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Published quarterly by the
Louisiana Historical Association
In cooperation with
The Center for Louisiana Studies
The University of Southwestern Louisiana
(The following article is reprinted by the Young-Sanders Center with permission granted by the Louisiana Historical Association and
The Center for Louisiana Studies)
Volume XXXII, No. 4
Texans on the Teche:
The Texas Brigade at the
Battles of Bisland
And Irish Bend,
April 12-14, 1863
By: Donald S. Frazier Doctoral Candidate
Texas Christian University
By the end of March 1863, Confederates in southwestern Louisiana found themselves in a precarious position. Only a small army of 3,000 men defended the region against a Union force of 20,000. A few small battles had been fought in the area, and Major General Richard Taylor, commander of the district, anticipated an upcoming Union offensive on a scale he could not stop. He had little heavy artillery to defend the interconnecting lines of bayous and rivers from probing enemy gunboats; a shortage of Rebel steamboats prevented the creation of an effective defensive flotilla. As a result, the Federals firmly held the strategic initiative, and Southern leaders could only sit and await developing events.1
Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks, aware of his numerical superiority, searched for options as he planned the military conquest of Louisiana. Unsuccessful in his attempts to invest the Mississippi
1 Richard Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War (New York, 1879), pp. 113-115; “Consolidated Report of Ordnance and Ordnance Stores in the Department of Southwestern Louisiana, March 26, 1863,” J. L. Brent Papers, Group 55-B, Volume 41, Louisiana Historical Association Collection, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana (hereafter cited as LHA Collection, Tulane University).
defenses at Port Hudson from the south, Banks listened to Union strategists who suggested an approach through the heart of Taylor’s command. Banks convinced the plan would work, left a strong garrison in New Orleans before ordering his remaining divisions to concentrate at Brashear City on Berwick Bay. From there the army would advance up Bayou Teche as far as Alexandria, destroy Taylor’s army, and remove any threat to Union lines of communication during the anticipated siege of Port Hudson.2
General Taylor, mindful of his lack of resources, nevertheless planned to hold the Teche region as long as possible. On the south bank, five miles upstream from Pattersonville, engineers had constructed a redoubt named Fort Bisland, mounting two 24-pounders and commanding the bayou.3 The timely capture of the Union gunboat Diana strengthened the position, her long-range 30-pounder Parrot-rifle adding greater reach to the Bisland defenses. Soldiers and slaves built a line of earthworks that extended 1,000 yards away from the Teche with the ends anchored in the surrounding swamps. The deep furrows and unharvested sugarcane in front of the works provided further obstacles to advancing enemy infantry.4
Brig. Gen. Godfrey Weitzel, a Union officer familiar with the region, proposed a plan to destroy Taylor’s army by exploiting a toehold gained during the campaign of the previous autumn. A half-dozen Federal regiments, in the region since October, had skirmished with the meager Rebel forces in the Lafourche country and had successfully captured the rail line between
2 Richard B. Irwin, “The Capture of Port Hudson,” in Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (Secaucus, N. J., n.d.), III, 586; Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction, pp. 120-121.
3 The Teche winds generally north to south; in the region of Pattersonville, the bayou flows east and west. For purposes of this article, the left bank is the north bank; the right bank is the south bank.
4 Felix Robert Collard, “Reminiscences of a Private, Company G, 7th Texas Cavalry, Sibley Brigade, C. S. A” (typescript in possession of Don Alberts, Albuquerque, New Mexico), p. 13; Alfred Mouton to Edward Surget, May 2, 1863, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (Gettysburg, Pa., 1972), Series I, XV, 396-397; hereafter cited as OR all references are to Series I; C. M. Horton Diary, April 11, 1863, Civil War Papers, Box 20, Folder 2, LHA Collection, Tulane University.
Brashear City and New Orleans. Sympathetic Louisiana steamboat men had taught gunboat captains the area and its intricate web of waterways. These sources of intelligence suggested a Federal march up the Teche to pin the Southerners at Bisland. Meanwhile another Union force, embarked on transports, would by-pass the Confederate position by traveling up the Atchafalaya and Grand Lake. This amphibious expedition, landing in the vicinity of Irish Bend, would then block the Rebel line of retreat. General Banks, after receiving preliminary scouting reports, recognized his opportunity and prepared to move.5
The Federals defeated Taylor in the subsequent campaign up Bayou Teche, but the Union victory fell far short of expectations. Union troops maneuvered Taylor out of his fortifications at Bisland by flanking the position and making it untenable, but the Confederate army escaped without significant loss. What could have been a decisive coup for Northern war aims in the region instead resulted in only a temporary loss of Rebel territory. Taylor and his small Confederate army, enriched by lessons learned in combat, would be a constant source of irritation for Northern strategists until the end of war.
Although defeated, the Confederate army in southwestern Louisiana gained some benefit from the battles of Bisland and Irish Bend. The Teche campaign provided a culling process that promoted a capable commander and cashiered an inept one. The Teche country fell to the Unionists, yet this campaign represented a triumph of Confederate command cooperation—the expedient union of two amazingly different Southern commands.
At the campaign’s outset, Taylor concentrated two small Rebel armies into one cohesive fighting force capable of making a stand at Bisland. Brig. Gen. Jean Jacques Alfred Alexandre Mouton, although subordinate to Taylor, had led an autonomous army of nearly 2,000 battle-tested veterans in the hard-fought Lafourche campaign during the fall of 1862. Taylor’s other army at Bisland was the mounted command of Brig. Gen. Henry H. Sibley, the first large-scale commitment of Texas troops to that region. Sibley, who commanded the Fourth, Fifth,
5 Irwin, “Capture of Port Hudson,” 590; Morris Raphael, The Battle in the Bayou Country (Detroit, 1984), pp. 73-76.
and Seventh Texas Cavalry Regiments, also had led an independent force the previous year during the Confederate invasion of New Mexico. Elements of the brigade also fought as marines during the successful recapture of Galveston. Experts in independent action but with little experience in cooperative enterprises, these two Confederate brigades supported each other in the Teche campaign.6
Sibley and Mouton differed greatly. Sibley, a Mexican War veteran and professional soldier with a reputation for heavy, debilitating drinking, had only recently returned from a six-month-long investigation into his conduct in New Mexico. Even so, one Texan described this luckless leader as a “high-minded, noble, valorous, and gifted officer.” Mouton, the wealthy son of a former Louisiana governor, had earned his stars in combat as colonel of the Eighteenth Louisiana Infantry. “Modest, unselfish, and patriotic, he showed best in action,” wrote Taylor, “always leading his men” and “ever proved faithful to duty.” Seriously wounded at Shiloh, this Acadian officer recovered and advanced to brigadier, transferring to his home district in southwestern Louisiana.7
The outnumbered Confederates at Bisland were veterans led by Capable officers. Two of Mouton’s Louisiana units, the Eighteenth “Creole” Infantry and the Twenty-fourth “Crescent” infantry, after loosing scores of men at Shiloh, had returned west of the Mississippi to rebuild. Supporting these steady infantrymen, the shotgun-wielding horsemen of Colonel William G. Vincent’s Second Louisiana Cavalry were experienced in scouting and skirmishing. Two artillery batteries, Oliver J. Semme’s First Regulars and Florian
6 For a discussion of the various Louisiana units in the Teche campaign, see Arthur Bergeron, Guide to Louisiana Confederate Military Units, 1861-1865 (Baton Rouge, 1989); for a review of the Texas units service in New Mexico, see Martin Hall, Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign (Austin, 1960.)
7 Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction, pp. 105, 165; Ezra Warner, Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders (Baton Rouge, 1959), pp. 222-223; Theophilus Noel, A Campaign from Santa Fe to the Mississippi: Being a History of the Old Sibley Brigade from its First Organization to the Present Time; Its Campaigns in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas in the Years, 1861-2-3-4, ed. By Martin Hardwick Hall and Edwin Adams Davis (Houston, 1961), p. 78. For a biography of Sibley, see Jerry Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley: Confederate General of the West (Natchitoches, La., 1987.)
Cornay’s St. Mary’s Cannoneers, had also seen combat.8 Four additional units, Edmund Waller’s Thirteenth Texas Cavalry Battalion, the Tenth Louisiana “Yellow Jacket” Battalion, Colonel Henry Gray’s Twenty-eight Louisiana Infantry, and Thomas Farie’s Pelican Artillery augmented the Southern forces at Bisland.9
Sibley’s three regiments, in the course of their far different military career, had displayed a number of peculiar contradictions. They had fared badly in New Mexico—the brigade had almost disintegrated—but the exhausted, prideful men brought by hand five captured cannons through the arid mountains back to Texas. These reorganized units were well mounted and classified as cavalry, yet they carried rifles and fought mainly as infantry; some became artilleryman, serving their trophy cannons—captured at the Battle of Val Verde—as a battery at Bisland. Taylor both admired and disparaged these Texans. “The men, hardy frontiersmen, excellent riders, and skilled riflemen, were fearless and self-reliant,” he wrote,
But discharged their duty as they liked and when they liked. On a march they wandered about at will, as they did about camp, and could be kept together only when a fight was impending. When their arms were injured by service or neglect, they threw them away, expecting to be supplied with others. Yet with these faults, they were admirable fighters…10
Although Sibley had failed in past campaigns, the other Texas officers were described as “bold and enterprising.” As the
8 Men in the “Crescent Regiment” hailed almost entirely from New Orleans, where they served in prewar militia regiment. Oliver J. Semmes was the brother of Raphael Semmes of Alabama fame. Men in the St. Mary’s Cannoneers came from St. Mary Parish and were organized at Franklin. The Val Verde guns fell by frontal assault, an unusual feat for troops in their first battle; “Consolidated Report of Ordnance.”
