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A metal enclosure may shield the contents from an EMP's destruction
It is important that you understand that the insulating effect of the rubber tires is not 100% effective for EMP shielding. A fiberglass body or being parked too close to a large metal expanse (next to a metal wall, for example) will make a vehicle more susceptible to EMP. Also, as almost all new cars are heavily computerized and filled with IC circuits, the newer the car the more likely that it will be out of commission following an EMP weapon burst.
It is for this reason that many who practice survival preparedness have a backup survival vehicle. These vehicles are usually pre-1980 or earlier, also an older diesel-powered vehicle should still be operable as they dont use fuel-injectors.
The technology is developing steadily to provide effective EMP shielding for newer vehicles. Unfortunately the technology is still limited to military applications, and has not really been applied to vehicles available to the public.
Overall it appears that your best bet for ensuring you have an operating vehicle after a high-altitude EMP burst is to have an older diesel car or truck. Make sure its sitting on good rubber tires and not parked next to a metal building. | <urn:uuid:c1baa1fd-8c5f-4007-8bac-154d26905720> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.survival-homestead.com/emp-shielding.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397842.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00064-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956629 | 247 | 2.75 | 3 |
Suggested Essay Topics
You are free to choose your own essay topic, in consultation with me and the few listed below are but an indication of the sorts of treatments that would be accepted as tutorial and final essay topics.
1. Land tenure is often the cement that binds together a small scale traditional society. Discuss land tenure comparatively in at least two Oceanic groups, comparing their major features.
2. Compare the religious beliefs of at least two populations, examining them along at least one other dimension, such as their economy or social organization.
3. What is the relationship between history and ideology, as discussed by Sahlins, in the society that you have chosen? There is a special section of the Outline bibliography on the Pacific Islands (Open Reserve A 1212) dealing with Sahlins work and discussions about his approach to anthropology and history.
4. Anthony Giddens (1984. The Constitution of Society. Cambridge, Polity Press) proposes "structuration theory" as a sensitizing series of concepts for analysing modern society. Show how structuration can (or cannot) be applied to the material from your chosen society.
5. Conduct a survey of a South Pacific Islander group in Sydney, emphasizing, through network analysis, their adaptation to life in Australia. There are small enclaves of people from Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and some smaller populations. Your task will be to see to what extent your chosen group represents a community and how their traditional practices have survived in Sydney.
6. "Cargo cults" and other millenarian movements are well-known throughout Oceania. Compare two such cults, noting differences and similarities.
7. Polynesian navigation has been revived in the last two decades, with canoes being sailed throughout Eastern Polynesia. Consider the technical, historical and political aspects of this activity in modern Oceania.
8. Gender relations vary considerably in Oceania. Consider and contrast how two societies culturally structure gender roles, including their symbolic representation. Please recall that several Oceanic societies have more than two genders in your answer.
9. Haunani Kay Trask accused Roger Keesing of insulting the Hawaiian people by alleging that population had "invented" their traditions. Consider what some Pacific Islanders, such as Trask, Hauofa and others, have had to say about how anthropologists have represented Pacific cultures.
Top | Next | <urn:uuid:7f5d54b6-d328-4eee-8232-30f561786b30> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.hawaii.edu/cpis/psi/anthro/oce_soc4.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00138-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954499 | 495 | 2.984375 | 3 |
MISSION CONTROL CENTER (Korolyov, Moscow Region) – The landing capsule of the Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft, carrying three crew members of the International Space Station (ISS), landed early on Wednesday in Kazakhstan, the Russian Mission Control Center said. They were evacuated from the capsule.
"The reentry vessel has landed 147 kilometers [91 miles] away from the city of Zhezkazgan, Karaganda Region, in the Republic of Kazakhstan," the representative told RIA Novosti.Mikhail Kornienko and US astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent 340 days at the ISS — the longest space mission ever recorded, as well as Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov, who spent six months at the ISS.
Some 200 servicemen, as well as 12 Mi-8 helicopters carrying special equipment, four An-12 and An-26 transport planes and 18 all-terrain vehicles were involved in the spacecraft search-and-recovery operation.
"The crew members are feeling well. The returned space travelers will be examined by doctors, and later Kornienko and Volkov will return to the Star City, while Scott Kelly will fly to the United States," the spokesperson said.
During the mission, the crew carried out a number of important scientific experiments.
Scott Kelly published the photos of the first flower ever grown in space.
NASA underscored that this successful experiment paved the way toward a manned Mars mission.
Moreover, European scientists collected tiny mushrooms growing in Antarctic rocks and sent them to the International Space Station. The Cryomyces antarcticus and Cryomyces minteri were planted aboard the station in conditions close to those on Mars and kept in cells on a platform for experiments.
After 18 months, more than 60 percent of the mushrooms' cells remained intact, namely with functioning DNA. According to the authors of the study, these results will help in a further search for life on Mars.
The ISS members shared their New Year wishes in an exclusive interview with Sputnik.
Russian cosmonauts Yury Malenchenko and Sergei Volkov conducted a spacewalk on the ISS performing an experiment called "Restoration" to repair the spacecraft. And they took mesmerizing photos. This is probably the best selfie ever.
Scott Kelly amazed the world by playing Ping-Pong in the conditions of microgravity with two hydrophobic paddles and a sphere of water.
Using a 4K-camera, the crew filmed a stunning footage of an effervescent tablet dissolving in a floating ball of water.
Scott Kelly took a series of photos of the Earth from an altitude of some 400 kilometers. Just look at the beauty and fragility of the world.
Scott Kelly pranked his UK colleague Tim Peake chasing him in a gorilla suit. Go big, or go home!
By the way, Tim Peake, in his turn, unintentionally trolled an unknown woman on the Earth after he had mistakenly dialed her phone number.
I'd like to apologise to the lady I just called by mistake saying 'Hello, is this planet Earth?' — not a prank call…just a wrong number!— Tim Peake (@astro_timpeake) 24 декабря 2015 г.
Undoubtedly, the crew's work in space made a great contribution to science.
The crew members are expected to be replaced by Russia’s Aleksey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka, as well as US’ Jeffrey Williams, who are scheduled to take off aboard the Soyuz TMA-20M on March 19. | <urn:uuid:632512d7-721b-4f24-a6dd-48ee1507f15f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://sputniknews.com/art_living/20160302/1035635257/iss-crew-members-land-kazachstan.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00004-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934609 | 749 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Mental illness is a catchall phrase that joins two very scary words: mental and illness. It is the phrase of choice of the various mental health organizations to describe a plethora of psychological disorders.
Many workers are simply not taking advantage of the health-care insurance programs and EAPs available in many companies either because they are unaware of the available help or because of the social shame still attached to seeking out mental health care. Sadly, many workers conceal and hide their disorders rather than seek assistance. And many employers don't have established screenings that would support workers to seek out help in a private, confidential environment.
As a result, workers with mental disabilities do not have the same opportunity to contribute and to achieve their potential because of barriers they face when trying to obtain competitive employment. In the United States, the unemployment rate for individuals with psychiatric disabilities is between 80 to 90 percent.
Psychologists often write about the emotional state of the American workforce. And, sooner or later, managers peer into these findings hoping to adapt them to their own particular work-a-day world. But a recent report conducted by the Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Group and the National Mental Health Association found that 25 percent (about 28 million) of the U.S. workforce suffers at least one mental or substance abuse disorder each year. That's a staggering one out of four workers!
About 66 percent of that 28 million have never been diagnosed, and just 14 percent have received treatment in the past year. Unfortunately, the myth is that if you are at work you are healthy, but this is simply not the case.
The most common mental disorders among American workers aged 18-54 are alcohol dependence, major depression and social phobia.
The report also found that companies pay more than $17 billion a year in unproductive wages to workers with mental disorders: $5 billion for missed workdays and $12 billion for lost productivity. Employers aren't the only losers. Workers with mental disabilities earn on average 22 percent less than those without them.
The first of its kind, this large-scale study and its findings will certainly be analyzed and questioned for a long time to come.
For many Americans, working provides a sense of self-worth and a source of self-esteem. Work offers many benefits besides a means to pay the bills. It provides a sense of purpose, social interaction and an opportunity to contribute to the community.
Understanding mental illness is every manager's responsibility.
SOURCES: Robin Hertz, Ph.D., senior director, population studies, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Group, New York City; Mary Graham, senior policy advisor, National Mental Health Association, Alexandria, Va.; Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Group study, 2002.blog comments powered by Disqus | <urn:uuid:b6da2ae7-7408-4379-89fc-c0816952d6d4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mmsonline.com/columns/mental-illness-in-the-workplace | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00149-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961481 | 558 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Container Gardening for Wildlife
by Marlene Haas
Provide food for pollinators in small spaces.
Container gardening is ideal for the urban naturalist trying to maximize blooms per square inch, but is also a welcome addition to a larger yard. Following a few simple guidelines will result in healthy plants cascading over pots and enticing wildlife to visit.
First one must find the appropriate home for a floral occupant. When choosing a container, keep in mind what plant you want to grow in it. The size and shape of the root system and the growth rate are factors determining how big and deep of a pot you want. Large pots stay moist longer, are less subject to temperature fluctuations, and allow for more root growth and multiple plant displays. Hanging pots are the most susceptible to drying out.
Pots can be made out of a number of materials. Depending on your taste and setting, you might try clay, terra-cotta, cast concrete or wood. Wood can be pressure-treated and painted, just do not use creosote, which is toxic to plants. Line pressure-treated wood with plastic if using the pot for edibles. Be creative and recycle a wooden barrel or watering can.
If you're not familiar with your locally native plants, you can experiment with them in containers before setting them loose in your yard. In many cases, local natives will be hardier than non-native plants. Locally native flowering plants will attract hummingbirds, butterflies, and other pollinators. Non-hardy plants will need to have winter protection or be moved to a sheltered location. If plants are combined in one pot, just be sure that their growing conditions and growth forms are compatible.
Drainage is important to prevent roots from being waterlogged, which hinders nutrient uptake and can lead to root rot. With this in mind, outdoor plants should not be left in standing water. If a pot lacks adequate drainage, add extra holes using an electric drill with a masonry bit. Put newspaper over the holes to prevent soil from spilling out. Elevating pots on pottery or wooden feet also helps with drainage and aeration. It is better to opt for a houseplant soil mixture over regular garden soil, which is too dense. To help keep the soil cool and moist, top with a layer of mulch.
Watering the plant itself can inhibit efficient gas exchange in the leaves, so it is better to water the soil directly. The moisture of the soil should be checked frequently, both at the edge and in the center of the pot. Your watering schedule should vary with the seasons. In cooler months, allow the plant to nearly dry out between watering. When the temperature is up, water daily to every other day. If a plant has wilted due to dehydration, immerse the pot in tepid water until no air bubbles appear and place in a shady spot until the cells are again turgid. Watering is best done early in the morning when it is cool. | <urn:uuid:257c032f-fb43-4a80-8ee3-c66af1784030> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.enature.com/articles/detail.asp?storyID=636 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00064-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936974 | 612 | 3.203125 | 3 |
May 11, 2014
Reports: Russia Is Planning To Establish A Manned Moon Base By 2030
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online
Russia is reportedly planning to construct a manned colony on the moon by the year 2030, and could take the first steps towards establishing a base of operations on the lunar surface within the next two years.FoxNews.com, citing reports published Thursday by the Russian-language newspaper Izvestia, said that the nation plans to be prepared to send manned missions to orbit the moon by the year 2028.
During the final stages of that program, humans would be sent to the lunar surface in order to build an infrastructure that would be used by a permanent base of operations. The first stage of the project would cost approximately 28.5 billion rubles, or $815.8 million, and the country is hoping to gain the support of private-sector investors.
A report on the program, which was prepared by the Russian Academy of Sciences, Roscosmos and Moscow State University and referenced by RIA Novosti, said that the moon was “a space object for the future exploration by terrestrial civilization, and a geopolitical competition for the Moon's natural resources may begin in the 21st century.”
The Russian media outlet went on to say that the officials behind the moon colonization mission are planning several three- to four-year projects over the next 16 years. The first leg of the project will focus on analyzing the physical and chemical composition of the future home of the base, the moon’s south pole.
The first four of those missions will take place between 2016 and 2025, said Lee Moran of the New York Daily News. Afterwards, round trips have been scheduled for 2028 to 2030, and a manned exploration mission is set for the following decade. The main purpose of the manned lunar operations will be to extract minerals such as aluminum, iron and titanium, which were discovered by previous moon missions.
“The program also envisages building a space- and Earth-monitoring observatory on the Moon,” said Moscow Daily Times reporter Anna Dolgov. “While the program envisages international cooperation on the project, it stresses that the ‘independence of the national lunar program must be ensured regardless of the conditions and the extent of the participation in it by foreign partners.’”
“Lunar resources may present a ‘treasure-trove’ of rare and valuable minerals of substantial strategic importance, according to NASA, but the concentration and the distribution of those elements remain uncertain,” she added. “The Moon can also be used as a launchpad for future missions into deep space, said the research chief of the Institute of Space Policy, Ivan Moiseyev, Izvestia reported.”
The announcement comes a little over a month after NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and the US space agency said that it would be suspending some space-related contracts with Russia in the wake of unrest in the Ukraine. However, Bolden maintained that his agency would continue to work alongside their Russian colleagues on the International Space Station. | <urn:uuid:dfcaec55-3b2c-47ee-8b41-ef742aa0bf2c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1113143305/russia-planning-moon-colony-051114/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397567.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00115-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94311 | 638 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Simple Definition of college
: a school in the U.S. that you go to after high school : a school that offers courses leading to a degree (such as a bachelor's degree or an associate's degree)
: a part of an American university that offers courses in a specified subject
: a school in Britain that offers advanced training in a specified subject
Full Definition of college
1 : a body of clergy living together and supported by a foundation
2 : a building used for an educational or religious purpose
3 a : a self-governing constituent body of a university offering living quarters and sometimes instruction but not granting degrees <Balliol and Magdalen Colleges at Oxford> —called also residential college b : a preparatory or high school c : an independent institution of higher learning offering a course of general studies leading to a bachelor's degree; also : a university division offering this d : a part of a university offering a specialized group of courses e : an institution offering instruction usually in a professional, vocational, or technical field <business college>
5 a : a group of persons considered by law to be a unit b : a body of electors — compare electoral college
6 : the faculty, students, or administration of a college
Examples of college in a sentence
She teaches art at a local college.
He graduated from one of the country's best colleges.
She attended a business college.
He attended college for several years, but didn't graduate.
She dropped out of college.
I went to Mount Holyoke College.
When I was a junior in college, I spent a semester in Spain.
the Edinburgh College of Art
the London College of Fashion
She is attending fashion college.
Origin and Etymology of college
Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin collegium society, from collega colleague — more at colleague
First Known Use: 14th century
Rhymes with college
COLLEGE Defined for Kids
Definition of college for Students
: a school that offers more advanced classes than a high school
Seen and Heard
What made you want to look up college? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible). | <urn:uuid:d08d2958-c1a9-45f8-834e-c63efa7c2440> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/college | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00026-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934689 | 452 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Copyrights are generally enforced by the owner in a civil law court, but there are also criminal infringement statutes.
In general, the owner of a physical copy of a copyrighted work (book, CD, etc.,) can do what he pleases with the copy, even without owning the copyright, so long as he does not produce additional copies or modified works; but there are exceptions: public performances (which are considered a form of copy) or electronic copy. In the US this is known as the First Sale Doctrine[?], and was established in the US court system to clarify the legality of reselling books in used book stores.
Many European countries (and other countries as a result of the GATT Trade Related Intellectual Property or "TRIPs" agreement) further provide for "moral" rights, which are rights in addition to copyrights possessed by authors, such as the right to have their work acknowledged and not be disparaged. While copyright is normally assigned or licensed to the publisher, authors generally retain their moral rights (although in some jurisdictions these can be excluded under contract).
Some European countries also provide for artist resale rights, which mean that artists are entitled to a portion of the appreciation of the value of their work each time it is sold. These rights are granted on the background of a different tradition, which granted droits d'auteur[?] rather than copyright also granting all creators various moral rights beyond the economic rights recognized in most copyright jurisdictions.
While governments had previously granted monopoly rights to publishers to sell printed works, the modern concept of copyright originated in 1710 with the British Statute of Anne. This statute first recognized that authors, rather than publishers, should be the primary beneficiary of such laws, and it included protections for consumers of printed work ensuring that publishers could not control their use after sale. It also limited the duration of such exclusive rights to 28 years, after which all works would pass into the public domain.
The Berne Convention of 1886 first established the recognition of copyrights between sovereign nations. (Copyright protection was also provided by the Universal Copyright Convention of 1952, but that convention is today largely of historical interest.) Under the Berne convention, copyright is granted automatically to creative works; an author does not have to "register" or "apply for" copyright protection. As soon as the work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically granted all exclusive rights to the work and any derivative works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them, or until the copyright expires.
Some think the current copyright system doesn't work in the Information society. The general problem is that the current (international) copyright system undermines its own goal (Boyle 1996, 142). The concept of public domain, needed as a pool for future creators, is far too often forgotten or repressed, due to the strong position of the concept of the romantic author, and selective blindness for the possibilities concerning copyright that the Internet and computers offer. Except for unlimited copying, it offers, as said, also new ways for marketing and, more important, the possibilities of code; much depends of course of how code is used (code can be used and is in most of the cases also used in a positive way), but in various cases it threatens not only the public domain in a serious way, but is also ignored when talking about "restoring the balance" which is said to be gravely disturbed by the so called unlimited copying possibilities the Internet creates. (http://akira.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/andreas/english_paper_gaidai)
Others believe that irrespective of contemporary advances in technology, copyright has been and remains the fundamental way by which authors, sculptors, artists, musicians and others can protect their creations from unauthorised copying. This view espouses that copyright serves as an incentive to creation of things such as books and art which are otherwise not protectable at law. Without the incentive afforded by protection, such creations would not exist.
In the US in 2003, controversial changes implemented by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act extending the length of copyright protection under U.S. copyright law by 20 years were constitutionally challenged unsuccessfully in the Supreme Court.
Copyright law varies from country to country. For information on specific national copyright laws, see:
International treaties concerning copyright | <urn:uuid:084ec531-1232-43cc-ab7a-9996eedbb668> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://encyclopedia.kids.net.au/page/co/Copyright | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393518.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00116-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954562 | 888 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Definitions for gleamglim
This page provides all possible meanings and translations of the word gleam
gleam, gleaming, glow, lambency(noun)
an appearance of reflected light
gleam, gleaming, glimmer(verb)
a flash of light (especially reflected light)
glitter, glisten, glint, gleam, shine(verb)
be shiny, as if wet
"His eyes were glistening"
shine brightly, like a star or a light
"A terrible thought gleamed in her mind"
a small or indistinct shaft or stream of light.
a glimpse or hint; an indistinct sign of something.
The rescue workers preserved a gleam of optimism that they might still survive.
brightness or shininess; splendor.
To shine; to glitter; to glisten.
To be briefly but strongly apparent.
To disgorge filth, as a hawk.
Origin: * (noun) Originates before the first millennium from Middle English gleme, from Old English glæm; see ghel-.
to disgorge filth, as a hawk
a shoot of light; a small stream of light; a beam; a ray; a glimpse
to shoot, or dart, as rays of light; as, at the dawn, light gleams in the east
to shine; to cast light; to glitter
to shoot out (flashes of light, etc.)
Origin: [OE. glem, gleam, AS. glm, prob. akin to E. glimmer, and perh. to Gr. warm, to warm. Cf. Glitter.]
Chambers 20th Century Dictionary
glēm, v.i. to glow or shine: to flash.—n. a small stream of light: a beam: brightness.—n. Gleam′ing, a sudden shoot of light.—adj. Gleam′y, casting beams or rays of light. [A.S. glǽm, gleam, brightness (see Glimmer); akin to glass, glow.]
The numerical value of gleam in Chaldean Numerology is: 7
The numerical value of gleam in Pythagorean Numerology is: 2
Sample Sentences & Example Usage
One life - a little gleam of Time between two Eternities.
She was a phantom of delight When first she gleam'd upon my sight A lovely apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament.
Genius without religion is only a lamp on the outer gate of a palace; it may serve to cast a gleam on those that are without while the inhabitant sits in darkness.
Genius without religion is only a lamp on the outer gate of a palace; it may serve to cast a gleam of light on those that are without, while the inhabitant sits in darkness.
The mind alike, Vigorous or weak, is capable of culture, But still bears fruit according to its nature. ?Tis not the teacher?s skill that rears the scholar: The sparkling gem gives back the glorious radiance It drinks from other light, but the dull earth Absorbs the blaze, and yields no gleam again.
Images & Illustrations of gleam
Translations for gleam
From our Multilingual Translation Dictionary
- Schimmer, Schein, Funke, GlanzGerman
- hohtaa, pilkahtaa, loisto, välke, kiiltää, välkkyä, välkehtiä, vilahtaa, vilkahtaa, säde, pilkahdusFinnish
- miroitement, luire, rayon, refletFrench
- titiwha, ramarama, raramaMāori
- urmă, strălucireRomanian
- луч, проблеск, свет, вспышка, блескRussian
- parıltı, belirti, parlaklıkTurkish
Get even more translations for gleam »
Find a translation for the gleam definition in other languages:
Select another language: | <urn:uuid:702828de-ecae-46b9-b49d-20c142292d2d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.definitions.net/definition/gleam | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399522.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00100-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.743149 | 915 | 2.546875 | 3 |
The following historical article by Edige Kirimal (1911-1980) appeared in Chapter II of a monograph, Genocide in the USSR: Studies in Group Destruction (1958), published by the Institute for the Study of the USSR in Munich. It was edited by Nikolai K. Deker and Andrei Lebed, and printed by Buckdruckerei Universal in Munich. The reader must keep in mind that the article was written during the height of the Cold War, when information exchange between the Soviet government and the West was extremely limited. Dr. Kirimal, who was a member of the German-based Institute for the Study of the USSR, relied partly on eyewitness accounts by individuals who had managed to escape to the West. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian government opened the state archives to research. In recent years new studies on Crimean Tatars, based on archival research, have become available. One such study is "The Deportation and Fate of the Crimean Tatars" (2000) by J. Otto Pohl, which is available at this Web site. For biographical information about Dr. Kirimal, see the next page. -- Ed.
Complete Destruction of National Groups as Groups
The Crimean Turks
The Crimean Turks, also known in the West as Crimean Tatars, were until 1944 the autochthonous inhabitants of the Crimea. Their fate furnishes one of the best illustrations of Soviet genocide. As is well known, the Bolsheviks occupied the Crimea and incorporated it into the RSFSR in November 1920. Numerous existing documents and research studies testify to the fact that until World War II, during the 20-year rule of the Bolsheviks in the Crimea (November 1920 to November 1941), the Soviet government followed a policy of gradual but systematic physical extermination of the Crimean Turks and that the mass genocide of 1944 was only the concluding stage in this program of extermination.
After the occupation of the Crimea by the Bolsheviks in November 1920, power in the Crimea was handed over to the notorious Hungarian Communist, Bela Kun, who carried out a policy of mass terrorism. In the process between 60,000 and 70,000 inhabitants of the Crimea were shot. This reign of terror was the introductory phase of physical extermination of the Crimean Turks by the Bolsheviks. The name of Bela Kun became a household word among the people, who replied to terrorism with armed resistance to the Soviet regime.
This resistance, and on the other hand the desire to win for themselves the sympathy of the Moslem East, moved the Soviet government to make temporary concessions to the Crimean Turks by halting the campaign of terrorism and proclaiming on October 18, 1921, the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic as part of the RSFSR.
In 1921 a terrible famine broke out in the Crimea, which lasted from November 1921 until January 1922. Two students of the problem, Tatmanli and Dzafer Sejdamet Kirimer, have proven by documentary evidence that this famine was artificially caused by the Bolsheviks by repeated confiscation of foodstuffs from the local peasants and by the compulsory export of a large part of the local harvest from the Crimea during 1921. Tatmanli states that this poor harvest would only have been sufficient to feed the inhabitants of the Crimea alone. These authors have also proven that not only was the Soviet government to blame for this famine, but it deliberately rejected an offer by the Italian Red Cross to help the starving Crimea. Not only did the Soviet government do nothing to relieve the famine, but it shipped out of the Crimea grain sent by Turkey for the Crimean population. Kirimer cites the following striking example: Whereas in Sevastopol, which was considered the stronghold of the Bolsheviks in the Crimea, 11% of the inhabitants died of starvation, in Bakhchiar, which is a 2-hour drive from Sevastopol, more than one half (55%) of the Turkish population of the town died of famine. An eyewitness, G. Aleksandrov, writes that during the terrible famine year 1921 there was not a single Turkish family in which someone did not starve to death.
As a result of the famine the population of the Crimea decreased by 21%, 50,000 having left the Crimea and 100,000 having died of starvation. Of the latter 60,000 were Crimean Turks. The artificially induced famine in the Crimea in 1921-22 was the second stage in the physical extermination of the Crimean Turks by the Bolsheviks.
The next five years (1923-27) were a short period of comparatively normal existence for the Crimean Turks. During the era the so-called Tatarization of the Crimea took place. The majority of the members of the Crimean autonomous government were Crimean Turks. National schools, scientific institutes, museums, libraries, and theaters were opened. A young generation of national intelligentsia grew up. A national press and literature were developed. The local economy was encouraged. There was relative freedom for religion. The language of the Crimean Turks was recognized, on a par with Russian, as a state language of the Crimea.
The national autonomy accorded the Crimean Turks was virtually liquidated in 1928. Tatarization was replaced by Sovietization, which found expression mainly in ruthless suppression of what was called local bourgeois nationalism.
While these changes were taking place (1928), the Soviet government persecuted, deported, or shot more than 3,500 Crimean Turks who had defended the autonomous rights of the Crimea. A significant proportion of the middle-aged generation of the Crimean Turkish intellectuals fell victim to this third stage in the physical extermination of the Crimean Turks by the Soviet government.
The compulsory collectivization carried out in 1929-30 formed the background for the fourth stage of extermination. Between 35,000 and 40,000 Crimean Turks, the immense majority of whom perished in exile, were declared kulaks or semi-kulaks and deported to concentration camps in the Urals or Sibiria. Aleksandrov states that the Crimean Turk peasants "were liquidated by whole villages. Thousands of families were driven behind barbed wire into deportation camps. Persons who had grown up in a gentle southern climate, who had never at any time left their native hills and shores, were deported into the taiga and tundra and began to die off in the first stages of the journey. These were not mere mass measures, they were the physical extermination of a whole people, merciless and senseless."
The German author Spuler states that this Soviet policy of extermination evoked resistance on the part of the Crimean Turks, which found an outlet in the Alakat uprising on the south coast of the Crimea in December 1930. This uprising was savagely suppressed by the Soviets and resulted in the arrest of several thousand Crimean Turks, many of whom were shot or deported to concentration camps in the Soviet Union.
An eyewitness, Omar Mustafa Oglu, testifies that on January 18, 1930, the Bolsheviks sent large land and sea forces into the area of the uprising and that 350 heads of families were arrested on that day in the village of Uskut alone. This eyewitness furnishes a list of the 42 inhabitants of the village who were shot by the Bolsheviks in Simferopol on March 24, 1930. The number of those arrested throughout the Crimea amounted to several thousands.
As a result of compulsory collectivization and the export of Crimean grain and cattle, the population of the Crimea underwent a second famine in the years 1931-33; this was the next and fifth stage in the mass extermination of the Crimean Turks by the Soviet regime. Aleksandrov states:
During the dreadful famine years 1931-33, when bodies were piled in the streets of villages and towns, foreign ships were incessantly loading choice golden wheat in Crimean ports, and unfermented wine was being poured through pipes into the holds of tankers. The terrible famine mowed down all who had stayed behind. Foodstuffs were deliberately not imported into this area, deprived of its own produce.
The policy of the Soviet regime evoked a public protest in 1931 on the part of a local Turkish Communist, Mehmet Kubay, chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Crimean Autonomous Republic, who accused the Soviet government of "plundering the Crimean Republic, exporting all its natural riches, and not providing food for the starving population in exchange." Kubay paid for his boldness by being deported and the Soviet government, in response to his protest, intensified the Sovietization of the Crimea.
The Sovietization of the Crimea in 1931-36 was the sixth stage in the systematic genocide committed by the Soviet government against the Crimean Turks. During this period the majority of the Moslem priesthood were either deported or physically exterminated, and the religious schools and mosques in the Crimea were forcibly closed. A considerable proportion of the intellectuals among the Crimean Turks, who were accused of bourgeois nationalism, counter-revolution, Trotskyism, etc., were subjected to systematic persecution, deportation, and execution by shooting. Almost the entire pre-revolutionary national literature was forbidden and a wide-spread Russification of the language and alphabet of the Crimean Turks was carried out by forbidding the use of many "bourgeois" Arabic, Persian, and Turkish words and introducing Russian words and grammatic rules in their place.
This process was completed by the compulsory introduction among the Crimean Turks of the Russian alphabet, which is completely unsuited to the needs of the Turkish language.
Persecution and elimination of the national, social, and family customs of the Crimean Turks began in the villages. Summing up these facts, the Crimean author, Kirimer, rightly described the Sovietization of the Crimea as a policy of "exterminating the national essence, the national culture, and the language of the Crimean Turks."
The Ezhov period was the culmination of Sovietization and was the seventh stage in the physical extermination of the Crimean Turks. All social classes among the Crimean Turks now became victims of terrorism, in the literal sense of the word. Not only the nationalists and remaining bourgeois (the older and middle-aged generations of intellectuals, clergy, former landowners, traders, and prosperous peasants), but also many National Communists and members of the Crimean Autonomous Republic, headed by Ilyas Tarkhan, and Samedin, chairman of the Soviet of People's Commissars of the Crimea, and a considerable proportion of the new Soviet intelligentsia which had grown up under the Soviet regime and which had previously participated in the Sovietization of the Crimea (Soviet professors, doctors, teachers, journalists, writers, poets, artists, painters, etc.), were arrested or shot. Terrorism was also applied to the Crimean peasantry. Eyewitnesses testified that a majority of those arrested never returned home.
Sadreddin Tamali, an inhabitant of Karasubazar, testified that in December 1937, 60 persons were arrested in one night alone in Karasubazar. All the Moslem clergy who were still alive in this part of the Crimea, including the 70-year-old Sheikh Mekhmed Kedzhaamed Vedzhi, the well-known Crimean theologian and teacher, the 75-year-old Sheik Sheikhzade Abdul Medzhit, the 80-year-old Kafadar Hadji Muzaffer, the 90-year-old Said Hadil Chelibi Oglu Effendi, and others were imprisoned in Karasubazar. Jemil Hadji Oglu, an inhabitant of Yalta, states that "in 1937, in the Turkish villages of Aivasil and Derekoi, 171 persons were arrested and the majority never returned." "In the village of Kylchor, in Ichkin Raion," writes Muhtar Ismail, "which has a total of 45 Turkish and 45 Russian houses, 17 Turks were arrested of whom two returned in 1941, while the remainer died in prison."
One Crimean author considers that "in the first period of Soviet domination of the Crimea the number of Crimean Turkish victims, according to the most sober calculation, exceeded 100,000." Another author estimates that as a result of the famine in 1921-22 and the collectivization of the Crimea in 1929-30 alone the Crimean Turks lost 140,000 persons. Both are dealing only with the first decade of Bolshevik domination in the Crimea. To sum up the result of all seven stages in the physical extermination of the Crimean Turks it may be said that during twenty years of Bolshevik occupation of the Crimea (1921-41), between 160,000 and 170,000 Crimean Turks were either murdered or deported, the equivalent of approximately one half of the Crimean Turkish population in 1917. These losses constitute the sole reason for the fact that the Turkish population of the peninsula, which during the 1920's and 1930's had a high birth rate, has not only failed to increase numerically, but has continously dwindled under the Soviet regime. Thus, even before the beginning of World War II and during a period when there was absolutely no reason to accuse the Crimean Turks of betraying the Soviet regime, the Soviet government had in the two decades 1921-41 exterminated almost one half of the Turkish population of the Crimean Autonomous Republic.
The Crimean Turks still alive in 1941, on the eve of the Soviet-German war, were half exterminated, deprived of elementary human rights, deprived of their national culture, language, and alphabet, systematically Russified, deprived of freedom of worship, deprived of the better part of the national intelligentsia, of their land, of private property, cruelly exploited on collective farms and state farms, laboring under a double social and national yoke.
World War II and the advance of the German Army on the Crimea provided the Soviet government with grounds for the commission, during the last days of the Bolshevik occupation of the Crimea (October and November, 1941), of yet another mass crime, the eighth stage in the physical extermination of the Crimean Turks. An inhabitant of Simferopol, Ilyas Mirasbay, testifies that during the evacuation of the Crimea the NKVD was occupied day and night in arresting and executing members of the civil population. Another witness declares: "On the eve of the evacuation of Simferopol, on October 31, 1941, the NKVD shot all the prisoners in the cells under the NKVD building and the city prison." Says another: "After the departure of the Bolsheviks, the bodies of women and infants were discovered among the multitude of corpses in the cellars of the Simferopol NKVD building."
During the retreat from Karasubazar, the NKVD authorities shot on the spot every inhabitant encountered in the streets of the city. The same was true at Yalta, where on November 4 the local NKVD shot all prisoners in the city prisons. The retreating NKVD officials also executed the local inhabitants along the highways in the Crimea, for example on the road between Alushta and Yalta.
The reign of terror during the retreat provided evidence that in the event of the return of the Bolsheviks to the Crimea, the Crimean population would again be subjected to persecution, and this in fact was the case. The occupation by the Bolsheviks of the Crimea on April 10, 1944, opened the concluding stage of genocide committed by the Soviet government against the Crimean Turks. This act of genocide was not merely the liquidation of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and the mass deportation of Crimean Turks. Documents! and testimony on the subject prove that the mass deportation was preceded by a process of physical extermination of Crimean Turks during the period between the first incursion of the Soviet Army into the Crimea in April 1944 and the deportation in June.
The first two weeks were the period of the most ruthless terrorism. An eyewitness has described the events of this period as follows:
After the arrival of the Soviet armies in the Crimea, the whole Turkish population, by a special order from the commanding officer, was completely subjected to the will of the NKVD for two weeks. The savage soldiers raped women, children and girls. They plundered, murdered and hanged defenseless persons. For two weeks the heartrending groans of the ravished, tortured and slain could be heard throughout the Crimea.
Other eyewitnesses testify that during this reign of terror mass executions of Crimean Turks were carried out in the streets of Crimean towns and villages. Evidence from two persons was sufficient basis for conviction of collaboration with the Germans and a sentence of death. The trees in the streets of Simferopol were used as gallows. The eyewitnesses state that many of those arrested and murdered came from the Turkish villages on the south coast of the Crimea.
Lack of data makes it impossible to determine how many Crimean Turks were murdered before the deportation, but the number undoubtedly ran into the thousands.
The deportation itself took place two months after the occupation of the Crimea by the Soviet Army. A lieutenant colonel of the MVD named Burlutsky, who took part in the action and later escaped to the West, testifies that the deportation of the Crimean Turks was carried out with the use of the same methods as in the Chechen-Ingush Republic in the North Caucasus, i.e., by the sudden and simultaneous arrest of the whole Turkish population of the Crimea by NKVD forces especially sent for the purpose. Those arrested were loaded into closed freight cars and deported.
The fate of the deported Crimean Turks and their later location were carefully concealed by the Soviet government. Burlutsky testifies that the deportees were loaded into empty cattle cars, which were filled to overflowing, closed, sealed, and guarded by an escort. No destination was announced. Burlutsky believed that a large number of those deported perished en route. This belief is confirmed by a number of reports which have been received via devious routes from the Soviet Union. It has been established that the overwhelming majority of the Crimean Turks were taken to concentration camps in Sverdlovsk Raion in the Urals, where many of them died of hunger, cold, and unendurable slave labor. It is also known that a minority, including workers who had returned from Germany, were deported to Turkestan.
According to information in the possession of a Committee for the Investigation of Genocide in the USSR the following numbers died following arrest, during deportation, or on arrival at their place of deportation:
|Chechens and Ingush
|| 200,000 |
|Karachai and Balkars
|Jews and Greeks
A decree of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, entitled "On the Abolition of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR and on the Transformation of the Crimean ASSR into the Crimean Oblast," stated that "the Chechens and the Crimean Turks have been deported to other parts of the USSR." This decree was not issued until June 25, 1946, two years after the deportation, and a year after the Crimean ASSR became the Crimean Oblast on June 30, 1945.
The gross violation of the well-known declarations dated November 15 and December 7, 1917, which were signed by Lenin and Stalin and in which the Soviet government guaranteed to "all the peoples of Russia" and to "the Moslems of Russia and the East" full rights to "a free and independent existence," is clear.
The reasons for the genocide of the Crimean Turks are unmistakable. Following the war, Soviet scholars and propagandists, on instructions from the Soviet government, attempted to justify the murder of the Crimean Turks as "just punishment" for "the betrayal of the Soviet State" during the war. At a "session on Crimean history" held in September, 1948, in Simferopol, the Soviet historian P.N. Nadinsky attempted "scientifically" to explain "this complex historical problem of the Soviet Crimea" as the result of the "persistence of survivals of capitalism in the minds of the Crimean Tatars."
But analysis of the events of the years 1921-41 in the Crimea reveals clearly enough the totally unsubstantiated nature and injustice of this "scientific" reasoning. It is interesting to note that in recent years Soviet scholars and propagandists and science have moved away from direct attempts to justify the murder of the Crimean Turks and now prefer to hush up the liquidation of the Crimean Republic and the name of the Crimean Turks, which disappeared from the Soviet press and from the papers of scholarly publications, even including the second edition of the Large Soviet Encyclopedia.
An eyewitness, Ismail Akim, states that after the arrival of the German Army in the Crimea, Soviet secret documents found in a safe abandoned by the Bolsheviks show that the Soviet government intended to effect the deportation of all Crimean Turks to Kazakhstan in the autumn of 1941 as in the case of the German population of the Crimea during the first months of the war against Germany. The hasty retreat of the Bolsheviks from the Crimea prevented them from carrying out this intention. However, the fact that there was such an intention proves that the plan for the compulsory deportation of the whole of the Turkic population of the Crimea was in existence long before there could be any question of a "betrayal" of the Soviets.
The true reason for the genocide committed against the Crimean Turks was the desire of the Soviet government to remove from the Crimea a native Turkish ethnical element which from its point of view was unreliable, and to transform the Crimea into a reliable fortress and strategic base for Soviet aggression. There are numerous free world studies on this point.
Further proof is found in the fact that the Soviet government deported from the Crimea all the Crimean Turks, including those who had fought throughout the war in the ranks of the Soviet Army. Many of these persons had been awarded orders and the title "Hero of the Soviet Union," but this did not save their families from deportation. Thus, several thousand Crimean Turks who were evacuated by the Bolsheviks to the Caucasus in the autumn of 1941, and who were therefore far removed from events in the Crimea in 1942-44, suffered the same fate. Finally, the local Turkic Communists and their families, who under the leadership of the chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Crimea, Menlibari Abedilzhelil Khaurullakh, had fought actively against the German Army side by side with Soviet partisans and had called upon the Crimean Turks to take up arms against the Germans, were also subjected to mass deportation. This group included 50 Communist writers and journalists who had distributed anti-German proclamations and newspapers in the Turkish language throughout the Crimea. The fact that the Soviet government also deported from the Crimea all the Greeks and other members of national minorities who were living on the peninsula confirms the truth of the reason given above for the genocide committed against the Crimean Turks.
The liquidation of the so-called national regions which had existed in the Crimea before the war, such as the Jewish (Freidorf), German (Buyuk-Onlar), and the Ukrainian (Ishun) Regions, points in the same direction. The ethnographic map entitled "Nationalities of the USSR" in the Geographical Atlas of the USSR published in 1950 shows that by that year, after the Autonomous Crimean Republic had become the Crimean Oblast, only the Russian population remained. Settlers from the central oblasts of the Soviet Union (i. e., Moscow, Yaroslavl, Kursk, Penza, and Rostov Oblasts), who settled in 1944-45 on land left unoccupied by the deportation of its legitimate owners, constitute a significant proportion of the new postwar population of the Crimea.
Although in regard to other peoples which suffered from complete national genocide at the hands of the Soviet regime a gesture of rehabilitation was made, no such step was taken with regard to the Crimean Turks. The session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR which provided for the return of the Balkars, Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks, and Karachai made no mention of the Crimean deportees.
Most orientalists regard the name Crimean Turks as more accurate than the commonly
used term Crimean Tatars, the people concerned being Turkic in origin, language, and culture.
See A. Bachmakoff, Cinquante siecles d'evolution ethnique autour de la Mer Noire, Paris, 1937,
Chaps. V, VII; Abdullah Soysal, "The First Turkish Inhabitants of the Crimea," Yeni Turk,
Istanbul, Vol. IX, 1941, pp. 584-86, 611-13; Edige Kirimal, Der nationale Kampf der Krim-turken, Emstetten/Westf., 1952, pp. 1-4.
Bertold Spuler, "Die Krim unter russischer Herrschaft," Blick in der Wissenschaft, Berlin,
1948, No. 8, p. 364; Dzafer Sejdamet, Krym (The Crimea), Warsaw, 1930, pp. 128-29; A. Falken-horst, "Massenmord auf der Krim," Donau-Zeitung, Belgrade, February 23, 1943.
Dzafer Sejdamet, op. cit., p. 129.
"Green" partisan detachments were formed in the mountains and forests of the Crimea;
according to Ismail Mazal, a member of such a detachment, they comprised as many as 3,000
Crimean Turks. Ismail Mazal, "Memoirs of a Participant in the Events," pp. 5-6, manuscript in possession of the author, in Turkish.
Dzafer Sejdamet, op. cit., loc. cit.
BSE, 1st ed., Vol. XXXV, Moscow, 1937, p. 317; Bertold Spuler, op. cit., p. 363.
Tatmanli, "Operative Factors in the Severe Famine in the Crimea," Emel Mecmuasi, Constantsa, 1933, No. 3, pp. 9-17; No. 4, pp. 6-13; No. 7, pp. 7-14.
Dzafer Sejdamet, op. cit., pp. 131-32; Emil Mecmuasi, Constantsa, 1933, No. 9, pp. 1-40 (deals solely with the famine of 1921-22 in the Crimea).
Dzafer Sejdamet, op. cit., p. 132.
Grigory Aleksandrov, "Extermination of the Crimean Tatars," Sotsialistichesky vestnik, New York and Paris, 1950, No. 3, p. 51.
Tatmanli, op. cit., loc. cit.; Butun Kirim (All Crimea), Simferopol, 1925.
Bertold Spuler, op. cit,, p. 363; Dzafer Sejdamet, op. cit., pp. 129-30.