9 For a history of Waller’s Battalion, see Charles Spurlin, West of the Mississippi with Waller’s 13th Texas Cavalry Battalion, C. S. A. (Hillsboro, Tex., 1971). Joseph C. Terrell to “Ma” (Susan Kenerly Terrell), March 29, 1863, letter in possession of Geraldine Hudson, Fort Worth, Texas: Morris Raphael, Battle in the Bayou Country, pp. 80-82; Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction, pp. 108-109, 114. The Diana was a converted river steamer and had been captured on March 17, 1863, after blundering into an ambush.
10 Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction, pp. 178-179.
Teche campaign progressed, Taylor relied heavily on one talented Texan subaltern-Colonel Tom Green of the fifth Texas Cavalry. “Upright, modest, and with the simplicity of a child, danger seemed to be his element, and he rejoiced in combat,” wrote the commanding general. “His men adored him, and would follow wherever he led…The great Commonwealth…will never send forth a bolder warrior, a better citizen, nor a more upright man than Thomas Green.”11
Sibley’s Texans had been hesitant about going to Louisiana. “We are going into a very sickly country and to one where there will be a great deal of hard fighting.” Wrote a soldier to his sweetheart on the eve of his departure from the Lone Star State. “It is very certain many of us will never again see Texas if we remain among those Louisiana swamps for any length of time…We can only hope that the move is for the good of our glorious Confederacy.” Despite their reluctance, these veterans formed their road columns in mid-March and headed through the piney woods toward New Iberia.12
The citizens of Louisiana showed great enthusiasm for the reluctant Texan reinforcements. “The people met us with open arms,” wrote one soldier. “In every town we passed through, they lined the streets and greeted us with waving flags and handkerchiefs. Many of them carried lunches and baskets of flowers which they lavishly bestowed upon all who wished for them.” The road-weary Texans, unhappy they were even in the state, spurned much of the hospitality. “A great many of our men, who had gone through an arduous campaign the year before and others who had been drawn from their homes with great reluctance paid but little attention to the flowery offerings,” noted the soldier. “But when lemonade and cakes appeared on the program, they were ready enough to take an active intrest.”13
11 Ibid, p. 178.
12 William Randolph Howell to Sallie Patricks, January 19, 1863, William Randolph Howell papers, Eugene C. Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas, Austin; hereafter cited as BTHC; Thomas Green to John M. Bronough, February 2, 1863, “Letter Book,” John M. Bronough Papers, Texas collection, Baylor University, Waco, Texas.
13 Henry C. Wright, “Reminiscences of H. C. Wright of Austin,” Wright Memoir, pp. 56-57, BTHC.
Sibley’s men found in Louisiana an environment unlike any they had experienced in the war so far. Much of the population spoke French. Sugarcane fields, with two-foot-deep furrows, covered the countryside. Ancient oaks, with Spanish moss flowing in long beards from their branches, lined the roads. And, unlike New Mexico and most of Texas, water was in abundance, with great knotty cypress trees towering above numerous black swamps. Even cemeteries appeared different, with large tombs resting above ground because of the high-water table. Louisiana seemed to many of the Texans a foreign country.
Confederate leaders first had to rebuild the Texas brigade into an efficient military organization. Recruits and conscripts replaced the losses from New Mexico, and discipline was correspondingly lax. The troops owned fine horses, but had arrived with few other military assets. Half of the Texans reached New Iberia unarmed while the balance carried inadequate weapons; ordnance officers labored to eliminate the deficiency. Sibley’s men quickly emptied the stocks of small arms at the New Iberia arsenal.14 Taylor, fretting over the lack of discipline within the Texans ranks, re-established brigade routines with frequent drill and dress parades.15
The government provided their weapons, but the individual Texans helped themselves to local lagniappe—“little something extra”—from the surrounding country. Blackberries abounded. “The vines…ran up in the bushes and trees so that one could sit on a horse and gather all you wished.” Wrote one private. “So many of the men became sick with diarrhea that the doctors objected.” Nearby plantations also provided delicacies to supplement the government fare of beef and corn bread. “Sugar was so plentiful that hundreds of hogsheads were left exposed to the weather,” noted one Rebel. “When a man wanted
14 Sibley requested 2,000 weapons and accoutrements for his command. “Consolidated Report of Ordnance.” Howell to Patricks, may 4, 1863; William Randolph Howell Diary, April 8, 1863, William Randolph Howell Papers, BTHC; Alfred B. Peticolas Diary, April 27, 1863, in possession of Judge A. B. Peticolas of El Paso, Texas; Robert Thompson William Diary, March 30, 1863, 4th Texas Cavalry File, Harold B. Simpson Confederate Research Center, Hill College, Hillsboro, Texas.
15 Williams Diary, April 4, 6, 7, 1863.
any, he would break in the head of one, shovel out a sack full and go on his way leaving the rest to be wasted.” Local rum also made its way into the brigade mess, soldiers quaffing cups of the potent elixir as they gambled on horse races.16
Before the Federal advance began, men from each of the two Confederate brigades had little interaction with their counterparts. The brigades bivouacked nearly ten miles apart, with the Texans camping near Centerville and Mouton’s men at Bisland. As the Texans drilled, paraded, and dined on rum, blackberries, and sugar, the officers from the Louisiana regiments danced as guests of Madame Porter at her impressive plantation home in Irish Bend.17
When Banks launched his offensive on April 9, Taylor sent the Texans forward, deploying them separately from his infantry, and ordered the Bisland defenses reinforced and expanded.18 Soldiers and slaves began erecting chest-high works that extended 1,000 yards from each bank of the Teche and anchored in the surrounding swamps, incorporating an unfinished railroad embankment on the far right. Other troops cleared and enlarged drainage ditches running through the sugarcane fields, using split cypress fencing rails to shore up the sides into natural trenches. With their flanks secured by impassable terrain, the Rebels also built additional redoubts on their line.19 The Fort Bisland defenses included two 24-pounders, and the Diana, positioned nearby in the Teche,
16 Wright Memoir, p. 57; Williams Diary, April 2, 3, 1863.
17 Williams Diary, April 2, 9, 1863; “Leila Robertson’s Story” in Lucile Barbour Holmes, Oaklawn Manor: Ante-Bellum Plantation Home, 4th ed. (Franklin, LA, 1980), non-paginated; Horton Diary, April 6, 1863; Howell Diary, April 9, 1863.
18 Frank M. Flinn, Campaigning with Banks in Louisiana, ’63 and ’64, and with Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley in ’64 and ’65 (Lynn, Mass. 1887), p. 33; Captain Samuel Gault Diary, April 9, 1983, manuscripts number 177, The Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans, Louisiana; Noel, Santa Fe to the Mississippi, p. 69.
19 On the far left, troops built an earthwork backed by a stockade and equipped with three gun platforms; on the extreme right, gunners from the Val Verde battery used large cypress, ash, and elm logs to construct an elevated emplacement that enabled the guns to direct fire over the heads of the infantry in front.
Carried a powerful, 30-pounder Parrott rifle. On the left of the Rebel line, soldiers felled trees to form an abatis against a flank attack.20
The deeply furrowed sugarcane fields in front of the Confederate works also favored the defense. Much of the previous year’s crop had remained unharvested, leaving the shriveled, frost-nipped stalks to become wind-blown into such a “tangled mass,” as one Texan remembered, “a dog could hardly get through it.” Officers sent details from their units to trample and cut the cane in front of the works for several hundred yards to afford better fields of fire.21
On April 11, 1863, Banks, with his right flank covered by the U. S. S. Clifton, continued his advance and skirmished with Rebel Cavalry. The Texan horseman, although repeatedly compelled to retreat under pressure from the enemy gunboat, took positions throughout the day to impede the Federals. After a rugged day, the Texans withdrew as Yankee troops entered Pattersonville, five miles from the Rebel works.22
In the course of the day’s fighting, the lack of discipline that Taylor noticed among the Texans had serious results for some of Sibley’s men. Colonel Green had ordered Capt. Jerome B. McCown to lead a party through the swamp on the right to determine the enemy troops’ strength. The expedition ended in disaster. A German officer in the brigade recorded that the captain, “having imbibed too freely, fell from his horse during a retreat.” Federals quickly captured McCown and several of his men.23
Fighting resumed the following day. Banks deployed his 8,000 men across the can fields fronting Pattersonville and
20 Collard, “Reminiscences,” p. 13; Mouton to Surget, May 2, 1863, OR, XV 396-397.
21 Collard, “Reminiscences,” p. 13; Horton Diary, April 11, 1863.
22 Howell Diary, April 11, 1862; Oscar Haas, Trans. “The Diary of Julius Gieseke, 1863-1864,” Military History of Texas and the Southwest, XVII (1988), 65; Noel, Santa Fe to the Mississippi, p. 69; Flinn, Campaigning with Banks, p. 33; Gault Diary, April 11, 1863; Noel, Santa Fe to the Mississippi, p. 69.
23 William Diary, April 11, 1863; Noel, Santa Fe to the Mississippi, p. 69; Haas, trans., “The Diary of Julius Gieseke, 1863-1864,” p. 65.
Began his approach toward Bisland.24 Despite resistance, the Yankees pushed back the Southerners steadily and by afternoon forced them to take cover behind their works as a terrific artillery duel opened. The Rebel return fire soon revealed the locations and caliber of their guns, allowing the Unionists to plan more efficiently for the next day’s assault. That evening, the Federals withdrew out of range, word having reached Banks that Brig. Gen. Cuvier Grover had finally left Brashear City and was steaming up the Atchafalya to close the trap.25
The Confederates spent a damp, restless night. Several buildings between the opposing lines caught fire during the engagement and, as one Texan observed continued to flame up “fierce and hot toward the sky.” As fog settled over the battlefield, men from the Twenty-fourth Louisiana added to the arson, igniting a cluster of slave huts to deny cover to an advancing enemy. Those Rebel soldiers fortunate enough to avoid some type of extra duty lay in the mud and water of the trenches with bayonets fixed, fearful of a night attack. Mosquitoes from the neighboring swamps added to their sleepless misery.26
That night, scouts brought information on the Federal Flotilla ascending Grand Lake, and Taylor prepared pre-emptive action. He first dispatched the Second Louisiana Cavalry, and two of Cornay’s 6-pounders to observe the fleet’s movements and oppose any attempted landings. He then ordered Sibley to lead his Texans in a dawn surprise attack against the Union forces at Bisland. Perhaps a successful assault there would compel the enemy’s amphibious force to withdraw. At daybreak, however, Sibley’s men remained behind the works, their commanding officer having made no effort to attack, thus forfeiting the vital tactical initiative.27
24 Noel, Santa Fe to the Mississippi, p. 69; Flinn, Campaigning with Banks, p.37.
25 John William De Forest, A Volunteer’s Adventures: A Union Captain’s Record of the Civil War (New Haven, 1946), p. 88, Peticolas Diary, April 27, 1863; Howell Diary, April 12, 1863.
26 Peticolas Diary, April 27, 1863; Gault Diary, April 12-13, 1853; Horton Diary, April 12, 1863; Howell Diary, April 12, 1863; De Forest, A Volunteer’s Adventures p. 91.
27 Thompson, Sibley, p. 325; Raphael, Battle in the Bayou Country, pp. 94-95.
Taylor, furious over Sibley’s failure, had to reconsider his strategy, taking into account the relative strengths of his various units and positioning them accordingly. Mouton’s infantry, supported by artillery, stiffened the center of the line. Taylor broke up the Texas brigade, sending its regiments to threatened points along the line. He relegated Sibley to command the supply train. The Fifth Texas, under the aggressive Colonel Green, anchored the right flank and defended the wooded coastal swamp. Col. Arthur Bagby’s Seventh Texas and Waller’s Battalion held the left flank, defending from behind the abatis in the marshy ground bordering Grand Lake. Taylor held Col. James Reily’s Fourth Texas Cavalry in reserve. He also strengthened the Rebel Line by distributing his artillery according to caliber, carefully placing his four 3-inch rifles where they could do the most execution.28
Despite Sibley’s bunglings, Rebel detachments began probing the enemy by seven o’clock in the morning of April 13. North of the Teche, skirmishers from the Eighteenth and Twenty-fourth Louisiana and Seventh Texas moved about 500 yards through the fog. Meanwhile, several companies of the Twenty-eight grove of trees near the bank of the bayou. Here, the fourth Wisconsin had taken position and, after sporadic firing, drove the Rebels back to their trenches.29
28 Raphael, Battle in the Bayou Country, p. 94. On the extreme right, the Val Verde Battery’s three 6-pounders and two 12-pounder howitzers occupied an elevated emplacement, allowing direct fire over the troops in the trenches and controlling an unfinished railroad embankment emerging from the woods. Semmes’s battery composed of two 3-inch rifles, a 6-pounder, and a 1-pounder howitzer, strengthened the Rebel right-center. Cornay’s St. Mary’s Cannoneers, positioned with the Twenty-eighth Infantry near the redoubt on the west bank of the Teche, held their four remaining 6-pounders in reserve. The two 24-pounder howitzers in the redoubt and the 30-pounder Parrott rifle aboard the Diana dominated the center of the Confederate line. Two 12-pounder howitzers from the Pelican Artillery, supported by the “Yellow Jackets” and the “Crescent Regiment” commanded the east bank of the Bayou. The longer range of two 3-inch rifles, along with the Enfields of the 18th Louisiana protected the Rebel left center while two 6-pounders defended a timber and earth redoubt on the extreme left. Collard, “Reminiscences,” p. 13; Mouton to Surget, May 2, 1863, OR, XV, 396-397.
29 Horton Diary, April 13, 1863; Collard, “Reminiscences,” p. 1.
As the fog lifted, Federal snipers began their work. “In the early morning, some of the enemy climbed moss-covered cypress, away down the bayou, armed with high powered rifles,” recalled one Texan skirmisher. “[They] were so far away that we could not hear the reports… The balls would strike the timber just in our rear like hailstones. Directly one struck Lt. [James] Cunningham, of my company, piercing the right lung,”30
Visibility improved by ten o’clock, allowing the Federals to renew the attack. Artillerymen placed their guns as infantry columns struggled through the cane. Opposing cannons soon began a long-range duel. Five Union regiments and a battery crossed a pontoon bridge to sweep the north bank of the Teche and pin down its defenders. Four batteries, including six 20-pounder Parrott rifles, along with twelve regiments of infantry, deployed on the south bank. The Twenty-first Indiana Heavy Artillery, armed with six 30-pounder Parrott rifles, took positions to concentrate on the Diana, which they soon disabled and forced out of action. As the artillery fire intensified, one Texan observed, “the firing was so brisk that one could scarcely discern any pause whatever.”31
By early afternoon, Federal Infantry began to advance toward the Confederate works. Columns struggled across the sugarcane rows until within rifle range, then deployed into lines, driving Confederate soldiers scurrying before them.32 “Here they come!’ was shouted down our line as skirmishers came running in and jumping over the works so their position behind them,” recalled one Texan. Soon, small arms fire added to the noise of battle.33
Union infantry advanced against the Texans holding each flank of the Confederate lines. A heated fight developed on the right where the Fifth Texas successfully forced two New York
30 Collard, “Reminiscences,” p. 1.
31 Haas, trans., “Diary of Julius Gieseke, 1863-1864;” Noel, Santa Fe to the Mississippi, p. 71; Howell Diary, April 13, 1863.
32 The Federal regiments formed into columns of divisions, two companies across, for their approach to the Rebel works. Horton Diary, April 13, 1863.
33 Noel, Santa Fe to the Mississippi, p. 70; Howell Diary, April 13, 1863.
Regiments back into the swamp. Colonel Green, having ordered the badly damaged Val Verde battery withdrawn, sent a message to Taylor describing his position as “hot.” “Green was assured,” wrote the general in his memoirs, “that there were no places on our line particularly cool.” On the far left, the Seventh Texas stubbornly defended its ground, Colonel Bagby receiving a painful wound in the arm. During the fight, the Texans fell back a short distance, abandoning the flank company of the supporting Eighteenth Louisiana and causing its capture. Despite limited successes, the Union assault failed to break the Rebel line. The battle then reverted back to a test of artillery which tapered off toward nightfall.34 That afternoon, General Grover landed on the shores of Grand Lake, springing the Union trap and forcing a quick response from the Confederates. In the midst of the fighting at Bisland, couriers informed Taylor that Grover’s 8,000 Federals had landed in the rear, brushed aside Vincent’s 400-man Rebel force, and were marching for the town of Franklin, threatening the Confederate line of retreat. Colonel Reily and his Fourth Texas Cavalry galloped away from Bisland to check the Union advance, covering nineteen miles in an hour and a half. Two of the remaining 6-pounders from the St. Mary’s Cannoneers limbered up and also headed up the bayou road. Taylor, realizing the danger of the situation, began making plans to evacuate Bisland.35
Vincent’s and Reily’s Confederate cavalry regiments had to buy time. The Second Louisiana, soon aided by companies from the Fourth Texas, made a second stand, skirmishing with the Federals while details attempted to burn or dismantle the numerous plantation bridges across the Teche. The Rebels, reinforced by the timely arrival of the Val Verde guns, made a third stand at Madam Porter’s plantation on Irish Bend. Soon the Unionists began massing in strength, forcing the Confederates to withdraw. Several Southern detachments, alarmed by the approach of the enemy, failed to destroy some bridges allowing the
34 Collard, “Reminiscences,” p. 1; Howell to Patricks, May 4, 1863; Howell Diary, April 13, 1863; Horton Diary, April 2-7, 1863.
35 Haas, trans., “Diary of Julius Gieseke, 1863-1863,” p. 66; Peticolas Diary, April 27, 1863; Noel, From Santa Fe to the Mississippi, pp. 70-71; Howell Diary, April 13, 1863; Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction, p. 132.