Dzafer Sejdamet, op. cit., p. 134; Bertold Spuler, op. cit., p. 363; Azerbaycanli Abdulvahap, "Crimeans in Prison and Exile," Emel Mecmuasi, Constantsa, 1938, p. 17; Edige Kirimal,
op. cit., pp. 290-92; "The Sentence in the Veli Abraimov Case," Izvestia, Moscow, January 5, 1928.
Edige Kirimal, op. cit., pp. 292-93 (Document 1232).
Grigory Aleksandrov, op. cit., p. 51.
Bertold Spuler, op. cit., p. 363.
Edige Kirimal, op. cit., pp. 293-94 (Document 1237).
Mustafa Oglu Omer, "The Alakat Tragedy," pp. 1-2, manuscript in possession of the author, in Turkish.
Grigory Aleksandrov, op. cit., p. 51.
Emel Mecmuasi, Constantsa, 1932, No. 4, pp. 33-34; 1939, No. 1, p. 36. Materials based on Soviet sources.
For details see Edige Kirimal, "The Religious Policy of the Soviets in the Crimea," Dergi, Munich, 1955, No. 1, pp. 55-57.
See the following newspapers: Yas Kuvvet, Simferopol, January 24, 1934; August 22 and October 14, 1937; Yani Dunya, Simferopol, October 26, 1933; March 28 and November 28, 1935; August 17, 18, 22, 1936; September 16 and October 4, 5, and 22, 1936; October 4, 1937; Krasny Krym, Simferopol, March 27, 1937; Emel Mecmuasi, Constantsa, 1937, No. 2, pp. 1-12 and
No. 3, pp. 15-21.
Yani Dunya, Simferopol, October 23-29. 1929; March 28, April 6, September 15, October 17-25, November 26-28, 1935; August 22, September 14, 16, and 22, October 5 and 22, 1936; October 14, 1937; January 15, 1938; Emel Mecmuasi, Constantsa, 1937, No. 9; 1938, No. 2, pp. 4-7, 30; No. 3, pp. 8-13; 1939, No. 136, pp. 6-8; No. 12, pp. 9-17; Mlody Prometeusz,
Warsaw, 1938, No. 2, p. 30.
Edige Kirimal, "The Status of the Crimean-Turkish Family and Womanhood after the Revolution of 1917," Dergi, Munich, 1955, No. 3, pp. 13-30.
Kiziltasli [Dzafer Sejdamet Kirimer], "The Language Problem in the Crimea," Emel Mecmuasi, Constantsa, 1935, No. 1, p. 363.
For details, see Edige Kirimal, note 1 above, Chap. V, pp. 300-02; T. Murtaza, "Slander or Truth," Azat Krim, Simferopol, June 22, 1943.
Sadreddin Tamali, "Memoirs," manuscript in possession of the author, in Turkish.
Cemil Haci Oglu, "Information on Events in the Crimea in 1937-38," pp. 1-2, manuscript in possession of the author, in Turkish.
Ismail Muhtar, "Information on Events in the Crimea in 1927-42," manuscript in possession of the author, in Turkish.
Anefi Kirimli, "The Nationality Policy of the Soviets," Krim, Berlin, December 13, 1944.
Kemal Ortayli, "Our Struggle with Bolshevism," Krim, Berlin, December 20, 1944.
Ahmet Tikici, "Recollections from My Diary," p. 3, manuscript in possession of the author, in Turkish; Kerim Tohtar, "Memoirs," p. 17, manuscript in possession of the author, in Turkish; Abdullah Corgunli, "Diary of Events, 1941-46," p. 1, manuscript in possession of the
author, in Turkish.
Ilyas Mirasbay, "The German Occupation of the Crimea in 1918 and 1941-42," p. 6, manuscript in possession of the author, in Turkish.
Abdullah Corgunli, op. cit., p. 28.
Ismail Akim, "The Bolshevik Catastrophe and the Struggle of the Crimean People," p. 8, manuscript in possession of the author, in Turkish.
Abdullah Corgunli, op. cit., p. 16.
Ibid., p. 15.
Ismail Akim, op. cit., loc. cit.
A. Musa, "The Evil Deeds of the Bolsheviks Against the Crimean Tatars," Azat Vatan, Munich, 1952, No. 4.
Abdullah Corgunli, op. cit., p. 90; "News of the Crimea," Krim, Berlin, 1945, No. 3, p. 8; "On the Situation in the Crimea," Krim, Berlin, December 13, 1944.
Tape recording of statement by Burlutsky before a special commission July 28, 1954, in Munich, morning session, tape No. 4, in files of Radio Liberation, Munich.
Ibid., tape No. 4. Burlutsky witnessed the deportations of the Kalmyks as well as the Chechen-Ingushes and the Crimean Tatars. For his description of the Kalmyks see p. 35.
Ibid., tapes No. 3 and No. 4.
Abdullah Corgunli, op. cit., p. 90; statement by a Crimean Turk, O. Dzh. (O. S.), a refugee
who left East Germany for the West in 1946, manuscript in possession of the author; several letters received from the USSR by relatives of deported Crimean Turks, copies in possession of the author.
Svobodny Kavkaz, Munich, 1951, No. 1, p. 32.
Full text in Izvestia, Moscow, June 28, 1946.
BSE, 2nd ed., Vol. XXIII, Moscow, 1953, p. 547.
"Declaration des droits des peuples de Russie et ses effets," Revue du monde Musulman, Paris, 1922, Vol. II, pp. 5-9.
B. Altman, "Session on the History of the Crimea," Voprosy istorii, Moscow, 1948, No. 12, p. 184.
Ismail Akim, op. cit., pp. 2-3. The entire German population of the Crimea, including members of mixed marriages, was forcibly deported to the Caucasus and thence to Kazakhstan; Abdullah Corgunli, op. cit., p. 3.
"Die ideologische Begrundung fur die sowjetischen Volkermorde, ihr Ziel, ihre Methoden und Resultate," Bulletin der Prometheischen Liga der Atlantik-Charta, no place of publication, 1949, No. 2, p. 16; Hans Friede, "Die Krim als Festungsbollwerk," Deutsche Ukraine-Zeitung,
Lutsk, August 4, 1943.
Abdullah Corgunli, op. cit., pp. 5, 50, 80-84.
"Russia Deports the Turkish Minority from Bessarabia," Narodowiec, Lens (Pas de Calais), November 19, 1951, p. 2.
B. Baranov, Krym (The Crimea), Moscow, 1935, p. 24.
Geografichesky atlas SSSR (Geographical Atlas of the USSR), Moscow, 1950, Map No. 14.
Burlutsky, note 41 above, tape No. 3; Pravda, Moscow, March 16, 1945; Izvestia, Moscow, June 20, 1944; BSE, 2nd ed., Vol. XXIII, Moscow, 1953, p. 551.
See Appendix to this volume.
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Hand transplant is a treatment option for people who have had one or both hands amputated. In a hand transplant, you receive one or two donor hands and a portion of the forearms from a person who has died. Hand transplants are performed in only a few transplant centers worldwide.
Although not guaranteed, a hand transplant may help you regain some hand function and sensation. While a hand transplant can improve your quality of life, it is a lifelong commitment to treatment. You'll need to take special medications (immunosuppressants) and have routine physical therapy and doctor appointments to check on the condition of your donor hands.
A hand transplant is performed in selected cases in an attempt to improve quality of life and give you some function and sensation in your new hands.
When matching you with a donor hand for a hand transplant, surgeons consider:
- Blood type
- Tissue type
- Skin color
- Comparable ages of donor and recipient
- Same sex between donor and recipient
- Hand size
- Muscle bulk
A hand transplant is a major operation and carries all the risks typical of transplant surgery, including infection, bleeding and blood clot formation (thrombosis). A clot would cause decreased blood flow to your hand, a serious complication that requires immediate surgery to repair.
Rejection of a donor hand happens when your body's immune system treats your donor hand as foreign to your body. Like viruses or bacteria, your immune system will then try to destroy your donor hand. Rejection can happen two ways:
Acute rejection. Acute rejection happens when your immune system tries to quickly destroy the tissues in your donor hand. It can also happen when your immune system sends special proteins (antibodies) to attack blood vessels and tissues in your donor hand.
If you have acute rejection, you may notice a rash, swelling or change in skin color of your hand or arm. You may or may not have pain.
Acute rejection can be controlled with medications, but in rare cases, you may need to have your donor hand or hands removed. Having a previous acute rejection doesn't disqualify you from having another hand transplant, but it may make it more difficult to match you with a donor.
Chronic rejection. Chronic rejection happens over a longer period of time. Your hand may become painful and lose function. You may notice a loss of hair on your hand or changes in your fingernails.
You'll learn to watch for early signs of rejection. Report any changes in the appearance or sensation in your hand to your transplant team. If your transplant team suspects your body is rejecting your donor hand, you may need to begin taking more anti-rejection medications. Your transplant team will likely order tests to be done on your hand, including a biopsy of the tissue in your donor hand.
Immunosuppressants are medications you take to prevent your body from rejecting your donor hand or hands. Immunosuppressants are powerful medications that you will need to take for the rest of your life. Major side effects of immunosuppressants include:
- Increased risk of serious infections, including cytomegalovirus (CMV)
- Increased cancer risk
- Kidney damage
- Increased risk of developing diabetes
- Increased cholesterol risk
Less serious immunosuppressant side effects include:
- Weight gain
- Hair loss
Evaluating whether to have a hand transplant
Before you can receive a hand transplant, carefully consider the risks of the procedure and whether you can be committed to intense follow-up care that will last the rest of your life. Also consider what benefits you hope to gain from a hand transplant. Post-transplant care includes:
- Regular appointments with transplant doctors and surgeons
- Regular physical therapy
- Taking immunosuppressant medications daily and managing the medications' side effects
- Follow-up care with your primary care doctor for routine health screenings
You'll be evaluated by a transplant team. People with amputation at the midupper arm or below may be considered for transplant. To be considered for a hand transplant, a candidate must:
- Pass a comprehensive physical exam that includes X-rays, blood tests and other measures of physical health
- Pass a mental and emotional health evaluation that examines coping skills, family and social support, and ability to manage post-transplant care
- Have no history of chronic nerve conditions, such as peripheral neuropathy
- Have no serious medical problems, such as diabetes, kidney disease, heart disease or untreatable cancers
- Have had no recent serious infections
- Be a nonsmoker
- Not abuse alcohol or illegal drugs
- Complete a financial evaluation of post-transplant care expenses with a member of the transplant team
Getting ready for your hand transplant
Once you're approved for a hand transplant, you'll be placed on a waiting list for a donor hand or hands. Your wait time can be unpredictable, since it's usually not known when a donor hand or hands that will match your needs will be available.
In the meantime, prepare as much as possible for a transplant. Preparations include:
- Transplant clinic visits. You'll need periodic appointments with your transplant team for blood tests and ongoing evaluations of your transplant readiness.
- Strengthening exercises, if recommended. Physical therapists may work with you to increase the strength and flexibility in your arms before your transplant.
- Arranging for travel and lodging. Your transplant team will ask that you stay at a location that's within 10 hours of travel time to the hospital where you'll have your transplant. Following your transplant, you'll usually need to stay near your transplant team for several months. Your transplant team may have recommendations for long-term lodging if you need it.
- Communicating with your transplant team. If you have any changes to your medical care — including changing medications, having a blood transfusion or being diagnosed with a chronic medical condition — let your transplant team know immediately. Also be sure to communicate any changes to your address, phone number or family contact information.
During the procedure
Hand transplant surgery is a complicated operation that can take 18 to 24 hours to perform. A team of surgeons will perform your surgery and provide your family with periodic updates on how your surgery is progressing.
Once the donor hand is ready to be attached to your arm, your surgeons will first attach your bones to the bones of the donor hand using small metal plates. Your surgeons will then use special sutures (stitches) to attach the blood vessels, nerves and tendons. Surgeons use a special operating room microscope to place the sutures. Once all the parts of the donor hand and recipient's arm have been attached, the skin is closed.
After the procedure
After your surgery, you'll be placed in an intensive care unit (ICU). Your health care team will check for function in your donor hand or hands, and you'll be asked to try to move your fingers. It's possible the room that you stay in will be kept at a higher temperature to promote blood circulation in your donor hand or hands.
Once you're stable enough to leave the ICU, you'll move to a different hospital room. You can expect to stay in the hospital for seven to 10 days following your transplant.
Your health care team will help you manage your pain following your transplant. It's important to communicate to your team how serious your pain is, since managing your pain can speed up your recovery.
A special hand therapist also will work on physical therapy with you while you're in the hospital. He or she will teach you exercises to get your hand functioning. In between exercise sessions, you'll wear a splint on your hand to keep it stable. You'll also be taught exercises to perform on your own.
It's normal to have some emotional concerns soon after your surgery. You may have trouble sleeping and adjusting to your new routine of caring for your donor hand or hands. Talk to members of your transplant team if you have any emotional concerns.
Immunosuppressant medications can help stop your immune system from destroying your donor hand or hands. Following your procedure, you'll begin to take immunosuppressant medications and will continue to do so for the rest of your life. To decrease the risk of side effects from immunosuppressant medications and the risk of rejection, you should:
- Take your immunosuppressants at the same time and in the same way every day (with or without food)
- Never stop taking the medications unless directed to do so by a doctor
- Expect side effects from the medications, and work with your transplant team to minimize the side effects
- Have regular blood tests to check the effectiveness of your immunosuppressants
While immunosuppressants can help reduce your risk of rejection, they can also lower your body's ability to fight off infections. If you have any signs that you're becoming ill with an infection — such as fever, rash or swelling — contact your transplant team or your doctor.
Because hand transplants are a relatively new procedure, it's difficult to predict what the results of your procedure will be. Following your post-transplant care plan carefully can increase your chance of regaining as much function as possible.
Although there's no guarantee on how much hand function you'll gain, hand transplant recipients have been able to:
- Pick up small objects, such as nuts and bolts
- Lift heavier objects with one hand, such as a full milk jug
- Use a wrench and other tools
- Take change into an outstretched palm
- Use a knife and fork
- Tie shoes
- Catch a ball
Mayo Clinic doctors trained in hand and reconstructive surgery have experience and expertise performing many complex surgeries, including microsurgery. Learn more about hand transplant at Mayo Clinic.
July 01, 2015
- Barbara Woodward Lips Patient Education Center. Hand and arm transplantation. Rochester, Minn.: Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research; 2011.
- Foroohar A, et al. The history and evolution of hand transplantation. Hand Clinic. 2011;27:405.
- Petruzzo P, et al. The International Registry on Hand and Composite Tissue Transplantation. Transplantation. 2010;90:1590.
- Landin L, et al. Outcomes with respect to disabilities of the upper limb after hand allograft transplantation: A systematic review. Transplant International. 2012;25:424.
- Kaufman CL, et al. A new option for amputees: Transplantation of the hand. Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development. 2009;46:395.
- Cendales L, et al. Implementation of vascularized composite allografts in the United States: Recommendations from the ASTS VCA Ad Hoc Committee and the Executive Committee. American Journal of Transplantation. 2011;11:13.
- Petruzzo P, et al. Long-term follow-up in composite tissue allotransplantation: In-depth study of five (hand and face) recipients. American Journal of Transplantation. 2011;11:808.
- Constantinescu MA, et al. Hand transplant: A challenge in immunological management of patients. Journal of Medicine and Life. 2011;4:287.
- Shores JT, et al. The current state of hand transplantation. Journal of Hand Surgery. 2011;36A:1862.
- Siemionow M, et al. Successes and lessons learned after more than a decade of upper extremity and face transplantation. Current Opinion in Organ Transplantation. 2013;18:633. | <urn:uuid:01fc1431-71c0-413b-ba3f-bcda04d20343> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/hand-transplant/care-at-mayo-clinic/why-choose-mayo-clinic/prc-20014037?p=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403826.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00081-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923783 | 2,404 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Dinosaur Profs Worlds Apart on Link to Birds
Source Newsroom: University of Kansas
Contact: Ranjit Arab, University Relations, (785) 864-8855. or [email protected]
Online at: http://www.urc.ukans.edu/News/00N/JuneNews/June23/dino.html
KU takes center stage in bird-dinosaur debate
Editors note: Several photos, both electronic and print, as well as video footage of both researchers are available for use upon request. Call (785) 864-8855.
LAWRENCE, Kan.--Larry Martin expects his work to ruffle some feathers among people who believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
Martin, senior curator at the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas, recently co-authored a study with several other scientists on "Longisquama insignis," a small reptile with feathers that glided among the trees some 220 million years ago in what is now central Asia.
Because Longisquama, a contemporary of the earliest dinosaurs, existed some 75 million years before the first birds, Martin says he believes it--not dinosaurs--was among birds' first ancestors. And, unlike early dinosaurs, fossils of Longisquama show the same unique sheath that surrounds growing
feathers in modern birds.
"Everything you can make out is consistent with it being a small, tree-living, gliding animal, which is precisely the thing you'd expect birds to evolve out of," Martin says.
The results of the study appear in the June 23 issue of the journal Science.
Martin's conclusion that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs is going against popular opinion. Practically everyone--from established scientists to best-selling authors and major Hollywood directors--tends to believe the theory that dinosaurs were birds' earliest ancestors. Martin says that is just wishful thinking.
"People want to believe that birds came from dinosaurs because it would mean that dinosaurs aren't really extinct," Martin says. "People want to believe that the parakeet in a cage is a cousin of the Tyrannosaurus Rex."
If Martin wants an informed opinion to dispute his claims that birds and dinosaurs are not of the same feather, all he has to do is open his office door in the Natural History Museum and call out for David Burnham.
Burnham, a KU paleontologist, has an office next door to Martin's. But when it comes to the bird-dinosaur debate, they are worlds apart.
Burnham recently assembled "Bambiraptor feinbergi," a 3-foot-tall skeleton of a 75 million-year-old dinosaur that had a roadrunner's body, birdlike shoulders, and long-clawed arms that folded like wings. Bambiraptor also had a large brain that shares several traits with modern birds. More than 90 percent of Bambiraptor's skeleton was recovered, making it the most complete birdlike dinosaur ever found. Burnham insists that the discovery of Longisquama will not change his belief that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
"I'm not convinced that those structures are proto-feathers," Burnham says of Longisquama. "They look more like hard scale-like structures that are attached to the ribs and do not cover the body like feathers would."
To Burnham, the questions Longisquama raises have more to do with the origins of flight--not necessarily the origins of birds.
"It's not going to help either side of the debate," Burnham says. "But it will raise the question of whether flight evolved from the ground up, like Bambiraptor, or whether it evolved by parachuting down from the trees like Longisquama may have done."
Regardless of one's beliefs on the origins of birds, Martin says, there is so much new information appearing that a definitive answer should be reached within the next five to ten years.
Until then, scientists around the world will take sides in a debate whose dividing line runs right through KU's Natural History Museum, where Martin and Burnham stand firmly on opposite sides of the bird-dinosaur fence.
Still, they both agree on one thing: KU is quickly taking a role at the center of the controversy.
"One of the wonderful things at the University of Kansas is that we have the best evidence for both sides of the debate," Martin says. "And, of course, you have to remember that KU has been one of the world's leaders in paleontology for the last 100 years."
Burnham, who just returned from a two-week visit to China, where he presented a paper on Bambiraptor and visited sites where other birdlike dinosaurs were discovered, says he looks forward to the heated discussions that he and Martin often have.
"I enjoy it immensely," Burnham says. "We don't take these things as a personal affront. In fact, your arguments get tighter and you are constantly tested every day, so it makes the arguments stronger from both sides."
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Photo: &y (flickr)
If you’ve ever had to dig a hole and then fill it back in, you may have noticed a mysterious thing: there was always a little dirt left over. This can often be seen when construction crews dig down to get at sewer pipes or electric cables. But how can there be more dirt going in than there was coming out?
The answer is that the amount of soil itself remains the same; what has changed is the arrangement of the individual grains. To see how this happens, think of a sugar bowl. If every crystal of sugar is evenly spaced, the ratio of crystals to empty space will be 60 – 40. That’s true no matter how big the bowl: 40% of the inside will always be empty.
Now put a spoon in and smooth the surface of the sugar: all those evenly-spaced crystals will be packed down into an uneven arrangement, filling the empty spaces. The result is still a 60 – 40 ratio, only now we have a lower level of sugar, with the empty space moved up top.
It’s the same with soil. Rainwater and passing feet press the soil down so that the grains lie closely together with little empty space, called “pore space.” When the shovel pulls the soil up and scatters it in a big pile, the soil grains fall into a pattern closer to the way they were before being packed down. Once the hole is refilled, all you have to do to make it level is get rid of that pore space — which can easily be done with the back of a shovel. | <urn:uuid:698ab62d-ad62-4c3f-b416-4282534d0e0b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/sugar-bowls-holes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394414.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00053-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9423 | 333 | 3.9375 | 4 |
Nothing seems as disheartening as putting in hours of labor with the hopes of a lush, green lawn that rivals the 10th fairway at Augusta and ending up with an anorexic-looking sandlot for your effort. Grass can grow sparsely for several reasons, but it usually stems from less-than-ideal soil pH, inadequate fertilization or a grass variety not suited for the climate. You can correct a sparse yard by identifying the factors that caused it, reseeding it and then fertilizing to overcome any deficiencies, a process referred to as overseeding.
Test your yard’s soil pH at least six months before you overseed it and amend it to between 5.5 and 7.5 with the recommended amounts of ground agricultural limestone or elemental sulfur. Use 1 pound of elemental sulfur per 100 square feet of soil to lower the pH by 0.5. For example, if the soil pH measured 8.5, you need 2 pounds of elemental sulfur per 100 square feet to lower it to 7.5. Use 3 to 4 pounds of ground sulfur per 100 square feet to raise the pH by 1 point if you have sandy soil; use 1 1/2 to 2 pounds of sulfur per 100 square feet to raise the pH by 1 point if you have loamy soil; use 8 to 10 pounds of sulfur per 100 square feet to raise pH by 1 point if you have heavy clay soil.
Cut the grass to about 1 inch from ground level or lower after the threat of frost passes in spring. Short grass increases seed-to-soil contact. Rake the grass vigorously using a yard rake to collect the grass clippings and loosen the thatch. Compost the clippings and detritus or add them to your garden waste bin.
Walk a lawn dethatcher over the lawn in two directions, perpendicular to each other, to improve moisture penetration and seed-to-soil contact. Grass often grows sparsely when too much thatch -- the brown, coarse, dead turf roots that sit on the soil surface -- builds up. Lawn dethatchers, available at tool-rental stores, have tines that pull up the old thatch. Power rakes set to 1/4 inch, also available at tool-rental stores, also remove thatch.
Rake the thatch vigorously from the lawn with a yard rake. Add the clippings to your compost pile or give it to your sanitation service when they come by for garden waste.
Push a manual or powered core aerator over the yard in two directions, perpendicular to each other, as you did with the dethatcher. Core aerators remove small plugs of soil, or cores. You have to push manual aerators in the soil with your foot, and powered models use an engine to do it for you.
Pour one-half of the following recommended amounts of cool-season grass seed per 1,000 square feet in the hopper of a broadcast spreader: 8 to 10 pounds of tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea) seed, 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 pounds of red fescue (Festuca rubra) seed, 2 to 3 pounds of Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis) seed, 6 to 9 pounds of perennial rye grass (Lolium perenne) seed, or 7 to 9 pounds of annual rye grass seed (Lolium multiflorum) per 1,000 square feet of lawn.
Walk the broadcast spreader over the yard in rows, as you do when mowing grass. Add the other half of the recommended amount of grass seed and walk the broadcast spreader over the yard in rows perpendicular to the direction you previously seeded. Seeding in two directions broadcasts the seed more uniformly than working in one direction only.
Rake the seed 1/16 inch deep in the soil with a yard rake. Walk a yard roller over the area to tamp it down. Pour 10 pounds of soluble, granular, slow-release, 10-20-10 fertilizer in the broadcast spreader and walk it over the yard to distribute it.
Water the lawn to a depth of 1 to 2 inches. Water the yard lightly every day with about 1/2 to 1 inch of water to keep the soil moist until the grass establishes.
Mow the grass to 2 inches tall when it grows to 3 inches tall. Keep the grass 2 inches tall for the rest of the growing season.
Things You Will Need
- Soil pH test
- Chemical-proof gloves, goggles, and a respirator
- Ground agriculture limestone or elemental sulfur (optional)
- Lawn mower
- Yard rake
- Lawn dethatcher or power rake
- Bag for clippings and thatch
- Core aerator
- Cool- or warm-season grass seed
- Broadcast spreader
- Soluble, granular, slow-release, 10-20-10 fertilizer
- Always follow manufacturer's instructions when using fertilizer or lawn tools.
- Tall fescue grows in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 3 through 8. Creeping red fescue grows in USDA zones 3 through 9. Kentucky bluegrass grows in USDA zones 3 through 8. Perennial rye grass grows in USDA zones 3 through 10.
- Wear chemical-proof gloves, goggles, and a respirator when handling lime, sulfur or fertilizer.
- Follow the manufacturer's safety precautions when using lawn equipment.
- Don't apply any herbicides for six weeks before overseeding.
- Always check labels on lawn seed, fertilizers and chemicals because rates vary by brand.
- University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program: Overseeding
- University of Minnesota Extension: Overseeding Cool-Season Lawns
- University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program: Closely Mow the Turf and Rake Up the Debris
- University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program: Dethatch and Aerate
- University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program: Seed, Fertilize and Irrigate
- University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program: Planting Times and Rates for Grasses That Can Be Established From Seed
- University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program: Starter Fertilizer
- Univerisy of Minnesota Extension: Soil pH and Liming
- Gardenality: About Turf-Type Fescue Grass Part 1
- Iowa State University Extension and Outreach: How to Change Your Soil's pH
- John Foxx/Stockbyte/Getty Images | <urn:uuid:6463e6ae-f9bd-4eac-9fc1-fa69a4c2f861> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://homeguides.sfgate.com/correct-sparse-grass-76468.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398873.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00062-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.883778 | 1,365 | 2.65625 | 3 |
ADDIS ABABA - The United Nations World Food Programme announced today that it has been forced to reduce the amount of food distributed to refugees in Ethiopia due to lack of funding. The 126,000 refugees will only receive 70 percent of the food considered adequate for a healthy diet.
WFP urgently requires US$10 million to avoid further cuts in food rations and continue feeding the refugees up to the end of December 2004. So far, WFP has received only 40 percent of the funds required to feed the refugees. WFP will run out of food in May if further donations are not made immediately.
"The imminent cut in food rations will put at risk the health and lives of refugees, especially women and children," said Georgia Shaver, WFP Country Director in Ethiopia. "We will be only able to provide 1,500 kilocalories per person per day, which is well below the minimum 2,100 kilocalories required to carry out a healthy and active life."
The refugees from southern Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea live in camps in western, eastern and northern Ethiopia. Confined to camps where arable land is scarce and other money-making opportunities limited, refugees have few alternative sources of income to feed themselves.
"Lack of sufficient food combined with precarious living conditions will have an impact on the status of refugees," said Shaver. "They will be more vulnerable to disease, and the number of low weight births could increase in the camps."
Political and civil unrest in the Horn of Africa, combined with repeated cycles of drought and other natural disasters, are the main reasons for refugee influxes into Ethiopia.
To date, the Ethiopia refugee operation has received donations totaling US$18 million from the United States, France, Japan, Finland, Saudi Arabia, Luxembourg, Germany, Cuba and USA Friends of WFP.
WFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency. In 2003 WFP fed 104 million people in 81 countries including most of the world's refugees and internally displaced people.
WFP Global School Feeding Campaign -- As the largest provider of nutritious meals to poor school children, WFP has launched a global campaign aimed at ensuring the world's 300 million undernourished children are educated.
For more information please contact:
Public Affairs Officer | <urn:uuid:8af128bb-d676-4a5d-bfc8-d8ead8b90b32> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/funding-crisis-forces-wfp-reduce-food-rations-thousands-refugees-ethiopia | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00174-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948546 | 463 | 2.625 | 3 |
by Carolynn Look, Institute for Advanced Development Studies
A kilo of tomatoes in Spain typically costs around €1.99. This price includes the efforts of the farmer who grew the tomatoes, transportation costs, and the work of the retailer. What it does not include is the cost of emissions as these tomatoes make their way across Europe, or of water usage, deforestation and loss of biodiversity as monoculture plantations spread across Spain’s rural landscapes. Because of an increasing recognition of such detrimental effects, economists and governments have started to realize that air, water and forests are not in fact free and have asked themselves: What is the price of an old Cypress tree? How much does a clean river cost? How do you place a value on a gulp of unpolluted air, or on an entire habitat?
In Europe, particularly, many countries have started including environmental costs in their national accounts. Germany, for instance, produces an easy-to-read yet comprehensive sustainability report every year based on a myriad of data concerning such things as levels of energy consumption, pesticide use in agriculture, and air quality, which it puts side by side with social statistics such as employment, education, and crime in order to highlight which sectors need to be improved. For example, the latest report published by Federal Ministry of Statistics entitled “Sustainable Development in Germany” showed that efforts to preserve biodiversity were not meeting their 2015 goal, explained what was causing the lack of progress, and suggested focusing on improving protection of biodiversity, for instance by reducing land cultivation. The Italian government has also been making serious efforts since 2002 to pass legislation that will link documents concerning ecological sustainability to those normally adopted for economic planning. These have provided detailed environmental information—on such things as water usage during agriculture or how to account for pollution emitted during tourism—that will allow policy-makers to make more informed decisions. Many other countries, such as Sweden, the UK and Austria, have well-established environmental-economic accounting branches which regularly produce reports indicating their emission data and environmental expenditures.
Monetization of Resources
The question all European governments face is: how to place a value on the environment? For example, although wood as a resource for making paper, tables, or kitchenware may be relatively cheap its price often does not reflect a forest’s positive contributions to the environment, such as breaking down carbon dioxide or providing a habitat for animals. All these things remain largely invisible to policy planners thousands of miles away, but they would costs humans $trillions if they were trying to provide them themselves. Thusly—drawinginspiration from a group of German laws that allow regional ministries to charge varying compensation costs ranging from €30 – 2,000 to businesses when different ecosystems are damaged—a Land Cover Accounting project in the Czech Republic attempted to assign monetary values to ecosystems and created a spatial map to demonstrate this varying worth. The idea was that ecosystems have relative values based on such things as their age, level of biodiversity, and amount of resources.
Being aware of the value of nature and resouces can help policy-makers reach decisions that minimize environmental damage and thus long-term economic costs. In a 2000 paper in the Journal of Geographical Analysis, a group of Spanish researchers tested the results of economic policy and pesticide use limitations on farming activities in the Flumen-Monegros (north-eastern Spain) region by plugging predicted outcomes into an economic model. They then analysed this data and found that policies resulting in low crop prices or high water prices can lead farmers to either abandon their land or switch over from grains to pricier fruits and vegetables. These higher-value crops demand an intensive use of chemical pesticides and fertilizer and thus cause extensive environmental damage. The policies that they discovered led to more environmentally beneficial agricultural habits included the European Union (EU)-backed Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which has subsidized farming activities in member states since 1962. Studies like this make it possible to predict future policies’ environmental and other impacts and aid policy makers in planning for a more sustainable future.
Environmental Cooperation of the EU
Since the early 2000s, European countries have been making a concerted effort to implement environmental-economic accounting (EEA) policies. In 2011, a proposal was passed that requires all EU member states to provide (a) air emissions accounts, (b) environmental taxation statistics, and (c) economy-wide material flow accounts (how natural resources move through the economy). The second batch of regulations is underway for the coming years, including accounts on environmental protection expenditure, environmental goods and services sector, and physical energy flow accounts of each industry. The main objective of this policy at the European level is to give priority to regular production of a core set of accounts, and at the national level to ensure that national statistical institutes maintain and potentially expand their work on environmental accounting. Through this they have been able to assess important country and region-wide environmental-economic accounting statistics, such as environmental taxation’s 2.4 percent contribution to the EU gross domestic product (GDP).
Protecting the environment is a task that cannot be tackled alone. This is a fact that is gaining recognition among EU member states and their combined efforts will certainly prove to be more fruitful than if they acted individually. Environmental law has become one of the most far-reaching and important EU legislations. A unionised system of environmental-economic, or ‘green’, accounting is a first step not only in decreasing environmental damage, but also in showing individual countries the economic benefit of adopting sustainable policies.
However, although this system will help regulate policies within the EU, what is still being neglected is the fact that many products, especially agricultural ones, are grown and imported from abroad. Although the EU is starting to lower its domestic eco-footprint, what remains to be seen is whether this will lower its global environmental impact. What also remains to be seen is how free market advocates will respond to growing environmental regulations in the long-run, some of whom argue that these render businesses uncompetitive.
There is certainly a lot of work to be done in terms of optimizing environmental policies. But perhaps the growing European model of environmental-economic accounting can provide useful advice and act as an inspiration to other regions fostering ‘sustainability cooperation’. With the right intentions and efforts to provide transparent information, green accounting could even one day see global dimensions.
- Live Research Bulletin: The opposite poles of environmental accounts of Canada and the United States
- Can economics protect the environment?
- Theory Bites: Development, Underdevelopment and Dependency
- Irrationality and Heuristics: What can international development learn from behavioural economics?
- Poverty Highlights
- How can $700 million in hydrocarbon revenues be bad for the poor?
- Natural resource rents and taxes: Insights from Bolivia’s Green National Accounts
- How ‘sustainable’ is sustainable development in the corporate world?
- Bolivia’s high CO2 emissions
- The Relevance of Productivity: From Macro to Micro
About the Author
Carolynn Look is part of the research and communications team at the Institute of Advanced Development Studies. This article was originally featured on INESAD’s English language blog Development Roast. | <urn:uuid:2625a803-2b1d-4ae5-bce9-bb72c5f35c68> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://econintersect.com/wordpress/?p=29299 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392069.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00050-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947484 | 1,482 | 3.5625 | 4 |
- freely available
Appl. Sci. 2013, 3(2), 437-456; doi:10.3390/app3020437
Abstract: This paper presents a simple control strategy for the operation of a variable speed stand-alone wind turbine with a permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG). The PMSG is connected to a three phase resistive load through a switch mode rectifier and a voltage source inverter. Control of the generator side converter is used to achieve maximum power extraction from the available wind power. Control of the DC-DC bidirectional buck-boost converter, which is connected between batteries bank and DC-link voltage, is used to maintain the DC-link voltage at a constant value. It is also used to make the batteries bank stores the surplus of wind energy and supplies this energy to the load during a wind power shortage. The load side voltage source inverter uses a relatively complex vector control scheme to control the output load voltage in terms of amplitude and frequency. The control strategy works under wind speed variation as well as with variable load. Extensive simulation results have been performed using MATLAB/SIMULINK.
Nowadays, most countries of the world are facing difficulties in using conventional sources for power generation due to exhaustion of fossil fuels and environmental issues. Wind energy, is one of the available non-conventional energy sources, which is clean and an infinite natural resource. Variable speed wind energy systems have several advantages compared with fixed speed wind energy systems such as yielding maximum power output, developing low amount of mechanical stress, improving efficiency and power quality . Power electronics devices with a variable speed system are very important, where AC–DC converter is used to convert AC voltage with variable amplitude and frequency at the generator side to DC voltage at the DC-link voltage. The DC voltage is converted again to AC voltage with constant amplitude and frequency at the load side for electrical utilization [2,3]. The reliability of the variable speed wind energy systems can be improved significantly by using a permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG). PMSG has several advantages over other types of generators which are used in wind energy systems such as its simple structure, ability of operation at slow speed, self-excitation capability leading to high power factor and high efficiency operation . With low speed of PMSG operation there is no need for a gearbox which often suffers from faults and requires regular maintenance making the system unreliable [5,6].
Maximum power can be extracted from the available wind power, which varies continually with change in the wind speed throughout a day, by adjusting the rotor speed of PMSG according to the wind speed variation. So, most recent papers try to achieve sensorless maximum power extraction from available wind power because using these mechanical sensors leads to inaccurate measurements due to mechanical parts consideration [7,8,9].
There are two common types of interfaces between PMSG and the load. The first configuration is designed as back-to-back PWM converter [10,11], the second configuration is a single switch mode rectifier and an inverter [12,13]; the former is commonly considered as the technical ultimate operation but may be more expensive and complex, it has a lot of switches which cause more losses and voltage stress in addition to presence of Electromagnetic Interface (EMI). The latter, which is adopted in this paper, is usually used in the stand-alone or small scale wind farms for its simple topology and control, and most importantly, low cost.
There are many remote communities throughout the world where the electricity grid is not available. These communities are supplied with conventional energy sources. As it is well known, these conventional sources are very expensive and go to depletion. If these communities are affluent in wind energy, in this case, stand-alone wind energy systems can be considered as an effective way to supply power to the loads in these communities. It is one of the practicalities for self-sufficient power generation which involves using a wind turbine with battery storage system to create a stand-alone system for isolated communities located far from a utility grid. Load side voltage source inverter is responsible to supply controlled output load voltage in terms of amplitude and frequency to the load [14,15,16]. Wind energy supply systems are among the most interesting, low cost, and environmental friendly for supply power to remote communities which are affluent in wind energy resource.
Battery storage system is essential for a stand-alone wind energy supply system to meet the required load power. As a variable speed wind energy system which has fluctuating generated power due to the variability of wind speed. It can store the excess energy when the generated power from the wind is more than the required load power for a time when the generated power from the wind is less than the required load power to maintain power balance between generated power and required load power [17,18,19]. Also, it can remove the fluctuating power from wind energy system and maximize the reliability of power supplied to the load.
Hence, this paper proposes a control strategy for a variable speed stand-alone wind energy supply system. Control of the switch mode rectifier at the generator side is used to achieve sensorless maximum power extraction from available wind power. Control of the DC-DC bidirectional converter, which is connected between the batteries bank and DC-link voltage, is used to maintain the DC voltage at constant value and to meet power balance of the system. Control of the voltage source inverter at the load side is used to supply controlled output voltage in terms of amplitude and frequency to the load. Simulation results demonstrate that the control strategy performs very well in spite of wind speed and required load variation.
2. Stand-Alone Wind Energy Supply System
The power circuit topology of the proposed variable speed stand-alone wind energy supply system is shown in Figure 1. The system consists of the following components:
Permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG), which is directly driven by the wind turbine without using a gearbox.
A single switch three phase mode rectifier which consists of a three phase diode bridge rectifier and DC-DC boost converter.
Batteries bank is connected to the DC-link voltage through DC-DC bidirectional buck-boost converter.
A three phase voltage source inverter connected to the load through LC filter.
The proposed model has been modeled and simulated using MATLAB/SIMULINK software program.
3. Generator Side Converter Control
The mechanical power captured from wind turbine is governed by the following equation:
Using (1) and (3), the optimum output power from wind turbine can be written as:
Figure 3 indicates that the mechanical powers generated by the turbine as a function of rotor speeds for different wind speeds. The maximum power extraction within the allowable range can be achieved if the controller can properly follow the optimum curve with variation of wind speed.
The generator side converter (a single switch three phase mode rectifier) is controlled to extract maximum power from available wind turbine power. Hence, the wind turbine can produce maximum power when the turbine operates at optimum value of Cp (Cp-opt). So it is necessary to adjust the rotor speed at optimum value of the tip speed ratio (λopt).
The structure of the proposed control strategy of the switch mode rectifier is shown in Figure 4. The objective of this control is to control the duty cycle of DC-DC boost switch S1 which is shown in Figure 1 to extract maximum power from available wind power. The control algorithm includes the following steps:
Estimate generator speed, ωg
Generator speed of PMSG can be estimated by measuring the average output voltage Vd and current Id of the uncontrolled bridge rectifier and by knowing the parameters of used PMSG in this paper which are given in Table 1. .
The relation among generator speed, PMSG parameters, Vd and Id is governed by (7).
Determine the reference power as shown in Figure 6, which describes the relation between the generator reference power and the generator speed, using (8).
This reference power is then used to calculate the reference DC current as indicted in (9).
The error between the reference DC current and measured DC current is used to adjust the duty cycle of the DC-DC boost converter to operate the generator speed at optimum speed through a hysteresis current controller to extract maximum power from wind turbine.
|Rated output power||Pr = 20 kW|
|Rated mechanical speed||Nr = 211 rpm|
|Number of poles||Pole ( p) = 36|
|Peak line-to-neutral back emf in no-load||ENL = 295.6 V|
|Stator winding resistance||Rs = 0.17640 Ω|
|Stator leakage inductance||Ls = 4.48 mH|
|Peak line-to-neutral back emf constant||Km = 1.4 V/rpm|
To describe the control function, considering Figure 2. If the PMSG operating at point “a” and wind speed increases from υw1 to υw2 (point “b”), the additional power causes the PMSG to accelerate also causes difference between reference DC current and measured DC current, this difference operate to adjust the duty cycle of DC-DC boost converter to achieve optimum speed of the PMSG ωg which attain maximum power extraction. Finally, the generator will reach the point “c” where the difference between reference DC current and measured DC current is within the bandwidth of the hysteresis current controller. A similar situation occurs when the wind speed decreases.
In this proposed strategy, there is no need to measure wind and generator speed using mechanical sensors which lead to inaccurate measurement.
4. DC-DC Bidirectional Converter Control
Battery storage system is essential for a stand-alone wind energy supply system to maintain the balance between the generated power from wind turbine and required load power through charge/discharge energy to/from this storage system. In this paper, the batteries bank is connected to the DC-link voltage through a DC-DC bidirectional buck-boost converter; the control of this converter can maintain the DC-link voltage at constant value as a reference value in addition to charge/discharge current to/from the batteries bank according to the required load power. The batteries bank voltage can be kept lower than the reference DC-link voltage (Vdc*) and hence less number of batteries need to be connected in series. In the proposed system the batteries bank voltage is kept at about 300 V while Vdc* = 690 V. In this paper the rating of the batteries bank, considering 60% depth of discharge (DOD), is decided based on the assumption that even when the wind power is zero it should be able to supply power to the load of a 15 kW for approximately an hour. The calculation of the battery rating is
Hence, 85 Ahr, 12 V battery rating is considered and therefore, twenty five numbers of batteries are required to connect in series.
The DC-DC bidirectional buck-boost converter shown in Figure 1 is operated in continuous conduction mode. The IGBTs Q1 and Q2 are switched in such a way that the converter operates in steady state with four sub intervals. The circuit operations in steady state for these different intervals are elaborated below:
Interval 1 (Q2 ON); in this interval the lower switch Q2 is turned ON and the upper switch Q1 is turned OFF with diode D1, D2 reverse biased as shown in Figure 7(a). During this interval the converter operates in boost mode and the inductor is charged and current through the inductor increases.
Interval 2 (D1 ON); during this interval both switches Q1 and Q2 are turned OFF. The diode D1 of the upper switch Q1 starts conducting as shown in Figure 7(b). The converter in this case supplies power to the DC-link voltage.
Interval 3 (Q1 ON); the upper switch Q1 is turned ON and the lower switch Q2 is turned OFF with diode D1, D2 reverse biased as shown in Figure 7(c). During this interval the converter operates in buck mode and transfer power to the batteries bank.
Interval 4 (D2 ON); during this interval both switches Q1 and Q2 are turned OFF, the diode D2 of the lower switch Q2 starts conducting as shown in Figure 6(d).
The control strategy of the DC-DC bidirectional buck-boost converter uses a PI controller to regulate the output DC voltage at a reference value is shown in Figure 8. In this control technique, the DC voltage Vdc is sensed and compared with the reference DC voltage Vdc_ref.. The error signal is processed through the PI controller. The output signal is the duty cycle of the switches Q1 or Q2 according to the case of charging or discharging. Where, the parameters of the PI controller are obtained by using Zeigler Nichols tuning method.
The presence of inductor in batteries bank side results low ripple current which achieves higher efficiency and longer lifetime.
5. Load Side Converter Control
The load side converter, a three phase voltage source inverter, is used as interface between DC-link voltage and the load. Unwanted high frequency harmonics which are generated from load side voltage source inverter based on the switching frequency. This unwanted high frequency can be eliminated by using a simple passive LC filter to prevent the problems in power quality at the customer load.
The load side voltage source inverter control is responsible to regulate the voltage and frequency at the customer load. In the stand-alone wind energy systems, there is no grid, the output voltages should be controlled in terms of amplitude and frequency. Vector control strategy is used to control the output load voltage during variation of required load power or wind speed.
In this paper, the specified load voltage frequency and RMS value of output phase voltage are 50 Hz and 220 V, respectively. The voltages Va, Vb, Vc and the currents Ia, Ib, Ic should be measured and transformed from stationary abc reference frame to rotating dq reference frame using chosen electrical load voltage frequency.
The voltage equations using dq transformation in the rotating reference frame are:
So, the active and reactive power can be calculated by using the dq transformation and given by:
If the reference frame is vq = 0 and vd = │V│, the equations for active and reactive power will be:
Therefore, active and reactive power can be controlled by controlling direct and quadrature components, respectively. Also, in the case of resistive load Vd* can be governed by:
Space vector PWM technique is used in the controller, because it increases the fundamental output voltage. In addition it reduces the harmonic contents in the output voltage.
The control strategy of the voltage source inverter to supply controlled voltage in terms of magnitude and frequency to the load is shown in Figure 9.
6. Simulation Results
The proposed control strategy for a stand-alone variable speed wind energy supply system is simulated in MATALB/SIMULINK under different operating conditions. Figure 10 shows the simulation block diagram for the system.
The variation in wind speed that occurs on a wind turbine is shown in Figure 11 to observe the performance of control strategy under wind speed variation. Figure 12 shows that the estimated and calculated generator speed where it varies with changing wind speed. The percentage error between the calculated and estimated generator speed is found less than 2% as shown in Figure 13. Figure 14 shows that the value of power coefficient Cp, it is clear that the simple sensorless control technique works well where the value of power coefficient is kept at its optimum value which equals 0.48 with wind speed and load variation to extract maximum power from available wind turbine power.
Figure 15 demonstrates the performance of DC-DC bidirectional buck-boost converter controller. It has been able to charge the batteries bank when the generated power is more than the required load power, and discharge the batteries bank when the required load power is more than the generated power. Also, to maintain the DC-link voltage at constant value which equals 690 V. Figure 15(a) shows the generated, load, and batteries bank powers, where the maximum generated power is variable according to the wind speed variation. The required load power steps up at times 6.005 and 12.005 second (in worst time of change, where the instantaneous value of voltage and current of phase A is at maximum value) from 12 kW to 13.5 kW and from 13.5 kW to 15 kW, respectively. Also, it steps down from 15kW to 13.5 kW and from 13.5 kW to 12 kW at times 18.005 and 24.005 second, respectively (also in worst time of change). Batteries bank power changes (charge and discharge) to meet power balance of the system during required load and wind speed variation. Figure 15(b) shows the DC-link voltage which is maintained at constant value at 690 V.
The total harmonic distortion (THD), in percentage, of the output load current for different required load power situations is shown in Figure 14. Where, the THD is less than 1.6% when the required load power is 12 kW, the THD is less than 1.2% when the required load power is 13.5 kW, and the THD is less than 1.0% when the required load power is 15 kW as shown in Figure 16(a–c), respectively.
Figure 17(a) shows that the output load current responses with a long time simulation. Figure 17(b,c) show the output load current at the instant of step up of required load power at time 12.005 seconds and step down of required load power at time 24.005 seconds, respectively. The output load voltage responses for all simulation time, output load voltage at the instant of step up of required load power at time 6.005 seconds and step down of required load power at time 18.005 seconds are shown in Figure 18(a–c), respectively. Figure 19 shows the RMS value of output phase voltage, where it is maintained at 220 V as a reference. It can be seen that the control of the voltage source inverter works well under wind speed and required load power variation.
Control strategy of a stand-alone variable speed wind energy supply system has been presented in this paper, along with a comprehensive analysis and simulation using MATLAB/SIMULINK. From the simulation results, the maximum power extraction control algorithm at the generator side converter has been implemented based on estimating generator speed, using the relation curve between generator speed and mechanical power to adjust the generator speed operation at optimum value through a hysteresis current control for extracting maximum power from the available wind power. Also, the DC-link voltage has been maintained at constant value; furthermore, the batteries bank has been able to store the surplus of wind energy and supply it to the load during a wind power shortage by controlling the DC-DC bidirectional buck-boost converter, which is connected between batteries bank and DC-link voltage. Finally, it has been explained how the voltage source inverter controller uses a vector control strategy to supply controlled output voltage in terms of amplitude and frequency to the resistive load. The simulation results proved that the performance of the control strategy is satisfactory in spite of variation in wind speed and load.
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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© 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). | <urn:uuid:101366e2-ad41-440a-8874-c5f670d25541> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://mdpi.com/2076-3417/3/2/437/htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397873.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00078-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.866575 | 5,390 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Facts, Identification and Control
Springtails are tiny insects. Their size ranges from 0.25 to 6 mm. They get their name from a spring-loaded structure, called the furcula, located on the underside of their abdomen. When the insect is disturbed, the furcula is released causing the insect to be flung into the air. One jump can cover 10 centimeters.
Behavior, Diet & Habits
Springtails normally live in damp soil. They eat mold and fungus. They are common in flowerbeds, under logs, paving stones and landscape timbers. Woodpiles are also a common place for springtails to hide.
Springtails lose water through the surface of their body. If their environment becomes dry, they try to migrate to a wetter place. They sometimes enter homes under door thresholds. When they get inside, they go to humid areas. Rooms that offer the needed moisture often are basements, kitchens and bathrooms. They also find areas where there has been moisture damage. Springtails have been found inside walls where a pipe has been leaking. They have also been found in furniture that has become wet and mildewed. Overwatered potted plants and planter boxes are also places where springtails live.
Springtails do not bite or sting people. They do not damage buildings or the contents. They develop quickly. It is common to find springtails in very large numbers. The fact that there can be thousands of jumping insects in an area can be very distressing to homeowners.
When the dampness is corrected, the springtails disappear very quickly. Eliminating dampness is very important in preventing or eliminating springtails. A thorough inspection is the first step.
Springtail males place a sperm-containing structure on the ground called a spermatophore. Females then inseminate themselves with it. Females deposit individual eggs or clusters of eggs in damp locations. Life cycle from egg to adult varies, depending on species.
Signs of a Springtail Infestation
If springtails have been a problem in the kitchen, start inspecting under the sink. Empty the cabinet and check the drainpipe. If it has been leaking, there could be mold or mildew present. Dry the cabinet completely to discourage the springtails.
If springtails have been active in the bathroom, start the inspection under the sink. Also inspect the trap behind the tub for leaking pipes. Examine tile walls carefully. If there is missing grout, mildew can develop behind the tiles.
In the basement, check the walls for dampness. It may be necessary to get a waterproofing compound for the basement walls. The specialists at the home store can point out the right product. A dehumidifier can be helpful to get rid of dampness in a basement.
During the outside inspection, look for damp places where springtails could occur. Stack firewood up off of the ground and move it away from the house. Move mulch away from the foundation. Create a bare zone next to the foundation of 15 cm or more. If the zone is dry and free of leaves and mulch, springtails and other pests will not find it as attractive.
Make sure gutters are cleaned out. Downspouts should drain away from the foundation. If necessary, trim tree limbs that cause damp shady areas near the foundation.
Check exterior doors to be sure they close properly. Replace weather stripping that is missing or damaged. Check crawl space vents to be sure they are open to allow air circulation. Access openings into crawl spaces should have a door that closes tightly.
When the dampness has been eliminated, the springtails will leave quickly or they will die.
How Orkin treats for Springtails
Springtails are very small insects that jump around when disturbed, much like fleas. Their normal habitat is the interface between soil and plant debris, but may be found almost anywhere there is high moisture content. Springtails feed on mold and fungi, another reason why they prefer moist habitats. While usually not a serious pest problem when outside, springtails can become a nuisance if they get inside and infest moist areas within a building’s interior.
If you suspect you have a springtail problem, contact your pest management professional and ask for an inspection and pest identification. If your pest management professional determines the culprits are springtails, he or she will prepare an integrated treatment program designed to provide educational information plus effective nonchemical and chemical control measures.
As mentioned above, springtails usually are not a major exterior problem. However, when their exterior habitat begins to dry, these insects will often move inside. Therefore, your springtail treatment plan will likely focus on what is needed for both exterior and interior springtail treatment.
Exterior treatment if needed may include:
- Locating where persistent, excessive moisture occurs and taking actions to reduce the amount of moisture there. For example, your pest management professional might recommend fixing any moisture leaks or areas of excessive water runoff from downspouts, reducing the thickness of moisture holding mulch or leaf litter and removing any wet wood or other debris. In some situations, using a labeled chemical product in areas where springtails are especially numerous and around the locations they use to enter the building may be required.
Interior treatment when needed may include:
- Locating, drying out and treating places with excessive moisture, especially if the moist condition harbors mold or mildew growth. Such locations may include dampness around tubs and sinks or inside damp wall voids. In addition, using vacuums to remove adult springtails that are either alive or dead is helpful. | <urn:uuid:b670b4f4-fef1-4dad-ad16-442bb6ccb95b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.orkin.com/other/springtails/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399117.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00111-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940737 | 1,147 | 3.625 | 4 |
The Hubble Space Telescope, one of the greatest scientific instruments of all time, is about to get an extreme makeover — an overhaul so delicate and risky that NASA astronaut John Grunsfeld likens it to "brain surgery."
At 19 years old, the famous telescope is showing its age. Three of its scientific instruments are broken. Half of its six gyroscopes, which keep the Hubble pointed in the right direction, aren't working. And its batteries are slowly dying.
The seven-member crew of space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to blast off Monday in an attempt to fix it.
It will be the fifth, final and most difficult mission to service the Hubble — a mission that was judged so risky to astronauts it was canceled in 2004 before safety precautions were added to ease the concerns.
If the work succeeds, it will mean a glorious rebirth of the Hubble. The telescope would be 90 times more powerful than when it was launched in 1990. If the mission fails, astronomy's crown jewel could become a $6.9 billion "piece of space junk" with no chance to save it, astronaut and mission commander Scott Altman says.
No other flights to Hubble are planned. That's because the shuttle — the only vehicle that can reach the telescope — is 17 months from retirement.
There had always been the possibility of "another shot" at Hubble, says Mike Weiss, the telescope's deputy program manager.
That's no longer the case.
"This is the last opportunity," Weiss says. "There's no margin for error."
Even if Hubble were to blink off tomorrow, it would leave a legacy richer and more vast than that of any other astronomy tool. It has more discoveries to its credit than any other observatory, NASA's Jon Morse says.
It "has already earned its place in history as a triumph of science in our modern era," says Heidi Hammel, an astronomer at the Space Science Institute, a research institute. "Hubble brings the heavens down to us."
• Helped narrow the age of the universe to 12 billion to 14 billion years, rather than the 10 billion to 20 billion years known previously.
• Captured the farthest pictures of deep space ever taken, showing early galaxies born in the era when the first stars were forming.
• Detected exploding stars in a pattern that suggested a mysterious "dark energy" is propelling galaxies apart.
•Provided the first analysis of the atmosphere of planets in other solar systems and taken the first picture of such a planet.
For all those accomplishments, the Hubble's potential is perhaps even more tantalizing. The period after the mission will be "the grand finale of the Hubble symphony," says David Leckrone, Hubble project scientist at NASA.
"Everything we've done up to this point," he says, "has been in preparation for these final five years, where Hubble is at its peak of capability."
Viewing deep into space
Hubble's namesake is the late U.S. astronomer Edwin Hubble, who discovered that our galaxy is only one of countless others.
The observatory owes its scientific achievements mostly to one simple fact: It's out in space. Images snapped by telescopes on the ground are distorted by the Earth's atmosphere, as if they had been taken though a grimy windshield. Hubble sits comfortably above the atmosphere, offering a stunningly clear view of the universe.
That vantage point makes it possible for Hubble to produce pictures such as the famous Ultra Deep Field: a snapshot showing 10,000 galaxies, some not long after they emerged from the Big Bang.
Its lofty perch also means that Hubble doesn't contend with light pollution — the haze of city light and moonlight that can blind ground-based telescopes. That allows Hubble to see very faint objects, including those that are very far away.
All these advantages add up to make Hubble "the most powerful astronomical observatory in history," wrote a National Research Council committee that assessed options for fixing the telescope.
The committee said the shuttle mission should proceed, noting that no telescope with Hubble's powers will be built for decades. A potential of a retooled Hubble, the committee said, "would be comparable to the telescope's promise when first launched."
Restoring Hubble to full health will be such a daunting task that NASA officials such as Hubble program manager Preston Burch play down the likelihood of a complete success.
None of the previous missions to fix the telescope has been so packed with chores. And never before have astronauts tried to repair Hubble's scientific instruments.
Astronauts have made four house calls on Hubble.
The first was to fix a humiliating goof discovered after Hubble's launch: Its main mirror turned out to be defective because of a manufacturing error, and the telescope produced only blurry pictures. During a 1993 mission, astronauts installed a $74 million series of mirrors that acted like eyeglasses to correct Hubble's squint.
Previous visits were "heart surgery on Hubble," says Grunsfeld, who will make his third mission as a Hubble-repair spacewalker. This one is "comparable to doing brain surgery."
Consider what Grunsfeld faces to fix the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which snapped some of Hubble's best-known images.
Its builders thought no one would work on the camera, so they closed it with 36 tiny screws — impossible to handle wearing a spacewalker's clunky gloves.
To fix the camera, Grunsfeld will have to pull out four circuit boards with razor-sharp edges, which could puncture his spacesuit. He'll do all this without a good direct view of what he's touching, because the work site is around a corner and deep in the bowels of the telescope.
To make the camera repair possible, engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., custom-built several tools to aid Grunsfeld. One, a forceps-like instrument, will be used to grip the circuit boards and yank them out.
Another grasps the miniature screws so they don't float away.
A loose screw inside Hubble might seem trivial, but even a minute foreign object could be disastrous for the telescope.
It would take only "an immeasurable amount of debris in the right place to cause problems with the telescope's ability to image," says astronaut Andrew Feustel, who will perform three spacewalks during the mission.
The frailty of the Hubble and the complexity of the mission were brought into focus last fall, when a critical system on the telescope failed just 2½ weeks before the scheduled launch. NASA delayed the mission while engineers devised a fix.
Now the hour is at hand — again — and the anxiety and anticipation are running high. "I can hardly wait," Leckrone says. "Let's get this thing off."
Making it safer
Just as Hubble faces risks from the astronauts' visit, the astronauts themselves face dangers from trying to fix it.
If Atlantis is badly damaged by launch debris or space junk, the telescope-repair team can't take refuge on the International Space Station, the way all other shuttle crews can. The station will be just too far away.
That led Sean O'Keefe, then the head of NASA, to cancel the mission in 2004. A public outcry ensued. Schoolchildren pooled their lunch money to fund a rescue of Hubble, and ordinary citizens flooded NASA's website with protests.
O'Keefe's successor, Michael Griffin, reinstated the servicing mission in 2006 after satisfying himself that the mission's risks could be minimized.
To make sure the crew can be rescued, NASA added an unprecedented safety measure: A second shuttle will be waiting on the launch pad, ready to go to space, when Atlantis lifts off. That means that a second shuttle crew could rescue the Hubble astronauts before they run out of air or food.
None of this comes cheaply.
A shuttle flight costs roughly $500 million, and the new scientific instruments and other hardware add up to $887 million.
Even so, there's little opposition among scientists to the mission to fix Hubble, says astronomer Warren Moos of Johns Hopkins University. "The community is very excited," he says.
During the upcoming mission, Hubble will be fitted with two new sophisticated scientific instruments in addition to the two now in orbit that will be fixed.
"We will be getting a whole new telescope," says Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute, the non-profit group that manages the observatory.
The scientific possibilities after Hubble's makeover "are just endless and exciting and hard to fathom," Leckrone says.
Among the questions a refurbished Hubble will tackle:
• How common are planets outside our solar system, and how big are they?
• How and when do galaxies form stars?
• What's the composition of the cosmic "web," the filaments of stuff that fill the universe and make up most of its matter?
When a new observatory opens, astronomers generally foresee only half of its major discoveries. The same can be expected with Hubble, said the National Research Council committee, meaning that the greatest science that lies ahead cannot be predicted.
Eventually Hubble, which was originally envisioned to last 10 to 15 years, will have to take a bow. NASA expects to get five to seven more years of life out of it, assuming the repairs succeed, before it makes a controlled plunge into the ocean.
In a few years, NASA will launch a Hubble follow-up, the James Webb Space Telescope, named for a former NASA chief who is not related to Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va.
The Webb telescope won't be able to see objects that emit ultraviolet light, as Hubble can, nor will it have Hubble's talent for taking pictures in ordinary light.
In some areas, though, it will "clean our clocks," Leckrone says.
The Webb, for instance, should be able to find galaxies that are even closer to emerging from the Big Bang, because it specializes in detecting light from the earliest stars.
Crewmembers want to give the Hubble's successor a high bar to cross. They know a lot is riding on this mission.
Altman, who was also commander of the last Hubble repair mission in 2002, recalls thinking at that time: "Well, there's going to be another servicing mission coming around."
"This time, this is it," he says, "So we're going to be giving it our best." | <urn:uuid:81cecce7-7e0a-43d5-ba11-f4489dae9503> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=7524517&page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00189-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95443 | 2,140 | 2.890625 | 3 |
New evidence suggests there might be oceans of water far beneath Earth’s surface.
Northwestern University geophysicist Steve Jacobsen, along with University of New Mexico seismologist Brandon Schmandt, found evidence of water in pockets of hot magma about 645 km beneath North America within the transition zone between Earth’s upper and lower mantle.
“It alters our previous understanding of the composition of the Earth,” said Jacobsen, adding that Earth might have far more H2O than was previously thought.
“It [also] has some implications for where Earth’s water came from, from inside [the Earth] versus comets,” Jacobsen said.
Even though this deep-Earth water isn’t in the form we’re used to, such as liquid, ice or even vapor, researchers say their discovery could still turn out to be one of our planet’s largest water reservoirs.
Not only will the findings help determine just how much water is trapped inside rock in the transition zone, but they will also provide scientists with unique insight into the composition of Earth’s structure, how it was formed, and the complex processes that are taking place deep inside our planet.
The study augments another, by a Canadian-led team, that discovered water deep within Earth hydrous minerals that were pushed to the surface by volcanoes.
Jacobsen and Schmandt believe that plate tectonics may be responsible for driving water so far down into the Earth.
There are instances where tectonic plates come together and one of them dives deep down from the crust into the mantle, beneath the other, in a process called subduction.
There are times during subduction when water is taken down into the mantle in the form of hydrous minerals, such as ringwoodite. This form of water often doesn’t make it that far down into the mantle.
Typically, within the upper 100 kilometers or so into the mantle, temperatures become so hot and the pressures become so high, that those hydrous minerals begin breaking down to form other minerals. But, in doing this, the minerals also release some water in a process called dehydration melting, which Jacobsen said is also the source of magma in all volcanoes .
The huge amounts of water described by the researchers are trapped within the molecular structure of minerals that are contained in the mantle rock.
The researchers say that even if only 1percent of the weight of transition zone rock had trapped water inside, that amount of water would be equal to about three times the water that’s held in our oceans.
Since the minerals are subjected to such immense pressure and high temperatures, water molecules that become bound within the mineral’s crystal structure actually split and form something called hydroxyl radicals.
As these OH rich minerals come up to the surface of the Earth and are melted through geological events such volcanic eruptions, the OH molecules regroup and form actual water (H20) molecules and are expelled as water vapor.
The research team believes that this deep Earth water is connected with surface reservoirs.
“You can probably recycle all of the water in the oceans, through the upper mantle, once every 100 million years or so,” said Jacobsen.
The research Schmandt conducted was based on seismic data produced by USArray, a network of some 2,000 seismometers that have been placed throughout the US. Jacobsen replicates the pressure and temperatures found deep inside the Earth through various laboratory experiments and then studies the geophysical processes that are taking place so far beneath the surface of the Earth, that direct observation isn’t possible.
“We don’t know much yet, about this deeper reservoir, which could be potentially as large as the oceans or maybe even more than that,” said Jacobsen. | <urn:uuid:dd5fb96c-c01c-455c-acff-31dbd152bf25> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blogs.voanews.com/science-world/2014/06/30/vast-oceans-detected-deep-beneath-earths-surface/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00157-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953333 | 792 | 4.3125 | 4 |
|Syntactic Confectionery Delight|
Re^2: Reading two text files parallelly...by Marshall (Monsignor)
|on Nov 09, 2010 at 17:16 UTC||Need Help??|
while (my $test1 = <$fh1>, my $test2 = <$fh2>) This is "comma operator". The "true" or "false" of the "while" only depends upon the state of $test2. The comma operator is a way to combine two what normally would be completely separate statements "together". This should be used only with extreme caution.
A common use for this is in user prompting loops. Putting the prompt together with the ending condition solves the problem of "how to get the loop started" and at the same time puts the condition that is going to stop the loop right up there where it belongs - right in the statement that runs the loop - not buried somewhere in the "guts".
Here is an example. We are asking about part numbers. The user prompt is clear. What stops the loop is clear (q,Q,QuIT, etc) and it is right there where it is supposed to be, in the controlling loop statement. In the "guts" of the loop there will be many error messages like "hey, dummy a part number needs 10 digits" or whatever, followed by a "next;" statement - that restarts the loop and re-prompts the user.
Some would argue that it is better to move the ending condition into the loop and make it the first statement. Well ok thats one way. In that case we have:
last if $line !~/^\s*q(uit)?\s*$/i;
I would argue against that as "do forever" loops should be reserved for servers, GUI event loops and such.
In any event, the OP doesn't appear to be in need of such things. | <urn:uuid:4b675b16-a85d-4133-8fb8-b2d20fae2ddc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=870359 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393518.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00064-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912479 | 408 | 2.875 | 3 |
Study Shows Africa Dust May Hamper Hurricanes
WASHINGTON -- Dust storms swirling out of Africa's Sahara Desert may help reduce hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean, a new study suggests. The findings aren't conclusive, but researchers led by Amato T. Evan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that years with more African dust had fewer tropical storms and years with less dust had more storms.
The study is reported in Tuesday's issue of Geophysical Research Letters.
Evan and his colleagues used satellite images to study the amount of African dust blown out over the Atlantic for the years 1982-2005 and compared that with tropical storm activity.
"While we cannot conclusively demonstrate a direct causal relationship, there appears to be a robust link between tropical cyclone activity and dust transport," they concluded.
"People didn't understand the potential impact of dust until satellites allowed us to see how incredibly expansive these dust storms can be," Evan said in a statement. "Sometimes during the summer, sunsets in Puerto Rico are beautiful, because of all the dust in the sky _ well that dust comes all the way from Africa."
Co-author Jonathan Foley, also of the University of Wisconsin, added: "These findings are important because they show that long-term changes in hurricanes may be related to many different factors."
Several recent studies have indicated a potential relationship between warming sea surface temperatures and increases in either the strength or number of tropical storms.
Other researchers have suggested a link between rain in North Africa and an increase in tropical storms, resulting from more easterly wave disturbances entering the Atlantic from Africa.
Dust blowing off the Sahara can spread widely and it is not unusual for it to be detected in the Caribbean and Florida.
The researchers suggest three possible ways the dust can affect storms:
_ By introducing dry air into a storm it causes downdrafts, blocking the rising streams of air needed to fuel a storm.
_ Midlevel winds accompanying the Saharan air cause wind shear, a change in direction with altitude that prevents rising currents from growing into storms.
_ Warmth absorbed by the dust in the air can stabilize conditions, again blocking rising air.
Source: Associated Press | <urn:uuid:80aeda18-780a-4265-bf4d-f42dba4e8fe5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.enn.com/climate/article/5219 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00187-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939761 | 443 | 3.578125 | 4 |
We Anglophones enjoy a living language but are stuck with a long-dead character set; are 26 letters really enough to last from now to the end of English? Others are more fortunate; Asians not only have more characters but get new ones. The brand-new Release 4.0 of Unicode defines 96,513 characters, of which the vast majority are Asian. This note is provoked by the Emoji phenomenon, worth a look in its own right, but the issues of languages and characters and their growth are big ones.
If you haven't looked at the previous ongoing essay on Unicode, you might want to do that before proceeding, some of the abbreviations will make more sense.
Emoji · In Japanese, ji means character. Thus, kanji are characters originally borrowed from the Han Chinese repertoire, gaiji are “foreign characters”: obscure variants, historical curiosities, and occasionally newly-invented custom characters.
Emoji are characters invented by NTT DoCoMo for people to use in
text messages on their cellphones.
The most obvious example is the well-known “smiley face”, often
encoded in ASCII as
:) and called an “emoticon”.
Thus, “emotion” + ji gives emoji.
DoCoMo makes emoji easy to type into your cellphone, and people use them; there were 207 last time I checked. Since DoCoMo uses standard Web infrastructure, including basic HTML and HTTP and all that, the question arises of how these things are encoded. They use Unicode's “Private Use Area”, a built-in range of character codes that's there for people who want to use their own non-standardized characters.
I'm of two minds; I can't decide whether this is cheering evidence of human creative bubbliness, or a vile standards-busting lock-in attempt. Maybe both.
On Inventing Characters ·
U+00DE LATIN CAPITAL LETTER THORN
It seems unfair that nobody gets to invent new characters. Well, mathematicians do; they label their abstractions not just with Greek and and even Hebrew letters, they use particular combinations of fonts (such as the Old German Fraktur) and diacritics in a way that seems not only promiscuous but perverse. For example, it really hardly seems necessary to take a perfectly straightforward concept like countable-infinity and represent it with a typographical orgasm consisting of a large Hebrew letter Alef (U+05D0) with a subscript zero, pronounced Aleph-Null. Mind you, it looks kind of cool. Maybe that's the point.
U+021C LATIN CAPITAL LETTER YOGH
Anyhow, Unicode has a generously-supplied selection of characters just for mathies. But that's not good enough, publishers of serious mathematics often have to wander outside the capacious bounds of Unicode.
Aleph-null and the emoji are similar in that they are useful and have some semantics, but no sound. So in one sense, they are second-class characters, poor little mute things. A prediction: the English character set is dead, we have all the sounds we need, we won't get any more first-rate speaking characters.
Dr. Seuss · Theodor Seuss Geisel (“Dr. Seuss”, 1904-1991) was among those who couldn't resist the lure of making characters. In On Beyond Zebra, he invented a panoply of wonderful new letters each ostensibly required to stand for a wonderful imaginary animal. My 3½-year-old isn't ready for this one yet, but will be soon, and I look forward immensely to reading it to him. | <urn:uuid:b2dde8dd-61fb-4403-943b-dff335417dd9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/04/21/Emoji | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00180-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943754 | 785 | 2.78125 | 3 |
The Trial in To Kill a Mockingbird
The trial of Tom takes up a great deal of space in the novel because it gives Harper Lee a chance to do an in-depth exploration of characters and situations. The people involved in the case are Bob and Mayella Ewell, Tom Robinson and Atticus Finch. The alleged rape of Mayella by Tom allows Harper Lee to look in detail at issues of racial and social prejudice in Maycomb.
Bob Ewell is the villain of the novel and, as a result of the trial
, he tries to get revenge on Atticus and his family. In the trial itself he is revealed as a very unpleasant character. We learn that he drinks and sometimes leaves his family for days, he is violent and he may even be committing incest with Mayella. Atticus establishes that he is left-handed and that Mayella was probably beaten up by a left-handed man - it seems that he, and not Tom Robinson, beat up Mayella after he saw Mayella trying to kiss Tom. Bob therefore lies during the trial and is prepared to sacrifice the life of an innocent man
for the sake of his daughter's reputation. His unpleasant behaviour during the trial and his assumption that everybody will be on his side against a black man convince the reader that he is a thoroughly unpleasant character.
Mayella Ewing also lies in court but for different reasons to her father. She is the only responsible member of one of the poorest families in Maycomb. She looks after herself and her brothers and sisters and even tries to bring some beauty into their lives by growing geraniums. Her family is so poor that white people will have nothing to do with her and, at that time, it was not possible for her to be friendly with black people. Scout calls her "the loneliest person in the world". Tom Robinson
passed her house every day on his way to work and, according to Scout, he was probably the only person who was ever nice to her. Tom's evidence at the trial shows that she had planned to make a pass at him for a long time. It took her nearly a year to save enough money to send all her brothers and sisters into town to get ice creams. When she and Tom were alone together she tried to kiss him but she was interrupted by the arrival of her father. At that time in the 1930s there was a very strong prejudice against white women being involved with black men and if the fact that she had kissed Tom of her own accord emerged,she would have been shunned by everyone. She would rather let Tom die than let this happen.
Tom is the innocent victim of Mayella's loneliness. He helped Mayella over a long period of time and always behaved courteously and respectfully around her. When Mayella tried to kiss him he didn't know what to do. He couldn't hit a white woman to keep her away from him nor could he allow her to kiss him - he ran away when Bob Ewell arrived knowing that whatever he did would get him into trouble. In the trial Tom's innocence is proved by the fact that only his right arm is useable. He couldn't have held Mayella and raped her in the way that she described, and her injuries were the result of a beating from a left-handed man. He is honest and hard-working but he offends the jury by saying that he felt sorry for Mayella. This was not an appropriate feeling for a black person to have about even the poorest white at that time. In spite of his obvious innocence Tom is convicted of the crime.
The trial gives the readers a chance to see Atticus Finch at work. Atticus is unusual in that his behaviour is always the same both in and out of court (unlike Mr Gilmer who is so unpleasant to Tom that it makes Dill cry but who is, according to Scout, decent enough at other times). His politeness is seen as offensive by Mayella who is not used to being treated decently and it is clear that he takes no pleasure in revealing the true nature of Mayella's actions. In his summing up, Atticus tries to defend the idea that all men are equal before the law, but he is unable to overcome the basic prejudices of the jury. The only mark of his success is that they take an unusual length of time to come to their decision. Atticus was appointed to defend Tom and he upset people merely by doing his job. In spite of the verdict, the black people of the town appreciated his efforts and on the day after the trial they sent large amounts of food to his house in gratitude.
The trial reveals a great deal about the prejudices that existed in Maycomb in the 1930s. Mayella would not have tried to kiss Tom if social prejudice had not excluded her from white society - Mayella does not even seem to understand the idea of 'friends' when Atticus asks her about them. The arrival of Bob Ewell at the wrong moment involved several aspects of racial prejudice. White women were not supposed to have anything to do with black men and Bob is so shocked by his daughter's behaviour that he beats her savagely. Once the charge of rape is brought, Tom becomes the victim of prejudices about black men and white women. These are so strong that the townspeople's first reaction is to lynch Tom without a trial. When Atticus agrees to defend Tom, he and his children come in for a great deal of verbal, and some physical, abuse. In the trial itself Atticus says that Bob and Mayella have assumed that they will automatically be believed over a black person. Atticus asks the jury to try to overcome this prejudice but it is too ingrained for him to succeed and, besides, the jury had probably been offended by Tom's remark that he felt sorry for Mayella.
The whole trial is viewed from Scout's point of view. This works well because as a lawyer's daughter she is very familiar with court procedures and even some of the characters like the judge and Mr Gilmer. She is therefore able to write about things accurately but because she is a child she is still capable of being shocked by the injustice she sees in front of her. The purpose of any trial is to make things plain for the jury and in doing this Harper Lee also makes things plain for the reader. | <urn:uuid:7ba256f7-1cd0-4c0b-b1a9-cffe1904e414> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=15191 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00068-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990493 | 1,289 | 2.9375 | 3 |
The NYT Opinion recently ran a piece on a PLoS One study that links increased sugar availability to increased rates of obesity and diabetes. One of our favorite things about paleo is the natural decrease in sugar consumption that it brings to most diets, simply because it means eating real foods. The study corroborates this approach.
The key point in the article is this: “Each 150 kilocalories/person/day increase in total calorie availability related to a 0.1 percent rise in diabetes prevalence (not significant), whereas a 150 kilocalories/person/day rise in sugar availability (one 12-ounce can of soft drink) was associated with a 1.1 percent rise in diabetes prevalence.” Thus: for every 12 ounces of sugar-sweetened beverage introduced per person per day into a country’s food system, the rate of diabetes goes up 1 percent. (The study found no significant difference in results between those countries that rely more heavily on high-fructose corn syrup and those that rely primarily on cane sugar.)
The study meets the “Bradford Hill’ criteria – the medical standard for inferring causation. The big takeaway at the end of the article sums things up pretty well:
It isn’t simply overeating that can make you sick; it’s overeating sugar. We finally have the proof we need for a verdict: sugar is toxic.
Read the full post below. It’s worth your time.
photo credit: David Pacey
Download Your FREE Paleo Starter Kit Today!
- 3-Day Paleo Diet Meal Plan
- Comprehensive Paleo Diet Shopping List
- 5 of Our Favorite Paleo Diet Recipes | <urn:uuid:d6659a0c-f6db-47f2-a9d8-0c38ec8b9eee> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ultimatepaleoguide.com/sugar-is-toxic/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00095-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.883937 | 340 | 2.640625 | 3 |
NELLES (Nellis), ROBERT, businessman, office holder, jp, politician, and militia officer; b. 6 Oct. 1761 in Tryon County, N.Y., eldest son of Hendrick William Nelles (Nellis); m. first 1788 Elizabeth Moore (d. 1813), and they had five sons and three daughters; m. secondly 1814 Maria Jane Waddell, the widow of Samuel Bingle, and they had two sons and four daughters; d. 27 July 1842 in Grimsby, Upper Canada.
According to family tradition, Robert Nelles was descended from a Huguenot family that was driven from France to the Palatinate (Federal Republic of Germany) following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. In 1709 they were uprooted once again by a French invasion and found temporary asylum in England. From there they were bundled off, along with 4,000 Palatinate refugees, to populate the colony of New York. War followed them. William Nelles (Nellis), Robert’s grandfather, was pressed into taking part in an attack on New France within a year of his arrival in 1710. In 1759–60 Hendrick William Nelles, Robert’s father, served in Sir William Johnson*’s Indian Department, with which he saw action during the Seven Years’ War.
Friendship with the Indians had helped rebuild the family fortunes in New York, as it would later in Upper Canada. Abandoned by their British sponsors and denied title to their lands, the Palatinate immigrants had moved inland in the 1720s to settle among the Indians of the Mohawk valley. During the 1750s and 1760s Hendrick Nelles’s cousin George Klock was surrounded in controversy because of his method of obtaining land from the Mohawks at Canajoharie (near Little Falls, N.Y.). Klock apparently got the Indians drunk, bartered their clothes off their backs, and then tricked them into signing deeds to vast tracts of land for a pittance. Although it seems that Nelles was not involved in such deals, he certainly did acquire a great deal of land. When old associations called him back to the Indian Department in 1777 (or revolutionary tensions drove him back), he left behind property that he later valued at £3,760, not counting stock and equipment.
After 1777 the Indian Department strategy was simply to destroy the settlements in the interior of New York that supplied the Continental Army. Captain Nelles (he anglicized his name to Henry at this time) accompanied Indians on many savage raids back into his own Mohawk valley, sacking homesteads, burning crops, and killing and scalping settlers. Through his intervention the Old Palatine Church, which his family had helped build, and the Nelles homestead were spared destruction. On one of these murderous missions in 1780 Nelles “recovered” his teenage son Robert, who joined him at Fort Niagara (near Youngstown, N.Y.) as a lieutenant in the Indian Department. Robert proved as energetic and resourceful at frontier terrorism as his father, leading raids in 1781 and 1782 with a cool fury. He returned in modest triumph from the 1782 campaign with “a parcel of negroes & wenches” in tow, for which he found a ready market in Niagara. At the end of the war, both Robert and his father were released from the Indian Department, but were retained on half pay.
Understandably, neither father nor son returned after the war to the district that they had razed. Instead, they followed their Indian clients to the Grand River valley, where they settled and did a little fur trading. In February 1787 Joseph Brant [Thayendanegea*] arranged for some 4,254 acres on the Grand River to be deeded to Henry Nelles and his sons Robert and Warner “to be possessed by them and their posterity.” By the time of Henry Nelles’s death in 1791, five of his sons were settled in Upper Canada. The Nelleses received other land grants for military service, loyalism, and compensation for lost property, and by 1800 they collectively owned 7,300 acres, most of it in the Niagara District, making them the sixth largest landholders on the peninsula.
Robert decided to develop more than 600 acres on Forty Mile Creek. There, on the site of present-day Grimsby, he built mills and a store, and commenced a grand stone mansion, The Manor, which still survives. In the 1790s he supplied hardware, household goods, textiles, and provisions to the small settlement. After 1800 he forwarded whiskey, grain, and flour from his mill to W. and J. Crooks at Niagara (Niagara-on-the-Lake) [see James Crooks*]. Joseph Brant sought his help both in supplying the Six Nations settlements and in the education of his own sons. Robert was also briefly pressed into service again as an Indian agent in 1797, delivering trade goods to the Mississauga Ojibwas under the terms of their recently concluded treaty. Thus Robert Nelles launched his own family from the elevated position accorded by landed wealth, a commercial income, and his continuing half pay.
Being a local notable in a deferential society, Nelles held various offices, such as town warden and justice of the peace, and was inevitably drawn into provincial politics. In the 1800 general election he headed the poll in the two-member riding of York West, 1st Lincoln, and Haldimand and he served in the House of Assembly until 1808, usually voting with the government majority. He seems to have devoted himself to local appropriations and regularizing the title to family land on the Grand River. While he was away at York (Toronto), his brothers, and later his eldest son, Henry, looked after the store and mills, and his wife, Elizabeth, tended a growing family that eventually numbered eight children.
War threatened life and property again in 1812 and Nelles, his brothers, and his son responded to the call to arms. Robert reported for duty as a captain in the 4th Lincoln Militia in 1812 but did not see much action during the next two years. The inhabitants of the Niagara District, many with loyalties cruelly divided by the war, seemed to prefer being spectators. The local militia remained inactive, undermanned and demoralized, especially after the American occupation in 1813. This state of affairs led to a general shake-up of command in the Lincoln militia in 1814 during which Nelles was promoted lieutenant-colonel of the 4th regiment. He quickly brought it up to strength with threats of fines and courts martial. Robert and his family fought in several battles, most notably at Lundy’s Lane, where his son was captured and his brother wounded.
After the war he remarried and briefly returned to public life. In February 1814 he had been elected to the assembly for 1st Lincoln and Haldimand to replace the expelled Joseph Willcocks*. He held the seat until 1820; while he attended parliament, his son Henry managed the family mills. This separation has bequeathed to us a rare collection of touching love-letters between husband and wife. Robert Nelles (over the years the spelling gradually regularized to Nelles) was enormously proud of his military record and continued to take a great deal of interest in militia affairs. In 1822 he was rewarded with a promotion to colonel of his regiment. He scandalized and angered his neighbours with the unblushing favouritism of his appointments. For 20 or more years most of the officers in his regiment were members of the Nelles family. This situation aroused jealousy and resentment not only in the county but also within the Nelles family. In 1822 Robert promoted his son-in-law, but his brother William claimed seniority and marred the annual militia parade by beating his rival with a stick.
Robert Nelles’s sons were all well educated by the standards of the day. They received an elementary education in a school their father had established at the Forty (Grimsby), and some of them were sent to York to continue their training in the care of the Ridouts and John Strachan*. Although raised a Lutheran in the German-speaking Palatinate community in New York, Robert helped build and became a pillar of the Anglican church in Grimsby. His son Abram* became a noted Church of England missionary to the Six Nations Indians. This appointment served to mark the great change that had taken place over the generations in the relative fortunes of the Nelles family and their Indian neighbours. Abram, a professional man from a well-off family, ministered to the poor and confined population of a reservation, descendants of the warriors his father and grandfather had fought alongside in three wars, whose friendship had so generously endowed the family with land.
AO, MS 118; MS 502; MS 503; MU 3296. BL, Add. mss 21661–892 (mfm. at PAC). HPL, File information on Robert Nelles. PAC, MG 19, Fl; F2; F6; MG 24, D108; RG 9, I, B1; B34; B35; RG 10, A1; RG 19, E5(b), 4447. The papers of Sir William Johnson, ed. James Sullivan et al. (14v., Albany, N.Y., 1921–65). U.C., House of Assembly, Journal, 1800–10, 1816–20. Valley of Six Nations (Johnston). D. C. Nellis, [Nellis family album] (Topeka, Kans., 1888; copy in possession of H. V. Nelles). William Gillard and Thomas Tooke, The Niagara escarpment: from Tobermory to Niagara Falls (Toronto and Buffalo, N.Y., 1975), 100, 104. Barbara Graymont, The Iroquois in the American revolution (Syracuse, N.Y., 1972). [L. D. MacWethy and] Milo Nellis, The old Palatine church, together with a description of the Gen. John Cochran house, also articles on the early Klock and Nellis pioneers ([3rd ed.], St Johnsville, N.Y., 1930). Milo Nellis, The Mohawk Dutch and the Palatines; their background and their influence in the development of the United States of America (St Johnsville, ). B. G. Wilson, Enterprises of Robert Hamilton. E. A. Brooks, “The story of William Sampson, first rector of Grimsby, 1817–1822,” Wentworth Bygones (Hamilton, Ont.), no.11 (1975): 28. “The coming of the loyalists, 1783–1787” and “Fifty years of municipal government, 1790–1840,” comp. R. J. Powell, Annals of the Forty ([Grimsby, Ont.]), no.1 (1950): 4–7, 32–35, 88, and no.2 (1951): 12. H. V. Nelles, “Loyalism and local power: the district of Niagara, 1792–1837,” OH, 58 (1966): 99–114. J. G. Rossie, “The Northern Indian Department and the American revolution,” Niagara Frontier (Buffalo), 20 (1973): 52–65 . | <urn:uuid:46ffad38-d9d8-478a-a111-391c798986ae> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/nelles_robert_7E.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396222.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00041-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97641 | 2,443 | 3.09375 | 3 |
From: Kennedy Space Center
Posted: Thursday, February 5, 2009
A new environmental satellite that will improve weather forecasting and monitor environmental events around the world soared into space this morning after a picture-perfect launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA-N Prime spacecraft lifted off at 2:22 a.m. PST aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket from NASA's Space Launch Complex 2. Approximately 65 minutes later, the spacecraft separated from the Delta II SLV.