Union army a bridgehead on the Teche. By dusk, Federal troops camped amid the stately oaks of Porter’s plantation, while Reily and Vincent retreated past Franklin.36
While Unionists slept at Irish Bend and Bisland, Taylor executed a skillful withdrawal. Sibley led the supply wagons away in the early hours of darkness. The Twenty-eighth Louisiana and the remainder of the St. Mary’s Cannoneers then withdrew, marching silently up the road toward Franklin. Mouton followed with the rest of the command from the north bank of the Teche. Green, joining up with Waller’s command and the 3-inch rifles from the First Regular Battery, brought up the rear. Behind in the works stood the two 24-poinders at Fort Bisland and a 12-pounder howitzer with a broken axle.37
At this critical point in the campaign, Union General Grover failed terribly. Once across the Teche, he directed his troops to follow the course of the bayou to the left in a direct approach to Franklin. Had he turned right instead, Federal troops could have blocked an alternate, more direct road leading across the width of Irish Bend. Instead of seizing the true Rebel line of retreat, Grover moved along a parallel road hoping to secure the town and its road junction.
Taylor hurried forward to Franklin and, realizing Grover’s mistake, ordered Reily to make plans for holding action at Irish Bend northeast of Franklin. The arrival of the Twelfth Louisiana Battalion from Avery Island brought the Confederate forces in the vicinity to around 800 men.38 Reily positioned his troops in an uneven line of woods fronting sugarcane fields just northeast of town. On the right flank, the Texan placed two 6-pounders supported by the Twelfth Battalion on the bayou road,
36 Haas, trans., “Diary of Julius Gieseke,” p. 66; Holmes, Oaklawn Manor, non-paginated; Williams Diary, Arpil 13, 1863; Peticolas Diary, April 13, 1863; Noel, Santa Fe to the Mississippi, pp. 71-74.
37 Horton Diary, April 14, 1863: Noel, Santa Fe to the Mississippi, p. 75; Howell Diary, April 14, 1863; Thompson, Sibley, p. 326.
38 This was the Confederate Guard’s Response Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Franklin Clack.
followed by the Fourth Texas and two more 6-pounders in the center and the Second Louisiana on the left. At sunup, Colonel Gray’s Twenty-eight Louisiana arrived with 40 men, extending the Confederate left flank which was protected by the thick, wooded swamp of Bayou Yokely. The Diana, fresh from repairs, strengthened the right, taking her position in the Teche.39
Union troops soon tested Reily’s skill as a tactical commander. Wheeling four regiments across the field, the Federals stumbled through the uneven cane stubble and came under fire. Rebel smoothbores and shotguns on the left decimated the enemy with buck-and-ball, forcing three of the Union regiments to halt and go to ground. On the Confederate right, the Thirteenth Connecticut, pushing through a dense canebrake, had passed unseen into a large grove that jutted from the Rebel line. The outnumbered Twelfth Louisiana Battalion and the crews of the two 6-pounders, realizing their danger, withdrew, abandoning their cannons and exposing the right flank to the Fourth Texas. The New Englanders exploited this advantage, capturing scores of startled men and throwing the Texans into confusion. The death of Colonel Reily and the wounding of Colonel Vincent compounded the disaster as the Confederate line began to give way.40
Colonel Gray soon saved the situation. Without orders, he led his Twenty-eighth Louisiana forward out of the trees and against the shaken Federals in his front, an act copied all along the Rebel line. The demoralized Yankees in the cane field broke and fled. The Unionists in the woods, to avoid being surrounded, also withdrew, taking with them the silk banner of the St. Mary’s Cannoneers. The Confederates, their aggressive tactic momentarily successful, fell back as yet another Union brigade deployed into line; these Northerners, however, did not advance.41
39 Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction, p. 133; Florian O. Cornay to James L. Brent, April 23, 1863, OR, LIII, 465-468; Noel, Santa Fe to the Mississippi, p. 71.
40 Noel, Santa Fe to the Mississippi, p. 71, 74-75; Haas, trans., “Diary of Julius Gieseke,” p. 66.
41 Noel, Santa Fe to the Mississippi, p. 75; Williams Diary, April 14, 1863.
As the fighting at Irish Bend continued, Taylor worked to save the army. Since enemy forces now controlled the Teche above and below the town, he commanded all steamboats tied up at Franklin destroyed. The crew of the Diana, with no way to save their vessel, scuttled it. Taylor then ordered General Mouton to ride toward the sound of the guns and take command of the forces there while the remounted Fourth Texas covered the Confederate Infantry’s retreat. Colonel Green stood securely in charge of the rear guard; gunfire from the south confirmed his activity. Sibley faced less vigorous concerns: evacuating hospitals and hurrying wagons up the road.42
Sibley botched his three assigned tasks. Provided with wagon transportation for removing the sick and wounded, he instead ordered them placed aboard a steamer and dispatched under a hospital flag through Federal lines. The boat and its passengers were quickly captured. As the last wagons left Franklin, Sibley called for Green to withdraw and, once the Texans crossed Bayou Yokely, ordered the only bridge over the stream burned. No one had informed Mouton; fortunately the alert Louisianians realized the error and safely brought his men across the flaming span. The mistake trapped the officers and crew of the Diana, however, causing their capture. Taylor had also ordered Sibley to assume command of the retreating column and to prevent straggling. Sibley failed to travel with the wagons, following a different, less-congested road, allowing the unsupervised Rebel army to unravel. Sibley’s failures confirmed the suspicions regarding the alcoholic officer, and many now firmly believed that he was not only inept, but also dangerous. For his blunderings during this campaign, he would face a court-martial and never command combat troops again.43
Sibley’s lack of leadership in controlling the retreating column contributed to the disintegration of some of Taylor’s army. Vehicles and refugees clogged the road, and panic spread through the ranks. “Ten thousand rumors were afloat throughout the army,” wrote a Texan sergeant. “The panic became the greater the further then men got from the enemy.”
42 Taylor to William R. Boggs, April 23, 1863, OR, XV, 388-396; Horton Diary, April 14, 1863, Noel, Santa Fe to the Mississippi, p. 75.
43 Thompson, Sibley, pp. 326-332; Peticolas Diary, April 27, 1863; Noel Santa Fe to the Mississippi, p. 75.
While the mounted troops outpaced their pursuers, Mouton’s Infantry began to wear out, and dozens of exhausted foot soldiers surrendered. “Although we could not catch the Texan horsemen,” wrote a Union officer, “we were marching the Louisiana Infantry to tatters.” Some Rebels confiscated farm horses to aid their flight, others simply went home.44
Covering the retreat, Colonel Green displayed his unique talent for rearguard fighting that would soon make him famous, intuitively employing his mounted infantrymen to their optimum effect. When pursuing Federals neared the rear of the Confederate column, Green deployed a regiment with artillery to check the opposing cavalry while sending another regiment around their flank. The Texan’s longer-ranged rifles and cannons would outmatch the carbine-armed enemy, forcing them to withdraw to the protection of their supporting infantry. As the stronger formations of Federal foot soldiers deployed, Green’s men simply mounted and galloped away.45
Green fought several such delaying skirmishes. A two-hour stand near Centerville on April 14, proved a serious impediment for Bank’s pursuing column. The Texas Brigade, reunited at Franklin, fought again at Jeanerette on April 15. At New Iberia the following day, elements of the Union cavalry charged Green’s retreating Texans, who faced about and, fighting this time as cavalry, counter charged. The ensuing melee scattered the Federal horsemen, widening the gap between the opposing armies.46
Green used the natural obstacles of Vermilion Bayou to delay his enemy again on April 17. The Val Verde Battery, sent in advance, covered the principal crossing, placing its guns on a wooden bluff. The Texans the crossed, burning the only remaining bridge. At 2 o’clock that afternoon, the head of the Federal column arrived and attempted to force a crossing but they retreated under canister fire from the Rebel artillery. Unable to cross the stream safely, the Federals shelled the
44 De Forest, A Volunteer’s Adventures, p. 92; Peticolas Diary, April 27, 1863; Horton Diary, April 14, 16, 1863.
45 Collard, “Reminiscences,” p. 3; Noel, Santa Fe to the Mississippi, p. 76.
46 Peticolas Diary, April 27, 1863; Noel, Santa Fe to the Mississippi, pp. 75-76; Howell Diary, April 14-17, 1863.
Texan’s position with little effect while awaiting the arrival of their pontoon train. By midnight, the Unionists had constructed a bridge across the Vermillion, and Green withdrew, having cost the enemy almost an entire day. These delaying skirmishes allowed Taylor time to evacuate the region, save his trains, and disperse his remaining forces in safety. Green, for his ability as a battle commander, was promoted to brigadier general in command of the Texas brigade, replacing the disgraced Sibley.47
The Texans had suffered during the hard-fought retreat. The day after the fight at Vermillion Bayou, the brigade remained in camp and received rations, their first in forty hours. Everyone was exhausted. “For five long days and nights our saddles were not removed from our horses,” wrote one trooper. “What sleeping that was done was in the saddle; what cooking that was done was done for us by the noble and patriotic citizens, and what eating the boys did was done on the go.” For one homesick German teenager, all of the charm had gone out of soldiering. “This life is quite tiresome and the only pleasure I have is thinking of home,” he scrawled in a letter to a friend. “You wrote that I might be home when the peaches ripen, but I believe the peaches will ripen a number of times before we get home.”48
Taylor, unable to hold the line against Bank’s superior army, still maintained a high degree of unity among the vastly different troops under his control. Although poor coordination had caused some units to be outflanked during combat, the integration of independent and Louisiana units had proved a workable expedient—Rebel soldiers from both states claimed tactical successes in the battles. Only the strategic threat to his line of communications prevented Taylor from holding his position. With the campaign over and his army out of danger, however, Taylor did divide his command into its component elements, sending Green’s Brigade west toward pastures near the Sabine as Mouton’s remaining foot soldiers retreated north toward Alexandria as escort to the valuable supply train. Banks, although unsuccessful in bagging Taylor, eventually
47 Williams Diary, April 17, 1863; Peticolas Diary, April 27, 1863; Howell Diary, April 17, 1863; Collard, “Reminiscences,” pp. 3-4.