Shortly after liftoff, flight controllers tracked the launch vehicle's progress using real-time telemetry data relayed through NASA's Tracking and Date Relay Satellite System. NOAA-N Prime was in a power positive mode with its solar array deployed approximately five minutes after spacecraft separation. NOAA-N Prime was renamed NOAA-19 after achieving orbit.
"NOAA-19 is in a nominal orbit with all spacecraft systems functioning properly," stated Wayne McIntyre, the NASA POES Project Manager. "The NASA/NOAA partnership continues to produce enormous results with environmental missions, now exceeding more than three decades."
NOAA-N Prime (NOAA 19) Mission
NOAA-19 is the fifth in a series of five Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) with advanced microwave sounding instruments that provide imaging and sounding capabilities. As it orbits the Earth, NOAA-N Prime will collect data about the Earth's surface and atmosphere that are vital inputs to NOAA's weather forecasts.
NOAA-N Prime has instruments that support the Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking System (SARSAT), part of the international satellite system that includes the Russian provided satellites (COSPAS). Since SARSAT was established in 1982, NOAA polar-orbiting satellites have been detecting emergency distress beacons set by aviators, mariners and individuals in remote locations and relaying them to ground stations so that rescue teams may be dispatched. More than 24,500 lives have been saved through the satellite based Search and Rescue system to date.
NOAA-N Prime will replace NOAA-18 in a 2:00 p.m. local solar time orbit as the primary afternoon spacecraft. NOAA-N Prime will carry the same primary instruments as NOAA-18 plus an Advanced Data Collection System and an improved Search and Rescue Processor provided by France.
NOAA-N Prime is the sixteenth and last satellite in a series of polar-orbiting satellites dating back to 1978. A new generation of environmental satellites called the National Polar Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) will become operational after the POES satellites complete their mission. NPOESS is a tri-agency (NOAA, U.S. Department of Defense, NASA) program. NPOESS will provide more capable sensors for improved data collection and better weather forecasts beginning in 2013.
NOAA manages the polar-orbiting operational environmental satellite program and establishes requirements, provides all funding and distributes environmental satellite data for the United States. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., procures and manages the development and launch of the satellites for NOAA on a cost reimbursable basis.
NOAA-N Prime integration with the Delta II, countdown and launch management is the responsibility of the NASA Launch Services Program headquartered at the Kennedy Space Center.
Twenty-one days after it is launched, NASA will transfer operational control of NOAA-19 to NOAA. NASA's comprehensive on-orbit verification period is expected to last approximately 45 days after launch.
For more information about NOAA-N Prime and the polar orbiting satellites, see the following web sites:
// end // | <urn:uuid:9c50ffc3-34f9-4ccc-80f4-6cfcbb855da9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=27513 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00048-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.892195 | 745 | 3.015625 | 3 |
• empire •
Pronunciation: em-pair • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. An extensive political area under one government that includes several distinct nations or territories. 2. An enormous enterprise with many branches under one authority, such as a sports empire.
Notes: In the 18th and 19th centuries European countries competed for the largest empires: the British, French, Russian, and Spanish empires were perhaps the largest, but Germany, Italy, and Portugal had smaller ones. The derivatives of this word all begin on the letter I: the neutral adjective is imperial and the noun, imperialism. Now, imperialism clears the way for another adjective, imperialistic "like an imperialist, in an imperialist manner".
In Play: Empires did not first arise in the 18th century. Empires go back as far as recorded history: the Assyrian Empire, the Greek and Roman empires, the Ottoman empire, the Persian empire, to name but a few. Despite the disappearance of all these, the word still has a figurative use: "Herb Vinaigrette started with only one restaurant in 1955, and now he has a culinary empire stretching around the globe."
Word History: Today's contributor raised an interesting question: Is there any relation between empire and empirical? It seems as though there should be, but the similarity today is purely coincidental. Empire is what French turned Latin imperium "rule, command" into. This word comes from im- "in" + parare "make ready, provide, arrange". Empirical goes back to Greek empeirikos "experienced", Latin empiricus, French empirique, at which point English borrowed it. The root of this word, peir-, comes from Proto-Indo-European per- "try, risk", which came to English via the more natural route through Old Germanic as fear. (Narges Torkashvand, a university student in Iran—formerly the Persian Empire, for recommending that we compare today's Good Word with empirical.) | <urn:uuid:b39bee43-5ea3-4d2d-96b6-de6ca8b496bb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.alphadictionary.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6787&p=42480 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00128-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941681 | 420 | 3.15625 | 3 |
What is Cardiovascular Disease?
Cardiovascular or heart disease is the leading cause of death and a common cause of morbidity in the United States. Coronary heart disease (CHD) and ischemic heart disease are more specific names for the principal forms of heart disease. These terms are used when there are clinical symptoms, such as angina, from coronary atherosclerosis or narrowing of the arteries.
The term coronary artery disease (CAD) is used when there is atherosclerosis in the coronary arteries (arteries that feed the heart muscle) but not symptoms. Atherosclerosis in the coronary arteries is the underlying cause of heart attacks, CHD and CAD. Angina pectoris occurs when atherosclerosis causes reduced blood flow and, therefore too little oxygen, to the heart muscle resulting in chest pain.
A myocardial infarction or heart attack occurs when a coronary artery becomes blocked, usually by a blood clot (thrombus), resulting in lack of blood flow to the heart muscle. The part of the heart muscle deprived of oxygen and other nutrients then dies or infarcts. About 1.1 million people in the United States experience a heart attack each year. Nearly 500,000 Americans die from CHD a year with more than half of these deaths occurring outside the hospital, within 1 hour of symptom onset. | <urn:uuid:cc9e5d37-cd81-42ca-a1c8-1ce484c64979> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.chfs.ky.gov/dph/mch/cvd.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394987.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00047-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.89845 | 275 | 3.546875 | 4 |
How GesturePak Works
Microsoft has lowered the bar with Kinect for Windows so that
anyone willing and able to spend $250 can interact with their PC
using their bodies. The Kinect for Windows API gives the programmer
a stream of raw data coming from the sensor, but making sense of
that data is a challenge.
GesturePak uses the skeleton recognition
system in the Kinect for Windows SDK to help the user turn complex
gestures into data, which can then be matched against real-time
movement. Gestures are broken down into a series of poses. Pose matching
happens first. A gesture is considered recognized when the poses in
that defined gesture are matched in series, within the allowed amount of time.
GesturePak is two things. The GesturePak Recorder is a Windows app that lets
you record, edit, and otherwise define gestures. The GesturePak API lets
a .NET developer recognize those gestures with no real programming.
A gesture has a few constraints. You can select which axes to track, which
joints to track, how much margin of error to allow, and how much time is
required and allowed in between each pose. With these simple constraints,
an unlimited number of simple and complex poses can be defined and recognized.
How does it work?
Gestures are defined and created with the GesturePak Recorder app.
The user breaks down a gesture into a series of poses, each pose
representing a body position. A stick figure of the user is shown in
real-time. As well, each pose is represented as a stick figure.
Poses can be added easily with the voice command "Snapshot," or with
a quick rocking back and forth of the head.
Poses can be deleted and inserted in the series that makes up a gesture.
The user can also watch an animation that shows the stick figure
going through the poses.
Each axis (X,Y,Z) can be optionally tracked. Each of the 20 body joints
can optionally be tracked as well. All of this is saved as data as an
XML gesture file.
Gestures can be recognized in any .NET application with the use of the
GesturePak Matcher, part of the GesturePak API, which is easily added
to any project as an assembly reference.
The GesturePak Matcher performs an analysis on each frame in real-time.
It walks through each pose in each gesture, checking to see if the user
is matching any of the poses. A certain definable amount of slop is
taken into account when matching poses. More accuracy means less slop
allowed. If a pose is matched, the application is notified via a callback.
Optionally, the programmer can opt to poll the Matcher to see if a gesture
or pose was recognized. That way, GesturePak stays completely out of the way of
the existing code.
Once pose matching is established, the Matcher checks each gesture to see
if the poses were matched in the correct order in the required amount of time.
When a gesture is matched, the application is notified via a callback, or
GesturePak can be polled as stated earlier.
Multiple gestures can be loaded at the same time, and GesturePak discerns
each gesture individually. Gestures can be sequenced.
For example: gesture A could be movement of the right hand from left to right,
and then gesture B could be movement of the right hand from right to left.
Since your code is alerted when each of these gestures is performed, your
application could then determine that both of them were performed one after
the other within a given amount of time, and that sequence could be considered
Gesture-controlled applications are most practical in a situation where the
user is not physically able to sit down and operate a computer. Here are a
In an industrial scenario, often a machine operator can't move away from
their post in order to operate a computer. However, they could turn to the
side, extend a hand and make movements to set tolerances, start or stop
processes, or anything else that can be controlled via computer.
Operating Room Control
An obvious application of gesture control is in the OR. A surgeon cannot
touch a screen, and voice command glitches could lead to unfortunate
accidents. Gestures can be used to flip between X-Rays, zoom in and out,
and otherwise control assistive medical technology.
For those who cannot type or speak clearly, a gesture-based interface
makes a lot of sense. Naturally, one would want to customize the gestures
that control such an application due to the wide range of abilities among the
disabled. Since the GesturePak API includes the ability to record new
gestures, this functionality can be built right into an app.
Pose matching can be used in lieu of real Kinect programming to determine
the relative position of the hands. For example: you can create a gesture
in which Pose 1 has your hands close together, Pose 2 has them a little
further apart, and so on for about 12 poses until the last pose
has them as far apart as they can reach. Now, your app will be notified
when your user hits each of those poses. You can use the pose number
(1-12) to calculate a zoom value for a picture. Now as your user moves their
hands the photo is zooming in and out in real-time, all with very little
Fun for Kids!
Since no real programming is required to recognize gestures with GesturePak,
what better way to get kids interested in STEM education (Science, Technology,
Engineering and Math). What could be cooler
than letting kids come up with their own gestures and then mapping them to
things that programs can do!
The Kinect SDK gives us the raw data. Programming gestures in code doesn't
make sense. Instead, turn the gestures into data and run them through a
recognition engine. GesturePak is that tool. Very little programming is
required and you can create a complex gesture in less than 3 minutes.
Best of all, GesturePak is only $99 US. | <urn:uuid:b69175ef-4328-4fc0-b8d0-6cc3bcb3a6ad> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.franklins.net/GesturePakHow.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00021-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930768 | 1,305 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Yellow nutsedge, or nutgrass, is a relatively common weed in lawns, landscapes and vegetable gardens. Although it looks like grass, it is actually a sedge.
Unlike grasses, sedges have triangular stems and the leaves are three-ranked instead of two-ranked. This means the blades come off the stems in three different directions not two.
Yellow nutsedge is pale green to yellow in color and grows rapidly in the spring and early summer. It is easy to identify because it grows taller than the rest of the lawn just a few days after mowing.
Normally found in wet areas, nutsedge is a good indicator of poor drainage or over watering. But it can be introduced into a well-drained site through contaminated topsoil or plants.
Nutsedge is difficult, if not impossible, to control with cultural practices because it produces numerous tubers that give rise to new plants. However, as with many weeds, nutsedge does not grow well in a dense, healthy lawn.
With this in mind, mow the grass higher than usual, fertilize at the appropriate times and water only when needed to keep your yard healthy.
By far, the best method of control is with the use of herbicides. There are few products labeled for use in the lawn, however. Manage is probably the safest and most effective product. It is expensive, but if an infestation is not too severe, one application should take care of the problem.
The Manage label states it should be applied after nutsedge has reached the three- to eight-leaf stage. Waiting until this growth stage apparently results in improved translocation of the active ingredient to the underground tubers and rhizomes.
MSMA (monosodium acid methanearsonate) can also be used, but is less effective than Manage and can cause temporary discoloration of the desirable turfgrass. MSMA is less expensive than Manage, and is more widely available in the homeowner market.
You can achieve fairly good control with repeat applications 10 to 14 days apart. MSMA is often sold under such generic names as "crabgrass killer" (because it is also used for postemergence crabgrass control) or "nutgrass killer." Of the two, Manage would be my first choice.
In the vegetable garden and flower beds, hand pulling and fresh mulch are probably the best options. Don't be afraid to pull small plants when they pop-up from time to time.
Contrary to what you sometimes hear, pulling the nutsedge by hand will not make the problem worse. You have to be persistent, but eventually the nutsedge will die out.
Around woody ornamentals, a directed spray at the weeds with Manage works well. But, do not spray the foliage, annual and perennial flowers, or the vegetable garden.
Yellow nutsedge, or waterweed, used to be a problem in my own landscape. However, with the use of herbicides, hand pulling and keeping the flower beds on the dry side, I have this weed pretty much under control.
From time to time, I will find that a new plant has sprung up, but I pull it, then replace the mulch and all is well. | <urn:uuid:12ff5dbb-635a-4833-a47c-b9743e9593eb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2000/jul/16/nutgrass_although_common/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396029.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00098-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953076 | 667 | 2.5625 | 3 |
When Black voters in Fayette County, Georgia took to the polls during a primary election earlier this month, they experienced, for the first time in the county’s 191-year history, the opportunity to elect their candidates of choice to the Board of Commissioners and Board of Education.
It is more than just serendipity that this election took place almost exactly 60 years to the day that our nation celebrated the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education on May 17, 1954. Brown ended legally enforced segregation in our country’s public schools and overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine that segregated all aspects of American society. The Brown decision also breathed life into the Civil Rights movement, which in turn led to the creation of the Voting Rights Acts of 1965, widely considered the movement’s greatest victory.
But for the voters of Fayette County, that victory was a long time coming. Prior to the historic election in May 2014, Fayette County used at-large voting to maintain a racially segregated Board of Commissioners and Board of Education. Although Black voters comprise nearly 20 percent of Fayette County’s population, are geographically concentrated within the County, and consistently vote together to attempt to elect candidates of their choice, no Black candidate has ever been elected to either body under the at-large system of election. Indeed, because Black-preferred candidates are not meaningfully supported by white voters, who comprise 70 percent of Fayette County’s population, those candidates cannot win a county-wide election under the at-large electoral scheme.
A Black candidate, for example, lost a Fayette County Board of Education election after receiving 99 percent of support from Black voters, but securing only 15 percent of the votes from white voters. In another election, three Republican candidates ran for a vacant seat on the Board of Commissioners, including two Black candidates and one white candidate. One of the Black candidates was an attorney and then vice-chairman of the Fayette County Republican party, and the other Black candidate was a certified public accountant. The white candidate, who was a political novice, but who ran to "preserve the heritage . . . in our county," was a mechanic. Two other Black Democratic candidates also ran in that election. In the end, the white candidate defeated all four Black candidates without a runoff.
After two decades of unsuccessful advocacy by Black voters and the Fayette County Branch NAACP for a change in the method of election which produced such results, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) filed Georgia State Conference of the NAACP et al. v. Fayette County Board of Commissioners et al., a lawsuit challenging Fayette County’s at-large method of election under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Our lawsuit sought to bring greater inclusion and democratic legitimacy to Fayette County’s political process through district-based voting.
In February of this year, after two-and-a-half years of litigation, a federal court ruled that Fayette County’s at-large method of election violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because it provided Black voters with less opportunity to elect their candidates of choice. In an 81-page opinion, the court ordered Fayette County to implement district-based voting, commencing with the primary election in May and continuing with the November 20 general election and all future elections. Black voters in Fayette County now represent the majority of the voting-age population in one of five single-member districts for the Board of Education and Board of Commissioners.
On primary day, LDF’s voting team monitored the polls and interacted with voters to ensure that district voting was implemented fairly and without confusion. At one polling place, one of our clients, Henry Adams, a long-time resident of Fayette County, expressed great excitement about the possibility of finally electing his preferred candidate of choice. Mr. Adams was not alone. We met numerous other Black voters who entered the polling places filled with excitement that they would finally have the means to elect responsive representatives—including Board of Education members who can help make the promises of Brown real for Fayette County students. Several white community members also voiced optimism that district voting will bring more people into the political process in Fayette County so that more, rather than fewer, perspectives can help build Fayette County to the benefit all of it residents.
As the polls closed that day, our clients, and Black voters in Fayette County were one step closer to electing their candidates of choice for the County Board of Commissioners and Board of Education in the November general election. At the same time, their excitement was tempered by the reality that both boards have appealed the federal court’s ruling in an effort to stall progress in Fayette County.
And so today, 60 years after Brown and nearly 50 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we are continually reminded that there are new frontiers for the expansion of civil rights as well as old battles still to be fought. In the spirit of Brown’s legacy and in the interest of a stronger, participatory democracy, the time is now to break down the walls of exclusion in Fayette County, Georgia, and in other places in our country where segregation still exists, that weaken the voting strength of voters of color.
Sixty years after Brown, we have important promises to keep, and still others to make. | <urn:uuid:fcdcfe8d-010d-4ec0-a5a8-3919fa56eb1d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.acslaw.org/acsblog/the-battle-for-equality-still-rages-sixty-years-after-brown | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394937.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00033-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9626 | 1,098 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Special Surgical Procedures II
LESSON 2: Procedures in Gynecological and Obstetrical Surgery
2-7. THE LIGAMENTS OF THE UTERUS
a. Broad Ligaments. From each side of the uterus, the pelvic peritoneum extends laterally, downward, and backward. A double fold of pelvic peritoneum forms the layers of the broad ligament, enclosing the uterus. These layers separate to cover the floor and sides of the pelvis. The uterine tube is situated within the free upper border of broad ligament. The part of the broad ligament lying immediately below the uterine tube is termed the mesosalpinx. The ovary lies behind the broad ligament.
b. Round Ligaments. These fibromuscular bands are attached to the uterus. Each round ligament passes forward and laterally between the layers of the broad ligament to enter the deep inguinal ring.
c. Transverse Cervical Ligaments. These cardinal ligaments are composed of connective tissue masses with smooth muscle fibers that are strong support for the uterus in the pelvis.
d. Uterosacral Ligaments. These are a posterior continuation of the peritoneal tissue, which forms the cardinal ligaments. The ligaments pass posteriorly to the sacrum on either side of the rectum.
The Brookside Associates Medical Education Division develops and distributes medical information that may be useful to medical professionals and those in training to become medical professionals. This website is privately-held and not connected to any governmental agency. The views expressed here are those of the authors, and unless otherwise noted, do not necessarily reflect the views of the Brookside Associates, Ltd., or any governmental or private organizations. All writings, discussions, and publications on this website are unclassified.
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New hormones and endocrine pathways have recently been discovered. These discoveries increased our understanding of normal human physiology and behavior which provides insights into the pathophysiology of various diseases. (Graphic courtesy of Dr. Pittas)
In addition to covering the basics in the Concepts in Endocrine Pathophysiology lecture, the lectures in this course cover a wide range of subjects, from Pituitary Neoplasia to Diabetes and Obesity - Treatment to Goiter and Thyroid Nodular Disease. The course also contains Small Group Discussion sessions which consolidate the concepts and facts acquired during the lectures and pursues the ability to solve common clinical problems in Endocrinology and Metabolism with sample cases and solutions.
The endocrine system has always had a certain mystique among scientists, clinicians
and the general public. More recently, new hormones and
complex endocrine pathways have been discovered that have increased our
understanding of normal human physiology and behavior and provided insights into the pathophysiology of various diseases. As a result of these recent advances, the endocrine system has assumed a prominent role in our understanding and management of common medical conditions including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity and aging.
This course provides a brief review of endocrine physiology. The course teaches the pathophysiology of each of the following endocrine areas through didactic lectures and small group discussions. It covers adrenal cortex, adrenal medulla (catecholamine excess), disorders of calcium metabolism (hypercalcemia and hypocalcemia), diabetes mellitus, obesity and the metabolic syndrome: pathogenesis, complications and management, obesity: pathogenesis, complications and management, thyroid disease, hypothalamic and pituitary disease, hypoglycemia, and congenital adrenal hyperplasia. The student wil learn the mechanism of action of the various medications used in the treatment of endocrine disorders as a way to emphsize physiology and pathophysiology. The concepts and facts learned during the lectures will be applied to solve clinical problems in the small group discussion sessions. The small group sessions prepare students to handle endocrine cases during their clinical years and prepare them for the USMLE exams as well.
Please note that the course as presented here does not contain the full content of the course as taught at Tufts. The included content is based on material the Tufts faculty and instructors choose to include, as well as factors such as content preparation, software compatibility, and intellectual property and copyright restrictions.
|Anastassios G. Pittas|
|Richard D. Siegel|
|Arthur S. Tischler|
|此处塔夫斯大学“开放式课程网页”之资料乃由 开放式课程计划（OOPS）译为正体中文。塔夫斯大学不代表、或作以下的保证，(包含但不限制，直述或暗示方式)，关于课程教材的保证、商业化保证、适合特定目的、不侵权、没有错误(无论是有发现或没发现)的保证。塔夫斯大学“开放式课程网页”对翻译上之不正确不负任何责任。由翻译所引发任何关于此等资料之不正确或其他瑕疵，皆由 开放式课程计划（OOPS）负全责。翻译文章的原始英文资料可于原文网址找到。| | <urn:uuid:99c9b4f2-68cb-43c3-9e50-c11891e94dab> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.myoops.org/cocw/tufts/courses/14/CourseHome.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00104-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.870395 | 964 | 2.671875 | 3 |
This is a large tree with luxuriant, light green foliage, making
it ideal for a big garden, avenue or park. It is also valued by
galpinii is a deciduous tree, losing its leaves during the southern
African winter (April-July). It is fast-growing and can reach 25-30
m. Creamy to light yellow flowers appear during the growing season
(September-October). Reddish to purplish brown pods ripen during
February-March. Acacia galpinii is often confused with Acacia
polyacantha from which it can be distinguished by the gland
on the leaf stalk: small in A. galpinii and large in A.
Monkey-thorn grows naturally in open, wooded grassland, open woodland
and often near streams. It is indigenous to Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi,
northern and eastern Botswana and South Africa. In South Africa,
Acacia galpinii occurs naturally in Limpopo [Northern Province]
and the North-West. It is seen as an indicator of sweet veld, which
retains its nutritional value in winter.
The name Acacia is derived from the Greek word 'akis', meaning
a point or a spike, referring to the thorns in many Acacia
species. The South African species are armed with spines. Most of
introduced species from Australia are spineless. The species was
named in honour of Ernest Galpin (1854-1941), a plant collector.
Monkeys like taking cover in its wide branches and may also eat
the pods and seeds, hence the common name.
There are about 1 340 species in this genus of which 954 are indigenous
to Australia, 230 to the Americas, 129 to Africa and some species
scattered in Asia. This very large, pan-tropical genus occurs mainly
in dry country.
Ecology and uses
Many insects such as bees and wasps visit the flowers. Ripe
fruit pods burst open, releasing the seeds. Seeds are also dispersed
by animals eating the pods.
galpinii is one of the trees that can survive hot and dry conditions.
It makes a stunning tree along roads where there is enough space.
It is an ideal tree for a big garden. In the wild the plant is grazed
and used for shade during the hot summer by different animals including
giraffe, kudu and elephant. Many birds often prefer nesting in this
tree as it provides protection. It provides dappled shade on hot
summer days, making it an ideal tree for planting on a lawn where
some sun can penetrate.
Growing Acacia galpinii
Monkey-thorn is easy to propagate from seed that is
not parasitized. Like other plants belonging to the Fabaceae, seed
of this tree must be soaked in hot water overnight and then sown
the next day. Seed must be sown in a seedling tray filled with river
sand. To avoid unnecessary moisture loss, the seed can be covered
with vermiculite. Seedlings are fairly fast-growing but must be
protected from frost probably for the first growing season. Although
it is frost-tolerant, severe frost often kills off tender young
branches. The tree prefers full sun. Do not plant it too close to
buildings as it has extensive roots.
- TIMBERLAKE, J., FAGG, C. & BARNES, R. 1998. Field guide
to the acacias of Zimbabwe. CBC Publishing, Zimbabwe.
- VAN WYK, B. & VAN WYK, P. 1997. Field guide to trees of
southern Africa. Struik, Cape Town.
- VENTER, F. & VENTER, J-A. 1996. Making the most of indigenous
trees. Briza Publications, Pretoria.
- COATES PALGRAVE, K. 2002. Trees of southern Africa. Struik Publishers,
Pretoria National Botanical Garden | <urn:uuid:62f1aa04-cc63-4083-8494-7971a63bbc86> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.plantzafrica.com/plantab/acaciagalpin.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00000-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918266 | 851 | 3.625 | 4 |
The coming of independence to Sudan in 1956 revealed the incredible divisions within the country and complexities of cultural composition. Independence came with little turmoil or bloodshed, but there was also not a unifying spirit that characterizes many rebellions. For Sudan, an artificial geographic construct to begin with, the absence of a united mission was detrimental to the land and the people. Coupled with conflicting goals, poor leadership, and a divisive colonial legacy, it is not surprising that independent Sudan looked a great deal like colonial Sudan to many of its residents.
World War One raised the hopes of many colonial peoples throughout Africa and the Middle East for independence. In Sudan most of those who wished to rid themselves of colonial rule lived in the North, were highly educated and Westernized. Many Sudanese felt that only the departure of foreign rulers would allow for a centralized nation that was both Muslim and Arab, where tribal and religious leaders would share power.
Neither Britain nor Egypt would agree to a modification in the 1899 Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Agreement which placed Sudan under the joint administration of the two countries. Moreover, the British believed their presence was necessary to protect Sudan from Egyptian domination.
(Figure 15)Nationalists feared the solution might be to attach northern Sudan to Egypt and southern Sudan to Uganda and Kenya. Although they settled most of their differences in the 1936 Treaty of Alliance, which set a timetable for the end of British military occupation, Britain and Egypt failed to agree on the future status of Sudan.
Following World War Two, the British agreed to transfer power. Their system of indirect rule would be modernized and incorporated into a Sudanese political system. The new Sudanese government would have responsibility in all areas except military and foreign affairs, which remained in British hands. In February 1953, the parties signed the Anglo-Egyptian accord, which allowed for a three-year transition period from Condominium rule to self- government. During the transition phase, British and Egyptian troops would withdraw from Sudan. At the end of this period, the Sudanese would decide their future status in a plebiscite conducted under international supervision. Sudan achieved independence without the rival political parties having agreed on the form and content of a permanent constitution.
The new country had many problems and no clear mechanism for solving them. The colonial experience had created a profound division between North and South which was only reinforced by geographic factors, linguistic differences and religious affiliation. To what extent would religious law be incorporated in the new nation? Would southern Christians be bound by Sharia, Muslim law? Would claims of pan-Arabism mask distinctions and create a sense of nationalism? The British had an effective civil service. By whom would they be replaced, given the dearth of education of those who lived in the southern and western portions of the country? With whom would the country ally itself, both in its region and in the Cold War dominated era? Did it envision itself as part of Africa or the Middle East?
There was not a strong political commitment to democracy. Those who found themselves in positions of power were not prepared in the means of nation building or statecraft, because nothing in their colonial past prepared the Sudanese for such an approach. Elitism, factionalism and authoritarianism dominated Sudanese politics from the beginning. Northern Sudanese quickly replaced the British civil servants, much to the resentment of those in the South, who quickly began to agitate for provincial autonomy. Failure to gain power within the new government resulted in rebellion and protracted civil war between the South and the North from the first months after independence until the early 1970s.
The new government, based on a parliamentary model, introduced plans to expand the country's educational, economic, and transportation sectors. To achieve these goals, Khartoum needed foreign economic and technical assistance, to which the United States made an early commitment. The prime minister formed a coalition government in February 1956, but he alienated religious leaders by supporting increasingly secular government policies. Factionalism and bribery in parliament, coupled with the government's inability to resolve Sudan's many social, political, and economic problems, increased popular disillusion with democratic governance. Growing popular discontent caused many antigovernment demonstrations in Khartoum. On November 17, 1958, the day parliament was to convene, a military coup occurred.
A pattern developed in successive years. There were many in Sudan who understood the enormous task before them but absent any way to construct a majority, democracy was difficult. Those times when it was tried via a multiparty system, factionalism and corruption made a rapid return to authoritarianism and military domination easy. Even when coalition governments formed, they were unable to deliver on promises.
After the military overthrow in 1958, officers assumed positions of political leadership but the economy and society remained in turmoil. They tried to suppress religious and cultural differences by promoting the Arabization of all. In 1964, a parliamentary system was instituted that had little more success. In 1969, a military coup under Nimeiri took power which lasted until the mid-1980s. Again, a few years of democratic efforts failed to achieve lasting and meaningful change, and the military rule of the current president, al Bashir began in 1989.
Darfur was officially included in Sudan in 1916. In the three generations that followed, the people of Darfur became Sudanese. As the Sudanese were attempting to construct themselves as a distinct nation, those in Darfur shared in this process, yet did so from their marginal status. They assimilated to an economic and political entity that was centered on the Nile and most concerned with divisions between its northern and southern regions. As a peripheral appendage, the people of Darfur were saddled with problems not of their own design, with little ability to participate in the solution. Many within Darfur sought to change this situation. The ineffectiveness of nonviolence unfortunately gave way to a rising rebellion in which weapons would serve as the voice of protest.
1. What did independence mean for the people of Sudan? Darfur?
2. How did the absence of any real struggle to gain independence affect the new nation?
3. Who constitutes the majority in Sudan? Why do they have such little influence?
4. Were the people of Sudan better or worse off after independence?
- Country Reports: countryreports.org/country.aspx?countryid=228&countryName=Sudan
- Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict
- Daly, M.W. Imperial Sudan: The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
- Prunier, Gerard. Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. | <urn:uuid:66938829-b1df-40b3-bf57-2696457e4870> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://maps.bpl.org/darfur/independence | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396029.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00136-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968593 | 1,358 | 4.34375 | 4 |
Layia glandulosa (Hook.) Hook. & Arn.
White tidytips, Whitedaisy tidytips
Asteraceae (Aster Family)
Synonym(s): Layia glandulosa ssp. lutea
USDA Symbol: lagl5
Birds eat the seeds of this species.
From the Image Gallery
Bloom InformationBloom Color: White
Bloom Time: Mar , Apr , May , Jun
DistributionUSA: AZ , CA , ID , NM , NV , OR , UT , WA
Native Distribution: S. B.C. to s.w. ID, s. to NM, AZ & Baja
Native Habitat: Dry slopes; mesas
Growing ConditionsLight Requirement: Sun
Soil Description: Sandy soils.
Conditions Comments: Lean soil is necessary to encourage flowering and keep plants from becoming leggy.
Value to Beneficial InsectsSpecial Value to Native Bees
This information was provided by the Pollinator Program at The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.
PropagationDescription: Broadcast seed in fall or early spring. Seeds have temperature-related afterripening and also requrie light for germination.
Seed Collection: Bear in mind that birds will devour the seeds quickly upon maturity.
Seed Treatment: Not Available
Commercially Avail: yes
Additional resourcesUSDA: Find Layia glandulosa in USDA Plants
FNA: Find Layia glandulosa in the Flora of North America (if available)
Google: Search Google for Layia glandulosa
MetadataRecord Modified: 2007-01-01
Research By: TWC Staff | <urn:uuid:d5ff833f-d6b3-4845-bd03-0584a7a152f6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=lagl5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400572.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00144-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.675267 | 349 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Bad Water (image) The Earth Institute at Columbia University Share Print E-Mail Caption A well in the village of Van Phuc, outside Hanoi; the water is polluted with arsenic. Throughout south and southeast Asia, at least 100 million people are threatened by such wells. Credit Benjamin Bostick/LDEO Usage Restrictions None Share Print E-Mail Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system. | <urn:uuid:b9416d2c-1fed-4da8-9c07-4e41888a1ef5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/61537.php?from=248524 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00184-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912083 | 118 | 2.65625 | 3 |
1 Answer | Add Yours
In the poem "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas, the poet appears to suggest that people who are faced with death should rebel against this inevitable end. The poem focuses especially on death occurring after a long life, recommending that those in old age should "rage", "rave," and "burn" at the idea of dying.
The two most repeated refrains in the poem occur as the first and third lines in the first stanza. This stanza also contains the main premise of the poem, summarizing how people should react to the idea of leaving life.
The first line, "Do not go gentle into that good night" is also the title of the poem and could therefore be considered at the heart of all the poet's other statements. The first part of the line, "Do not go gentle" can be viewed in quite literal terms. Thomas is suggesting that human beings should not mildly accept what is about to happen to them. "That good night" is a metaphor for death. The images of darkness and night are frequently used to stand for death or some other calamity or crisis in poetry.
The third line, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" uses repetition. Repeating the word "rage" indicates the poet's strong feelings about his recommendation. He emphasizes the idea that those who are dying should not only rebel against it, but do so violently, by "raging." This line creates unity in the first stanza by repeating the main point the first line makes in somewhat stronger terms. The emphasis of "rage" also serves to connect this stanza to the rest of the poem.
The second line, "Old age should burn and rave at close of day" forms a connection between line 3 and 5 by qualifying and explicating the first line while creating a platform for intensification in the third line. Line 2 indicates "old age" as one of the common human features preceding death. "Old age" is also personified to indicate "those who are old" and the ways in which they should not be "gentle;" they should "burn and rave" when faced with death. Like "night" and "dying of the light," "close of day" is another metaphor for death, where "day" and "light" are an almost "built-in" contrast to signify life.
In the rest of the poem, Thomas provides several examples of those who have or should "not go gentle" and "rage." In the final stanza, the poem comes full circle by repeating both refrains. It also serves a clarifying purpose by indicating that the central recommendation of the poem to "rage" against dying is directed at the poet's father.
We’ve answered 327,850 questions. We can answer yours, too.Ask a question | <urn:uuid:7f39f799-09bf-4d51-8ba9-5de16b0ce3fc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/poem-do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night-page-437568 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00015-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972039 | 587 | 3.15625 | 3 |
An ongoing (chronic) cough is associated with numerous illnesses, including asthma. According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, chronic coughs last for at least eight weeks or longer. Persistent coughing is one of the telltale signs of asthma. It can also be one of the most nagging symptoms of asthma if it’s left untreated. Learn more about asthmatic cough and how to treat the symptoms of this chronic condition.
A cough is often a Catch-22: The basic function of a cough is to protect the lungs from developing infections, but coughing can be frustrating. There are two types of coughs: productive and nonproductive. When a cough is described as productive, it means that a noticeable amount of phlegm is expelled, which also enables the lung to rid itself of potentially harmful substances.
Coughing in people with asthma can be helpful because it’s one of the body’s natural defense mechanisms. A productive asthmatic cough will expel phlegm and mucus from the lungs. However, most cases of asthma cough are considered nonproductive. In other words, it’s a dry cough — a response to an irritant that forces the bronchial tubes to spasm (or constrict). Asthma is characterized by swelling (inflammation) and constriction of the airways, which prompts this type of nonproductive cough. An asthma cough is also often accompanied by wheezing. This is a high-pitched whistling sound, which is the result of constricted airways.
A cough is indeed the most common asthma symptom. In fact, it’s sometimes the only symptom of this condition. Still, when figuring out whether your cough is attributable to asthma or not, it may be helpful to assess any other potential related symptoms you may have. Other asthma symptoms may include:
- chest tightness from excessive coughing
- fatigue from night coughs
- problems exercising
- prolonged illnesses and infections
- shortness of breath
With asthma, a cough can be troublesome, especially at nighttime. It makes getting restful sleep difficult and sometimes requires special treatment. Night coughs are most often related to asthma or other breathing problems such as emphysema.
It’s also important to understand symptoms that are not associated with asthma cough. Seek emergency medical attention if your cough is accompanied by:
- chest pain
- coughing up blood
- high or long-lasting fever
- loss of appetite
- night sweats
- problems talking because of breathing difficulties
- changes in skin color due to difficulty breathing
Before you start an asthmatic cough treatment regimen, your doctor will probably order breathing tests to measure your lung function. These tests may also be ordered periodically to measure the effectiveness of any medications you might take. According to the Mayo Clinic, these diagnostic tools are most effective in patients ages 6 and older. Your doctor might also do allergy testing if they suspect your cough is a symptom of allergic asthma.
Controller medications are the most commonly used treatments for asthma. Inhaled corticosteroids help decrease lung inflammation, one of the causes of asthma cough. These are used on a long-term basis, unlike oral corticosteroids, which are used for short periods of time during severe flare-ups.
Quick-relief inhalers are prescribed to have on-hand in case of wheezing and coughing flare-ups. Most of these fall into the class of short-acting beta-antagonists. According to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, quick-relief inhalers are generally meant to be used once or twice a week. Your doctor may also recommend them for use before exercise, or during an illness. Call your doctor if you find you rely on your quick-relief inhaler more often than recommended.
Asthma cough may also be relieved through long-term oral medications such as leukotriene modifiers. One such drug is called montelukast (Singulair). These work by treating asthma symptoms related to allergic rhinitis.
Alternative treatments may help an asthmatic cough, but they should be regarded as complementing treatments. Never stop prescription medications for homeopathic medicine. Ask your doctor if the following techniques may help your asthma cough:
- herbs, such as dried ivy and gingko
- yoga breathing (pranayama)
Aside from treatment, you can help decrease the incidence of asthma cough with a few lifestyle changes. For example, placing a humidifier in your room can help ease night coughs. You may also have to limit outdoor activities if the air quality is poor.
You should also avoid irritants and triggers that can worsen your cough. These may include:
- cigarette smoke
- chemicals and cleaners
- cold air
- low humidity
- pet dander
- viral infections
If your asthma is exacerbated by allergies, you may also need to prevent and treat allergen exposure first before your asthma symptoms get better.
Asthma itself isn’t curable. Still, the symptoms can be managed to help you lead a more comfortable lifestyle. Treating asthmatic symptoms like cough is also important in preventing lung damage, especially in children. With proper management, your cough should eventually ease up so you can achieve some normalcy once again. Be sure to call your doctor if your asthmatic cough continues despite treatment. | <urn:uuid:6dafb621-eff4-4488-a08f-8a5f3e411abd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.healthline.com/health/asthma-asthma-cough | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00075-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946122 | 1,112 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Historical Items Showing 3 of 12 View All
Contributed by: Greater Rumford Area Historical Society
Date: circa 1912
Media: Post Card
Contributed by: Maine Historical Society
Location: Portsmouth; Norfolk
Media: Ink on paper
George F. Shepley of Portland had achieved renown as a lawyer and as U.S. Attorney for Maine when, at age 42 he formed the 12th Maine Infantry and went off to war. Shepley became military governor of Louisiana early in 1862 and remained in the military for the duration of the war.
For many different reasons people saved and carefully preserved the objects in this exhibit. Eventually, along with the memories they hold, the objects were passed to the Maine Historical Society. Object and memory, serve as a powerful way to explore history and to connect to the lives of people in the past.
A history of one of Maine’s many populated islands. The site was created by a team consisting of representatives from Islesboro Historical Society, Islesboro Central School, and the Alice L. Pendleton Library. Early settlements, businesses and cottage industries, schools, water transportation, and summer resorts are the topics covered.
Highlights from the history of what is perhaps the most popular tourist destination in Maine. The site was created by a partnership between MDI High School, Mount Desert Elementary School, and a number of supporting organizations: Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor Historical Society, the Jesup Memorial Library, Great Harbor Maritime Museum, and the Maine Granite Industry Historical Society. Exhibits cover Northeast Harbor, the Granite industry, Bar Harbor’s Building of Arts, the Green Mountain Railway, the Bryants and the Rockefellers, and steamboats. | <urn:uuid:2e019963-7e53-4fa2-ad28-5388f27cccf5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mainememory.net/search/?keywords=Episcopalian%0D | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00105-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951406 | 353 | 2.78125 | 3 |
This year’s Leap Day
has finally arrived (or maybe gone depending where you are). Fewer than five million are celebrating this day that only comes every four years – and also share the pleasure of being technically younger than everyone else.
If you didn’t pay attention in elementary school, you may be wondering what a Leap Year is exactly. Why do we have them? What is the purpose of a Leap Year? Here are some interesting facts about why we have imposed a Leap Year every four years.
Most individuals are unaware that it takes approximately 365.2422 days for the Earth to orbit around the sun. By having an additional day in intercalary or bissextile year this keeps the calendar year harmonized with the astronomical/seasonal year.
Before 45 BC, humans maintained a 355-day calendar. When Julius Caesar rose to the ranks of Roman emperor, an extra 22-day month was added every two years, but it did not solve the issue and added more problems, such as abnormal harvest seasons.
, an astronomer for Caesar, was ordered to come up with a logical solution. He came up with the idea of a year consisting of 365 days and then an extra day for every four years to catch up with the hours. This is how leap year came to fruition.
Is that the end of the story? Not necessarily.
The common misconception is that a leap year is every four years. However, a year that is divisible by 100, but not by 400, is not a leap year. The year 2000, for example, was a leap year, but the years 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not.
Leap Day organization
The Leap Day Year prompted the foundation of an organization called the Honor Society of Leap Day Babies. It is unclear as to how many Leap Day Babies belong to the group, but its main purpose is to advocate awareness of the day.
For example, the institute urges Leap Year to be added to a calendar and for it also to be capitalized like other holidays, such as Groundhog Day and New Year’s Day. Furthermore, it wants businesses, websites and other establishments to accept Feb. 29 as a valid birthday.
On its website, leapyearday.com
, hundreds of people have published numerous issues they have suffered from, such as discrepancies related to licenses and births and even being made fun of by their peers.
“My mother tried to have the doctor change the time so I would not have a leap year birthday,” wrote Larry Hollingsworth.
“I went to get my driver’s license and of course it said Feb 29th. So since there was no Feb 29th last year they weren't going to renew, so they switched it to Feb 28th so they could renew my license. How dumb is that?” wrote Wayne Robertson.
“In the second grade I was scolded by my teacher in front of the class for lying to her about my birthday. A classmate finally convinced her that I was telling the truth when I said February 29,” wrote Joan Sutton.
Do you have odd stories related to your Leap Year birthday? Let us know and we could publish your experiences in this story. | <urn:uuid:9833ec32-d3f3-4b04-8740-31a51c422b26> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/320429 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00120-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980336 | 667 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Since early in the 20th century, military tacticians around the world have understood the importance of using camouflage to prevent detection during combat. Camouflage uniforms used by the military are frequently redesigned or replaced as the conditions in which the troops find themselves continue to change. Most recently, the U.S. Army has begun replacing the woodland camouflage and the three-color desert camouflage patterns that were used during the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War. The newly developed MultiCam pattern was considered just after 2000, but wasn’t chosen at that time. Instead, the Universal Camouflage System pattern became part of the ACU, or Army Combat Uniform. In 2010, however, the U.S. Army has begun issuing MultiCam uniforms to Soldiers deploying to Afghanistan.
The new pattern uses seven different colors and shades that range from tan and brown to green and even light pink. The camouflage pattern helps the person wearing it avoid visual or near infrared detection by blending in well with the surroundings. The pattern also helps protect troops from detection by night vision devices.
The MultiCam uniforms are designed to blend with well with the background environment by using the lighting of the environment. For example, the camouflage pattern will appear green when it’s worn in a forest, but when it’s worn in a high desert area, the tans and browns will become predominant. The variety of colors and shades found in the camouflage pattern make it ideal for many different kinds of environments, including wooded areas, sandy open desert or rocky high desert, or even urban areas. Some non-licensed patterns use either darker or lighter colors, and include yellow and pink shades on fabrics featuring different types of patterns.
In addition to taking on the appearance of the surrounding environment by mimicking colors and lighting, the camouflage pattern also deceives how the eye picks up shape and volume. When someone looks at a scene, he sees not only color, but also shape and size, or volume. The multi-colored camouflage pattern was designed to trick the viewer into seeing a person wearing the camouflage pattern as part of the background, rather than a definite object with a profile.
While some camouflage patterns work well when viewed at a distance, the person wearing the pattern can become visible at a close range. The multicolored camouflage pattern avoids this problem by using blended rather than contrasting patterns. The colors and shadings don’t have well-defined borders, and they are not repeated at predictable intervals throughout the material. Instead, they gradually fade from one shade to another in small areas of the fabric, within larger blocks of color, such as green or tan. This pattern makes it harder for someone to see the silhouette of the person wearing it, allowing him to blend into the background environment. The overall camouflage pattern has come to be known as “macroflage”.
Beginning in 2001, Crye Associates started working with the U.S. Army Soldiers System Center to develop the MultiCam uniform. In developing the new camouflage pattern, Crye Associates looked at the way animals hide themselves in nature, using lighting, terrain, seasonal changes and other factors. After assessing how best to use camouflage in many different conditions, Crye set out to develop and test a single camouflage pattern that would work well in many different areas.
Crye Associates and its manufacturing and production side, Crye Precision, field-tested the pattern with the US Army beginning in 2009, with input from soldiers in the field. U.S. Army soldiers tried several different camouflage patterns and ranked them according to preference. Then a team from the U.S. Army took photos of troops wearing the various camouflage patterns in a number of different terrains in Afghanistan. Photo simulations of the different types of camouflage at various distances and terrains were evaluated by soldiers who had recently returned from Afghanistan. The Crye Precision MultiCam pattern was the hands-down winner.
In 2010, the U.S. Army began issuing MultiCam uniforms developed by Crye Precision to Soldiers deploying to Afghanistan. At this time, the camouflage pattern is being used only by Soldiers deployed in Afghanistan. In addition, the multicolored camouflage pattern is being used on the Modular Lightweight Load-Carrying Equipment tactical gear issued to the Soldiers. The U.S. Army chose the pattern because it blends so well into the varied surroundings of the Afghanistan geography and terrain. It’s not unusual for Soldiers on patrol to move from wooded areas to high desert or mountain terrain to a desert area. The U.S. Army feels the multicolored camouflage pattern gives Soldiers the best camouflage in one single ACU as well as the tactical equipment they use. High-level U.S. Army officers say the camouflage pattern allows troops to get much closer to enemy combatants than they could before, giving them an extra measure of protection.
While the MultiCam pattern was developed for U.S. Army soldiers, it will soon be put into use by other U.S. military branches, such as the U.S. Air Force. The multicolored camouflage pattern is finding uses in other countries’ militaries as well. Private military contractors and law enforcement on the federal, state and local levels, such as the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and some police departments are also using the camouflage pattern. Multicolor camouflage clothing is also available to civilians. Hunters in particular appreciate its usefulness in varied terrains. Paintball and Airsoft game participants also find the camouflage pattern beneficial when hiding themselves and their equipment.
The Army discontinued the BDU once the ACU was implemented, but multicolor camouflage pattern BDU uniform components are available to civilians. The BDU components include field jackets, pants, hats, and even combat boots. The pattern is also used in tactical gear, such as day packs, ammo pouches, and canteen covers.
Although the multicolor camouflage pattern is a new player in military, law enforcement and civilian clothing and equipment, it has already shown itself ideal for providing the needed cover in all kinds of different environments. Whether he's a professional soldier, a law enforcement member, or an outdoor enthusiast he'll find that using this kind of camouflage pattern in clothing and tactical gear will let him, for all intents and purposes, hide in plain sight. | <urn:uuid:ebc89262-6b57-4d74-b8fc-06a9f95d7bf3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.patriotsurplus.com/multicam.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397567.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00064-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949169 | 1,286 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Probably the most common disorder seen in intact female dogs, pyometra is a serious and life threatening infection of the uterus. Due to hormonal and uterine changes that occur in the older dog, an infection starts in the uterus and can lead to death due to sepsis or organ failure if not treated properly. (see cystic endometrial hyperplasia) It is possible in a very few spayed dogs for a small piece of uterus, usually left during spaying, to become infected.
The symptoms are most common in dogs over 5 years old unless the dog has been given hormones for a medical abortion and then any age dog can be affected. Usually 4-12 weeks after a heat has occurred, symptoms will begin. The symptoms observed outwardly, however, will depend on whether the cervix is open or closed.
In cases of open-cervix pyometra a thick, bloody and pus-like vaginal discharge is noted. The dog will often be lethargic, weak, anorexic, drink and urinate more frequently and may vomit or have diarrhea. If the cervix is closed, no discharge will be seen; symptoms will include abdominal enlargement, shock and coma. (Pyometra)
Diagnosis is based on history, especially the fact that the female is not spayed (in most cases), analysis of vaginal discharges, culture, blood counts, serum chemistries, urinalysis, X-rays and ultrasound studies. This disease is serious and requires prompt and aggressive treatment.
TREATMENT OF PYOMETRA
All dogs should be stabilized with IV fluids, antibiotics and general supportive care. The best treatment is to perform surgery quickly to remove the uterus and ovaries (similar to a spay, but quite a bit more complicated) before any pus can leak into the abdomen. If the uterus remains in one piece and no organ damage occurs, the success rate is excellent. Where the uterus ruptures, the chances for survival are lessened, as peritonitis is a serious complication. The most common organ dysfunction secondary to pyometra is kidney failure.
Some persons, especially dog breeders, may hope to retain the reproductive capabilities of the bitch. If the dog has an open cervix pyometra, a drug called PGF-2alpha can be used along with antibiotic therapy. While this type of therapy does provide an option, it is advised only for selective cases, as there are many risks inherent to the procedure and the drug itself. Our advice is to surgically remove the affected organ and enjoy the dog.CYSTIC ENDOMETRIAL HYPERPLASIA | <urn:uuid:db808b2a-f764-455c-886a-1719c2cce220> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bulldogsworld.com/health-and-medical/pyometra?quicktabs_hot_content=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00173-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938579 | 542 | 2.90625 | 3 |
VICTORY ADVENTURE'S TIERRA DEL FUEGO PAGES
Expeditions to the Antarctic Peninsula, South Georgia,
Cape Horn, Falklands & Tierra Del Fuego
About the Ona Indian Culture in Tierra Del Fuego:
The Ona are an American Indian group formerly occupying most of the large island of Tierra del Fuego located between long. 65 degrees-70 degrees 31 min. W by lat. 53 degrees-56 degrees S, at the southern tip of South America.
Neighboring peoples with whom the Ona traded and intermarried were the Alacaluf and the Yagan. The Ona are often referred to in the literature as "Foot Indians," because they had neither canoes nor horses.
About 10.000 years ago when the last glacial age was finished, Tierra del Fuego was joined to the South American continent. and the Ona Indians (Selknam etnia) were able to cross over to Tierra Del Fuego.
They were hunters of birds and guanacos. More than 4000 Ona Indians inhabited the area, a tall race ( 6'2" average male height) and very good with the sling bow, arrow. They repelled the penetration of white man for almost half a century. (The average European in these times was about 5"6")
The Ona were divided into two main groups called Haush and Selk'nam, each of whom was distinct both dialectically and culturally. The Selk'nam were further subdivided into a northern and a southern branch. Both of these groups again differed somewhat in language and culture, and were not on the best of terms. There may have been an ecological basis for their differentiation, since the northern group occupied the treeless prairies north of the Rio de Fuego and the Rio Grande, whereas the southern group occupied the parklands and forest regions south of that line (Cooper, 1946: 108).
The language of the Ona has been classified by Greenberg (1966) within a linguistic group that includes Yagan, Alacaluf, Tehuelche, Puelche, and Araucanian. This group constitutes a branch of the Andean subfamily of the Andean-Equatorial language family (Steward and Faron 1959: 22). The previously mentioned linguistic differences between the Selk'nam and the Haush were quite pronounced, and it has been said that a Selk'nam could understand a Haush only with a great deal of difficulty.
Since the first European contacts, the Ona population has diminished disastrously. Lothrop (1928) estimates that around 1850 the Selk'nam population numbered about 3,600, and that there were approximately 300 Haush. Seventy-five years later, at the time of Lothrop's fieldwork (1924-25), he reports that there were only 60 to 70 Selk'nam and 2 or 3 Haush. Gusinde (1931) claims, however, that Lothrop was "inaccurately informed," for in Gusinde's census of 1919, he counted 279 full-blooded Indians and 15 Indian-White mixtures. By 1930, when Gusinde was writing up his field data, there were only about 100 full-blooded Indians left. It is likely that by the middle of the twentieth century, the Ona had ceased to exist as a distinct ethnic-cultural group. The reasons for the rapid decline and evident extinction of the Ona population are no mystery. They are clearly etched in the history of Ona-White relations, and range from the introduction of new diseases to deliberate campaigns of extermination against the Indians. Ona subsistence was based primarily on hunting, particularly of guanaco, which was the basic staple in their diet. They also hunted fox, small rodents called tuco tucos, wild fowl, and marine animals. Other subsistence activities included the gathering of edible fungi, plants, and berries, the collecting of shellfish and other marine products and, to a limited extent, fishing. Men did the hunting and fishing, while the women did the gathering. The Ona had no knowledge of agriculture, and their only domesticated animal was the dog.
The Ona country was divided into 39 distinct territories, each of which was held exclusively by a different migratory band ranging in size from 40 to 120 individuals. Exploitative trespass in a territory by outsiders was deeply resented and often led to bloodshed and war. Hunters from other bands were received as guests, however, and were allowed the use of the land. Property in things, such as clothing, adornments, weapons, tools, baskets, and playthings, was owned individually. Generally, property was acquired through labor, gift, or barter. Acquisition by inheritance was lacking, since an individual's personal belongings were burned at his death (Cooper 1946: 119). Because of the nomadic nature of the Ona, there were no permanent settlements. Instead, families traveled after game animals, settled for a few days at the spot where the game fell, and then traveled on. Huts were of two kinds; the ones used in the open, treeless, northern region were merely windscreens, while in the wooded south where timber was available, conical-shaped true huts were constructed.
An old photo of Ona Indians
and their beech bark tee pee
(They typically wore more clothes
than their neighbors, the Yagans)
Descent among the Ona was bilateral. Eskimo cousin terminology was employed, with all cousins being equated with each other and distinguished from siblings. The basic social unit was the independent nuclear family. Real authority among the Ona was vested in the male head of the family who recognized no higher authoritative head, and did not accept orders from any other man. The next and highest level of organization consisted of the patriarchal, exogamous band, with the nuclear families grouped into 39 such bands. Each band was independent, had its own separate, well-defined territory, and recognized the moral leadership of an elder in the group, who was not actually called a chief and had no real authority. His office was not hereditary and his influence was persuasive rather than coercive. In addition to the absence of chiefs, there also were no social castes or classes, no sibs or moieties, and no other organized group or secret society.
Gusinde states that, with the exception of band exogamy and a prohibition against consanguineous relatives, the Ona had complete freedom of choice in selecting a mate. Ideally, the farther away a bride lived the more suitable she became as a wife. After a temporary period of matriarchal residence, the couple, almost without exception, moved to live permanently with the husband's band. Although monogamy was the general rule, sororal polygamy did take place on occasion. But only a small minority of the older men had two wives and it was even more rare to have three. Sometimes a man would marry a woman and her daughter by a previous marriage. Public opinion, however, generally disapproved of polygamous unions. The average age of marriage was 20 years for a man and 15-19 for a girl. However, a man first had to be tested in the secret ceremonies of the kloketen before he was permitted to marry and a girl must have had her first menses. Divorce was relatively rare.
From the available accounts, Ona religion may have been monotheistic in nature with a belief in a supreme being called Temaukel. Prayers were addressed to Temaukel at the time of grave illness and two simple, almost non religious, sacrifices were made to this deity on particular occasions. Other elements of the religion involved mythological ancestors, forest spirits, and the kloketen spirits. The Ona also conceived of the existence of a human soul (kaspi) and its continuance after death in the realm of the supreme being. Ceremonialism was primarily confined to the kloketen celebration in which young men were initiated into manhood. Shamanism was well-developed among the Ona, the shaman being called xon or yohon. The call to office came through a dream in which the spirit of a deceased shaman appeared to a person, invited him to seek the vocation, and finally bestowed upon him its own special songs and power. Training for this office took two to three years. Since there was no shaman society or organization, each shaman worked independently, frequently in deadly rivalry with other shamans. The shaman cured, controlled the weather and hunting, and helped his group in warfare. He also functioned as a sorcerer and was often called on to bring harm to his own or his clients' enemies.
Onas on a tour of a "Big Island of Tierra Del Fuego" beach
Ona hunters with Guanaco skin cloaks
More on the Onas
Back to Tour of Tierra Del Fuego | <urn:uuid:2908bcad-5dd3-4edb-b5b3-cbf0067c5b83> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.victory-cruises.com/ona_indian.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00070-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982261 | 1,866 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Smoketrees (Cotinus coggygria) are small deciduous trees that slowly grow 15 to 30 feet tall. This yellow wood tree has oval leaves and produce yellow blossoms in June and July. These ornamental trees form fruit drupes covered with greenish and purplish hairs, which ripen in July and August. In the fall, the leaves turn yellow, orange, red and purple for four weeks. The best time to plant smoketrees is in the early spring while they are still dormant.
Remove the smoketree from its container or packaging. In a large tub, mix 1 tbsp. of sugar for every gallon of water used to fill the tub. Place the rootball in the tub of water for a day. The sugar water gives the smoketree simple carbohydrates to help it stay strong during transplanting.
Choose a planting site for the smoketree that is large enough to accommodate the mature size of the tree. Smoketrees are messy in the fall, so place it where the debris will not get in the way. Remove all weeds and grass from the planting site.
Dig a hole that is twice as wide as the rootball and just as deep with a shovel. Rough the sides and bottom of the hole up with the edge of the shovel. This helps the roots work their way out of the planting hole.
Break up the soil removed from the hole so there is no more large dirt clumps. Remove the rootball from the water and gently loosen the roots with your fingers. Straighten the roots out so that they are not growing in a circular motion.
Place the rootball in the hole and fill halfway with the soil. Pour the sugar water into the hole. Finish filling the hole in with the soil.
Spread 2 to 4 inches of sawdust around the planting area. Mulch reduces competition from weeds and grass. It also means that string trimmers or lawn mowers are not required near the smoketree. This prevents accidental damage to the smoketree by lawn equipment. | <urn:uuid:4e71a99c-4303-40f0-b2ed-fb618ce97551> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.gardenguides.com/120073-transplant-smoke-tree.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00075-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951015 | 425 | 2.96875 | 3 |
If you're kids are always complaining how bored they are, this one's for you. Making crafts at home is easy and budget friendly. Check out a few unique crafts your kids will be begging to try!
Duct tape (any color)
Tear two pieces of duct tape 8 inches (one can be colored and one gray- the gray will be the inside of the wallet) Stick them together, sticky side to sticky side.
Continue this method over-lapping the tape by about 1/4 inch until you have about six strips of tape. Trim the excess.
Fold the tape in half.
For the wallet seam, measure the width and tear off a piece of tape that length. Attach the duct tape about half way and trim off the excess. Repeat on the other side.
2 jumbo craft sticks
1 thick 1/4 inch rubber band
2 thin rubber bands
Take the thick rubber band and stretch it over the craft stick length-wise. Cut your straw into two pieces - big enough so that they overlap the stick on each end.
Pick one piece of straw and stick it under the rubber band - you want it about an inch down from the edge. Take your other craft stick, lay it over the top and use one thin rubber band to bind them together.
Take the other piece of straw and put it on top of the rubber band. Then take the other thin rubber band and wrap it around the other side.
Pipe cleaner, straw, floral wire and or paper clips
Get creative and make a wand out of these items. You can use the straw or pipe cleaner as a wand. You can bend the paper clip, floral wire or pipe cleaner into shapes for the bubble maker.
Glycerin or corn syrup
Have fun mixing the ingredients to create your own solution. You need more water, a relatively small amount of soap and very little glycerin.
"Today we explored mathematics in terms of patterns, geometry, measurements, we explored physics with sound, vibrations and we did chemistry with the bubbles as well as engineering with the bubble wands all that for maybe $10 bucks with the materials," said Keith Ostfeld with the Children's Museum of Houston.
Thanks to the Children's Museum of Houston for the use of their facility.
Check out Keith Ostfeld's blog for more unique craft ideas at cmhoustonblog.org. | <urn:uuid:f71c2ec5-0268-4c21-8379-51b5d40b1505> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://livewellnetwork.com/Deals/episodes/Kids-Crafts/8708094?pid=8708108 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00061-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911414 | 492 | 2.9375 | 3 |
If you are looking for a screening shrub that grows really fast you want an oleander. Flower come in pink or white varieties. There are small versions of oleanders as well that will not take over the place.
Oleander grows well along the coast, the edges of forests and in home gardens. It grows from between 3′ and 30′ tall. Flowering occurs through out the warm season. Plant in full sun for best flowering.
While it can withstand cool temperatures, ice is a threat, as are several extended freezes. Only the older established Oleanders survived last winter’s cold. Oleanders bend easily under the weight of water and ice and must be protected from breaking. The oleander grows so quickly though you could also just trim back broken branches once the weather breaks.
Once established they are drought tolerant but need regular watering the first year while they settle in.
Pruning is not necessary, but oleander will flower better if pruned. Remove suckers and prune after flowering is done for the year. Severe pruning will hurt flowering. Remove suckers, dead branches, branches that have over grown other branches and just lightly to keep the shape of the plant nice.
Oleanders have Cardenolide Glycosides in the sap. It can cause death in sufficient quantities. It is very bitter tasting and nauseating so it is unlikely you’ll be eating much of it. Fumes from burning oleanders are also toxic. Because it is so common it is a favorite plant of poisoners and suicides. So toxic is it, that like rhododendron, honey made from the flowers may be toxic as well. Do not toss oleander cuttings in the compost pile, it can remain toxic even in the compost for almost a year.
Oleanders are believed to be native to the Mediterranean and were transported to warm regions around the world from there by early traders in the early 1800s.
Oleanders should be pruned in the early spring, around Valentine’s Day is a good time. This way you don’t have to cut off flowers or buds. However you can prune oleander any time of year. Since the milky white sap is poison, be sure to wear gloves and keep your fingers away from your face while pruning. The sap also irritates some people’s skin. Dispose of cuttings where children and pets will not get into them.
You can lightly prune them to keep them from looking scraggly, or you can prune them into a tree shape by removing lower branches. Cutting the stems encourages branching so cut the stems to about half the height you’d like to allow for branching. You can also prune oleander to the ground if it gets totally out of hand. It will come back bushier.
Watch for leaf scorch both bacterial ( see comments below ) and from dry windy conditions. The leaf scorch from windy, dry weather can be treated by watering more frequently and deeply.
Aphids can be a problem, treat with soapy water or orange oil. They may cause black sooty mold to grow on your plant. The black soot can be washed off with soapy water.
Scale and caterpillars will also attack oleander. Treat scale with orange oil. Caterpillars I’m not sure of a good treatment.
That said I’ve had not a single problem with any of my oleanders until the cold winter of 2009-2010. All of my miniature oleanders died. Many of my neighbors large oleanders are heavily damaged but look like they will come back once the weather warms. Just remove frost damaged branches and they should be fine.
Stay away from the dwarf oleanders they are not drought or cold tolerant and prone to scale. | <urn:uuid:19e1c8c1-4c7a-434a-a9f2-ef7d7dda3933> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://herselfshoustongarden.com/2007/06/oleander.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00056-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95022 | 805 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Permian-Triassic High Latitude Life and Landscapes
Project DescriptionOn the basis of fossil plants and paleosols recorded in the sedimentary rocks of the Transantarctic Mountains, a model of Permian to Triassic climate at high paleolatitudes is emerging: After continental glaciers melted in the early Permian, forests grew in the cold, wet climate. By the early Triassic, warmer, drier conditions inhibited prolific plant growth. A moister, but still warm climate allowed plants to flourish later in the Triassic.
We will test and refine this model and investigate the effects of climate change on Permian to Triassic landscapes and ecosystems. Using exposures in the Allan Hills, we will search for, describe, and interpret fossil forests, vertebrate tracks and burrows, arthropod trackways, and subaqueously produced biogenic structures, and document the end of glaciation and the importance of major episodic sedimentation. In so doing, we will address broader questions that will contribute to understanding
the evolution of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and how they are affected by the end-Permian extinction,
the abundance and diversity of terrestrial and aquatic arthropods at high latitudes,
the paleogeographic distribution and evolution of vertebrates and invertebrates as recorded by trace and body fossils, and
the response of landscapes to changes in climate.
The excellent record preserved by this Permian to Triassic sequence provides a unique opportunity to compare high-latitude forests and freshwater and terrestrial faunas with better-known low-latitude equivalents during an important period of their evolution. | <urn:uuid:3214ed5c-6468-4326-8202-6e362106b1f6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://gcmd.nasa.gov/KeywordSearch/Supplementals.do?Portal=GCMD&KeywordPath=Projects%7CP+-+R&NumericId=12319&MetadataType=0&lbnode=mdlb5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00008-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.891218 | 335 | 3.4375 | 3 |
Can you believe it? Another year already and its moving fast. Just a few weeks ago the leaves were turning from yellow to orange. After that, we slid right into the holidays. First Thanksgiving, then Christmas and now we are approaching mid-January as we speak. So, how can we catch the bull by the horns and get started on making 2012 a healthy and prosperous New Year.
Here are 5 suggestions:
Make exercise a part of your daily activity at least 30 minutes a day during the holidays and every day too.
Take your favorite holiday recipes and jazz them up nutritiously. Example Potato Soufflé with Corn Flake topping.
Reduce your intake of Alcohol and make water a staple beverage.
Eat fresh fruit or juice your juice from a piece of fresh fruit -Example: Banana, carrot and pineapple smoothie. (Check out Real Simple magazine)
A 2009 study by the Department of Agriculture found that 2.3 million households do not have access to a car and live more than a mile from a supermarket. Much of the public health debate over rising obesity rates has turned to these "food deserts," where convenience store fare is more accessible--and more expensive--than healthier options farther away "
September kicks off the observance of National Apple Month and extends throughout the month of November. There are 2,500 varieties grown in the United States with more than 7,500 grown worldwide. This delicious fruit is full of nutrients and contains 5 grams of fiber. While it may be difficult to try all of the varieties, you may consider the old adage "an Apple a day helps to keep the doctor away". Make it a great month and try a new apple every day. | <urn:uuid:ca6bfe60-bc25-4550-8dba-6e2831cdbb71> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://chronicle.augusta.com/blogs/diva | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393093.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00164-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949499 | 342 | 2.546875 | 3 |
SAN FRANCISCO - Rare earthquake lights are more likely to occur on or near rift environments, where subvertical faults allow stress-induced electrical currents to flow rapidly to the surface, according to a new study published in the Jan./Feb. issue of Seismological Research Letters.
From the early days of seismology, the luminous phenomena associated with some earthquakes have intrigued scholars. Earthquake lights (EQL) appear before or during earthquakes, but rarely after.
EQL take a variety of forms, including spheres of light floating through the air. Seconds before the 2009 L'Aquila, Italy earthquake struck, pedestrians saw 10-centimeter high flames of light flickering above the stone-paved Francesco Crispi Avenue in the town's historical city center. On Nov. 12, 1988, a bright purple-pink globe of light moved through the sky along the St. Lawrence River near the city of Quebec, 11 days before a powerful quake. And in 1906, about 100 km northwest of San Francisco, a couple saw streams of light running along the ground two nights preceding that region's great earthquake.
Continental rift environments now appear to be the common factor associated with EQL. In a detailed study of 65 documented EQL cases since 1600 A.D., 85 percent appeared spatially on or near rifts, and 97 percent appeared adjacent to subvertical faults (a rift, a graben, strike-slip or transform fault). Intraplate faults are associated with just 5 percent of Earth's seismic activity, but 97 percent of documented cases of earthquake lights.
"The numbers are striking and unexpected," said Robert Thériault, a geologist with the Ministère des Ressources Naturelles of Québec, who, along with colleagues, culled centuries of literature references, limiting the cases in this study to 65 of the best-documented events in the Americas and Europe.
"We don't know quite yet why more earthquake light events are related to rift environments than other types of faults," said Thériault, "but unlike other faults that may dip at a 30-35 degree angle, such as in subduction zones, subvertical faults characterize the rift environments in these cases."
Two of the 65 EQL events are associated with subduction zones, but Thériault suggests there may be an unknown subvertical fault present. "We may not know the fault distribution beneath the ground," said Thériault. "We have some idea of surface structures, but sedimentary layers or water may obscure the underlying fault structure."
While the 65 earthquakes ranged in magnitude, from M 3.6 to 9.2, 80 percent were greater than M 5.0. The EQL varied in shape and extent, though most commonly appeared as globular luminous masses, either stationary or moving, as atmospheric illuminations or as flame-like luminosities issuing from the ground.
Timing and distance to the epicenter vary widely. Most EQL are seen before and/or during an earthquake, but rarely after, suggesting to the authors that the processes responsible for EQL formation are related to a rapid build-up of stress prior to fault rupture and rapid local stress changes during the propagation of the seismic waves. Stress-activated mobile electronic charge carriers, termed positive holes, flow swiftly along stress gradients. Upon reaching the surface, they ionize air molecules and generate the observed luminosities.
Eyewitness reports and security cameras captured a large number of light flashes during the 2007 Pisco, Peru M 8.0 earthquake. Together with seismic records obtained on a local university campus, the automatic security camera records allow for an exact timing and location of light flashes that illuminated a large portion of the night sky. The light flashes identified as EQL coincided with the passage of the seismic waves.
Thériault likes the account of a local L'Aquila resident, who, after seeing flashes of light from inside his home two hours before the main shock, rushed his family outside to safety.
"It's one of the very few documented accounts of someone acting on the presence of earthquake lights," said Thériault. "Earthquake lights as a pre-earthquake phenomenon, in combination with other types of parameters that vary prior to seismic activity, may one day help forecast the approach of a major quake," said Thériault. | <urn:uuid:fac5e519-7e5a-4902-8693-47483f153cd3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-01/ssoa-ell122013.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00131-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940524 | 898 | 3.4375 | 3 |
UK scientists have uncovered a vital clue to stopping cancers spreading around the body.
Cancer cells can spread through the body
A protein called Tes is able to block a second protein, Mena, from helping cancer cells "crawl" away from the initial tumour.
The London Research Institute team says this knowledge should help in the design of new drug treatments to anchor a tumour in one site.
The work is published in the latest edition of the journal Molecular Cell.
The Mena protein is found in excessive amounts in tumours and was already known to help cancer cells move away from a tumour and spread around the body to form secondary cancers - one of the main obstacles in treating cancer.
Study leader Dr Michael Way said Tes was not as well studied but in many tumours it is absent.
Using a range of techniques, including X-ray crystallography, which can be used to determine the 3-dimensional structure of a molecule, Dr Way and his colleagues found that Tes attached itself to Mena in such a way it could no longer bind with other proteins.
Without being able to interact with its normal binding partners, Mena was no longer able to help the cancer cells migrate from the tumour.
Figures show about 20,000 people have died from cancer every day across the world in 2007.
And one in three people will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lifetime.
Scientists are gradually developing a deeper understanding of the causes of cancer, investigating the complex interaction of chemicals, genetics, ageing and diet.
Dr Way said if researchers could design a drug to block Mena in the same way as Tes, it would potentially be a way to stop the spread of cancer once a tumour had formed.
"What was surprising was, when you look at Tes you wouldn't predict it would interact with Mena.
"Looking at the structure gives us clues in designing drugs which mimic the interaction with Tes and prevent cells from migrating, although that's a long way away."
He said Mena was a very small part of the spread of cancer cells, but that was one of the control mechanisms that goes wrong.
Dr Lesley Walker, director of science information at Cancer Research UK, said: "Cancer cells use many complex processes when they break away from their tumour and spread to other areas of the body.
Understanding these mechanisms and increasing our knowledge about this protein can hopefully help us to develop more effective cancer treatments in the future." | <urn:uuid:12b4df5c-0050-4513-9ba7-79ef0bbf3f8a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7161762.stm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00120-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969429 | 506 | 3.5625 | 4 |
Interim Guidance for Enhanced Influenza Surveillance: Additional Specimen Collection for Detection of Influenza A (H3N2) Variant Virus Infections
This document is an update to interim enhanced surveillance guidance posted in 2012. In anticipation of the 2014 agricultural fair season, states should consider expanding surveillance to include reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing of specimens from ILINet providers statewide, of specimens collected from people with ILI reporting recent swine contact or agricultural fair attendance, and of specimens collected from people with unusual or severe presentations of ILI. States should also consider collection of specimens from outbreaks of ILI among children in child-care and school settings, since these settings have been associated with person-to-person H3N2v virus transmission in 2011. CDC will continue to evaluate new information as it becomes available and will update this guidance as needed.
Since August 2011, a number of human infections with a variant influenza A H3N2 virus ("H3N2v") have been detected in the United States (see Case Count: Detected U.S. Human Infections with H3N2v by State since August 2011). Influenza viruses that typically infect swine are referred to as “variant” when they infect humans. During these outbreaks, most cases reported agricultural fair attendance and contact with swine prior to illness. Few instances of person-to-person transmission were identified, and there was no evidence of sustained community-wide transmission. Confirmed H3N2v cases were identified primarily among children (<18 years of age), and limited serologic studies indicate that children, primarily those born after 2001 (age ≤9 years at 2010), have increased susceptibility to H3N2v. However, some adult H3N2v cases were identified.
This document provides interim guidance to state and local health departments for enhanced surveillance and testing by (RT-PCR) for influenza viruses. Use of RT-PCR testing is important in order to identify which influenza A virus subtypes (e.g. H3N2v viruses versus seasonal H1N1 or H3N2 viruses) are circulating. These guidelines have been developed in an effort to facilitate timely detection and investigation of H3N2v cases by targeting patients with influenza-like illness (ILI) for influenza testing by RT-PCR.
CDC would like state and local health departments to consider the following recommendations for influenza surveillance and testing.
- All state public health laboratories should use the CDC Human Influenza Real-Time rRT-PCR FLU Diagnostic Panel to screen specimens for InfA, InfB, and RP.
- Test all InfA-positive specimens with the CDC Influenza A Subtyping kit using all primer/probe sets: H1, H3, pdmInfA and pdmH1. Detailed guidance for testing can be found in the influenza surveillance diagnostic testing algorithm disseminated recently by Association of Public Health Laboratories [27 KB, 1 page]. Specimens that are positive for H3N2v virus should be sent to CDC Influenza Division for additional testing as soon as possible.
- Conduct contact tracing of confirmed influenza A (H3N2)v cases to gather more information about the epidemiology of the virus and modes of transmission. Contact tracing is essential to evaluate potential person-to-person transmission.
- When seasonal influenza viruses circulate at low levels, CDC recommends collecting specimens from patients with ILI, and sending these specimens to the state or local laboratory for rRT-PCR testing. States should specifically consider collection of specimens across the state from patients presenting with ILI in the following high priority areas:
- All ILINet providers statewide.
- Medically attended ILI and acute respiratory infection (ARI) in patients who have had recent contact (< 7 days prior to illness onset) with swine or recent attendance at an agricultural event where swine are present.
- ILI outbreaks statewide, particularly among children in child care and school settings, since these settings were associated with person-to-person transmission of H3N2v in the past.
- Unusual or severe presentations of ILI statewide, including hospitalized persons.
- Medically attended ILI and acute respiratory infection (ARI) in children in areas where confirmed H3N2v cases have occurred.
CDC will continue to evaluate new information as it becomes available and will update this guidance as needed.
- Page last reviewed: August 19, 2014
- Page last updated: August 19, 2014
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Techniques of BiotechnologyBY: bluemoon silverstars | Category: Others | Submitted: 2010-05-21 09:53:28
Article Summary: "this article is based on all the techniques used in biotechnology. all the techniques are described briefly..."
Modern biotechnology techniques are based only on the isolation and manipulation of DNA these days. These techniques made it possible to detect diseases and make certain precautionary measures to protect people from these diseases. Some of the techniques are described in this article.
DNA isolation techniques totally depend on the experimental organism, but somehow these techniques have following characteristics.
1) A treatment for opening the cells and releasing their DNA
2) Method for inactivating and removing the enzymes which degrade the DNA
3) Method to separate the DNA from proteins and other molecules which contaminate the DNA
There are many cheap laboratory exercises for the isolation of DNA which are also very simple. DNA is usually taken from onion, bacteria and other organisms. Heat and detergent is used to isolate the DNA. These methods break open the cell and inactivate the enzymes which degrade DNA. DNA is separated from other contaminants by using alcohol precipitation. The method of DNA isolation is more reproducible is isolation the DNA from bacteria16. There are many companies who sell kits to for DNA isolation. DNA is isolated from human body cells to detect genetic diseases in the newborn child, to analyze the forensic evidence and to study genes which are involved in causing cancer.
Over the past couple of decades biotechnologists have succeeded in developing DNA transfer techniques. It is the only the DNA which is required for the transformation. To get the DNA, in most cases tissues are exposed to stresses which enable the plasma membrane to rupture and in other cases cell wall of the plants is used. Through this process some of the cells will contain the foreign DNA in their genome. This foreign DNA is helpful to make useful products and has been used in pharmaceuticals such as human insulin.
Restriction Enzyme Digestion and Analysis:-
Restriction enzymes are actually the proteins. They cut the sequences of bases of DNA at specific places. Biotechnologists are able to reproduce cut DNA molecules into small well defined fragments through these enzymes. In biotechnology, restriction enzymes are used to make and analyze new DNA molecules. Agarose gel electrophoresis is the technique through which biotechnologists are able to make new DNA molecules. Agarose gel makes new DNA molecules through following methods
1) Chains of sugars make agarose.
2) DNA is moved in the agarose gel through electric current and this current cuts them into smaller pieces according to their size.
3) Special kind of dye makes possible the identification of small DNA molecules in the gel.
Polymerase chain reaction:-
Polymerase chain reaction or PCR is a common technique in biotechnology. This technique is used for producing multiple copies of short DNA molecules. PCR runs through following process.
1) DNA molecule that will act as a template in the reaction
2) Short and single stranded DNA molecules which are called as primers. Primers are the starting points for making new DNA molecule.
3) An enzyme is needed which makes DNA
4) Nucleotides which are the building blocks of DNA
5) Thermal cycler, a machine, which subjects the reaction mixture to varying temperatures repeatedly.
DNA sequencing is the most important thing in the human genome project. Many biotechnology techniques are dependent on this method. To determine the exact order of bases in the DNA molecule is this technique's purpose. Nature of protein encoded in the DNA molecule can be determined through this technique.
It is a very useful technique of biotechnology. In this technique, expression of many genes can be analyzed simultaneously. Microarrays can be made on a glass slide or a chip and they contain hundreds and thousands of parts of genes in a small section of the slide. Expressed genes can be isolated from the cells and then are detected. This detection shows that which DNAs bind to which genes and are taken from which cells.
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There’s a new website in town that looks to crowdsource predictions about everything from drone delivery to the future price of BitCoins. The SciCast site, which researchers at George Mason University launched in December, allows users from around the world to make predictions and pose questions in order to forecast possible future events and technological breakthroughs. And it’s funded by the Director of National Intelligence’s Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, or IARPA.
“We’re forecasting science and technology events that might be of national security interest, but we’re also creating technologies that can be applied to a wide range of national security questions,” said George Mason University economics professor Robin Hanson, one of the project principles.
The site is technically a prediction market, a sort of virtual casino where participants can wager on real events in much the way gamblers bet on the outcome of big football games. Prediction markets aren’t new. GE, Google, Motorola, Microsoft and various other companies have all used online prediction markets to get a consensus snapshot of the future. Sites like Inkling markets allow regular individuals to make bets on future events and to ask questions of the mob.
Online betting pools have proven useful in answering a wide number of national security questions. In early 2003, users of a prediction market called TradeSports.com correctly forecast a very low probability that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq, at a time when the CIA and the Bush White House continued to assess the presence of WMDs in that country. Prediction markets can also determine how a technological breakthrough, like the development of a new weapon, might change depending on varying conditions of funding, political support or the availability of technical expertise.
“If you have a particular opponent or party of interest, you could ask what they might do, or how they would respond to a particular policy, an outside event, like a change of the price of oil; or how they might respond to a neighbor,” Hanson said.
The SciCast project isn’t the only crowdsourced intelligence effort currently receiving funding from IARPA; another is the Good Judgment Project, which has been under development for years. SciCast, however, represents a key innovation over the way prediction markets are usually run. It’s a so-called combinatorial market, meaning that the algorithm combines different answers and other bits of information together in real time to provide a more accurate, moving picture of how all of these answers and areas are interacting with one another. For instance, predictions about the future electric car market could influence probability scores for breakthroughs in batteries or energy storage. The site weights every respondent’s answers depending on how many previous answers they got right and how much they wagered, all of which affects their influence. Unlike a simple running survey, participants have the option to go back and refine their predictions in the context of new information. The site tells the user if the probability score in a given area is moving up or down.
“The whole point of the combinatorial space is that you can ask about these relationships between things. You can see how it’s a pretty broad range of applications,” Hanson said. The SciCast project is the first project to employ that very unusual methodology at this scale. There are more than 3,000 forecasts on the site and about 1,000 registered users, with many more expected in the coming months.
Does it work? In a multi-year study where they used this methodology on a previous Web site (called DAGGRE, also funded by IARPA) the combinatorial approach performed 40 percent better than simply averaging a bunch of forecasts, Hanson said. So, if his numbers are correct, the combinatorial method is far superior to simplistic crowdsourcing techniques as a window into the future.
The use of prediction markets in the context of national defense isn’t without historical controversy. Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, retired Rear Adm. John Poindexter, director of the Office of Information Awareness at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, proposed the creation of a prediction market for the broader intelligence community. The objective was to allow spies, informants or anyone who might have inside information on a geopolitical event of any significance to offer insights into how these events might play out. Rather than rely on peoples’ sense of civic duty to volunteer this information, the program sought to pay people for contributing those bits of intelligence they might not give up so easily. The program was called FutureMAP and one of the projects associated with it was called the Prediction Analysis Market or PAM.
As writer Donald Thompson outlines in his book Oracles: How Prediction Markets Turn Employees Into Visionaries, the PAM website very quickly attracted powerful enemies in Congress after a rather faulty public unveiling. “The first PAM website offered ninety-five sample questions. Three of the more colorful examples related to an assassination of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat by the first quarter of 2004, a North Korean missile attack on any other country by the fourth quarter of 2003, and the overthrow of King Hussein of Jordan by the fourth quarter of 2003. When DARPA reported on the progress of the project to Congress, it used as one example the question, ‘Will terrorists attack Israel with bio-weapons in the next year?’ The hypothetical website question on assassination plus the biological war reference sealed PAM’s fate.”
Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., held a press conference in July 2003 to attack the PAM project. Wyden called it “ridiculous,” “grotesque” and a “federal betting parlor on atrocities.” Dorgan called the PAM site “stupid” and suggested that it might actually work to cause exactly the sorts of terrible acts that it was designed to predict. The PAM project was canceled the next day.
Hanson, in addition to being one of the pioneers in the development of the prediction market concept, was also deeply involved in PAM, an involvement he documents in great detail here. Ten plus years on, the fact that prediction markets have proven so effective in comparison to other means of information gathering is something of a bittersweet victory for him. Lawmakers simply didn’t understand the way that prediction markets work and didn’t truly grasp how PAM could be useful.
“We were developing a combinatorial project [at DARPA]. Killing that project put the combinatorial approach on hold…You would have seen something a lot like [this approach] 10 years ago,” he said. | <urn:uuid:af2b5c5b-e4b9-4f38-9f33-4584715bcb5e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/02/long-overdue-return-crowdsourced-intelligence/79094/?oref=ng-dropdown | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394414.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00153-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941423 | 1,382 | 2.515625 | 3 |
March 10, 2009
During World War II, many females filled work force roles in traditionally male occupations. After the war, most left these jobs, but that doesn't mean women are any less able to fill them. Experience has taught welding instructor Marty Rice that females make danged good welders.
"Girls can't weld!" That's what one of my students nicknamed "Bucky" said many years ago as a lone female walked into my all-male welding shop. Seventeen guys and one gal, I can only imagine how she felt walking into that class.
I had just completed a teaching internship at a trade school and had taught a female student who had done well and was hired for a really good job when she graduated. I also had worked with a couple of women who were danged good in the field. One of them was in my Iron Workers Local, and she could weld and work iron with the best of 'em. She'd walk the high steel in a flash (no arc welding pun intended), carrying leads and tools as if it were no big deal. So I knew girls could weld, and much to his surprise, Bucky soon found his female classmate could weld better than he could!
A few years ago, I had a group of business leaders come through my class, and I pointed out a girl who was doing really well. One of the ladies said, "You have a what?" I again said I had a girl … and she again said, "You have a what?" I guess she saw the "what the dadgummed heck are you talking about?" look on my face and explained that I must have meant I had a "female" in my class, not a "girl."
Yeah, OK, I had a female in my class. Heck, I didn't know "girl" had turned into a bad word! What's funny is my "female" student told me, "Hey, Mr. Rice, I don't know what that was all about, but I'm a girl and proud of it!"
So if I'm not politically correct here, I apologize because I sure as heck don't want to offend. But the whole point of this article is girls make good welders. So please excuse my Texas slang, 'cause to me you're either a guy or a gal. (Unless you had a sex change … then you're either a guy who was a gal, or a gal who was a guy.)