48 Joseph Faust to Herman Seele, May 13, 1863, Joseph Faust Papers, BTHC; Howell Diary, April 17, 1863; Noel Santa Fe to the Mississippi, p. 76.
turned his army east and captured Port Hudson. The Confederate forces operating in Louisiana, however, would be a constant concern of his for months to come. In an effort to subdue the state, the Federals launched two more major campaigns and several minor expeditions into Louisiana, each meeting with bitter results.49
The Teche campaign had also proven the merit of what Taylor styled as “horse,” or dragoons, operating among the swamps and bayous of the unconventional region. The firepower of infantry, coupled with the speed and maneuverability of Texas horsemen, proved a powerful combination and now four additional mounted Texas regiments gathered at Niblett’s Bluff near the Sabine.50 Green, after resting his men for a few days, returned to the bayou country with these additional Texas troops and fought well throughout the rest of the year, at one time even blockading the Mississippi and threatening New Orleans. By 1864, Green, who commanded all of the cavalry in Louisiana, had been recommended for promotion to major general. His military prominence in that theater started with his successes leading Texans on the Teche.51
49 Howell Diary, April 20, 1863. For a discussion of campaigns in Louisiana, see John D. Winters, The Civil War in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1963).
50 The Second Texas Cavalry, First Texas Partisan Rangers, Fifth Texas Partisan Rangers, and Third Arizona.
51 Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction, pp. 178-179. | <urn:uuid:08ae97e9-ad7a-4b81-89af-46d5fea21efe> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.youngsanders.org/youngsanderstexasbrigade.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00037-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95219 | 10,106 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Orchids form a very unique group with different species of orchids flowering during different times of the year. There are orchids which flower in summers and autumn, these orchids have active growing season when temperatures are high. There are also orchids which flower in winters and spring; these orchids can tolerate low temperatures very well. These winter/spring flowering orchids have active growing season during winters. Many terrestrial orchid species inhabiting the temperate zones, easily tolerate and produce flowers in low temperatures conditions.
However, a large number of orchids inhabit tropical and sub-tropical zones and flower when temperatures are high. Out of these orchids, I have put together a list of winter and spring flowering orchids. You can use this list while searching for orchids flowering when temperatures are running low. These are as follows:
• Acampe ochracea a winter flowering, tropical orchid
• Acanthephippium sylhetense, a winter flowering
• Acrochaene punctate a winter flowering sub-tropical orchid
• Aerides fieldingii, a spring flowering orchid growing in tropical to sub-tropical regions
• Anoectochilus tortus, a winter flowering sub-tropical orchid
• Arundina graminifolia, a tropical orchid. It flowers all through the year and when temperatures are kept between 15°C – 20°C and good amount of sunlight.
• Brachycorythis iantha, winter flowering sub-tropical orchid.
• Bulbophyllum amplifolium, B. hirtum, B. khasianum, B. loepardium, B. viridifolium, B. wallichii are sub-tropical orchids which flower in early winters. While Bulbophyllum gymnopus is a sub-tropical winter flowering orchid.
• Calanthe densiflora, terrestrial orchid which flowers from early winter till spring.
• Coeloygnes are hardy orchids and can tolerate low temperatures.
Coeloygne arunachalensis, C. fuscescens, C. ovalis are tropical orchids flowering in winter. C. corymbosa, C. fuliginosa, C. punctulata are sub-tropical orchids flowering in winters. Sub-tropical orchids like C. cristata, C. viscosa flower till late spring.
• Cymbidiums can tolerate low temperatures. While many Cymbidium orchids flower in summers, they retain their leaves in winters. Cymbidium lowianum is a tropical orchid fowering in late spring. Cymbidium cochleare, C. elegans, C. iridioides, C. mastersii are winter flowering sub-tropical orchids. There are also terrestrial sub-tropical Cymbidiums which flowers till spring like C. cyperifolium and C. goeringii, while C. hookerianum is a sub-tropical epiphyte flowering till spring.
• Dendrobiums are generally less tolerant of low temperatures. However, some dendrobes flower in winter, like the tropical epiphytes D. eriaeflorum and D, falconeri. While D. heterocarpum, D. lituiflorum, D. longicornu flower in early winters. Tropical D. mannii flowers in early winters.
• Epigeneium fuscescens (a.k.a Dendrobium fuscescens) flowers in early winters.
• Eria coronaria and E. vittata flowers in winters in the subtropical regions of South Asia, while the sub-tropical E. spicata flowers in early winter.
• Some saprophytic orchids, like Galeola falconeri and G. lindleyana are seen flowering in early winters in the sub-tropical regions.
Most of the orchids listed above have beautiful flowers.
• Chowdhery, H.J. 1998. Orchids of Arunachal Pradesh.
• Dubey Anu. 2006. Morpho-physiological studies in some orchids of West Bengal. Ph. D dissertation. | <urn:uuid:9e95712a-faa6-416c-9354-9b27f5b837d1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bellaonline.com/ArticlesP/art31726.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396945.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00059-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.809835 | 928 | 3.203125 | 3 |
He’s literary, mythological, and figures in American history. He’s also more popular than you might guess.
Thanks to Darja for suggesting a name dear to her heart. Our Baby Name of the Day is Ulysses.
Clever Odysseus fought with his fellow Greeks during the Trojan War. In Homer’s Iliad, he gets credit for thinking up the Trojan Horse strategy. Victorious, Odysseus sets out to return home to his beloved Penelope. Like air travel during a winter storm, the trip is plagued by unexpected delays. These form the basis of Homer’s second work, the Odyssey.
Ulysses is the Latin version of the name. There were a few twists between Odysseus and Ulysses – Olusseus in a Greek dialect, Ulixes in the original translation to Latin. I can’t quite follow the path, but today they’re the accepted versions: Odysseus the Greek, Ulysses the Latin.
Names borrowed from antiquity were popular in nineteenth century America; Homer and Horace ranked in the Top 100. Virgil wasn’t far behind. Ulysses probably got a boost thanks to Tennyson’s 1842 poem “Ulysses.” You might recognize this line: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
The most famous bearer of the name was born Hiram Ulysses Grant. The Ohio native was inadvertently renamed by the Congressman who nominated him to West Point as Ulysses S. Grant. At the military academy, he was nicknamed Sam, from his initials – U.S., for Uncle Sam.
Grant went on to lead the Union Army to victory during the American Civil War. In 1868, he was elected President of the United States, and served two terms. After leaving office, he embarked on an odyssey of his own – a pricey world tour with his family. Late in life, he penned his memoirs, and his writing cemented his reputation while earning him a tidy sum.
Then there’s the novel by James Joyce, originally published as a serial between 1918 and 1922. Ulysses is about an ordinary day in the life of Leopold Bloom. It’s a wild ride – a collection of techniques that Joyce correctly forecast would be the subject of debates for decades to come.
All of this could be enough to make Ulysses too much name to consider, but he’s enjoyed surprisingly steady use:
- The earliest American Ulysses I found was Ulysses Doubleday, born in 1792 and a US Congressman from New York. A few years later, Ulysses Mercur served from Pennsylvania;
- The Grant family passed it on, at least until Ulysses S. Grant IV named his only son George;
- Ulysses Daily was among the first African-American physicians in the US;
- Dancer-turned-choreographer Ulysses Dove takes the name in a creative direction, as does sculptor Ulysses Ricci;
- Athletes include baseball’s Ulysses Lupien – who answered to Tony – and Ulysses Stoner, who preferred Lil.
Ulysses is that rare character from myth that everyone recognizes. Kirk Douglas played him in a 1955 film adaptation. While he fell out of the US Top 1000 after 2005, he’s actually been on the edge ever since. In 2009, it took 194 newborns to chart in the Top 1000; according to Nancy, Ulysses, was given to 193 boys that year.
If Julius and Atticus are stylish, the equally ancient Ulysses can’t be too far out of fashion. | <urn:uuid:076769a8-1842-40a2-a4cc-3c20367b4d51> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://appellationmountain.net/baby-name-of-the-day-ulysses/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394987.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00176-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973689 | 789 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Anyone that’s looked at old paintings from the Middle Ages and before would think that artists had no idea how to draw – the angles look all wrong and common objects and items that we’re familiar with look distorted. The Egyptians seemed incapable of drawing anyone face-on, and let’s not forget the Bayeaux Tapestry…
But a revolution occurred in Renaissance Europe that changed pictorial art forever, and that was the introduction, commonly but not accurately attributed to Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), of the techniques of perspective. In fact, these “rules of perspective” had been in gradual development for around four hundred years, but they came to the fore in Renaissance art. If you’re interested in this, you can get a basic overview, with some good examples, here.
The basic rule in perspective in paintings and drawings is that if we imagine a canvas set up before the scene to be painted, all edges receding from the canvas (at a right angle to it) will project to lines in the picture converging toward a single, central “vanishing point”. This is the point in a work of art at which imaginary sight lines appear to converge, suggesting depth. We see it all the time in real life: train rails that converge in the distance even though we know they’re still separate, roads that appear to get narrower even though they don’t in reality, long garden walls that become lower as your eye follows them into the distance.