Although one semester I had four girls in my class, most of the time there are only one or two. I always tell my guys they need to be respectful, and I am very happy to say that in 15 years, they always have been. There might be a bit of drama now and then, but that is just part of the high-school scene. For that matter, that is part of the shop-and-field scene too. I've never had to discipline any of my guys for disrespect, and that makes me really proud of them.
During World War II, millions of women joined the work force in what were then untraditional female roles. With so many men in the services, many women took over traditionally male jobs in manufacturing and construction. Rosie the Riveter became the figurehead for this movement.
Even though women had done an outstanding job of keeping the country thriving and had proved they could do the jobs, after the war most were forced back into traditional roles or had their pay cut drastically.
Now, over 60 years later, there are still a lot of negative attitudes toward women in skilled trades. That's a shame because women can weld and weld danged good! Does this mean all women can become successful in the welding trade? Nope, some women aren't cut out for welding. Is that a sexist statement? Nope, because there are a lot of men who aren't cut out for welding either! There, now I've offended equally.
The good news is that even though some males still don't like or want women in welding, many are seeing that women can hold their own on the job. Laws are now in effect that protect women from being harassed, and a guy can get into some big-time trouble if he crosses the line. I tell my girls that the first thing they need to do is act confident and not take any crap.
Are they gonna get kidded, and be tested? You betcha, and they're gonna have to learn what is OK and what is crossing the line. I tell my girls it's OK to kid around but not if it makes them feel uncomfortable.
Every job has an old hand who will take care of the new ones, and hopefully a girl will have a few guys like that. But it is first and foremost up to the women themselves to be tough and know the difference between playin' around and going too far. What I stress most is that a girl should not be made to feel uncomfortable on any job.
I also tell my girls their skill and hard work will earn them respect just as they do for a guy. And that's where the confidence comes in. Not just looking confident, but being confident, because they know that with their education and training, they can do the job and do it right. They've practiced in school by burning rod, burning more rod, and then burning even more rod. The more you burn, the more you learn.
Girls in my program have won district, state, and national competitions. One of my girls who had won third place in our state skills contests came back to visit when we were preparing for that same competition. She told my guy student who had entered the contest to "weld like a girl and you'll do good." Sure enough, he won state that year.
I'm really proud that I've had quite a few girls go out into the predominantly male work force and become valued craftsmen …er, uh, craftswomen. And with the projected shortage of welders, it should get easier for girls to get into the trade. There's a great link to an article about the shortage in my article "Why the heck would you want to weld?"
Is welding easy? Heck no. Can girls do it? Heck yeah. Yes little Bucky, girls can weld!
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Thursday June 30th, 2016 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
For centuries, Canada’s major rivers have acted as highways for northern travellers. Canoes and dog teams were the most reliable transportation in the North until 1924, when a Canadian company called Vickers Canada designed the Vedette. Known as the “Flying Canoe”, the Vickers Vedette was the first airplane designed and manufactured by Canadians. Continuing the great tradition of northern life, waterways became the landing strips for a new generation of pioneers. To see the world’s only complete example of the amazing Vickers Vedette flying canoe and other historic planes of the golden age of bush flying, join us in June for a guided tour. Tours are free with admission. Tours are always free for members. Tours are held at 2:00 pm on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.
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Researchers may have found molecular explanation for schizophrenia|
Date: 2013-12-31 15:44:50
One of the most mysterious neurological ailments is schizophrenia. Only recognized as an official medical condition in the past few decades, the causes of this disease are relatively unknown. However, researchers at Tel Aviv University may have found a cause that could led to new treatments for schizophrenia.
Published in Nature's Molecular Psychiatry, the lab tests were led by Illana Gozes, Ph.D., at Tel-Aviv University. The team of researchers discovered that a process of cell-maintenance called autophagy was decreased in the brains of patients with schizophrenia.
"We discovered a new pathway that plays a part in schizophrenia. By identifying and targeting the proteins known to be involved in the pathway, we may be able to diagnose and treat the disease in new and more effective ways," said Gozes.
Her team identified that decreased levels of the protein beclin 1 were present in the hippocampus of schizophrenia patients. This region relates to the brain's learning and memorization abilities. The lack of beclin 1, which is an essential part of starting autophagy, indicated that designing drugs to boost the levels of the protein could be a new way to treat schizophrenia.
Their findings could advance the development of tests for diagnosing schizophrenia, as well as improve overall understanding and treatment of the disease.
'Good' and 'bad' cholesterol levels healthy for the brain|
Date: 2013-12-31 12:05:47
Managing cholesterol levels can be a balancing act for some individuals as they work to prevent the risks associated with hypertension and cardiovascular disease. However, a new study published in JAMA Neurology detailed the link of cholesterol levels with amyloid plaque buildup that can cause Alzheimer's disease.
Led by Bruce Reed, Ph.D., the lab tests were carried out at the University of California-Davis Alzheimer's Disease Center in Sacramento. The 74 participants in the study were 70 years of age or older and were recruited from support groups, senior facilities and stroke clinics around California. Of the participants, 38 had mild cognitive impairment, 33 had no impairment and three had mild dementia. In order to measure their amyloid levels, the researchers used a tracer that bonded to the plaques and were imaged by PET scans.
Their cholesterol tests showed that high levels of LDL (bad) and low levels of HDL (good) were associated with a bigger buildup of amyloid plaques in the brain. This marked the first time that cholesterol levels have been correlated to the buildup of amyloid.
"Our study shows that both higher levels of HDL - good - and lower levels of LDL - bad - cholesterol in the bloodstream are associated with lower levels of amyloid plaque deposits in the brain," explained Reed, associate director at the Alzheimer's Disease Center.
Although increased cholesterol has been tied with Alzheimer's disease before, the team's study specifically connected unhealthy patterns of cholesterol to deposits of amyloid in living human participants. The link similarly mirrors the relationship that irregular hypertension numbers has with the development of heart disease.
Not adhering to new guidelines...
Concussions may be related to Alzheimer's disease|
Date: 2013-12-27 11:24:53
According to a new study, a history of concussions involving momentary loss of consciousness might be linked to plaque buildup associated with Alzheimer's disease. Published in Neurology, a journal of the American Academy of Neurology, researchers conducted lab tests on brain scans of elderly participants in the Minnesota area.
The team of scientists, led by Michelle Mielke, Ph.D., examined brain scans of adults aged 70 or older in Olmsted County. In the group, 448 people had no signs of memory problems and 141 had minor cognitive problems. Additionally, the participants were asked if they had experienced any loss of consciousness or memory as a result of receiving trauma to the brain.
The researchers found that out of the 448 participants with no cognitive issues, 17 percent stated that they had experienced a brain injury. On the other hand, of the 141 people with a history of memory difficulties, 18 percent reported they had experienced a concussion or another form of head trauma.
Additional research into the participants' brain scans showed that the individuals with thinking impairments and a history of concussions had levels of Alzheimer's-associated plaque buildup 18 percent higher than those without a history of brain trauma. However, the team found no changes in brain scan measurements of the participants without memory issues.
"Interestingly, in people with a history of concussion, a difference in the amount of brain plaques was found only in those with memory and thinking problems, not in those who were cognitively normal," Mielke said.
Although their research is compelling, Mielke felt that the lack of a link between the plaque buildup and participants without thinking problems means more research needs to be done, as the relationship is complex and requires in-depth analysis.
The dangers of concussions...
Pre-op antibiotics can protect against surgical infections|
Date: 2013-12-23 13:51:49
Even though surgeons exercise thorough caution to prevent infections that can result from surgery, sometimes their development is unavoidable. However, lab tests conducted at the Rambam Medical Center in Israel revealed the benefit of taking antibiotics before procedures in order to reduce the chance of SSIs, or surgical site infections.
Published in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, a journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, the study's researchers examined the effects of preoperative antibiotic prophylaxis in heart surgery patients. Their results discovered that taking antibiotics two hours before a procedure greatly decreased the risk of SSIs. Out of the 2,637 patients in the study, only around 8 percent developed an infection when given the drugs during the specified time frame, compared to the almost 14 percent of patients who developed an SSI when administered antibiotics outside of the two-hour window.
"Antimicrobial prophylaxis can reduce the risk of SSIs following many operations, however, that efficacy diminishes or disappears if antibiotics are given either too early or after incision. Despite the general acceptance of this concept in guidelines, wide variations in preoperative antibiotic administration practices have been reported," explained lead author Renato Finkelstein, M.D.
The team carried out a 10-year cohort study with the overall goal of making their new two-hour guideline a wide-reaching rule for all surgeons. They investigated the efficacy of preoperative antibiotics being used up to two hours before the first incision was made. Any antibiotics administered at a different time ranged from either three hours before or after surgery. By the near end of the experiment, the team also discovered that their idea of optimal protection had been adopted by nearly all the participants.
Modest weight loss may reduce health risks in middle-aged women|
Date: 2013-12-19 12:00:41
According to a report released by the American Heart Association, overweight or obese middle-aged women who lost modest amounts of weight over a two-year span reduced their cholesterol levels and improved the outlook on their health. Lab tests helped determine a decrease in glucose and insulin numbers, possibly leading to a positive impact on the risk of developing diabetes or heart disease.
Published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the study examined a group of 417 women at an average age of 44 who weighed around 200 pounds at the beginning of testing. The participants who experienced a 10 percent or greater loss of their body weight also reduced their total cholesterol and inflammation markers. Women who benefited most from the modest weight loss had the highest risk levels before the study began.
"It is challenging to lose weight, but if women commit to losing 10 percent of their body weight and sustain that over time, it can have a large impact on overall risk factors associated with heart disease and diabetes," said Cynthia Thomson, Ph.D., co-author and director of the University of Arizona Canyon Ranch Center for Prevention & Health Promotion in Tucson.
There are numerous factors that might affect weight gain in women who are middle-aged, including repeated pregnancies and sedentary jobs and lifestyles. According to Thomson, a large percentage of American women feel they weigh much more at middle-age than they did in their younger years.
"The good news is that when you lose weight long-term, you just don't move to a smaller dress size, you are actually moving these risk factors markedly and likely reducing your risk of heart disease and diabetes," concluded Thomson.
Working with health care providers...
New guidelines for blood pressure could mean less pill taking|
Date: 2013-12-18 18:22:22
More than 10 years ago, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute published guidelines regarding blood pressure treatment targets and recommendations for drug prescriptions. After initially stating it would not be updating new guidelines, the NIH has released an updated report and it could change how hypertension is treated across the board.
The previous guideline stated that all adults should aim to have a systolic blood pressure below 140 millimeters of mercury, or mm Hg. Individuals with diabetes had an even lower target number, sitting at less than 130 mm Hg. Although the NIH still recommends those numbers for adults under the age of 60, it states that those 60 years of age and older should strive for an easier target of 150 mm Hg or lower. Despite these changes, the definition of hypertension still remains the same.
One significant difference between the NIH guidelines and the cardiovascular guidelines released by the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association last month is in risk assessment. According to Eric Peterson, M.D., in an editorial published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the NIH's hypertension guidelines for assessing patient risk will result in less treatment for the elderly, while the ACC/AHA guidelines will lead to increased treatment in those individuals.
It is important to note that although the recommendations in the new guidelines are based on evidence from extensive research, they should not be used to replace clinical judgment from a medical professional.
Treating high blood pressure...
Is physical activity more effective than prescription medication?|
Date: 2013-12-12 17:05:56
A new study showed that exercise can be as effective as prescription medication at treating some of the leading causes of death in the United States. The results, published in the British Medical Journal, question whether our country's health care system is too focused on medication as treatment and not promoting physical activity enough.
The comparative study was conducted by Huseyin Naci, London School of Economics and Political Science graduate student, and John Ioannidis, M.D., director of the Stanford Prevention Research Center at the Stanford University School of Medicine. They wanted to research how well exercise and prescription drugs reduced deaths among people who had been previously diagnosed with one of four different medical conditions: diabetes, stroke, chronic heart failure or heart disease.
Very few researchers have compared the effectiveness of medication and exercise, yet comparative effectiveness studies are important parts of pharmaceutical research. Naci and Ioannidis compiled data from 305 medical experiments that revolved around one of the four conditions they were researching. What they discovered was that out of all the studies, only 57 examined exercise as a method of treatment.
Using these numbers, the two researchers cross-referenced results from cases where participants were either prescribed medication, put on strict exercise regimens, or both. Typically, a prescribed exercise routine would include aerobic activity and some form of weight-training. The results of their cross-referencing were revelatory: exercise consistently showed similar results to medication when it came to treating life-threatening conditions.
Exercise as beneficial as medicine...
FDA plans to phase out trans fats entirely|
Date: 2013-11-07 14:20:59
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has plans in motion to completely remove trans fats from foods, a move the agency noted could reduce the number of heart attacks each year by several thousand. The fats are responsible for many ill health effects, like raising low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, often referred to as "bad cholesterol." While the agency is working to remove the fat altogether, those with high rates of LDL on cholesterol tests should try to avoid the fats in the meantime.
FDA working to eliminate trans fats...
What the new guidelines for cholesterol medication mean for you|
Date: 2013-11-12 19:25:37
A major shift in the treatment of those with high risk for heart disease has been announced by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology. For people with poor results on cholesterol tests, this may mean a change in how doctors treat the condition. Read on to find more information regarding the changes made to the way that heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular issues will now be treated.
A focus on risk factors...
New drug approach could lead to cures for multiple diseases|
Date: 2013-12-09 16:38:37
Following research conducted by the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, a new approach to treating misfolded proteins could lead to cures for a wide range of diseases. Lab tests carried out on mice may bring about revolutionary changes in treatment for ailments such as cystic fibrosis and cataracts.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was led by Michael Conn, Ph.D., former professor of physiology and pharmacology at OHSU. His team looked to discover a new method to fix misfolded proteins and restore them to make cells function correctly. Using male mice incapable of fathering offspring, the researchers were able to cure the mice and perfect the process through lab testing. They believe the same treatment could be used on humans.
"The opportunity here is going to be enormous because so many human diseases are caused by misfolded proteins. The ability of these drugs - called 'pharmacoperones' - to rescue misfolded proteins and return them to normalcy could someday be an underlying cure to a number of diseases," affirmed Conn.
Previously, scientists believed inactive proteins were naturally non functional. But Conn and his team of researchers showed that when the proteins were misfolded, their purpose was rerouted and caused a malfunction. The pharmacoperones are used to correct the routing problem and correctly fold proteins for functioning.
"We expect that these studies will change the way drug companies look for drugs, since current screening procedures would have missed many useful pharmacoperone drugs."
According to Conn, the next step in the process will be clinical trials on humans.
What are misfolded proteins?...
US cholesterol levels see improvement|
Date: 2013-11-04 19:31:27
The levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, often known as "good cholesterol," have risen in the U.S., though the rates of low-density lipoprotein, or "bad cholesterol," have stayed about the same. The new report, from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that screening rates for people having blood tests to determine their cholesterol levels have stalled, so those who may be at risk for high cholesterol should consider a lab test to help determine their levels.
The CDC compared levels of U.S. residents over the age of 20 in the years 2011 and 2012 to the rates of 2009 and 2010, finding that the rates of HDL cholesterol had improved significantly. The rate of adults in the U.S. with low levels of HDL cholesterol had dropped 20 percent between the time periods, with just 17 percent of adults surveyed having low levels. The study found that women had higher levels of LDL cholesterol and had been screened less frequently, though heart disease remains the most likely killer of both men and women in the country.
High levels of HDL cholesterol have been found to reduce the risk that is created by raised levels of LDL cholesterol, which is associated with heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular issues. Cholesterol tests can show the levels of both types, allowing for healthier lifestyle practices to begin, which can significantly reduce the risks of cardiovascular episodes.
Improving heart health...
Vitamin D supplements may not cause kidney stones|
Date: 2013-10-24 13:51:29
Vitamin D supplements have been linked to kidney stones in the past, but a new study suggests otherwise. The study was conducted by the University of California, San Diego Health Sciences and published in the American Journal of Public Health. For those who have a vitamin D deficiency diagnosed from a lab test online, supplements may be a good source of the nutrient.
Vitamin D and kidney stones...
What is a good diet for heart health and cholesterol?|
Date: 2013-10-10 13:36:20
Controlling heart health is one of the most important parts about staying healthy. This involves keeping cholesterol levels low while making sure to eat plenty of vitamins and minerals as well as omega-3 fatty acids and whole grains. At the same time, staying away from certain fats can make hearts stronger and healthier.
Why control cholesterol levels for a healthy heart?...
What are the risk factors for heart disease?|
Date: 2013-10-07 19:53:40
Heart disease, also known as cardiovascular disease, is a very common condition among Americans. It can lead to potentially deadly complications, so being aware of the risk factors for this condition is important for many.
New drug could reduce heart attacks and cholesterol|
Date: 2013-10-03 13:04:58
A new drug may be able to reduce cholesterol in people with high levels whose bodies are resistant to statins. The drug has shown significant promise in a clinical testing trial, significantly lowering low-density lipoprotein, often referred to as "bad cholesterol."
LDL rates and the new medication...
Are you getting enough vitamin D?|
Date: 2013-09-27 12:36:50
Vitamin D is essential to the health of your bones, heart and immune system, yet many people do not get enough of this essential vitamin. Luckily, it is easy to get more vitamin D once a blood test has confirmed low levels, so many people may want to find out more about how this nutrient affects them.
Benefits of vitamin D...
High HDL cholesterol may reduce risk of cancer|
Date: 2013-09-25 15:32:23
A meta-analysis of two dozen lipid intervention trials has found a connection between high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and a lower risk of cancer. The analysis took data from more than 100,000 patients and found that for each 10 milligrams per deciliter increment that HDL levels increased, the likeliness of cancer was reduced by more than 30 percent.
Connection between cholesterol and cancer...
What are the differences between good and bad cholesterol?|
Date: 2013-09-08 21:41:34
While many people know that high cholesterol is unhealthy, some may not be sure why. There are many conditions associated with high cholesterol that can negatively affect the entire body, all the way from the heart to the brain, potentially causing heart disease, heart attacks and strokes.
What is cholesterol?...
Making treatment easier can lower blood pressure|
Date: 2013-09-03 12:06:10
A new study has found that making treatment easier for patients who have hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, can help them become healthier. High blood pressure, together with high cholesterol, can lead to heart attacks, strokes and heart disease as well as other serious health issues.
Men may be at higher risk for heart attacks related to cholesterol|
Date: 2013-08-28 10:06:01
Middle-aged men with high cholesterol may be at a higher risk for heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems, according to a new study. Research found that men were far more likely to have a first heart attack than women, even if both had the same elevated levels of cholesterol.
Institute of Medicine calls for kids to get more exercise|
Date: 2013-05-23 15:40:21
Blood tests to check for cholesterol levels are not just important for adults, but children as well. As childhood obesity rates continue to rise in the U.S., parents need to realize that children need to be screened for obesity-related conditions like high blood pressure and cholesterol. It's also important for parents, educators, community leaders and politicians to all come together to find ways to keep kids healthy.
Recently, a report from the Institute of Medicine calls for schools to do their part to help kids maintain a healthy weight by ensuring that they engage in 60 minutes of moderate or vigorous physical activity during each school day.
"Schools are critical for the education and health of our children," said Harold Kohl, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology and kinesiology at the University of Texas School of Public Health and chair of the committee that wrote the report. "They already provide key services such as health screenings, immunizations and nutritious meals. Daily physical activity is as important to children's health and development as these other health-related services, and providing opportunities for physical activity should be a priority for all schools, both through physical education and other options."
Schools are key ...
An unhealthy diet during pregnancy sets children up for trouble|
Date: 2013-05-02 16:43:34
Regularly using cholesterol testing services is important for not only adults, but children as well. There is a childhood obesity problem in the U.S., and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that overweight children and those who have a family history of high cholesterol get tested before the age of 10. According to recent research from the University of Adelaide, one way that mothers may be able to help their children avoid a future of obesity and unhealthy cholesterol levels is to eat healthy while pregnant.
The scientists discovered that mothers who regularly consumed junk food during their pregnancy have a high risk of having children who are addicted to fatty and sugary foods.
Setting them up for trouble...
Vitamin D: The rock star vitamin|
Date: 2013-04-10 18:18:52
While most people understand that they should get blood tests or lab tests to help screen for any serious diseases, they may not understand that they also need these tests to make sure they are getting enough vitamins and minerals. For example, it's important to have enough iron and calcium, and it's very crucial for people to learn their vitamin D levels. This important vitamin has been hailed as a rock star in the healthcare community for the past few years, as studies continue to show how important it is.
Recently, Science News published an article with a quick overview of all of the important studies that have been conducted in the past year that show just how key vitamin D is to overall health.
A very important nutrient ...
Is a happy marriage making you fat?|
Date: 2013-04-04 17:22:45
Over the years, studies have come out suggesting that marriage may be good for health for a number of reasons. It can help keep people from feeling lonely or developing depression, and even appears to have some benefits for cardiovascular health. However, the findings of a recent study may have some married people ordering cholesterol testing and other blood tests to make sure that they have not developed any obesity-related conditions. According to scientists from Southern Methodist University, happy newlyweds may find themselves packing on the pounds.
Researchers discovered that young newlyweds who are happy in their relationship are more likely to gain weight in the first few years of marriage than those who were less satisfied in their marriage.
Happy isn't always healthy...
Could Kevin Wade have been vitamin D deficient?|
Date: 2013-04-02 18:35:52
On Sunday, Mar. 31, Kevin Ware, a sophomore at the University of Louisville and a guard on the basketball team, experienced a horrific injury when he fractured his tibia during a basketball game. Most news sources described the event as a "freak accident" and talked about how rare it is for such an injury to occur. However, a recent article published by Forbes magazine suggests that perhaps Ware could have been spared from experiencing this problem if he had been getting enough vitamin D and taking blood tests to make sure he had adequate levels of the nutrient.
The news source cited an article published by ABC News which quoted Tim Hewett, director of sports medicine research at Ohio State University, who said that Ware's diet may have been deficient in vitamin D and calcium, leading to more porous bones. That mixed with the constant pressure Ware put on his joints as an athlete may have created small stress fractures that eventually spread or became worse.
A widespread disparity ...
Researchers find more reasons to lose weight now, rather than later|
Date: 2013-03-04 15:28:02
There are many things in life that people put off - but getting important blood tests and cholesterol tests should not be on that list. Similarly, losing weight should not be something that people wait to do until the time feels right for them. According to researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, losing weight at a younger age increases the chance of reversing heart damage, compared to shedding pounds later in life.
These findings should encourage people to stop making excuses and telling themselves that they will get around to exercising at some point, and starting working toward developing a healthy weight now.
The sooner the better ...
Exercise doesn't have to be vigorous to be effective|
Date: 2013-02-14 16:54:07
Obese individuals have a higher risk than those with healthier weights to develop heart disease and high cholesterol. This is why people who are obese should regularly get blood tests to help determine if they are on their way to developing any adverse health conditions. While overweight individuals likely know that they need to exercise regularly in order to shed pounds and improve insulin sensitivity and cholesterol levels, not everyone has the motivation to workout.
It can particular be difficult for people to participate in a high-intensity workout regimen if it's been a long time since they last hit the gym. However, according to a recent study conducted by researchers from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, a low-intensity exercise program can be even more effective than a strenuous one.
Walk your way to healthier levels...
Women should know the signs of heart disease|
Date: 2013-02-06 16:17:33
It's important for everyone to know where they stand in terms of heart health.?According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 600,000 people in the U.S. die each year of heart disease, which equals about one out of every four deaths. This is one reason?why everyone should receive regular lab tests to make sure that they are in?good cardiovascular health.
According to a recent article by Jennifer Ashton, M.D., for ABC News, women, in particular, should be taking special care to make sure their hearts are in tip-top shape, since they may not notice something is wrong until it is too late. The doctor explained that only one out of every three women surveyed believe that they should be concerned about the health of their heart. However, since cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in women, they should all be focused on keeping their tickers in good shape.?
Many miss the signs?...
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Questions about online blood testing or how to order a lab test? Click here to get started or call us toll-free at 1.877.283.7882. Our certified professionals are ready to assist you.Back to top | <urn:uuid:3795d693-a102-462a-86ce-e438953bc1b7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.privatemdlabs.com/catnews.php?catid=438026432 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392099.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00102-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955946 | 5,910 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Washburn Shops at Worcester Polytechnic Institute • Worcester
Rehabilitation & Restoration
Ichabod Washburn, a founder of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), funded construction of the Washburn Shops in 1868 to house a "Department of Practical Mechanism" that would educate student mechanics in the applications of design and manufacturing. Prominent local architect Elbridge Boyden designed the building in the Second Empire style, and additions in 1880 and 1892 substantially expanded its footprint. The devastating hurricane of 1938 tore the central cupola from the Washburn Shops, dropping it through the roof of the building. Although it was reconstructed shortly thereafter, the cupola was reattached insecurely, such that by 2011 it was loose enough to be easily pushed out of place. In addition, in 1984, when the attic was converted to conditioned space, roof leaks were caused by winter ice dam formation, leading to warping of the roof deck, which in turn displaced slate shingles. The resultant gaps admitted still more water, causing further damage.
Because the roof had sustained irreversible damage, repair was not a viable option. Instead, the slate was replaced, and ice/water shields were incorporated into the roof's assembly. To maintain stability while restoring the cupola, tower corners were taken apart and reconstructed in sections. Concealed anchors improve structural stability without compromising the building's aesthetic or historic integrity. Salvaged brick from the original structure was interspersed with replacement brick at the tower's corners. Additionally, rotting woodwork was replaced, and dormers and surrounds were returned to their historic appearance. Historically appropriate divided lights replaced late 20th-century aluminum windows. And the arm-and-hammer weather vane, a 1977 replica of the original and a symbol of the school, was also restored. Continuously in use for engineering education since its construction and listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the Washburn Shops now houses the Material Science and Engineering Program, the Manufacturing Engineering Program, and the Management Department, as well as the Milton P. Higgins Lecture Hall. | <urn:uuid:35d87a48-f927-4c2b-a551-a423d8696f8b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sec.state.ma.us/mhc/mhcpra/praslideshow12/praslideshow12_11_worcester.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00016-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969155 | 425 | 2.71875 | 3 |
'Wild Science' to host discussions between researchers, public
Did the saber tooth cat really disappear? What’s it like to go wading in tropical Thailand in the dark to search for frogs?
A new series of talks at the KU Natural History Museum aims to answer these questions and more. The series, “Wild Science,” will bring science researchers and the public together for lectures and question-and-answer sessions the first Wednesday of every month at the museum. The talks are free.
Kris Krishtalka, director of the Biodiversity Institute, which includes the Natural History Museum, said the series offered a way get people excited about science by bringing them together with the scientists.
“We wanted a way to bring the questions KU researchers pursue to the public,” he said. “It will give people a chance to interact with scientists directly in a casual setting. They can have a cup of coffee, listen and have the chance to ask questions.”
Larry Martin, curator of vertebrate paleontology, kicked off the series Sept. 3 with a presentation titled “Do Saber Tooth Cats Have Nine Lives?” Martin used casts of fossil skulls from the largest saber tooth cat and the smallest — a “toy” species — as he traced the path of the extinction and re-evolution of these cats over the past 40 million years.
Beyond ancient cats and Thailand adventures afield, upcoming talks cover topics such as the decline of essential pollinators, biofuel development, Charles Darwin and poison beetles in Africa.
Fall lecture dates and times are:
- 7 p.m. Oct. 1 “Tales from Thailand.” Fanged frogs might sound like late-night horror movie material, but they are more of a mystery to David McLeod, a lecturer in ecology and evolutionary biology. Travel with him to Thailand to learn why researchers go far from the laboratory for their research and what they encounter in Southeast Asian rain forests along the way.
- 7 p.m. Nov. 5 “What’s Happening to Our Honey Bees, Bumble Bees and Other Pollinators?” Bees vanishing without a tract, habitat loss, systemic pesticides, pests and diseases add up to a questionable future for pollinators — and our food supply. Chip Taylor, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, will talk about the causes and consequences of the threats to these insects.
- 7 p.m. Dec. 3 “Water on the Plains: Struggles and Stories from Kansas.”
Understanding Kansas, and Kansans, requires knowing something about water in the state — where it comes from, how it’s used and how much is left. Water has always been central to Kansas, and with climate change and high commodity prices, that’s more true now than ever. Rex Buchanan, assistant director of the Kansas Geological Survey, will discuss what he’s seen while measuring water levels and sampling springs around the state. Along the way, Buchanan will address the water issues Kansans face today and the ones they’ll likely face in the future. | <urn:uuid:09ec97db-f6f0-4212-8734-82a4a998a2ef> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.oread.ku.edu/2008/september/8/wild.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00060-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926447 | 649 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Ask questions, find answers:
Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, and James Kwak produced this report in collaboration with NPR's Planet Money. You can find more from Johnson and Kwak on their Web site:
Mario Tama/Getty Images
In October 2008, the unofficial National Debt Clock in New York City had to add a "1" in the dollar sign field to accommodate the total debt count of $10.2 trillion.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
David McNew/Getty Images
Companies like Caterpillar stand to benefit from the U.S. plan for deficit spending on infrastructure. In January, Caterpillar announced 20,000 layoffs, roughly 18 percent of its workforce.
David McNew/Getty Images
With the annual U.S. government deficit recently projected at $1.2 trillion (not counting additional spending expected from the fiscal stimulus package now before Congress) and President Barack Obama warning about "red ink as far as the eye can see," government debt is once again near the top of the policy agenda. Which raises the question: What is government debt? And what's so bad about it?
What Is Government Debt?
For this article, we'll be talking only about debt issued by the federal government, not by state and local governments.
Let's say the federal government projects that it will need $100 billion more than it's bringing in from its existing tax programs. The government could raise taxes by enough to cover the shortfall. But that could be politically unpopular. It would also leave people with less disposable income. As a result, they'd spend less, so businesses would make less, so they'd lay people off, so they'd spend less, and so on. This does not mean that it is never a good idea to raise taxes, only that it is not a reliable way to close budget gaps.
Another way to close a budget gap is for the Federal Reserve to "print" another $100 billion or so, but that can lead to inflation. Imagine there were the same amount of stuff in the world, but suddenly everyone had twice as much money: The price of everything would simply double, and no one would be any better off.
Instead, governments prefer to raise money in the credit markets, which means that they issue bonds, just like private companies. A bond is a promise to pay money in the future; for example, a 10-year bond is a promise to pay a flat amount (the face value) in 10 years, and a percentage of that flat amount each year until then. When a government issues bonds, investors bid to buy those bonds; the amount of money they pay is therefore the amount that the government raises. (For more on bonds and bond yields, see Interest Rates for Beginners.) Now that you understand what government debt is, it's time to ask:
Is Debt OK?
It is accepted among virtually all economists that some government debt, sometimes, is a good thing. In a recession, tax revenues fall, and you need more money for social programs such as unemployment insurance, so the government should go into deficit. Fiscal conservatives, however, would say that these deficits during hard times should be balanced by surpluses during good times, so that over the long term the government budget remains in balance.
While this simple notion is appealing, there is no particular reason it must be true. Imagine that the government has some amount of debt, say 20 percent of its gross domestic product, or GDP, at the beginning of the year. Assume it retires none of the debt, but it does pay off the interest on the debt, and its budget is exactly balanced. The next year, debt will be less than 20 percent of GDP, because GDP almost always goes up. Clearly the government can sustain the same level of debt by running small deficits forever, as long as GDP is increasing, because GDP is a close proxy for the tax base. And the higher your level of economic growth, the more additional debt you can take on each year.
There are some negative effects of government debt, to be sure. Government bonds compete with corporate bonds for investors' money, which pushes up interest rates for everyone. And if the government is absorbing a larger proportion of the capital available, there is less for the private sector.
But debt is not necessarily all bad; as with households and companies, it depends on what you are doing with the money you borrow. For example, it can make sense for you to borrow money to pay for college or professional school, because higher education increases your lifetime earning potential. For many people, the increase in expected earnings more than compensates for the cost of the debt.
The same logic explains why companies take on debt. If you want to build a new factory for your faster-than-light hovercraft, you don't want to have to wait 20 years until you've accumulated enough profits from your sub-light hovercraft to pay for it; you want to borrow the money now, build the factory, and use the gigantic profits from the faster-than-light hovercraft to pay back the debt.
Whenever you hear someone say, "The government should be run like a company: Your revenues have to exceed the amount you spend," you should stop listening, because that's not how companies are run. On the other hand, government makes no distinction between expenditures that are productive investments bound to grow the tax base — roads, bridges, schools, school loans, basic research, etc. — and expenditures like entitlement programs.
The new Troubled Asset Relief Program, designed to rescue American financial institutions, actually made things more complicated, because now there is another category of government expenditure. With TARP, the government is acting like a bank, or actually a private equity fund, buying shares in private-sector companies and paying for the investments with borrowed money. Those investments all have value, and the government is going to recover that value at some point by selling its shares back to the banks. But many people probably see TARP simply as $700 billion that is gone forever. The Congressional Budget Office projected the final loss at $180 billion (calculated as the amount Treasury is paying for the securities, minus the value of the estimated cash flows Treasury will get from them).
The broader point is that there is a difference between borrowing money to drop it in large packages over other countries, borrowing money to invest in things we want our children to have, and borrowing money to buy assets that have real value.
How Much Debt Is OK?
The key issue is fiscal sustainability: the ability of a government to pay off its debt in the future, essentially by shifting its current obligations onto future taxpayers. (Again, borrowing money that your children will have to pay back is not necessarily a bad thing; it depends on whether you use it to improve the world they will live in.) Investors start getting worried when government debt looks like it will keep getting bigger (as a proportion of GDP), demographic trends look bad (with far more retirees than workers), and there seems to be no political appetite to confront the problem. If the debt gets too large, the government will eventually face a choice between several unpopular measures — including defaulting on the debt or imposing severe austerity in order to afford the debt payments.
In the U.S., the last time fiscal sustainability was a major concern was the 1980s, when annual government deficits — the amount by which spending exceeded tax revenues in a given year — reached a post-World War II high of more than 6 percent of GDP (data, p. 316). Deficits began falling in the mid-1980s, and especially after the end of the 1990-91 recession and the beginning of the Clinton administration, but total debt — the cumulative amount owed by the government — kept growing (because even small deficits still add to debt) until it peaked in 1996 at 67 percent of GDP (data, p. 126).
Still, the deficits that seemed so frightening in the 1980s were tamed by little more than a couple of moderate tax increases (by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Clinton) and the economic boom of the 1990s, to the point where the federal deficit faded as a political issue. And looking further back, even the World War II-related government debt — which reached 122 percent of GDP in 1946 — was paid down without much negative impact on the economy, thanks to strong demographic and productivity growth.
In this decade, however, the 2001 recession, George W. Bush's two major tax cuts, the Iraq War, and of course the current recession have weakened the government's fiscal position. Now the Congressional Budget Office is projecting a 2009 deficit in excess of 8 percent of GDP, a new post-World War II high. That's before counting the Obama administration's stimulus plan. In addition, Social Security and Medicare are expected to face funding shortfalls totaling in the trillions of dollars, beginning next decade.
No, Really: How Much Debt Is OK?
There are two plausible ways of resolving the argument over the sustainability of government debt, neither of which is conclusive. The first is empirical economic research. Here, the world's appointed authority is the International Monetary Fund, which is especially interested in analyzing debt sustainability because it is the institution that will be called in when government debts risk becoming unsustainable. The IMF has concentrated most of its attention on emerging-market countries, because it has been assumed both that developed countries are less likely to default, and that even if they did there is little the IMF, with its limited resources, could do about it.
That said, the IMF has done extensive research on debt sustainability, including attempts to estimate the sustainable debt levels for specific countries. Abdul Abiad and Jonathan Ostry, two IMF economists, have a paper on "Primary Surpluses and Sustainable Debt Levels in Emerging Market Countries" (this is their research, not official IMF policy), which outlines two analytical approaches to estimating debt sustainability — one based on a country's past performance at paying off debt, the other based on a model of economic fundamentals. Applied to a sample of 15 emerging-market countries, both the historical approach and the model-driven approach put the median sustainable debt level at around 30 percent of GDP (although across the sample the estimates range from less than 10 percent to more than 100 percent).
It would be a mistake to apply this single number to a country like the U.S., though. For one thing, developed countries in general can sustain higher levels of debt than emerging markets, among other reasons because they have higher revenue-to-GDP ratios. The IMF's September 2003 World Economic Outlook has some charts comparing government debt levels in industrial and emerging-market countries. Industrial countries in aggregate had public debt levels above 70 percent of GDP for most of the 1990s; yet no industrial country has defaulted on its debt in the post-World War II period. Empirical studies have shown at most a weak correlation between the amount of U.S. government debt and the interest rate the Treasury Department has to pay to borrow money.
The other way to see how much debt is too much is to ask the market. If investors think there is a risk that they won't be paid back, they will demand a higher interest rate, for the same reason that subprime mortgages have higher rates than prime mortgages. Interest rates on U.S. Treasury bonds are at historic lows, because people looking for a safe place to put their money are falling over themselves trying to lend to the U.S. government. The U.S. is able to borrow money cheaply despite everything we know about the recession, the government deficit, the Obama stimulus package and the looming retirement savings problems.
So the short answer to the question of how much debt is sustainable is simple: We don't know. If we were close to the edge of some fiscal cliff, the market would warn us, under ordinary circumstances. But these are not ordinary times: Due to the upheaval in all markets, there is a level of demand for Treasuries that is . . . how shall we put this . . . probably not justified by economic fundamentals, and as a result market signals don't work as well as they should. Right now, the markets are saying that the U.S. government is as good a place to lend money as any and are implicitly giving us time to sort out our fiscal problems. At what point that will change, though, no one can predict. | <urn:uuid:0ad2b963-697c-4469-980b-f363a76ae688> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99927343 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397565.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00034-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963765 | 2,543 | 3.375 | 3 |
The What's What of Accounting Terms ...
Posted on: 23/08/2012 By: Maureen Windridge
Hello again. I am intending to publish a series of blog posts that will explain the structure of a set of Accounts. Firstly though, I am going to demystify some of the language that non-accounting people may refer to as gobbledygook or jargon. I am only going to cover profit and loss account items this week ...
understand what's what with your accounting and watch your profits rise
As you'll know by now, MW Bookkeeping offers a comprehensive Bookkeeping service in and around Milton Keynes and clients often approach me to ask for clarification on what can appear a very complex matter. However with the correct explanation, Bookkeeping and Accounting should be easy to understand.
So, sit comfortably and read on for your own Glossary of Accounting terminology and let me begin to paint a very clear picture for you of exactly what's what and everything will fall into place nicely for you! Here we go:
Sales , Income, Turnover
These are all basically the same. They are sales of the goods and or services that a business normally trades in. This figure does not include VAT.
Cost of Sales
The cost to the business that can be directly linked to making sales. If a business is VAT registered this figure will not include VAT as that is reclaimable. If the business is not VAT registered this cost will include VAT as this is a cost the business must carry. The cost of sales will include goods bought for resale, materials bought for manufacture, wages of employees directly involved in selling or manufacture and sales commissions. They can vary between business, more will be explained in future posts.
When the Cost of Sales is deducted from sales the result is the Gross Profit. The Gross Profit percentage is important. The Gross Profit percent in most business stays fairly static. The costs rise and fall in line with the Sales/Turnover rising and falling. A significant variance in the Gross Profit percentage from one period to the next could be an indication of errors in the accounts. This subject could be a blog post on its own and I will come back to this in another blog post.
Expenses are also sometime referred to as "Overheads". The are the costs the business will incur regardless of the value of sales. There are some differences here between Limited company accounts and sole trader or partnership accounts. A Limited company will include Directors' salaries and remunerations in the Profit and Loss account. Sole trader's drawings are not part of the Profit and Loss account. Loan and Hire Purchase repayments will include both interest and capital. Only the interest is included as an Expense in the Profit and Loss account. Depreciation is also included in the Profit and Loss account although it does not involve any money changing hands. Depreciation is a way of charging the cost of a fixed asset to the business over the period of its useful life. It also appears in the balance sheet and will be explained in more detail next week.
The Expenses or Overheads are deducted from the Gross Profit to give the Net Profit of a business. This is usually stated before tax and it is, given some adjustments for none allowable expenses, the amount the business will pay tax on. The amount of net profit after tax is the value of funds that a sole trader or partners are allowed to use for drawings or a Limited company is allowed to use for dividends to shareholders.
I have endeavoured to keep this fairly simply and hope I have used plain language which you can understand irrespective of your knowledge levels in this area. However if there is anything you don't understand please call me on +44 (0) 1908 692378 and let me know - I'll happily take the time to chat matters through with you.
Next week I will be explaining the sections of the balance sheet and items within those sections, so watch this space!
Until next time ...
I consider myself to be incredibly lucky because I am a bookkeeper. At the age of thirteen I did a three year course in three months and passed with distinction.
Many years have gone by since then and I am still fascinated by the process of double entry bookkeeping. A process developed over 500 years ago by a venetian monk called Luca Pacioli.
Many people would like a machine that they could put all their paper work into at one end and it would come out the other end all sorted totalled and balanced. I'm glad it hasn't been invented because it would take all the fun out of my work!
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- How Good Is Your Gat ... | <urn:uuid:090aa918-3a2e-4d25-a656-fda18a9b0cb9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.mwbookkeeping.co.uk/gobbledygook-begone | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00045-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959031 | 1,101 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Brother Outsider: The life of Bayard Rustin
February 15, 2013
Pathways to Peace Film Series
This film explores Bayard Rustin's seminal contributions to the civil rights movement and his marginalization as a gay man and conscientious objector.
Hill University Center
(Nacny Kates and Bennett Singer, 2003, 83 min)
Bayard Rustin was a fervid orator and incisive rhetorician who served as a key figure in the civil rights movement for more than 60 years. He introduced Mahatma Gandhi’s principles of nonviolence to American activists, and he organized the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. So why doesn’t Bayard Rustin receive equal standing with King in American history? It’s a question of considerable debate, but Rustin’s status as an openly gay man who served jail time as a conscientious objector during World War II guaranteed his marginalization during the 1960s among civil rights leaders, who feared such traits could be used by opponents to discredit their movement. | <urn:uuid:311ffab8-b7eb-491e-b175-ee1dd3935482> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.uab.edu/civilrights/events-2/cas-events/121-events/pathways-to-peace-film-series/39-brother-outsider-the-life-of-bayard-rustin | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00143-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953054 | 231 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Parashurama is the sixth incarnation of Lord Vishnu. In this Avatar, Parashuram restored justice by wiping out the ruling class which had become corrupt. Parashurama was present on earth when Lord Vishnu incarnated as Lord Ram and Lord Krishna. The origin of many of the popular temples in
India, especially in South India, is traced to Parashuram.
Parashu means axe and this incarnation of Vishnu is named after his favorite weapon. He was born as the son of Rishi Jamadagni.
Kamadhenu, the divine cow that could confer all desires, was stolen by from Sage Jamadagni’s ashram by Sahastrabahu Arjuna (a king named thousand armed Arjuna). This finally resulted in the death of Rishi Jamadagni.
To avenge this Parasurama wiped out generations of corrupt warriors from the planet to restore justice. He distributed the wealth amassed by the rulers to the people. Thus we get the earliest information of social equality achieved through armed revolution.
Symbolically, this shows that when the ruling or political class starts to steal from its subjects adharma breeds – corruption and nepotism grows. To restore Dharma, Lord Vishnu incarnates.
In Ramayana, Parashuram appears when Lord Ram breaks Lord Shiva’s bow to win the hands of Mata Sita.
In the Mahabharat, Bhishma, Drona and Karna learn warfare from Parashurama. Thus he is Guru to the great warriors in Mahabharat.
Parashuram is believed to have consecrated numerous temples in
. This includes temples of Vishnu, Shiva and Shakti. India | <urn:uuid:95fa4ffb-0fe5-412f-b164-ea456fe9a343> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.hindu-blog.com/2010/03/parashurama-avatar-sixth-incarnation-of.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00181-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954282 | 363 | 2.765625 | 3 |
St. John and Penobscot Rivers map, 1798
Contributed by Maine Historical Society
Purchase a reproduction of this item on VintageMaineImages.com.
In 1798 surveyors and map makers were sent out by the governments of Britain and the United States to determine the northeast boundary line between the two countries.
This sketch is part of a collection of maps made to help determine the boundary. It is a copy "taken from one made on Birch Bark by Francis Joseph an Indian with the assistance of other Indians as also the above information of Pleasant Point May 8th 1798 by us Thomas Milledge, Rob Pagan."
The map shows an old canoe trail from the Maliseet Indian village of Meductic to Indian Island at Old Town -- an ancient "highway" for Indians and settlers. Indians used the route to trade with the French and English; settlers used it to get to the area.
Other place names include: Masaskisias, Madawaska River, Lake Pasahagan, Chepenannot River, Lake Kioxakcik. Francis Joseph Neptune was the chief of the Passamaquoddy Tribe.
- Title: St. John and Penobscot Rivers map, 1798
- Creator: Neptune, Francis Joseph
- Creation Date: 1798-05-08
- Subject Date: 1798-05-08
- Town: Pleasant Point
- County: Aroostook, Washington
- State: ME
- Media: Ink on paper
- Dimensions (cm): 37 x 23
- Local Code: Coll. 26 Box 9 Maps
- Collection: Barclay Collection
- Object Type: Text and Image
For more information about this item, contact:
Maine Historical Society
489 Congress Street, Portland, ME 04101
Cross Reference Searches
LC Subject Headings
Northeast boundary of the United States--Maps.
Indians of North America--Maine--Maps, Manuscript
Penobscot River (Me.)--Maps, Manuscript--Early works to 1800.
Saint John River (Me. and N.B.)--Maps
St. John River (Me. and N.B.)--Maps
Please post your comment below to share with others. If you'd like to privately share a comment or correction with MMN staff, please use this form. | <urn:uuid:6ee914e5-67ae-47a1-8a6d-27ead0d6348b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mainememory.net/artifact/6883 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392069.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00143-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.838571 | 489 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Pasta is dough that is kneaded into shapes for cooking. The size and shape is based on the function: for instance, very small Pasta is used in soups, larger Pasta with grooves is meant for chunky sauces as it can get a grip on them, very large Pasta are meant for stuffing and baking.
Even if Pasta is to be baked, it is always boiled first.
Italians tend to use olive oil-based sauces on dried Pasta, and cream-based sauces on fresh Pasta. When eggs are added to Pasta dough, it is mainly for the taste and colour they add. Northern Italy tends to makes flat noodles with eggs; in the South, curly noodles without egg are more prevalent. Generally, eggs are added to long pasta and to wide pasta (lasagna, cannelloni, etc), but not to short pasta.
Unless a specialty Pasta is being made, the wheat used in Pasta is durum wheat semolina which contains very little starch. Less water is required to make Pasta dough with semolina, as there is less starch to compete with the flour proteins for water. Less water is an advantage if you are going to be drying the Pasta, rather than cooking with it immediately, and this is why semolina is favoured in commercial production. Semolina-made Pasta is also stronger, less easily broken, and less prone to go mooshy, because its gluten is very strong. Pasta is traditionally yellow rather than white because Mediterranean semolina had a colour pigment about double that of normal wheats. Because that is the colour that has come to be expected, semolina is not bleached.
Pasta in Italy is almost never served as a course in itself. In a traditional Italian meal, you may or may not have some antipasti. (These "starters" are called "antipasto", or "before the Pasta.") Then, you have your first course, the "primo", which can be Pasta, soup, or risotto. The second course, called the "secondo", is usually meat, and refers to just the meat itself. You have some side dishes with that, usually vegetables, which are called "contorni." Salad is never served until after the secondo is finished.
Pasta gained tremendously in popularity in the English speaking world during the last half of the 1900s, but Italians still eat more of it: about 65 pounds (30 kg) a year per person, compared to 8 pounds (3 1/2 kg) a year per person in America.
Despite the great variety of Pasta available, all types usually fall into one of four categories: Pasta to be boiled and eaten with a sauce or topping, Pasta for soup, Pasta to go into a baked dish, and Pasta to be stuffed. The divisions aren't hard and fast: some Pasta for instance you stuff, then bake, and other Pasta, such as macaroni, can be used for many different purposes. And, we non-Italians have opened up a non-traditional use, which is Pasta salad.
Fresh Pasta cooks faster than dried, as it doesn't need to rehydrate first.
There are really only two things that can lead to Pasta disasters. Too little water, and forgetting about the time and overcooking it.
It's a myth that you should put oil in the cooking water. This myth started a few decades ago. You would only add a bit of oil if you were boiling sheets of lasagna, to stop them sticking to each other and tearing when you try to get them apart. Otherwise, oil in the water really just floats on top (basic physics, if you think about it), and because it will adhere to the Pasta as you dump the Pasta out, it can stop your sauces from coating your Pasta properly.
To cook fresh Pasta, bring the water to a boil. Dump the fresh Pasta in, and when the water returns to the boil, the Pasta is cooked.
Use loads of water. The Italian rule of thumb is 1 litre per 100 g of pasta (1 US quart per 3 oz.)
Plan to have twice as much water in the pot as you do pasta, enough that the pasta can move freely about in the water. Bring the water to a boil. Definitely salt the water. Meanwhile, bring your tea kettle to the boil as well.
Add the pasta when the water in the pot has started boiling, and stir a bit. If the pasta takes up 3 inches (7.5 cm) in the pot, you want another 3 inches (7.5 cm) of water on top of that to be safe, and you can top up from the kettle if you need to because you were clever and had it boiling. Most pasta disasters come from being stingy with the water.
Don't cover the pot. Let the water come back to the boil, then stir again to loosen the pieces from each other. Start counting your cooking time from when the water returns to a boil. Most dried pasta takes 10 to 12 minutes to cook, so stir once or twice again during that time. (Specialty pastas such as cornflour and wholewheat pasta usually cook up faster, see separate entries for them.)
When cooked (just tender to the bite, as everyone knows by now), drain in a colander. Never, ever rinse your pasta. It will have some starch on it, but you need that starch on it for the sauce you are about to put on it to adhere well to the pasta.
1 pound (450g) dried pasta, cooked = 1 1/2 (680g) pounds fresh pasta, cooked
1 pound (450g) of pasta will serve 3 as a meal on its own; 4 as a first course, or six if it accompanies meat.
If you cook up too much pasta, or miss the timing on a batch and it goes too soft for your taste, then toss into a freezer bag (plain, before you add sauce) and freeze for your next soup; makes a great addition.
Use fresh pasta within 5 days; store refrigerated well wrapped so that it doesn't dry out. Pasta freezes well for up to 4 months. If you are using frozen pasta, don't thaw before cooking.
The Etruscans were, in fact, the first that we know of to make Pastas in Italy, and the Pastas are depicted on Etruscan tombs dating from 300 BC. The Romans made and used Pasta a lot, often in soups. For them, it was a great way to convert grain into something that could be stored in a way that was less interesting to pests. In Roman society, the rich would eat fresh Pasta, and the poor ate dried (just like today). Dried Pasta was mostly popular with the poor in the city of Rome itself. Our word "lasagne" comes from the Roman word "lagana", meaning wide Pasta ribbons. Some Roman pastas were made from Chestnut Flour.
Pasta started to become popular again in the early 1700s. Pasta-making machines were invented in Napoli, making larger production possible. And, this was the time of the grand tour by wealthy English tourists coming to Italy. They picked up a liking for it. "Macaroni" became a term used to describe someone who had developed foreign tastes for non-English food.
Pasta started becoming popular in North America in the 1920s, with the arrival of Italian immigrants.
PastaAl Dente; Black Pasta; Corn Pasta; Egg Pasta; Fideos; Noodles; Pasta for Baking; Pasta for Salads; Pasta for Sauce; Pasta for Soup; Pasta for Stuffing; Pasta Liscia; Pasta Rigata; Pasta Sauce; Pasta; Semolina; Stuffed Pasta; Whole Wheat Pasta
Please share this information with your friends. They may love it. | <urn:uuid:36e6c60b-60df-45d6-b36e-eeeb5cd2a41e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.cooksinfo.com/pasta | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403508.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00074-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965568 | 1,671 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Perception of Being Fat Harm Teens
A new German study discovers the quality of life of adolescents who think they are too fat is worse than for adolescents who really are obese.
The findings are the result of a study of almost 7000 boys and girls aged between 11 and 17 years were weighed and asked about their self-assessment, ranging from “far too thin” to “far too fat.”
In addition, they all completed a questionnaire about quality of life. As a result of their analysis, the scientists established that about three quarters of adolescents are of normal weight.
Almost 55 percent of the girls, but just under 36 percent of the boys thought that they were “too fat,” although only about 18 percent of the adolescents were actually overweight. 7 percent to 8 percent of the adolescents were underweight.
The quality of life is lower in obese adolescents. However, this correlates to a large extent with self-evaluation. If adolescents think they are “far too fat,” they forfeit a lot of their quality of life, whatever their actual weight.
This is particularly marked with girls. On the other hand, if they consider their weight “just right,” their quality of life is the same as if they were of normal weight, even if this is not true.
The proportion of adolescents who think they are overweight has been increasing more rapidly in recent years than the proportion of those who really are overweight.
In an accompanying editorial, Johannes Hebebrand points out that adolescents are exposed to considerable social pressure to be thin. He thinks that it is remarkable that as many as 40 percent of the subjects thought that their weight was right, in spite of the ideal of slimness and the stigma of being overweight.
Nauert PhD, R. (2015). Perception of Being Fat Harm Teens. Psych Central. Retrieved on June 29, 2016, from http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/06/23/perception-of-being-fat-harm-teens/2486.html | <urn:uuid:e1cb5d0e-3f3e-4592-82a0-ce1f0d4a826f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/06/23/perception-of-being-fat-harm-teens/2486.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397842.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00049-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980327 | 424 | 3.09375 | 3 |
We've all heard the hype. As a fast growing grass bamboo is a renewable resource. So it must be good for the environment... right? Bamboo isn't always better. In their zeal to create what is popular for the market some manufacturers are not producing bamboo products in a sustainable and environmentally minded way. So how can you know? Here are some questions to think about before choosing bamboo over other materials. By shopping around and asking these key questions you can find the product that is best for you and for the environment.
1. Is bamboo more durable than the other material you're considering?
Durability determines the life of a material. If it's going to scratch and break down quickly then you're more likely to replace it and the bamboo may end up in a landfill. While many types of bamboo are considered to be as hard a red oak some are not and there are some applications where other materials are better suited.
2. Where and how is the bamboo harvested?
Some companies are using bamboo that is harvested using clear cutting techniques in China. The shipping alone can negate any carbon savings you were hoping to get. When looking at flooring sometimes a locally and sustainably harvested hard wood has a less negative impact on the environment than bamboo.
3. Are there any toxic substances in the finish?
Finishes that contain formaldehyde and other chemicals can really harm the environment. In addition to the environment, the chemicals can harm workers who apply them and even you when you put them in your home. Additionally, chemicals in the product may make it difficult or even impossible to recycle it after it has lived its life if your home. Make sure to ask the manufacturer for a list of the chemicals in the product.
4. Is the product produced in a environmentally conscious way?
Just because the product is considered "green" doesn't mean it was produced in a way that was kind to the environment. Some plants are able to use the waste products from their manufacturing to power the plant. Others are careful to limit the chemical exposure of their employees. A manufacturer that is truly friendly to the environment are more likely to create a product that is actually "green".
By asking these important questions and critically evaluating the life cycle, including the harvesting, manufacturing and disposal of the product, you will be better equipped to determine if bamboo is really the healthiest choice for you and the environment.
Want more information? Check out these resources:
• Bamboo in Construction: Is The Grass Always Greener?
• Bamboo Flooring (PDF) | <urn:uuid:f362e4f0-ff2e-4f05-b56c-811587defc42> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/bamboo-as-green-as-you-thought-124101 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402479.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00075-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963753 | 516 | 2.625 | 3 |
Innovative Wind Turbine From Australia
An Australian invention could make cheap micro-generation via wind power far easier. Graeme Attey has designed a modular wind turbine small enough for the roof of house, and with fully enclosed blades. It seems that without large blades, more of these could fit onto a particular surface.
The West Australian Government is funding some trials in the hope that he can get an efficient model working. If it's developed into a consumer product, which is the plan for later next year, then they also plan to offer rebates to residents who install the device. The article is rather devoid of details, but the device looks quite attractive in an industrial way, and I would be quite happy about having a spine of these along the apex of my roof. ::ABC | <urn:uuid:17e9c9e9-d29b-470b-91a1-7637bcd3d6f1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/innovative-wind-turbine-from-australia.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00134-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97233 | 161 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Global airlines are studying how to prevent a repeat of last month's disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines plane, one of more than 80 aircraft to vanish in flight since the mid-20th century.
The International Air Transport Association
, which represents 240 airlines, said last week it is creating a panel to examine how to improve real-time aircraft tracking. IATA plans to make recommendations by the end of this year.
In an interview with VOA, Washington-based IATA spokesman Perry Flint said the trade group is consulting experts from airlines, aircraft manufacturers and systems makers, search and rescue organizations, and the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization
"This sort of task force may be unique," Flint said. "But, the air transport industry also has organized international meetings in the past to address specific challenges."
How the study will unfold
Flint said the new panel will focus on real-time tracking of aircraft, rather than streaming of flight performance data for aircraft systems. He said any proposed improvements would not be likely to involve installing entirely new systems on planes.
Flint also said there is no guarantee about what will happen to IATA's recommendations. As an industry group, it can appeal for action but cannot mandate any steps by national or international authorities.
"Our main goal is to never be in a situation where we don't know where an airplane is," Flint said. "There are about 100,000 flights a day, and almost every day, every one of them ends on a runway somewhere. In situations where a flight does not end on a runway, we want to know where it is."
Such situations have arisen before.
History of aircraft disappearances
A Netherlands-based aviation accident database
has recorded 88 cases of missing planes since World War II.
The Aviation Safety Network said 62 of them involve aircraft vanishing over water, as happened to Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on March 8.
Lead database manager Harro Ranter said most disappearances at sea appear to have involved aircraft running out of fuel or suffering engine problems.
He said most of the other planes went missing over mountainous terrain, leading authorities to assume they were flying too low or caught in poor weather.
Ranter, who also serves as an adviser to the Dutch government, said the disappearance of MH370 stands out from the other cases in several ways.
What makes MH370 unique?
He said first and foremost, the case involves the highest number of people ever to be lost on a missing aircraft. The Malaysia Airlines plane was carrying 239 passengers and crew on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
The previous record
for people lost on a missing plane was set on March 16, 1962, when a U.S. military charter flight carrying 107 people, mostly soldiers, vanished over the Pacific Ocean on a flight from Guam to the Philippines.
Ranter also said most the 88 missing plane cases happened in the 1960s and 1970s.
"In those days, navigation equipment and satellite coverage were nonexistent or not as advanced as they are today," he said. "The Boeing 777 involved in MH370 had a very high safety standard, was considered very reliable, and was operated by an airline also considered very safe and reliable."
Ranter said almost all of the disappearances in more recent decades involve cargo aircraft and relatively small private planes, rather than commercial passenger flights. | <urn:uuid:5ffce524-b01c-45db-b557-d1aa93bdda1f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.voanews.com/content/global-airline-industry-begins-study-to-prevent-mh370-repeat/1891075.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00175-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968207 | 685 | 2.640625 | 3 |
The Goldilocks Zone
Scientists hunting for alien life can relate to Goldilocks.
For many years they looked around the solar system. Mercury and Venus were too hot. Mars and the outer planets were too cold. Only Earth was just right for life, they thought. Our planet has liquid water, a breathable atmosphere, a suitable amount of sunshine. Perfect.
If Earth, however, were a little closer to the sun, our planet might be like hot choking Venus. A little farther away, the Earth might be like cold arid Mars. Somehow, though, we ended up in just the right place with just the right ingredients for life to flourish. Researchers of the 1970's scratched their heads and said we were in "the Goldilocks Zone."
The Goldilocks Zone seemed a remarkably small region of space which didn't even include the whole Earth. All life known in those days was confined to certain limits: no colder than Antarctica (penguins), no hotter than scalding water (desert lizards), no higher than the clouds (eagles), no lower than a few mines (deep mine microbes).
Image right: A false-color electron micrograph image of Tindallia californiensis. Photo credit: NASA/R. Hoover.
In the past 30 years, our knowledge of life in extreme environments has exploded. Scientists found microbes in nuclear reactors, microbes that love acid, and microbes that swim in boiling-hot water. Whole ecosystems have been discovered around deep sea vents where sunlight never reaches and the emerging vent-water is hot enough to melt lead.
The Goldilocks Zone is bigger than we thought.
To find out how big, researchers are going deeper, climbing higher, and looking in the nooks and crannies of our own planet. Searching for life in the Universe is one of NASA's most important research activities. Finding extreme life here on Earth tells us what kind of conditions might suit life "out there."
NASA scientists Richard Hoover and Elena Pikuta are among the hunters. This month they've announced a new species of extreme-loving microorganism, Tindallia californiensis, found in California's Mono Lake.
Image left: Elena Pikuta and Richard Hoover in their laboratory at the National Space Science and Technology Center.
Mono Lake is an extremely salty and alkaline body of water. It is almost three times saltier than sea water and has a pH of 10, about the same as WindexTM, a household glass cleaner. (For comparison, a pH of seven is neutral; 14 corresponds to pure lye.) Surprisingly, though, Mono Lake supports a wide array of life from microbes, to plankton, to small shrimp. Tindallia californiensis (pictured at the top) thrives in highly alkaline conditions (pH 8-10.5) and at salt concentrations near 20%.
Earlier this year Hoover and Pikuta announced another strange microbe: Spirochaeta americana. They found it living with Tindallia californiensis and perhaps hundreds of other microbial species in Mono Lake mud samples. Finding new species in this abundant collection of microbial life is a detective story worthy of Perry Mason or Hercule Poirot.
"Collecting samples from the muddy bottom of this lake and keeping them alive can be tricky business," says Hoover. "These species are killed by the presence of oxygen, so great care must be taken to protect them."
"The battery of tests required to identify a particular species in a sample is extensive," says Pikuta. "For an organism to be identified and then recognized as a new species, it must be completely understood. This includes identifying its growth requirements and metabolism, colonial habit, cellular characteristics, DNA and genome properties, and sensitivity to antibiotics for detailed comparison with other known life forms."
Before a life form can be considered a valid new genus or species, it must be deposited in two separate International Collections of Microorganisms and a scientific paper describing all new features of the organism must be either published in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology or, if published in another journal, it must be verified by the International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes (ICSP), the clearinghouse for bacterial species.
Once a microbe is finally accepted as a valid new species, says Hoover, the years of intense labwork and wallowing in smelly lake mud suddenly become worthwhile. The Goldilocks Zone gets a little bigger. And life "out there" seems more likely than ever.
Dr. Tony Phillips | <urn:uuid:23b46cfe-466a-4cb5-a419-3a8e23877e96> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/livingthings/microbes_goldilocks.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394937.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00058-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923175 | 944 | 3.5 | 4 |
A drive across Kansas might lead you to think the state is entirely given over to vast corn and wheat fields. The rich soils that make Kansas one of America's great farm states, however, also support an enormous range of native flowering plants. Because they're native plants, they have adapted well to Kansas' growing conditions. Adding a few of them to your Kansas garden can provide low-maintenance color and fragrance.
Growing wild in the rocky soil of north and south central Kansas' open area, perennial pincushion daisy (Gaillardia suavis) grows up to 2 feet. Blooming from March to May, the plant's flowers quickly lose their few red, orange or yellow petals. They leave behind reddish-brown pincushion-like centers that make interesting additions to floral arrangements.
On warm days, the flowers are noticeably fragrant. Plant pincushion daisies in part shade and dry, acidic soil. Providing them with adequate water and removing spent flowers will extend their blooming season.
Between March and May, bluebowls (Giliastrum rigidulum) cover southwestern Kansas' dry prairies and hills with a sea of violet. Their clustered deep-blue flowers often conceal the plants' tough, prickly leaves. The blooms' vivid yellow centers are bull's-eyes for nectar-seeking bees and butterflies.
These small shrubs, seldom reaching 3 feet, like sunny locations and dry soil. They thrive in the caliche (soil high in calcium carbonate) that spells doom for so many other plants.
Four Point Evening Primrose
Four point evening primrose (Oenothera rhombipetala) grows throughout Kansas. It's most common in the sandy soil along the central state's roadsides and streams. This biennial plant reaches up to 3 feet in its second year, producing spikes of deep yellow 2-to-3-inch flowers that open at dusk.
Plants bloom from May until September. Four point evening primrose, says the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, likes sandy or sandy loam soil, and sun or part shade. Regular summer watering will prolong the bloom period.
Scarlet globemallow (Sphaeralcea coccinea) occurs across central and western Kansas' open prairies. Like bluebowls, these perennials do well in caliche. Native Americans would crush globe mallow leaves to make poultices for irritated skin.
Growing up to 1 foot, scarlet globe mallow plants produce several flowering stems. They sometimes colonize over large areas. Its pinkish-orange blooms appear in small clusters between April and September, making an attractive contrast with its green leaves. Birds and small mammals eat the fruit that follows the flowers. Plants like sun and dry, light limestone-based or sandy clay soils. | <urn:uuid:fcbbb9d6-28d6-42d1-b0ba-54d2aa003300> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.gardenguides.com/97354-native-kansas-flowering-plants.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00020-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927586 | 582 | 3.390625 | 3 |
Plant wintergreen in your garden and you've got a natural pain reliever, anti-inflammatory and tasty base for herb tea. Native peoples and early American settlers relied on wintergreen teas and oil to relieve fever, reduce inflammation and even prevent tooth decay. This hardy herb grows wild throughout Canada and much of the central and eastern United States. Its leaves have a minty, refreshing taste and can be brewed into a tea or munched on fresh. Eat the red berries fresh or bake them into pies and jams.
Plant wintergreen from seed, nursery plants or native cuttings in a damp spot in your garden that receives full to partial shade. Water newly-planted wintergreen frequently so the soil stays moist, but not soggy. Once wintergreen is established, it can survive on less water.
Pick the wintergreen berries off the stems when they've turned bright red in late fall.
Harvest all the wintergreen berries at once, or leave some on the bushes. They'll remain until spring and you can harvest them all winter. | <urn:uuid:b539e03f-da3a-47fa-909b-6dd84cb00559> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.gardenguides.com/126366-wintergreen-berries-harvesting.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00047-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937391 | 217 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Copyright(c) Management Analytics, 1995 - All Rights Reserved
Copyright(c), 1990, 1995 Dr. Frederick B. Cohen - All Rights Reserved
Files come in four types (Regular,
Character-Special, Block-Special, and Directory)
and are used to model storage and peripheral devices. The file
types are used as follows:
- Regular files are the normal sorts of storage
files we tend to think of when we think about computers. They
are accessible either sequentially or randomly; they can be created,
destroyed, and changed; they store what you put in them and retrieve it
at your request.
- Character-Special files are logical units used to
represent sequential device control programs. They are sequential in
that you send them sequences of symbols that are processed into output
as they arrive, and they return sequences of symbols arriving from their
inputs. They are device control programs in that, even though you treat
them as files from an input and output standpoint, they actually
act as programs that transform input and output requests into actions.
They are character files in that they handle information a
character at a time.
- Block-Special files are like character special
files except that they handle information in blocks of bytes
instead of single bytes. This makes them particularly suitable for DMA
- Directory files are actually just like regular
files except that they store lists of file names and their
inode numbers. An inode number is an integer associated
with a system structure that holds system information about a
file, and is designated by the system upon file creation.
A few examples may help to understand how these types of
files are used. Memory, for example, is modeled by several
Character-Special files which allow user memory,
kernel memory, or physical memory to be accessed. Physical disks are
represented by Block-Special files, while the files
stored on those physical disks are represented by Regular
files, and grouped under Directory files. Most
sequential peripherals, like terminals, tape drives, and parallel ports,
are represented as Character-Special files. DMA devices
like network interfaces and external disks, are typically represented as
The Directory files are normally used to form a tree
structured logical file-structure, with the ``/'' (root)
directory as the root of the file tree. | <urn:uuid:bf8b3965-24d0-46fb-9aea-a887aa9b7a30> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.all.net/books/unixsec/Chap4.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00133-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929387 | 492 | 3.90625 | 4 |
Lily family (Liliaceae)
Description: This herbaceous perennial plant is 6-20" tall, consisting of a dense tuft of basal leaves from tightly clustered bulbs. The basal leaves are erect, ascending, or arching-spreading; they are medium green, filiform, terete, hollow, glabrous, and sometimes glaucous. One or more flowering stalks develop from within the basal leaves. These stalks are more stiffly erect than the leaves; they are 8-20" long, medium green, filiform, terete, and glabrous. Usually, the stalks are leafless, although on rare occasions 1-2 cauline leaves may develop from an individual stalk. At the apex of each stalk, there is a crowded umbel of 30-50 flowers that spans about 1–1½" across; this umbel is held erect and it is globoid to subgloboid (globoid, but slightly flattened) in shape. Initially, the umbel is enclosed by a pair of membranous spathes with a sheath-like appearance, but the latter shrivel away when the flowers begin to bloom. Each flower is up to 2/3" (15 mm.) long, consisting of 6 pink or lavender tepals, 6 stamens, and a pistil with a single white style. The filaments of the stamens are white, while their anthers are variably colored. The tepals are narrowly elliptic in shape and strongly ascending; they often have fine lines of purple where their midribs occur. The style has a knobby tip. At the bases of these flowers, there are short pedicels up to ¼" long; these pedicels are largely hidden by the flowers when the latter are in bloom. Both the foliage and flowers have a mild onion-like aroma. The blooming period occurs from late spring to early summer, lasting about 3-4 weeks. Afterwards, individual flowers are replaced by 3-valved seed capsules (3-4 mm. across) that split open to release their seeds. These seeds are 2–2.5 mm. (less than 1/8") in length with a 3-angled ellipsoid shape; 2 sides of each seed are flat, while the remaining side is curved. In addition, the seeds are black, somewhat wrinkled, and glabrous. The root system consists of slender bulbs that are ellipsoid in shape and up to ¾" (20 mm.) in length; these bulbs have fibrous roots underneath. The outermost layers of the bulbs are brown and membranous. Clonal offshoots are created by the formation of new bulbs in the ground. This plant also reproduces by reseeding itself. The leaves die down during the winter.
Cultivation: The preference is full or partial sun, moist to mesic conditions, and a fertile loamy soil. Chives is winter-hardy and easy to cultivate.
Range & Habitat: As a wild plant, Chives has naturalized in only a few counties of Illinois (see Distribution Map), where it is uncommon. While it is native to boreal areas of both Eurasia and North America, Chives was introduced into Illinois as a culinary herb. It is still commonly cultivated in gardens, from where this plant occasionally escapes. Habitats include grassy areas along railroads and roadsides, areas that are adjacent to gardens, weedy meadows, banks of streams, and waste areas. Habitats with a history of disturbance are preferred. Chives is less aggressive than either Allium vineale (Field Garlic) and Allium canadense (Wild Garlic).
Faunal Association: The nectar and pollen of the flowers attract small bees and flower flies primarily. Some insect species are known to feed destructively on Chives (Allium schoenoprasum) and other Allium spp. Insects that feed on the foliage and/or flowers include Thrips tabaci (Onion Thrips), Myzus ascalonicus (Shallot Aphid), Neotoxoptera formosa (Onion Aphid), Lindbergocapsus allii (Onion Plant Bug), and Lindbergocapsus ainsliei; see Marshall (2006), Blackman & Eastop (2013), Knight (1941), and Henry (1982). The larvae of several insects also feed on the bulbs of these plants, including Strigoderma arbicola (False Japanese Beetle), Delia antiqua (Onion Maggot), Tritoxa flexa (Black Onion Fly), Eumerus strigatus (Onion Bulb Fly), and Eumerus tuberculatus (Lesser Onion Bulb Fly). Mammalian herbivores usually avoid consumption of the foliage of Chives and other Allium spp., although it is occasionally consumed by White-tailed Deer and domesticated cattle (Sotala & Kirkpatrick, 1973; Georgia, 1913), especially during the spring when little else is available. When dairy cattle consume these plants, this taints the flavor of milk that they produce.
Photographic Location: Along a sidewalk at the webmaster's apartment complex. This plant was established from seed that had blown across the sidewalk from a neighboring pot of herbs.
Comments: The chopped leaves of Chives has a mild onion flavor that can be used to season various dishes and sauces, including salads and sour cream. The umbels of flowers are also edible if they are picked while they are still young; like the leaves, they have an onion flavor. This plant is rich a source of antioxidants, especially the leaves (Stajner et al., 2004). It also contains significant amounts of Vitamin A (as beta-carotene), folic acid, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, protein, and other nutrients. Chives (Allium schoenoprasum) is fairly easy to distinguish from other Allium spp. cause of its dense umbels of flowers and dense tufts of very narrow leaves. The umbels of other Allium spp. are typically more loose and there are conspicuous gaps between their flowers. The basal leaves of other Allium spp. are either solid and flattened or they are more terete and hollow. If they are the latter, then they are somewhat broader in circumference at their bases than the leaves of chives. Chives doesn't produce aerial bulblets, whereas Allium vineale (Field Garlic), Allium canadense (Wild Garlic), and some cultivated Allium spp. almost always do. Two varieties of Chives are sometimes described: the typical variety and var. sibiricum. The latter tends to be a taller and more robust plant, otherwise these two varieties are very similar to each other and they have a tendency to intergrade. | <urn:uuid:1f5571b2-a8f9-4dd5-b073-c41d9fec9336> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/weeds/plants/chives.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00139-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940288 | 1,422 | 2.625 | 3 |
For the past couple of years, Greenpeace has been ringing the bell, taking action and highlighting the risks and dangers of drilling for oil in the Arctic, the last great wilderness on Earth, and one of the most fragile ecosystems on the planet. Drilling there will almost certainly lead to oils spills, and would be devastating for the people, polar bears, walrus, seals, caribou or any of the other amazing creatures who lives depend on the arctic environment.
For the oil industry - particularly the international oil companies (IOCs) like Shell - the Arctic is the last frontier. With the end of easy to extract oil, the only places left to go are environmentally risky, technically challenging and financially crippling, like the ultra deepwater of the Gulf of Mexico, the Canadian tar sands and now the Arctic.
We’ve exposed the financial risks for the tar sands (see here and here) and now it looks like Lloyds of London - who set the gold standard for risk assessment - are getting in on the act, but this time for the Arctic. In the Guardian, Lloyds and the respected think tank Chatham House have reported that the Arctic oil rush risks ruining a fragile ecosystem. A spill there, in general terms, would constitute “a unique and hard to manage risk”. You can read Lloyd's report - Arctic opening: Opportunity and Risk in the High North - here (pdf).
And digging into the details of the risk that a company like Shell is running in the Arctic is even more worrying. Arctic offshore exploration is a priority for Shell: its Alaskan project alone accounted for about one-seventh of Shell’s total exploration spending in 2011. Yet at the same time that they’re spending huge amounts of their investor’s money to find oil, they’ve also admitted that they actually haven’t calculated the financial impact of a worst case spill scenario in the Arctic. It’s important to remember, any spill in the Arctic runs the risk of being a worst case scenario – according to studies of Shell’s response plans in the Canadian Arctic, it would be impossible to stop a spill for seven or eight months of the year.
This is just tip of the iceberg. A detailed examination of Shell’s business plan for the Arctic in the US, Canada and Russia reveals a series of dangerous gambles, both with the fragile environment and with the savings of the members of the pension funds worldwide who own shares in Shell. Even if Shell isn’t worried about the risks they’re running, we are. And the City should be too.
Please ask environmental fund providers to ditch Arctic drillers like Shell, now » | <urn:uuid:cac37adf-af4e-4573-bad4-abcefd83d374> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.greenpeace.org/new-zealand/en/blog/the-financial-risks-of-arctic-drilling/blog/39932/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00200-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92437 | 556 | 2.734375 | 3 |
PCAT Flashcard Study System uses repetitive methods of study to teach you how to break apart and quickly solve difficult test questions on the Pharmacy College Admission Test.
Study after study has shown that spaced repetition is the most effective form of learning, and nothing beats flashcards when it comes to making repetitive learning fun and fast.
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Disclaimer: Mometrix Media LLC, the publisher of this product, is not affiliated with or endorsed by any official testing organization. All organizational and test names are trademarks of their respective owners.
Tags: how hard is pcat test , pcat | <urn:uuid:b7379409-6de6-41d7-a0d3-784b53661c04> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.appszoom.com/android_applications/education/pcat-flashcard-study-system_bzxge.html?nav=related | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392069.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00103-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.817655 | 382 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Dengue fever is transmitted by Aedes Mosquito, they transfer the virus from an infected person to another while making their round sucking blood for their reproductive cycle. Adult female mosquito need blood to produce eggs. Once ready to lay eggs they will search body of water to do their job and the rest will be following their normal cycle from eggs to larvae to pupae then back to Mosquito.
Photo : www.mosquitoes.orgTo reduce the mosquito population we need to break this cycle, either getting rid of stagnant water catchment, putting poison to the water itself or having fish to eliminate those larvae. Stagnant water are very difficult to get rid of, it is not the pots and containers around the house which is easy to get rid of that I am worried about but the drains that around any housing area over here in Malaysia are the main culprit.
After rainy season will come a dry spell, this is the period where mosquito will have access to water patches that has not dried up which is stagnant and ready to accept mosquito eggs. All they need is about 5 days to get from eggs to mosquito.
Photo from : www.michican.govOver the years that I practice Aquaponics, can't help but notice that whenever we have fish ponds or container with live fish, mosquito population within that area drop a little. I did a short experiment to see whether mosquito will lay eggs in an aquaponics system. The result is a big "YES" they will, this is due to the aquaponics flush and drain cycle has that moments of still water.
Photo below are few mosquito larvae within my aquaponics set that I use for this experiment.
Many larvae can be found in this small set, which I then eliminate by introducing fish.
Larvae can be easily controlled by adding fish like Tilapia, Tiger Barb or even Gourami to the container hence discontinuing the mosquito reproductive cycle. In this set I use Tiger Barb which is colorful and cheap, Guppy is not that effective since they are not that aggresive and easily die off.
Base on this I made my ornamental set, to provide an easy place for mosquito to lay their eggs which we will then be able to stop their cycle of reproduction by using fish.
Providing an easy place for mosquito to breed will ensure they don't breed in area where you will not have access to, like drains and gutters. Ornamental or even Practical Aquaponics set we have an easier way to help reduce mosquito population and at least do our part in reducing the Dengue epidemic that we are currently experiencing.
Just remember there is no cure for Dengue but we could help to reduce it. | <urn:uuid:f99c8390-6f92-4ed4-8cf7-504e9439d648> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.affnanaquaponics.com/2014/02/aquaponics-one-way-to-reduce-aedes.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397873.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00149-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960421 | 555 | 3.0625 | 3 |
A 33-year-old middle school principal in Houston is being accused of having an inappropriate relationship with one of her 14-year-old students. There are about 10 news stories like this every day, so I’m not very interested in the details of this one, except when it comes to the principal’s name:
She probably thinks her name is pronounced “Kimberly.” No doubt that’s what her parents had in mind when they named her. But there’s a problem here. “Cimberli,” spelled that way, would be pronounced “Simberly.”
English has rules, people! Many of those rules have exceptions, yes, but there are rules!
The letter “C,” when followed by an “I,” “E,” or “Y,” will always make an “S” sound: circus, cinema, cinnamon, Cynthia, century, censor, prophecy, concentrate, calcium, principal, officer, etc. (Words like artificial and special have a “sh” sound rather than “sss,” but the “C” is still functioning as an “S.”)
If you name your daughter Cimberli, you are not being original or clever or unique. All you’re doing is failing. | <urn:uuid:df6289cb-3cb7-4971-bf10-4936dbe002d9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ericdsnider.com/blog/2007/10/25/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00047-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97319 | 294 | 2.578125 | 3 |
The influential musical pioneers from Appalachia whose recordings lifted spirits during the Great Depression.
The 1968 Democratic National Convention saw a clash of political visions on the convention floor and violence outside on the streets of Chicago.
The story of Chicago's dramatic transformation from a swampy frontier town to a massive metropolis in the nineteenth century.
An African American minister whose dream of ending racism galvanized millions of Americans in the civil rights movement.
The New Deal program CCC put three million young men to work in camps across America.
From a small-town Texas murder emerged a landmark civil rights case that successfully challenged Jim Crow-style discrimination against Mexican Americans.
A president who rose from a broken childhood to become one of the most successful politicians in modern American history, and one of the most complex and conflicted characters to ever stride across the public stage.
In September 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev made an unprecedented visit to America, creating a media circus as he traveled from coast to coast.
The internationally famous carnival of delights in New York was the birthplace of the hot dog and the roller coaster.
The unbounded optimism of the Jazz Age and the shocking consequences when reality finally hit on October 29th, 1929.
The Last Stand, the final act of General George Custer's larger-than-life career, played out on a grand stage with a spellbound public engrossed in the drama. Part of the Wild West collection. | <urn:uuid:a716377e-f13b-4106-99b3-94e013693ade> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/filter/C/?flavour=mobile | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398209.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00066-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914176 | 295 | 2.75 | 3 |
What is Organizational Culture?
Organizational culture is a set of shared values, the unwritten rules which are often taken for granted, that guide the employees towards acceptable and rewarding behavior.
The organizational culture exists at two distinct levels, visible and hidden. The visible aspect of the organization is reflected in artifacts, symbols and visible behavior of employees. The hidden aspect is related to underlying values and assumptions that employees make regarding the acceptable and unacceptable behaviors.
- Artifacts: These are visible components of culture, they are easy to formulate, have some physical shape, yet its perception varies from one individual to another.
- Rituals and ceremonies: New hire trainings, new hire welcome lunches, annual corporate conferences, awards, offsite meetings and trainings are few examples of most common rituals and ceremonies.
- Symbols & Slogans: These are high level abstraction of the culture; they effectively summarize organization’s intrinsic behavior. Symbols are rituals, awards or incentives that symbolize preferred behavior; “employee of the month” is one such example of a symbol. Slogans are linguistic phrases that are intended for the same reason, “customer first” is an example of corporate slogan.
- Stories: These are narratives based on true events, but often exaggerated as it told from old to new employees. The stories of the organization’s founders or other dominant leaders are the most common ones, the challenges they had faced and how they dealt with those hurdles etc. In some form, these are stories of the organization’s heroes, employees relate the current system due to events that had happened in the past and stories are the medium that carries the legacies.
- Values: These are conscious and affective desires of the organization, the kind of behavior it wants to promote and reward. Usually every organization sells its cultural values through some artifacts like written symbols or slogans and publishes them in various mediums. However, the true values can only be tested within the organization, through the employees, based on their collective opinion about the experience of the values.
- Ethics: It is the code of moral principals and values that distinguishes the right behavior from wrong. Ethical values are different from rule of law which is dictated by the legal system of the country and have to be followed anyway. However, the laws themselves are based on some moral principles and thus there is some natural overlap between ethics and the laws. The geographic location of the organization and the culture of the place also influence the ethics, this is particularly important for multi-national organization.
Irrespective how an organization depicts its ethical values, they can be tested by the two criteria.
- Commitment: Whether the organization views its employees as resources required for business activities or it intends to invest in long term relationship with its employees; reflects the organization’s commitment to its employees. Commitment can be in various forms, maternity leave, life-work balance, unpaid leaves, it’s strategies for downsizing or globalization; are some examples.
- Career: The ethical values are also echoed in organization’s interest and investment in the career development of its employees. Whether it values specialization and narrow career paths that runs the risk of being outdated along with technology or it values broad skill development and offers training in new technologies at its own cost.
- Empowerment: The social culture and the structure of the organization influences the underlying values related to the amount of employee empowerment.
- Control/Decision: Management by nature is about control, the difference is how it enforces it. Well defined guidance, job description and authority of taking decisions are formal methods of control, while team or collective decision making is a social or cultural method of control. The functional or divisional structure encourages formal control while process or network structures promote a culture of employee empowerment.
- Responsibility: The authority of decision making is closely related to issue of responsibilities. The culture of responsibility is measured by observing whether the individuals are expected to take responsibility of their decisions or there is a collective responsibility in case of team decisions.
- Assumptions: Both the artifacts and the values give rise to assumptions the employees make about the organization's culture. Finally, it’s the assumptions that govern how an employee determines the right behavior and feels about his job and career, how the culture actually operates within the organizational system.
- Failures: The implication of failure is the most influential assumption that every employee derives from all the artifacts, stories, myths and values. The fear of failure and how it would be perceived determines the actual empowerment felt by the employee; the stated values vs. practiced factuality.
Foundation of the Organizational Culture
Organizations are mini social systems that are less complex than their counterparts at city or national level. The foundation of the organizational culture is also rooted in three distinct social entities, anthropology, sociology and psychology.
- Anthropological: It uses the physical artifacts like symbols, stories and values to study the cultural viewpoint of the employees who practice it, and how it adds meaning to their jobs.
- Sociological: It is a study of the different group behaviors in the organization, their causes and their consequences on its culture. The method of the study comprises of identifying certain key attributes and then quantifying them using questionnaires, surveys and interviews.
- Psychological: It is study of factors that influence the individual’s behavior. The key difference from sociology is that it is behavioral analysis at individual level rather than application of psychology on a social system. How a person behaves individually can be quite different from how he behaves in a group. As an example, humans by nature use statistical knowledge in making decisions, however they apply it rather poorly. The last positive or negative outcome influences our decision more than statistical average; such observations can be used effectively in growing a desired culture.
What Influences Organizational Culture?