So the “vanishing point” is a single location in a classical painting to which all parallel lines are drawn and converge. This single point gives the image perspective and structure, it harmonises the relationships between objects in the scene and between the people in it, and it establishes the correct relationship between the subjects and the world around them. It provides the appropriate way of perceiving the action in the painting so that it aligns with the artist’s vision and will. It is also not immediately obvious where it’s located in the image since it’s not a physical object, and yet it pervades the entire picture. Without it, the painting is a chaotic scrapbook page of disconnected objects that appear to bump into each other or fall off the scene.
What a great metaphor for faith! Without a framework of values and morals the earth is a chaotic place, there’s no harmony between people, nations are in discord, we’re at loggerheads with the world. Yet with faith, we have an unseen framework that places us in perspective, shows us our position in the world and provides a means for us to relate to one another that is based on peace, love and respect. Everything in the painting has a relationship with the central point, and the unseen strands that hold the faith-based world together all converge at the nexus where the master plan is held – the Original Artist’s “vanishing point”. And the beauty of it is that this harmony was only truly available once this technique of perspective was known and understood, revealed to mankind.
Like the vanishing point in Renaissance art, it takes an open eye to see the presence of God in our lives, the unseen strands that align us to Him and point the day-to-day actions and affairs in our lives towards His will. The artworks that He’s provided – the books of the bible – require interpretation by learned people who have studied Him and His ways, to locate him in the great tapestry of Creation.
Except that he’s not there. Like the vanishing point, God is an idea, a theoretical construct, a human creation projected into the chaos of the world by people trying to understand the relationships between themselves and their neighbours, brothers and children. God is a well-honed technique for establishing common values that bind society. When the vanishing point that is God is in the correct place, the tapestry of the world, the filtered image that you see, is harmonious. You go to church and read your bible, enjoy fellowship and prayer, all to show you where this “God Point” is located. And you steer your life by it, knowing confidently how the strands that hold you together all converge there.
But when the God Point is moved elsewhere in the tapestry, all hell breaks loose and there’s chaos – the sizes are all wrong, people are looking past each other, morals are distorted. But as a believer you don’t notice this because the God Point is your sole and absolute reference, and “everything that God commands is good”. You also don’t notice how the God Point is moved by leaders in your society, the pastors and televangelists, so that it resides in a part of the tapestry that suits them. You don’t notice how the God Point is actually fuzzy and poorly defined because you rely too much on others to tell you where it is. You simply have faith that the God Point is there where it’s supposed to be. Except that it isn’t. Even. There. It’s a virtual point, an empty intersection of lines drawn by people.
Just as a Renaissance master uses the vanishing point technique to give a portrait meaning, depth, relationships, wisdom and character, so we use faith and the God Point to direct and fill our lives, to give us meaning and direction. But it’s only a method, a life technique – an empty intersection of lines drawn by people. | <urn:uuid:23d53af3-732e-46a0-b7d3-eb8c24bae159> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/God-A-Question-of-Perspective-20130603 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00035-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954572 | 1,151 | 3.515625 | 4 |
1. DVBD Survey for Arthropod-Borne Viruses in Uganda
B. R. Miller
We are conducting adult mosquito trapping in pristine habitats, at the human-animal interface, farms and ranchland in Uganda. Captured mosquitoes are frozen and returned to the Uganda Virus Research Institute where they will be shipped to CDC Fort Collins to be sorted by species and tested for the presence of arboviruses in Vero cell cultures. Viral isolates will be identified using NIH grouping fluids, RT-PCR and sequencing in CDC-Ft. Collins. Unknowns will be further characterized in Fort Collins, Colorado in a BLS-3 enhanced laboratory with HEPA air filtration with investigators wearing personal protective suits and respirators. Low passage virus isolates will be made available to other investigators by placing isolates in WHO Collaborating Centers. This information will be useful in determining arboviral activity in different ecological zones in Uganda and because viral isolation will be done, new viral threats will also be discovered.
Crabtree, M.B., Sang, R. and Miller, B.R. (2009). Kupe virus: Description of a new virus in the genus Nairovirus,family Bunyaviridae. Emerging Infectious Diseases 15: 147-154.
Rosemary Sang, Elizabeth Kioko, Joel Lutomiah, Marion Warigia, Caroline Ochieng, Monica O’Guinn, John S. Lee,Philemon Cheruiyot, Hellen Koka, Marvin Godsey, Robin Lindsay, Barry Miller, David, Schnabel, Robert F. Brieman, and Jason Richardson. Rift Valley fever epidemic in Kenya, 2006/2007: the entomologic investigations. Am. J. Trop.Med. Hyg: 83 (Suppl 2), 2010, pp. 28 37doi:10.4269/ajtmh.2010.09-0319.
Crabtree, M.B., Nga, P.T. and Miller, B.R. 2009. Isolation and characterization of a new mosquito flavivirus, QuangBinh virus, from Vietnam. Arch. Virol. 154:857–860.
Crabtree, M.B., Sang, R., Lutomiah, J., Richardson, J. and Miller B.R. 2009. Arbovirus surveillance of mosquitoescollected at sites of active Rift Valley fever virus transmission: Kenya, 2006-2007. J. Med Entomol. 46:961-964.
2. DVBD Systematic Studies on Mosquito Vectors of Arboviruses
H. M. Savage
Arboviruses that cause human disease, e.g. St. Louis encephalitis, West Nile, Japanese encephalitis, and Rift Valley fever viruses, are transmitted in natural cycles that involve various vertebrate hosts and mosquito vectors of the genera Culex and Aedes s.l. Each virus is transmitted by a limited number of vector species. Precision in species identification is essential to evaluate vector status, and to elucidate transmission cycles. Research projects that integrate morphological and molecular studies to address species identification and evolution are encouraged. Sequence data obtained on a variety of nuclear and mitochondrial genes may be used to develop species-specific assays, and to investigate phylogenetic relationships among vectors and related species.
Crabtree, MB, HM Savage, and BR Miller. 1995. Development of a species-diagnostic polymerase chain reaction assay for the identification of Culex vectors of St. Louis encephalitis virus based on interspecies sequence variation in ribosomal DNA spacers. Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg. 53:105-109.
Miller, BR, MB Crabtree, and HM Savage. 1996. Phylogeny of fourteen Culex mosquito species, including the Culex pipiens complex, inferred from the internal transcribed spacers of ribosomal DNA. Insect Mol. Biol. 5:1-15.
Mukwaya, LG, JK Kayondo, MB Crabtree, HM Savage, BJ Biggerstaff and BR Miller. 2000. Genetic differentiation in the yellow fever virus vector, Aedes simpsoni complex in Africa: Sequence variation in the ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacers of anthropophilic and non-anthropophilic populations. Insect Mol. Biol. 9:85-91.
Aspen, S, MB Crabtree, and HM Savage. 2003. Polymerase chain reaction assay identifies Culex nigripalpus: Part of an assay for molecular identification of the common Culex (Culex) mosquitoes of the eastern United States. J. Am. Mosquito Contr. Assoc. 19:115-120.
Aspen, S, and HM Savage. 2003. Polymerase chain reaction assay identifies North American members of the Culex pipiens complex based on nucleotide sequence differences in the acetylcholinesterase gene Ace.2. J. Am. Mosquito Contr. Assoc. 19:323-328.
3. DVBD Ecology of Mosquito Vectors and Transmission Dynamics of Arboviruses
H. M. Savage
Knowledge of the basic biology and ecology of mosquito vectors is essential to understanding the transmission dynamics of arboviral diseases and the development of control strategies. Research projects that integrate field, laboratory and molecular studies to address unknown or poorly understood aspects of mosquito biology and arbovirus transmission are encouraged.
Apperson, C.S., H.K. Hassan, B.A. Harrison, H.M. Savage, S.E. Aspen, A. Farajollahi, W. Crans, T. J. Daniels, R.C. Falco, M. Benedict, M. Anderson, L. McMillen and T.R. Unnasch. 2004. Host feeding patterns of established and potential mosquito vectors of West Nile virus in the Eastern United States. Journal of
Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases 4:71-82.
Fyodorova, M.V., H.M. Savage, J.V. Lopatina, T.A. Bulgakova, A.V. Ivanitsky, O.V. Platonova, and A.E. Platonov. 2006. Evaluation of potential West Nile virus vectors in Volgograd Region, Russia, 2003 (Diptera: Culicidae): Species composition, bloodmeal host utilization, and virus infection rates of mosquitoes. Journal of Medical Entomology 43:552-563.
Savage, H.M., M. Anderson, E. Gordon, L. McMillen, L. Colton, D. Charnetzky, M. Delorey, S. Aspen, K. Burkhalter, B.J. Biggerstaff and M.Godsey. 2006. Oviposition activity patterns and West Nile virus infection rates for members of the Culex pipiens complex at different habitat types within the hybrid zone, Shelby County, TN, 2002 (Diptera: Culicidae). Journal of Medical Entomology 43:1227-1238.
Savage, H.M., D. Aggarwal, C.S. Apperson, C.R. Katholi, E. Gordon, H.K. Hassan, M. Anderson, D. Charnetzky, L. McMillen, E.A. Unnasch, and T.R. Unnasch. 2007. Host choice and West Nile virus infection rates in blood-fed mosquitoes, including members of the Culex pipiens complex, from Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee, 2002-2003. Journal of Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases 7:365-386.