The culture is influenced by the other entire contextual dimensions; purpose, environment, technology & size. Thus it is futile to expect or create a culture that is not aligned to these factors.. A lot of studies on organizational culture have been wrongly focused only on analyzing the organization behavior and its contributions to organization’s effectiveness. However, the culture is not a separate, self sufficient entity in itself, but rather one part of a whole.
Types of Organizational Cultures
In case of organizational design, while the contextual dimensions define the structure; the culture should aim at providing adequate reinforcement to the structure. The organizational culture can be accessed by evaluating the contextual factors and the structural dimensions. In some way, one can argue that the study of organization’s structural design itself is indicative of type of culture it has, after all the culture is a consequence of how the organization is controlled and what influences its operations. It should also be noted that in large organizations, different functional units might have or require different type of cultures.
There are four most common and identifiable types of organizational cultures:
: The organization has purpose of differentiation, it strives for innovation and competition, it requires research & development and its size is rather small, its control structure is horizontal. The culture encourages risk taking, values new ideas, is quick to detect and react to external changes and rewards ingenuity.
- Market: The organization has clear financial & sales goals and is focused on customer satisfaction. The external environment is not rapidly changing, is stable but demands efficiency, the control structural can be either horizontal & hierarchical. The organizational culture is competitive and demanding, success is measured by market share and penetration.
- Clan: It is aimed at efficiency and has internal focus, it encourages employee participation, and it values and often prides itself by taking exceptional care of its employees, just like a clan. It values employee empowerment by having a horizontal structure and creates a strong sense of identity in its employees.The clan leadership has strong concern for people, they value loyalty and traditions.
- Bureaucratic: It operates in a stable environment and has a hierarchal control structure; the organization has a lot of processes, rules and policies that guide the day to day operations.The leadership is focused on efficiency, predictability and low cost.
Why we need Organizational Culture?
- Common Identity: The culture gives a sense of collective identity to all the employees in the organization, it creates values and beliefs that go beyond the personal aspirations of the employees.
- Guidance: The culture creates good working relationships and promotes ethical communication between employees. It also helps employees in making decisions in the situations where there are no formal rules or policies, situations that haven’t been experienced yet.
- Justification of actions: The culture evolves from prior precedences, when employee behavior and decisions are guided by the culture, their actions are better understood by the management. | <urn:uuid:1be9f547-c4ac-4e39-a9c1-70ebb625177b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.practical-management.com/Organization-Development/Organization-Culture.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00168-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939441 | 1,787 | 3.34375 | 3 |
On December 16, 1775, the literary world would be forever changed by the birth of a baby girl. The proud parents were Reverend George Austen and Mrs. Cassandra Austen…the baby was to be Jane Austen. There is no doubt that Austen’s rich and colorful childhood in Steventon, Hampshire, filled with childhood plays, stories, and books, influenced and fostered her writing.
Austen began writing her first book at the age of 23; this book was Northanger Abbey, a parody of the Gothic genre, which had steadily been gaining popularity since its inception in 1764 with the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto.
At the age of 26, Jane and the rest of the Austen family, as a result of her father’s retirement from the Anglican clergy, took up residence in the resort town of Bath. Coincidentally, many of Austen’s novels are fully or partially set in this social venue.
Jane would again relocate after her father’s death in 1805. She, her mother, and her sister Cassandra, who was her ever-present companion, resided in Southampton with her brother Frank and his family. After only a few short years here, the Austen ladies finally settled with Edward Austen, Jane’s brother. Edward possessed an estate in Chawton. This was to be Jane’s final move before her untimely death.
Austen continued writing, eventually producing 6 novels, all of which are staples of classic literature. Austen’s final novel, Persuasion, was published posthumously in 1818. Jane passed away on July 18, 1817 due to failing health.
Despite the fact that Austen was only 41 when she died, she managed to create an impressive and lasting contribution to literature. All of her novels have been transformed into pieces either for television or film. Her novels are still taught in high schools and universities around the world. It is Austen’s ability to not only investigate and probe humanity, but her tact for articulating her finds that has and will sustain her works.
Northanger Abbey is also seen as didactic novel. Austen not only teaches young ladies what to live like, but she also shows authors and readers alike what a genuinely good book is made of.
Austen also employees free indirect speech, which incorporates several different perspectives into one narrative. This allows for an interesting relationship between the reader, characters, and narrators.
In Northanger Abbey, Austen specifically parodies Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, a stock novel in the Gothic genre. Her main character, Catherine Morland, is the exact opposite of the Gothic heroine; she is ugly, boring, and has trouble attracting a man. Catherine also finds herself in situations that are decidedly normal and plain, but she believes are truly supernatural. In these ways, Austen parodies the Gothic genre, but manages to create a unique novel.
Northanger Abbey is a Gothic parody.
Austen composes most of her novels during the Regency Period in
The Eighteenth Century and the literature produced during it are known for Neo-Classical elements, as well as scientific and philosophical content, which is linked with the Enlightenment. The Eighteenth Century also saw the rise of the novel as a major genre in
The Romantic Period was a sharp contrast to the strict rules and guidelines of the Eighteenth Century. Romantic literature features themes of the exotic, nature, and freedom. Rather than looking to reason and logic for wisdom, the Romantics believed that knowledge was gleaned from nature. Some key figures were Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, Coleridge, and Byron.
Gothic literature is typically grouped with Romanticism and is recognized as a subset of it. The Gothic genre, which began with Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, typically includes elements of the supernatural, fantasy, and mystery, but is not merely a sensational genre, as many believe. Gothic fiction places the reader in interesting situations and settings…such as subterraneous chambers and ancient castles. The reader becomes a character within these texts. Gothic pieces tend to use many psychological elements that force readers into examining themselves and their societies. The true source of the Gothic’s horror is its reflexive nature; the Gothic genre is frightening because its reflective narratives force readers to become one with the plot, characters, and narratives, which, in turn, leads to reader to measure him or herself against both the normal and abnormal. The Gothic is about examination, which is its most terrifying aspect. | <urn:uuid:dd24d883-5454-4d81-97ca-c13f84caedb9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://austensgothicparody.blogspot.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397565.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00019-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970989 | 950 | 2.96875 | 3 |
EARLY STAGE ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE
Persons with early stage Alzheimer’s disease may appear “normal” at first...but their deficits may interfere with their ability to perform certain tasks and follow daily routines.
Persons with early stage Alzheimer’s disease may exhibit the following symptoms:
Memory loss for recent events, which can manifest as...
- Asking repeated questions
- Telling the same story multiple times
- Misplacing things
Disorientation, which can manifest as...
- Becoming lost in places that used to be familiar
- Difficulty following directions
- Difficulty keeping track of dates and appointments
Aphasia/Anomia, which can manifest as...
- Difficulty finding the right word when speaking
- Difficulty recalling names
- Calling objects or people by the wrong name
- Difficulty with written language
Personality changes, which can manifest as...
- Becoming more mellow or withdraw
- Becoming more irritable or agitated
- Becoming more self-centered or inconsiderate of others
Trouble with routines, which can manifest as...
- Difficulty handling household responsibilities, such as balancing the checkbook or preparing a meal
- Difficulty organizing the steps involved in completing complex tasks
- Forgetting what has already been done and what hasn’t
Decline in hygiene, which can manifest as...
- Becoming untidy in appearance; failing to groom appropriately
- Forgetting to bathe regularly, or becoming resistant to personal hygiene tasks | <urn:uuid:7641f316-dd45-4c92-aada-a3a51d961c61> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://liaf.org/alzheimers/early-stage.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00122-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914972 | 319 | 2.890625 | 3 |
A condition in which the pigment is lost from areas of the skin, causing whitish patches, often with no clear cause. Also called leucoderma.
- For 15 years she has had symmetrical patches of vitiligo on her hands, elbows, hips, and neck.
- These patches are frequently confused with vitiligo or leucoderma, in which the patches are usually larger and have well defined convex borders, sometimes with a rim of hyper or increased pigmentation.
- Leucoderma or vitiligo is a common disease and affects almost three to four per cent of the population.
Late 16th century: from Latin, literally 'tetter'.
For editors and proofreaders
Definition of vitiligo in:
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed. | <urn:uuid:6ecac6bb-887d-4ff8-8ddd-88cdc4699548> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/vitiligo | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397865.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00168-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93635 | 185 | 3.1875 | 3 |
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A good way to help your young tree stay healthy is to prune it wisely. The best time to prune a tree is late winter, just before the leaves emerge, but right now is the time to inspect for dead and damaged branches—it’s easier to spot them now, when the leaves are gone.
Listen to BOB VILA ON PRUNING YOUNG TREES or read the text below:
When it’s time to prune, those dead or damaged branches should be the first to go. Make your cut at the branch collar, which is the ridge in the bark that surrounds the branch where it attaches to the trunk; that’s where the tree heals best. Don’t cut into the collar, but be sure to cut just outside it. Don’t leave a stub, where pests and disease can enter and damage the tree.
Next to go should be branches that cross or rub. Cut off the smaller of the pair. Then cut off branches that point downward. As you work, keep an eye on how much of the tree you’ve cut—you don’t want to remove more than 15 or 20 percent in one session. As spring approaches, those branches will bear the green leaves that the tree will need to turn sunlight into food, so you don’t want to take off too many. You can always go back next year and take off a few more.
Bob Vila Radio is a newly launched daily radio spot carried on more than 75 stations around the country (and growing). You can get your daily dose here, by listening to—or reading—Bob’s 60-second home improvement radio tip of the day. | <urn:uuid:38d2d016-2190-4553-8b17-4e99a325d547> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bobvila.com/articles/bob-vila-radio-pruning-young-trees/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00131-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928867 | 394 | 2.546875 | 3 |
South-Western's Learning With Computers Levels K-5 is a series of project-based keyboarding books that teach and reinforce computer application skills to elementary students. This series covers the computer literacy skills established by the National Educational Technology Standards or NETS. Students learn to use a word processor, the Internet, graphics and presentation, spreadsheet, and database software while integrating core-curriculum skills of language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies. Additional cross-curricular activities to reinforce the computer skills taught are available at the end of each of the projects. Learning with Computers Level 1 builds on the computer awareness skills introduced in the Level K book. Students gain more proficiency in keyboarding skills as additional key reaches are introduced. Awareness skills introduced include: using Save As, inserting clip art, centering text, identify and use draw tools in drawing software, and more! This 128 page text is softcover, top spiral, and has an easel back. It is a standalone product that also supports Bernie's Typing Travels Keyboarding software.
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Rent Learning with Computers Level 1 1st edition today, or search our site for other textbooks by Diana Trabel. Every textbook comes with a 21-day "Any Reason" guarantee. Published by CENGAGE Learning.
Need help ASAP? We have you covered with 24/7 instant online tutoring. Connect with one of our tutors now. | <urn:uuid:c1a94b31-8e22-42e5-ae60-f60d6e2ad635> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.chegg.com/textbooks/learning-with-computers-level-1-1st-edition-9780538437820-0538437820?ii=5&trackid=d3581dd7&omre_ir=1&omre_sp= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392099.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00084-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930235 | 290 | 3.484375 | 3 |
|INT'AL CLASS'N OF DISEASES | AIDS GLOSSARY | ANATOMY | DRUGS | USA STATS | CHINA STATS | GENOME DICTIONARY|
HEALTH TOPICS A TO Z
Epilepsy: historical overview
Source: The World Health Organization
Basic concepts surrounding epilepsy in ancient Indian medicine were refined and developed during the Vedic period of 4500-1500BC. In the Ayurvedic literature of Charaka Samhita (which has been dated to 400BC and is the oldest existing description of the complete Ayurvedic medical system), epilepsy is described as "apasmara" which means "loss of consciousness". The Charaka Samhita contains abundant references to all aspects of epilepsy including symptomatology, etiology, diagnosis and treatment.
Another ancient and detailed account of epilepsy is on a Babylonian tablet in the British Museum in London. This is a chapter from a Babylonian textbook of medicine comprising 40 tablets dating as far back as 2000BC. The tablet accurately records many of the different seizure types we recognize today. In contrast to the Ayurvedic medicine of Charaka Samhita, however, it emphasizes the supernatural nature of epilepsy, with each seizure type associated with the name of a spirit or god - usually evil. Treatment was, therefore, largely a spiritual matter.
The Babylonian view was the forerunner of the Greek concept of "the sacred disease", as described in the famous treatise by Hippocrates (dated to the 5th Century BC). The term "seleniazetai" was also often used to describe people with epilepsy because they were thought to be affected by the moon's phases or by the moon god (Selene), and hence the notion of "moonstruck" or "lunatic" (the Latinized version) arose. Hippocrates, however, believed that epilepsy was not sacred, but a disorder of the brain. He recommended physical treatments and stated that if the disease became chronic, it was incurable.
While both Hippocrates and the Charaka Samhita provided this less spiritualized understanding, the perception that epilepsy was a brain disorder did not begin to take root until the 18th and 19th Centuries AD. The intervening 2,000 years were dominated by more supernatural views. In Europe, for example, St Valentine has been the patron saint of people with epilepsy since medieval times. Sites where St Valentine was thought to have lived or visited became pilgrimage destinations to get cured. These sites included Rome and Terni (where St Valentine was Bishop) in Italy, Ruffach in France (where a hospital for epilepsy was later built), Poppel in Belgium, and Passau in Germany.
Throughout this time people with epilepsy were viewed with fear, suspicion and misunderstanding and were subjected to enormous social stigma. People with epilepsy were treated as outcasts and punished. Some, however, succeeded and became famous the world over. Among these people were Julius Caesar, Czar Peter the Great of Russia, Pope Pius IX, the writer Fedor Dostoevsky and the poet Lord Byron.
In the 19th Century, as neurology emerged as a new discipline distinct from psychiatry, the concept of epilepsy as a brain disorder became more widely accepted, especially in Europe and the United States of America (USA). This helped to reduce the stigma associated with the disorder. Bromide, introduced in 1857 as the world's first effective anti-epileptic drug, became widely used in Europe and the USA during the second half of the last century.
A hospital for the "paralyzed and epileptic" was established in London in 1857. At the same time a more humanitarian approach to the social problems of epilepsy resulted in the establishment of epilepsy 'colonies' for care and employment. Examples include Dianalund in Denmark, Chalfont in England, Bielefeld-Bethel in Germany, Heemstede in Holland, Sandviakain in Norway and the epilepsy centre in Zurich in Switzerland.
The foundation of our modern understanding of the derangement of function seen in epilepsy (pathophysiology) was also laid in the 19th Century with the work of Hughlings Jackson. In 1873 this London neurologist proposed that seizures were the result of sudden brief electro-chemical discharges in the brain. He also suggested that the character of the seizures depended on the location and function of the site of the discharges. Soon afterwards the electrical excitability of the brain in animals and man was discovered by David Ferrier in London, Gustav Theodor Fritsch and Eduard Hitzig in Germany.
Working in Germany during the 1920s, Hans Berger, a psychiatrist, developed the human electroencephalograph (EEG - brainwaves'). Its important application from the 1930s onwards was in the field of epilepsy. The EEG revealed the presence of electrical discharges in the brain. It also showed different patterns of brainwave discharges associated with different seizure types. The EEG also helped to locate the site of seizure discharges and expanded the possibilities of neurosurgical treatments, which became much more widely available from the 1950s onwards in London, Montreal and Paris.
During the first half of this century the main drugs for treatment were phenobarbitone (first used in 1912) and phenytoin (first used in 1938). Since the 1960s, there has been an accelerating process of drug discovery, based in part on a much greater understanding of the electrochemical activities of the brain, especially the excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters. In developed countries in recent years, several new drugs have come into the market and seizures can now be controlled in 70% to 80% of newly diagnosed children and adults.
Another recent stimulus towards the understanding and treatment of epilepsy in the last few decades has been the development of neuroimaging equipment. Such technology has revealed many of the more subtle brain lesions responsible for epilepsy. Any type of brain lesion (for example, trauma, congenital, developmental, infection, vascular, tumour, degenerative etc.) might lead to epilepsy in some people.
During the last few decades greater attention has been paid to quality of life, i.e; psychological and social issues, for people with epilepsy, although progress is slow and services are still poor. It is also the case that most of the advances in developed countries are of relevance but not available for the 80% of people with epilepsy who live in developing countries -stigma is still the same in both developed and developing countries. For many of these people supernatural views, social stigma and discrimination still prevail. Even in developed countries the disorder is still shrouded in secrecy and people prefer not to reveal or discuss their condition.
Of the 50 million people in the world with epilepsy, some 35 million have no access to appropriate treatment. This is either because services are non-existent or because epilepsy is not viewed as a medical problem or a treatable brain disorder.
In 1997 the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) and the International Bureau for Epilepsy (IBE) joined forces with the World Health Organization to establish the Global Campaign Against Epilepsy to address these issues. (The ILAE was founded in 1909 and is a professional organization with chapters in 60 countries. The IBE was founded in 1961 and is a lay organization with around 55 national chapters). The aim of the ILAE/IBE/WHO Global Campaign Against Epilepsy is to improve prevention, treatment, care and services for people with epilepsy. It also aims to raise public awareness about the disorder. It is hoped that the end result will be a supportive environment in which people with epilepsy can live better.
Sources: The World Health Organization | <urn:uuid:7311829e-b05f-46aa-b487-170183376220> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://allcountries.org/health/epilepsy_historical_overview.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00033-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964306 | 1,576 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Leising, A. W.. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, [email protected]
, . W.. ,
STARVATION, SATIATION, AND AREA-RESTRICTED SEARCH IN ACARTIA CLAUSI
This study examines whether copepods exhibit area-restricted search, and if so, what effect starvation has on this behavior. Area-restricted search can be a useful foraging strategy for copepods, depending on the patchiness of their food as dictated by the physical environment; e.g. thin layers. Acartia clausi were placed within small aquaria containing different concentrations of the diatom, Skeletonema costatum. Once placed in the aquaria, the animals' swimming behavior was videotaped at high magnification for 1.5 hours at dusk time, using a dim red light. Copepods were starved for different lengths of time before the start of each experiment. Replicate beakers containing the same concentration of food as the video-taped aquaria and copepods that underwent the same acclimation procedures were sampled at 5 minute intervals for gut fluorescence analysis, as an estimate of the gut levels of the video-taped copepods. Fourteen different parameters of swimming behavior were analyzed from the videos for differences between the treatment aquaria and control aquaria containing no food, and for trends of behavior versus time and gut content. Accurate determination of these parameters should allow fairly accurate modeling of the short term feeding and displacement of copepods if the distribution of their food and the physical environment relevant to their foraging ambit are known.
Day: Monday, Feb. 1
Time: 02:45 - 03:00pm
Location: Sweeney Center | <urn:uuid:659b611c-5e97-47e7-bd41-9616804b574f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.aslo.org/meetings/santafe1999/abstracts/SS01MO0245S.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00052-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931899 | 357 | 2.984375 | 3 |
NASA's New Horizons On New Post-Pluto MissionThe spacecraft that gave us the first close-up views of Pluto now has a much smaller object in its sights.
Johns Hopkins Pluto Spacecraft Is A 'Gift That Keeps On Giving'The Solar System's most distant world is linked to scientists right here in Maryland.
NASA Releases More Images Of Pluto's Icy Plains Mankind's first close-up look at Pluto did not disappoint Wednesday: The pictures showed ice mountains on Pluto about as high as the Rockies and chasms on its big moon Charon that appear six times deeper than the Grand Canyon.
Peaks On Pluto, Canyons On CharonA billion mile mission based right here in Maryland. Late Wednesday, NASA releases more incredible photos of Pluto from the New Horizons probe.
Pluto Close-Up: Spacecraft Makes Flyby Of Icy, Mystery WorldPluto is now in the bag. The New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach today to the dwarf planet.
Little Pluto Bigger Than Scientists Thought As Flyby LoomsNine and a half years is a long time to travel, but Tuesday morning, the New Horizons spacecraft will reach its destination.
Pluto Just 4 Weeks, 20 Million Miles Away For SpacecraftNASA's New Horizons spacecraft is at Pluto's doorstep, following an incredible journey of nine years and 3 billion miles.
Md.-Controlled Spacecraft Closes In On PlutoSixty million miles and closing in on Pluto.
Spacecraft Built By JHU Getting Closer To PlutoPluto is three billion miles from Maryland, but a spacecraft built by the Hopkins Applied Physics Lab is finally closing in on the dwarf planet.
Spacecraft To Give Earth First Close-Up Look Of PlutoClosing in on the really far out. If everything goes right, a spacecraft built and controlled in Maryland will come out of hibernation Saturday night.
New Horizons Spacecraft Is 1 Year Away From Closing In On PlutoIt's one long road trip, but man's first voyage to Pluto is almost over.
Name Pluto's MoonsYou can help name the moons of Pluto. Click on the link for more information. | <urn:uuid:8fc7544c-98e1-4753-a492-866c5f33bc64> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/tag/pluto/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392069.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00105-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.882852 | 439 | 2.921875 | 3 |
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April 12, 2011
BOULDER—Aircraft safety is getting a boost from a new computer-generated forecast that provides pilots with critical weather information on the likelihood of encountering dangerous in-flight icing conditions.
Each year in the United States, 20-40 aircraft accidents are linked to in-flight icing encounters. Icing conditions, created by water droplets from clouds that freeze on the surface of an aircraft, can affect air travel anywhere, especially during colder months. Hazardous icing conditions cost the U.S. aviation industry an estimated $20 million annually in injuries, aircraft damage, and fuel.
The Forecast Icing Product with Severity, or FIP-Severity, provides 12-hour icing forecasts that are updated hourly for pilots, air traffic controllers, and other users of aviation weather information who plan their flight paths over the continental United States. It was developed by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), with funding from the Federal Aviation Administration.
“In-flight icing can create extremely dangerous conditions for pilots,” says NCAR scientist Marcia Politovich, who leads in-flight icing research at NCAR. “Recognizing the potential for icing conditions to develop over time and the degree of severity are both crucial for safe flight planning.”
FIP-Severity will most benefit commuter planes and small aircraft, says Politovich. Such aircraft are more vulnerable to icing hazards because they cruise at lower, ice-prone altitudes, below 24,000 feet. They also may lack mechanisms common on larger jets that prevent ice buildup, such as heated wing edges.
In January, the Aviation Digital Data Service began displaying icing products generated by the FIP-Severity program. ADDS, which operates out of the National Weather Service’s Aviation Weather Center in Kansas City, provides digital and graphical weather forecasts, analysis, and observations to the aviation community.
FIP-Severity is a computer-based forecast of the probability of icing based on an analysis of temperature and humidity data associated with clouds, which are the source of in-flight icing. The automated algorithm gathers real-time information from satellites, radars, weather models, surface stations, and pilot reports, and determines the probability of encountering icing, its expected severity, and the likelihood of large droplet icing conditions.
This capability is an update to NCAR’s original Forecast Icing Product (FIP), which has been in operation for several years but only calculated an uncalibrated icing “potential.” The Current Icing Product (CIP) depicts severity and probability of an encounter with icing, but only for current conditions. Requests from users for more detailed information led to the development of FIP-Severity.
"This tool improves users' abilities to map flight paths across the country with safety and efficiency in mind,” says Politovich.
Icing conditions require supercooled liquid water drops—cloud drops, drizzle, or rain that exist at temperatures lower than 32°F (0°C).
In-flight icing occurs when water droplets from clouds freeze on the surface of an aircraft. “Supercooled” large drops with diameters greater than 50 microns are particularly dangerous because they rapidly impede an airplane’s aerodynamics. Icing can increase drag and decrease lift, ultimately causing the pilot to lose control of the aircraft.
Both local- and regional-scale weather patterns, particularly air rising over frontal systems or mountain ranges, play a role in creating icing conditions. “We often see warm or cold fronts, low pressure systems, and rising convective air masses associated with icing encounters,” Politovich says.
Commercial jets generally fly above 29,000 feet, much higher than typical icing altitudes, and are equipped with de-icing systems. Even with these systems, however, commercial pilots prefer to avoid icing risks. Adding severity information to FIP assists pilots in safe and efficient route planning around potential hazards.
The FIP-Severity computer software incorporates measurements of temperature at the tops of clouds, humidity levels in vertical columns in the atmosphere, and other atmospheric variables. It then employs a “fuzzy logic” algorithm, somewhat similar to the human thought process, to identify cloud types and the likelihood of precipitation aloft.
“Fuzzy logic helps us analyze and discern among information that can sometimes conflict so we can more accurately identify those clouds that present an especially high risk of icing,” Politovich says. “The program weighs each factor associated with icing, and once all the data have been examined, it provides a probability and severity forecast.”
A study in 2004 by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board found that in-flight icing was responsible for dozens of accidents a year, mostly among smaller, general aviation aircraft. An estimated 819 people died in accidents related to in-flight icing from 1982 to 2000, with most accidents occurring between the months of October and March, according to the study.
This research is in response to requirements and funding by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of the FAA.
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research under sponsorship by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. | <urn:uuid:d843f329-015a-43ed-b434-279b93ce6a25> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/news/4296/aviation-safety-new-computer-tool-forecasts-icing-hazards | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00135-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917198 | 1,149 | 2.875 | 3 |
|Photo by Jack, jmtimages, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license|
Historical Marker text for Blanco County Courthouse, Johnson City, Texas:
"Designed by San Antonio architect Henry T. Phelps, the 1916 Blanco County Courthouse was the first permanent courthouse built after the seat of government moved from Blanco to Johnson City in 1890. Serving as contractor for the project was stonemason James Waterston, who had come from Scotland to Texas in 1883 to aid in the construction of the state Capitol. The Classical Revival limestone structure features Doric columns and a domed cupola. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1983"
Johnson City was not always the county seat. Reconfiguration of the county (with additions from and subtractions to surrounding counties) resulted in Johnson City being closer to the geographic center of the county than the former seat, Blanco. A courthouse built in the latter town in 1885 was abandoned just six years later when Johnson City (not surprisingly, founded by relatives of former president Lyndon B. Johnson) won a hotly-contested election to become the county seat.
text only © Amanda Pape - 2010 | <urn:uuid:b76be0ca-56e2-4ea8-92a8-365de8270197> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://abt-unk.blogspot.com/2010/12/courthouse-christmas-blanco-county.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00175-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952738 | 248 | 3.296875 | 3 |
1 Sobering disclaimer: The family of compounds known as alcohols are all toxins that can kill you, whether instantly, quickly, or gradually.
2 Yet one of them—ethyl alcohol, or ethanol—is a staple of the human diet. Archaeologist Patrick McGovern speculates that fermented beverages were made as early as 100,000 years ago, when people first spread out of Africa.
3 The seeds Johnny Appleseed sold to farmers throughout Ohio and Indiana produced apples that were inedible, but perfect for making hard cider.
4 According to the Drunken Monkey Hypothesis, our zest for alcoholic beverages derives from our distant ancestors’ impulse to seek the ripest, most energy-intensive fruits.
5 Designated driver at the zoo: The Malaysian pen-tailed treeshrew routinely chugs the equivalent of nine glasses of wine a night in naturally fermented nectar, and yet it remains fully functional.
6 For a treeshrew, that is.
7 Fermentation occurs when enzymes, typically produced by yeast, convert sugar molecules in grapes or grains into ethanol.
8 That process can also happen in your digestive system, spiking every 100 ml of blood with 0.01 to 0.03 mg of alcohol.
9 Seriously, officer! Japanese doctors have observed patients with “auto-brewery syndrome,” in which high levels of candida yeast in the intestines churn out so much alcohol that they can cause drunkenness.
10 No digestion required. Ethanol is such a small, simple molecule—just two carbon atoms, six hydrogens, and a spare oxygen—that it pours directly out of the stomach and small intestine into the bloodstream.
11 A lean, muscular person will be less affected by drink than someone with more body fat: Water-rich muscle tissues absorb alcohol effectively, preventing it from reaching the brain.
12 Drunkenness is considered an impairment of the neurons in your head, but Australian researchers recently reported that part of the feeling may result instead from the effect of ethanol on the brain’s immune system. The finding could lead to new treatments for alcoholism.
13 The times they are a-changin’. In 1895 Anheuser-Busch launched Malt-Nutrine, a 1.9 percent-alcohol-content beer prescribed by physicians as a tonic for pregnant women and a nutritional beverage for children.
14 Until 1916 whiskey and brandy were listed as scientifically approved medicines in the United States Pharmacopeia.
15 Drinking and driving: Surplus wine in Sweden is distilled into ethanol, mixed with gasoline, and sold to service stations.
16 Ethanol was widely used as an industrial fuel in America until a tax on alcoholic beverages, levied to help pay for the Civil War, prompted a switch to kerosene and methanol.
17 Methanol, a distillation
of wood pulp, can destroy the optic nerves. “Blind drunk” was Prohibition-era slang for damage
caused by drinking grain alcohol that had been cut with methanol by unscrupulous bootleggers.
18 Interstellar brewery: The nebulas where stars form abound with hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen,
the atomic building blocks of alcohol.
19 Sure enough, astronomers found vast quantities of ethanol—as much as that in 400 trillion trillion beers—
in G34.3, an interstellar cloud some 10,000 light-years from Earth.
20 Resolution for 2012: Don’t stare at the cork. The
carbon dioxide in champagne bottles creates 90 pounds of
pressure per square inch, three times the pressure in automobile tires. Flying corks can cause retina detachment, double vision, and blindness. Happy New Year! | <urn:uuid:0696466d-341f-48f2-843e-065d05b29ff4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-alcohol | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396459.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00065-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933859 | 766 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Environmentalists have called on politicians to explore the use of congestion charging to tackle Scotland's transport problems.
Traffic levels have increased by almost 20% since 1994
The plea comes after the extension of the London Congestion Charge, which it is credited with cutting city traffic.
Friends of the Earth (FoE) Scotland said air pollution was harming the health of the public.
Last year, a Scottish Executive study concluded that road tolls were unlikely to be introduced in the near future.
FoE Scotland claimed congestion charges and better public transport could be the solution.
Chief executive Duncan McLaren said: "Building new roads and bridges is not the answer. They will simply lead to more traffic and more congestion.
"We need a package of measures to get people out of their cars and on to safe, convenient and affordable alternatives.
"This means greater investment in public transport, safer streets for cycling and walking, better land-use planning, and the introduction of a fair system of road-user or congestion charging."
The executive report said a previous 'No' vote on congestion charging in Edinburgh and the time and money required to develop a national congestion charging scheme suggested that such schemes were only a distant possibility.
Ministers have pledged to stabilise the volume of traffic on Scotland's roads by 2021.
In 2003 transport accounted for almost a fifth of all Scottish greenhouse gas emissions.
The amount of traffic in Scotland has grown by almost 20% since in 1994.
This weekend marked the fourth anniversary of the London Congestion Charge.
On Monday morning, the scheme was extended to the west of the city, covering most of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea.
Mayor Ken Livingstone said the amount of traffic entering central London during charging hours had been cut by about 20%.
It has also increased bus and bicycle use as well as cutting carbon dioxide emissions.
However, a spokesman for the National Alliance Against Tolls Scotland (NAATS) claimed the London scheme had not reduced congestion or improved air quality.
"The people of Edinburgh saw through these myths two years ago when we had the toll poll. The people of Scotland will not fall for these myths now," he said. | <urn:uuid:53378c5b-b24d-48c7-bb85-44a403d8ce43> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/6373705.stm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403825.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00038-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968177 | 447 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Biceps femoris muscle
|Lateral aspect of right leg. Biceps femoris muscle long head labeled|
|Same picture with the visible part of the short head beneath the long head labeled|
|Latin||musculus biceps femoris|
|Gray's||subject #128 478|
|Origin:||tuberosity of the ischium, linea aspera, femur|
|Insertion:||the head of the fibula which articulates with the back of the lateral tibial condyle|
|Artery:||inferior gluteal artery, perforating arteries, popliteal artery|
|Nerve:||long head: tibial nerve|
short head: common peroneal nerve
|Action:||flexes knee joint, laterally rotates knee joint (when knee is flexed), extends hip joint (long head only)|
Origin and insertion
It has two heads of origin;
- one, the long head, arises from the lower and inner impression on the back part of the tuberosity of the ischium, by a tendon common to it and the semitendinosus, and from the lower part of the sacrotuberous ligament;
- the other, the short head, arises from the lateral lip of the linea aspera, between the adductor magnus and vastus lateralis, extending up almost as high as the insertion of the gluteus maximus; from the lateral prolongation of the linea aspera to within 5 cm. of the lateral condyle; and from the lateral intermuscular septum.
The fibers of the long head form a fusiform belly, which passes obliquely downward and lateralward across the sciatic nerve to end in an aponeurosis which covers the posterior surface of the muscle, and receives the fibers of the short head; this aponeurosis becomes gradually contracted into a tendon, which is inserted into the lateral side of the head of the fibula, and by a small slip into the lateral condyle of the tibia.
From the posterior border of the tendon a thin expansion is given off to the fascia of the leg. The tendon of insertion of this muscle forms the lateral hamstring; the common peroneal nerve descends along its medial border.
Both heads of the Bicep Femoris perform knee flexion. Since the long head originates in the pelvis it is also involved in hip extention. The long head of the bicep femoris is a weaker knee flexor when the hip is extended (because of active insufficiency). For the same reason the long head is a weaker hip extender when the knee is flexed.
When the knee is semi flexed, the Biceps femoris in consequence of its oblique direction rotates the leg slightly outward
A slip may pass to the gastrocnemius.
- LUC bfem
- -865402803 at GPnotebook
- UWash - long head
- UWash - short head
- SUNY Labs 14:06-0100
- SUNY Labs 14:st-0402
- Anatomy at Dartmouth knee/surface/surface4
This article was originally based on an entry from a public domain edition of Gray's Anatomy. As such, some of the information contained herein may be outdated. Please edit the article if this is the case, and feel free to remove this notice when it is no longer relevant.de:Musculus biceps femorishe:שריר הירך הדו ראשיnl:Musculus biceps femoris | <urn:uuid:0b15cb76-7a73-4c4e-b9ea-5fcd5d58c789> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://wikidoc.org/index.php/Biceps_femoris | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00181-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.816884 | 772 | 2.796875 | 3 |
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that school districts can no longer use race as a basis for school assignments.
The decision in cases affecting schools in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle could imperil similar plans in hundreds of districts nationwide, and it further restricts how public school systems may attain racial diversity. (Washington Post )
How will this decision affect schools in North Carolina? Well, the state’s 2 largest school districts, Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Wake County changed to ‘race neutral’ assignment schemes during 1999-2001.
Popular forms of race-neutral assignment plans include lotteries, socioeconomic status based, geographic proximity and pure choice. These methods have had mixed results.
Since 2002 when Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools implemented a neighborhood-based, limited-choice student assignment plan:
- The number of hypersegregated schools (schools with more than 90% minority enrollment) more than doubled.
- The number of segregated schools jumped from 47 to 87 in 2004-2005
- African-American students effectively lost access to oversubscribed predominantly white schools.
- There has been no overall progress in black student achievement between 2002 and 2004. 60% of African American high school students failed state accountability tests as compared to 23% of white students.
Wake County schools, which used a socioeconomic status based plan, have not resegregated at the same rate as some districts. However, racial diversity has declined since the adoption of the socioeconomic plan in 2000.
- In 2003, 39% of African-American students attended a school that had 50% or more minority enrollment, compared to 21% of African-American students in 1999.
The unique demographics of Wake County account for the relative success of the race-neutral assignment plan:
- Wake County is one of only six counties (out of 100) in North Carolina that have a family poverty rate less than 10%, coupled with a significant racial disparity between poor and non-poor families.
- African American and Latino students are 10 times more likely to be eligible for free/reduced lunch than white students.
Counties that are not as socioeconomically polarized will have a difficult time replicating Wake County’s diversification success.
Today’s Supreme Court decision certainly throws an interesting twist into the state’s efforts to provide educational equality. School assignment decisions are no longer black and white, but rather rich and poor. | <urn:uuid:6adddec7-7729-4b77-bb21-0d78a1ec2d5a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2007/06/28/no-longer-black-and-white/print/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395166.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00087-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956938 | 503 | 3.546875 | 4 |
Posted by jasmine20 on Thursday, January 11, 2007 at 9:59pm.
PLEASE LOOK IN THE BOTTOM OF THIS MESSAGE......
solve for x:
3x - 2y = 6
i need help in solving this:
the possible answers has to be one of these:
A)2y +6 divided by 3
b)3x -6 divided by 2
C) 2 + 2y
D) 2/3y + 6
but how i keep trying and i don't get non of these.
For Further Reading
math correction - drwls, Thursday, January 11, 2007 at 9:45pm
Add 2y to both sides of the equation. That will give you
3x = 2y + 6
Then divide both sides of the new equation by 3 and you will see what x is.
It will be one of the choices
I STILL GET THE FOLLOWING:
X =2/3Y + 2
BUT ONE OF MY CLASSMATES SAYS THAT THATS WRONG BECAUSE IT HAS TO BE:
X = 2 +2Y
x = (2/3) y + 2 is the same thing as
x = (2y + 6)/3
Your answer is correct, but the multiple choice to make in this case is (A), which is another way of writing the same thing
Your classmate is wrong
how would you check this:
i mean you know how in alot of equations we can check them how would i do it with something like this.
sorry i didn't realize that my sister posted up something but the previous message is mine. she didn't erase her name.
Answer This Question
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There are three broad kinds of experiments that one can devise to test hypotheses involving the relevance of quantum effects to the phenomenon of conscious ness. The three kinds address three different scale ranges associated roughly with tissue-to-cell (1cm-10 μ m), cell-to- protein (10 μ m-10nm) and protein-to-atom (10nm-1Å) sizes. Note that we are excluding experiments that aim to detect quantum effects at the “whole hum an” or even “society” level as these have consistently given either negative results or been plagued by irreproducibility and bad science (e.g. the various extra sensory perception and remote viewing experiments ). TOWARDS EXPERIMENTAL TESTS OF QUANTUM EFFECTS IN CYTOSKELETAL PROTEINS
First on my mind is and was the idea of the Olfactory experience. As well, the idea of a photosynthesis as a capability and recognition of such an ability "as a distributor of of such quantum effects." Bird navigation using the earths magnetic feild.
You must understand that by no means do I pretend to know all of the answer, is more to demonstrate the learning that is going on toward dealing with some of the things that are demonstrative of understanding quantum effects as a measurable things. A measurable thing, that we as conscious beings make use of. A measurable thing in which we wish to emulate in quantum computing effects as measurable things to increase our depths of perception. Too Robotize.
We are creating machines with which to extend our perceptions in space and on Mars. Space travel and designated satellite space craft with which to examine that environment.
Big Ideas presents Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute for Technology on Quantum Life, how organisms have evolved to make use of quantum effects.
Also too then is the idea that such progress to provide sensor data which extends our range of perspective, as measures also help us to see consciousness as a useful thing. Consciousness's layers, which help to provide depth and understanding, using such data observation.
Statistical and applied probabilistic knowledge is the core of knowledge; statistics is what tells you if something is true, false, or merely anecdotal; it is the "logic of science"; it is the instrument of risk-taking; it is the applied tools of epistemology; you can't be a modern intellectual and not think probabilistically—but... let's not be suckers. The problem is much more complicated than it seems to the casual, mechanistic user who picked it up in graduate school. Statistics can fool you. In fact it is fooling your government right now. It can even bankrupt the system (let's face it: use of probabilistic methods for the estimation of risks did just blow up the banking system).THE FOURTH QUADRANT: A MAP OF THE LIMITS OF STATISTICS [9.15.08] By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Such depths are required to analyze the economic functions in society, as requiring more sensitive fundamental measures since being betray by political influence. This is so as to see the economy "as tool to influence." Greater then is the question to identify aspects of these models with which consciousness uses, so as to demonstrate aspect and dealings "as attributes" in that society. It requires a greater depth of perception then ever required before? So shall we say then that the economy suffers from no quantum effects at all?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb - What is a "Black Swan?"
Of course, I am not going to be most perfect in the science understanding which always begs for those that are the willing in science to help correct any mistakes that I may be perpetrating as a science enthusiast. Again caution here as to my status as a layman. | <urn:uuid:08f74fa0-7418-48ee-970c-e48c784db393> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.eskesthai.com/2013/02/the-emerging-physics-of-consciousness.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00072-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945197 | 780 | 2.75 | 3 |
Art and Design
Art Education (3-0) 3 Cr. Hrs.
This course is a study of child growth and development through creativity. Students will study techniques and materials appropriate for use at various elementary grade levels. Emphasis will be placed on methods to stimulate children’s creative interests.
(A requirement that must be completed before taking this course.)
Upon successful completion of the course, the student should be able to:
- Investigate works of art which encourage positive behavior.
- Explain the ways in which the visual arts can function within society.
- Explore the interrelationship of various art forms.
- Explain how the visual arts can enrich the school curriculum.
- Design age/grade appropriate art projects to complement a variety of curricular areas.
- Utilize the language of art and a variety of art materials and techniques.
- Explore a variety of art materials and techniques appropriate to children at various stages of development.
- Develop appropriate skill and sensitivity to evaluate children’s art work.
- Select appropriate methods and approaches of teaching art to children.
| ||113||140200||Art Education|| ||3||Sarris C||$37.00||11/20/0||Open||
| ||113||120204||Art Education|| ||3||Sarris C||$35.00||7/20/0||Open||
Note: This schedule updates once every 24 hours. Please reference WebAdvisor for current status. | <urn:uuid:c5adb3cd-ee7f-4870-9103-f812d094593c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://schoolcraft.cc.mi.us/academics/course-description/ART/113 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00145-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.808397 | 310 | 2.875 | 3 |
Found 30 - 40 results of 90 programs matching keyword "mapping the sea floor activity"
The science behind this musical instrument, including the concepts of sound, vibration, resonance, and amplification. An introduction to a crowd-pleasing noisemaker called a sound sandwich, which you can adjust to raise or lower its pitch. A detailed demonstration of how to make this primitive wind instrument using little more than a straw, two craft sticks, and some rubber bands. The science behind this instrument, including a discussion of how vibration produces sound, and how long, massive objects vibrate slowly and produce a low-pitched sound, while shorter, less massive objects vibrate quickly and produce a high-pitched sound. Scientists at Palmer Research Station in Antarctica talk about their research: How is the rich marine ecosystem just offshore responding to melting sea ice and global climate change? Join Exploratorium senior scientist Paul Doherty as he serves up more hands-on activities related to science in Antarctica. Join us in conversation with David Ainley and other researchers, as they wrap up there field season at the Adelie penguin breeding colonies in Antarctica’s Ross Sea. Penn State University glaciologist Dr. Richard Alley explains why ice is cool. Join Exploratorium senior scientist Paul Doherty as he serves up hands-on activities related to science in Antarctica. Footage of a small gray whale in the Chukchi Sea near the Barrow shoreline. | <urn:uuid:0e227c3a-3df3-4f54-8d95-5decaef2b55d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.exploratorium.edu/tv/archive.php?cmd=keyword&keywordtext=mapping%20the%20sea%20floor%20activity&start=30 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00070-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914073 | 292 | 3.296875 | 3 |
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