4. DVBD Molecular Epidemiology, Pathogenesis, and Transmission of Alphaviruses Using Infectious Clone Technology
Numerous alphaviruses have recently been implicated as significant human pathogens during large outbreaks while others have been designated as potential bioterrorism agents. For example, Chikungunya virus has caused a massive epidemic over the past 4 years that has resulted in over 2 million infections. Further basic, clinical, and translational research is needed to further prepare for epidemics and to develop control measures. Our lab utilizes existing and novel infectious clones of alphaviruses (particularly chikungunya; o'nyong nyong; and western, eastern, and Venezuelan equine encephalitis viruses) to gain increased knowledge of alphavirus virulence determinants and epidemiologic patterns. Potential projects include identification of elements of alphaviral genomes that correlate with virulence, development of novel assays and reagents to allow detection of altered or previously unidentified genotypes, characterization of molecular approaches to distinguish virulent versus non-virulent strains of alphaviruses, studies of immune response to alphavirus infection, and studies of virus/vector interactions using the modified infectious clones.
Kariuki Njenga, M., Nderitu, L., Ledermann, J.P., Ndirangu A., Logue, C.H., Kelly, C.H.L., Sang, R., Sergon, K., Breiman, R. and Powers, A.M. 2008. Tracking Epidemic Chikungunya Virus Into The Indian Ocean From East Africa. Journal of General Virology. In Press.Powers, A.M. & Logue, C.H. 2007. The changing patterns of chikungunya virus – reemergence of a zoonotic arbovirus. Journal of General Virology. 88(9): 2363-2377.
Roberts, B.A., Teehee, M., Kelly, C.H.L., Raetz, J.L., Baker, D.L., Powers, A.M., Bowen, R.A., Fine, D.L. 2007. Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus vaccine candidate (V3526) safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy in horses. Vaccine. 25:1868-1876.
Rosemary Sang, Ouledi Ahmed, Ousmane Faye, Cindy L.H. Kelly, Ali Ahaya, Kibet Sergon, Jennifer Brown, Agata, Allerangar, Muliva, Ball, Robert Breiman, Barry R. Miller, and Ann M. Powers. 2007. Epidemic Chikungunya Virus In The Union Of The Comoros, 2005. II. Entomologic Investigations. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. 78(1):77–82
Myles, K.M., Kelly, C.H.L., Ledermann, J.P., and Powers, A.M. 2006. Effects of an opal termination codon preceding the nsP4 gene sequence in the o'nyong nyong virus genome on Anopheles gambiae infectivity. Journal of Virology. 80(10):4992-4997.
5. DVBD: Molecular Virology, Immunology, Pathogenesis, and Vaccine Development of Flaviviruses
C.Y.H Huang (aka C.Y.H. Kinney)
This lab focuses on research and vaccine development targeted to medically important flavivirses that cause significant human diseases worldwide. These human pathogens include 4 different dengue viruses, West Nile virus, yellow fever virus, and Japanese encephalitis virus. Our lab has pioneered the engineering of numerous full-length infectious cDNA clones for various flaviviruses, and they have been widely distributed to research collaborators in and outside of DVBD. We conduct systematic genetic and phenotypic studies of recombinant mutant viruses derived by site-directed mutagenesis of these cDNA infectious clones. We have identified critical viral genetic and protein determinants that are important in virus infection/replication, virus virulence, viral-host interaction, mosquito vector competence, and immunogenicity. We also rationally designed and developed recombinant attenuated vaccine viruses for multiple flaviviruses, and some of them are currently tested in human trials with commercial partner. In addition, we are interested in antivirals, assay development for vaccine and basic researches, and methods for efficient production and purification of viral reagents (e.g. whole viral particles and proteins). Research proposals are invited in (1) identification of molecular biological determinants or functional domains encoded by viral genomes in areas described above, (2) novel research methodology/system development or improved virus reagent production, (3) improvement of vaccine efficiency by new vaccination strategy, (4) and investigation of viral genetic targets for antivirals.
Wicker JA, Whiteman MC, Beasley DWC, Davis T, McGee CE, Lee JC, Higgs S, Kinney RM, Huang CYH, Barrett ADT (2012). Mutational analysis of the West Nile virus NS4B protein. Virology 426:22-33
Butrapet S, Childers T, Moss KJ, Erb SM, Luy BE, Calvert A, Blair CD, Roehrig JT, Huang CYH (2011) Amino acid changes within the E protein hinge region that affect dengue virus type 2 infectivity and fusion. Virology 413, 118-127.
Brault AC,Kinney RM, Maharaj PD, Green ENG, Reisen WK, Huang CYH (2011). Replication of the PDK-53 dengue 2 virus vaccine candidate in Aedes aegypti is modulated by a mutation in the 5’ untranslated region and amino acid substitutions in nonstructural proteins 1 and 3. Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Dis. 11, 683-689
Osorio JE, Brewoo JN, Silengo SJ, Arguello J, Moldovan IR, Tary-Lehmann M, Powell TD, Livengood JA, Kinney RM, Huang CYH, Stinchcomb DT (2011). Efficacy of a Tetravalent Chimeric Dengue Vaccine (DENVax) in Cynomolgus Macaques. Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg 84, 978-987.
Erb SM, Butrapet S, Moss KJ, Luy BE, Childers T, Calvert AE, Silengo SJ, Roehrig JT, Huang CYH, Blair CD (2010). Domain-III FG loop of the dengue virus type 2 envelope protein is important for infection of mammalian cells and Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Virology 406, 328-335.
Huang CYH., Butrapet S, Moss KJ, Childers T, Erb SM, Calvert AE, Silengo SJ, Kinney RM, Blair CD, Roehrig JT (2010). The dengue virus type 2 envelope protein fusion peptide is essential for membrane fusion. Virology 396, 305-315.
Stein DA, Huang CYH, Silengo S, Amantana A, Crumley S, Blouch R, Iversen PL, Kinney RM (2008). Treatment of AG129 Mice with Antisense Morpholino Oligomers Increases Survival Time Following Challenge with Dengue 2 Virus. J. Antimicrob. Chemother. 62: 555-565
Butrapet S, Kinney RM, Huang CYH (2006). Determining genetic stabilities of chimeric dengue vaccine candidates based on dengue 2 PDK-53 virus by sequencing and quantitative TaqMAMA. J. Virol. Methods 131, 1-9
Kinney RM, Huang CYH, Whiteman M, Bowen RA, Langevin SA, Miller BR, Brault AC (2006). Avian Virulence and thermostable replication of the North American West Nile viral strain. J. Gen. Virol. 87: 3611-3622.
Huang CYH, Butrapet S,Tsuchiya KR, Bhamarapravati N, Gubler DJ, Kinney RM (2003). Dengue 2 PDK-53 virus as a chimeric carrier for tetravalent dengue vaccine development. J. Virol. 77,11436-11447.
Huang CYH, Butrapet S,Tsuchiya KR, Bhamarapravati N, Gubler DJ, Kinney RM (2003). Dengue 2 PDK-53 virus as a chimeric carrier for tetravalent dengue vaccine development. J. Virol. 77,11436-11447.
6. DVBD The role of NS1 during a dengue infection with regard to disease pathogenesis
Dengue is a complex of four antigenically distinct arthropod-borne viruses belonging to the Flavivirus family. More than 2.5 billion people are at risk for dengue infection, with 50 million infections occurring annually and over 100 countries involved. At least 500,000 people are hospitalized annually for dengue hemorrhagic fever, a more severe form of the disease, with fatality rates exceeding 20% in the absence of appropriate treatment. A recent increase in hyperendemicity (co-circulation of multiple dengue serotypes) has correlated with increased frequencies of dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) and the serious dengue shock syndrome (DSS) that may follow, presumably brought about by immune enhancement.
Dengue-associated deaths are usually linked to the more severe form of the disease known as DHF or DSS. Although no vaccines or drugs are available, severe disease can be successfully managed by careful monitoring of warning signs and early initiation of aggressive intravenous rehydration therapy. Hence, early diagnosis saves lives. Since NS1 is secreted in the blood during the early phases of infection, it is an ideal target for the development of a diagnostic tool. Additionally, previous characterization of NS1 indicated that this viral antigen may be a marker for severe disease and could be used as a predictor of viremia levels in infected individuals. The role of NS1 during a dengue infection with regard to disease pathogenesis is not well understood.
The purpose of this research is to 1) develop a serotype-specific assay for the detection of dengue virus NS1 in human serum and to 2) understand the role of NS1 in dengue pathogenesis. To achieve the first goal, peptide antisera specific for NS1 proteins produced by each of the four dengue serotypes will be generated and incorporated into an immunobased assay system for detection of dengue NS1 in clinical samples. The results obtained in this study will contribute to the development of antibodies that are specific for NS1 proteins produced by each of the four dengue virus serotypes. In order to understand the role of NS1 in pathogenesis, mechanistic assays were established to determine the cellular role of NS1 in culture and we are developing an in vitro model to determine the mechanism of exogenous NS1 on viral replication for all DEN viruses. Previous studies have determined that exogenous NS1 mediated enhancement of infection (only demonstrated with DEN-1) and that differences in NS1 glycosylation may play a role in pathogenesis. These studies provide the basic research understanding that would eventually have utility for applied prevention public health programs for dengue.
7. DVBD Dengue Branch, Molecular Diagnostics and Research Laboratory
Our laboratory is a common ground to facilitate interactions with scientists and generate national and international, collaborative projects. These interactions stimulate the development and evaluation of new technologies to improve dengue detection and surveillance, and the execution of research to better understand viral pathogenesis or dissemination in humans and mosquito vectors. Our studies encompass 3 mayor areas: 1- Dengue surveillance in Puerto Rico and Latin America: We conduct dengue surveillance in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean and Latin American countries. Through this work, we have learned that the four serotypes are endemic in the area and rapidly disseminate across the region, showing complex patterns of transmission and evolution. Research is conducted to better understand severity of disease and outbreak potential of the strains collected over a large geographical and temporal coverage at high-resolution. 2- Development and Evaluation: Our current understanding about the prevalence of dengue in the region is constrained within our ability to detect the virus. In addition, the reported dissemination of West Nile and its recent detection in Puerto Rico exemplify a rapidly evolving panorama. We are currently working to increase the level of sensitivity of our detection systems and evaluating mass spectroscopy and Microarray technologies. 3- Research in Viral Antagonism: Flavivirus infections cannot be cured with interferon therapy. Infections by these viruses stimulate a strong interferon response; but the virus can block the antiviral effects and remain one step ahead of the host ability to control infection. Our studies are aimed to better understand dengue and West Nile mechanisms involved in interferon antagonism. These studies include analysis of circulating strains of dengue which have been linked to epidemiological and clinical data. Other areas of viral antagonism include mosquito adaptation and dissemination.
Sariol CA, Munoz-Jordán JL, Rosado L, Pantoja P, Abel K, Giavedoni L, Rodriguez IV, White LJ, Martinez M, Arana T, Kraiselburd EN (2007) Transcriptional activation of Interferon stimulated genes but not of cytokine genes after primary infection of rhesus macaques with dengue virus type 1.Journal of Vaccine Immunology, Clinical and Vaccine Immunology 14: 756-766.
Ayala A, Rivera A, Johansson M, Muñoz-Jordán JL (2006) Travel-Associated Dengue - United States, 2005; MMWR 55: 700-702.
Beatty ME, Vorndam V, Hunsperger EA, Muñoz-Jordán JL (2005), Travel - Associated Dengue Infections - United States, 2001-2004 MMWR 54: 556-558.
Puig-Basagoiti F, Tilgner M, Bennett CJ, Zhou Y, Munoz-Jordán JL (2006) Garcia-Sastre A, Bernard KA, Shi PY. A mouse cell-adapted NS4B mutation attenuates West Nile virus RNA synthesis. Virology 361: 229–241.
Munoz-Jordan J, Laurent-Rolle M, Ashour J, Martinez-Sobrido L, Ashok M, Lipkin WI, Garcia-Sastre A. (2005) Inhibition of Alpha/Beta Interferon Signaling by the NS4B Protein of Flaviviruses. Journal of Virology 79: 8004-13.
Muñoz-Jordán J, Sánchez-Burgos GG, Laurent-Rolle M, García-Sastre A (2003) Inhibition of interferon signaling by dengue virus. PNAS SPELL out. 100: 14333-14338.
8. DVBD Arboviral Molecular Determinants of Pathogenesis
Aaron C. Brault
Most arboviruses have genomes comprised of RNA genomes that are highly mutable and capable of rapidly generating large population sizes, making these viruses exceedingly proficient at rapidly evolving into new ecological niches. Identifying the mechanisms by which arboviruses (alphaviruses and flaviviruses) emerge to initiate disease outbreaks will be critical for predicting future arboviral outbreaks. Our laboratory utilizes a combination of molecular systematic and reverse genetic system approaches for the specific identification of mutations associated with the epizootic emergence of arboviruses. For example, a single amino acid substitution within the helicase protein of West Nile virus (WNV; flavivirus) has been demonstrated to result in an approximate million-fold increase in replication efficiency in certain avian species. This mutation has also been identified through positive selection modeling to be under strong selective pressure, indicating the potential importance of avian replication for WNV emergence. Additional studies are currently underway to investigate vertebrate and invertebrate pathogenesis by using novel methodologies for restricting viral replication in a tissue-dependent manner. Potential projects are welcomed that seek to identify virally encoded determinants of vector competence, arboviral pathogenesis, novel methods for pathogen detection and viral attenuation mechanisms for the development of live-attenuated arboviral vaccine candidates.
Coffey, Lark L., Vasilakis, Nikos, Brault, Aaron C., Powers, Ann M., Tripet, Frédéric and Weaver, Scott C. 2008. Arbovirus evolution in vivo is constrained by host alternation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105: 6970-6975.
Reisen, William K., Fang, Ying and Brault, Aaron C. 2008. Limited interdecadal variation in mosquito (Diptera: Culicidae) and avian host competence for western equine encephalomyelitis virus (Togaviridae, Alphavirus). The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 78(4) 681-686.
Brault, Aaron C., Huang, C.Y.-H., Langevin, Stan A., Kinney, Richard M., Bowen, R.A., Ramey, W.N., Panella, Nicholas A., Holmes, Edward C., Powers, Ann M. and Miller, Barry R. 2007. A single positively selected West Nile viral mutation confers increased virogenesis in American crows. Nature Genetics 39 (9) 1162-1166.
Kinney, Richard M., Huang, Claire Y.–H, Whitman, Melissa, Bowen, Richard A., Langevin, Stanley A., Miller, Barry R. and Brault, Aaron C. 2006. Avian virulence and thermostable replication of the North American strain of West Nile virus. Journal of General Virology 87 (12) 3611-3622.
Brault, Aaron C., Langevin, Stanley A., Bowen, Panella, Nicholas A., Richard A., Biggerstaff, Brad J., Miller, Barry R. and Komar, Nicholas 2004. Differential virulence of West Nile viral strains for American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos). Emerging Infectious Diseases 10(12) 2161-2168.
9. DVBD Ecological Dynamics of Dengue Vectors in Puerto Rico
Aedes aegypti is the main dengue vector worldwide because of its close association with humans in tropical and sub-tropical urbanized areas. This mosquito encounters other invasive or native container mosquitoes (mostly treehole mosquitoes) with similar requirements of aquatic habitats for its immature development (natural and artificial containers) in some parts of the world. Examples of other container mosquitoes that overlap in aquatic habitat requirements are Aedes triseriatus in eastern North America, Ae. albopictus in Asia, Africa and the Americas, Ae. polynesiensis in the South Pacific, and Aedes mediovittatus in the Caribbean. Aedes mediovittatus is a competent vector of dengue viruses, with a high rate of vertical transmission for all dengue serotypes. Also, it has been proposed that this mosquito can act as a reservoir in the maintenance of dengue viruses in Puerto Rico during inter-epidemic periods in rural areas with low human population densities. The extent to which Ae. mediovittatus overlaps with Ae. aegypti, dengue viruses, and humans in urban areas is been determined. We have found that both species extensively overlap in sub suburban and rural areas. However, the importance of biological interactions (e.g., competition) between Ae. aegypti and Ae. mediovittatus has not yet been investigated. Previous studies have indicated that biotic interactions among larvae of Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus may be largely responsible for the replacement of the former mosquito species by the latter in the US. The proposed study involves conducting experiments in the laboratory and the field on the effects of environmental factors (e.g., food, temperature) on the nature and intensity of the interactions between immature Ae. aegypti and Ae. mediovittatus and assessing the effects of interactions on traits that might modify vector competence (e.g., size, fecundity).
Barrera R, 1996. Competition and resistance to starvation in larvae of container-inhabiting Aedes mosquitoes. Ecological Entomology 21: 117–127.
Barrera R. 2009. Simplified Aedes aegypti’s pupal-surveys for entomological surveillance and dengue control. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 81: 100-107.
Barrera R, Amador M, Diaz A. Smith J, Munoz-Jordan JL, Rosario Y. 2008. Unusual productivity of Aedes aegypti in septic tanks and its implications for dengue control. Medical and Veterinary Entomology 22:62-69
Bracks MAH, Honório NA, Lounibos LP, Lourenço-de-Oliveira R, Juliano SA, 2004. Interspecific competition between two invasive species of container mosquitoes in Brazil. Annals of the Entomological Society of America 97: 130–139.
Cox J, Grillet ME, Ramos OM, Amador M, Barrera R. 2007. Habitat segregation of dengue vectors along an urban environmental gradient. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 76: 820-826.
Lounibos LP, Suarez S, Menéndez Z, Nishimura N, Escher RL, O’Connell SM, Rey JR, 2002. Does temperature affect the outcome of larval competition between Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus? Journal of Vector Ecology 27: 86–95.
Smith J, Amador M, BARRERA R. 2009. Seasonal and habitat effects on dengue and West Nile virus vectors in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Journal of of the American Mosquito Control Association 25: 38-46.
10. DVBD Global Spread of Arboviral Diseases
M. A. Johansson
Global travel is increasingly associated with the spread of infectious diseases. Predicting the spread of arboviruses is complicated by the complex dynamics of vector populations and human-vector interactions. We have constructed a novel mathematical model to assess the potential for spread of yellow fever virus. The work included statistical modeling of key infection parameters and development of dynamic models for travel, virus transmission, and vector population dynamics. Future work will develop similar models for other pathogens and assess and compare potential interventions. We are particularly interested in developing models which can be used to inform policy.
Johansson, MA, N Arana-Vizcarrondo, BJ Biggerstaff, JE Staples, N Gallagher, & N Marano. (2011) On the treatment of airline travelers in mathematical models. PLoS One. 6(7): e22151.
Johansson, MA, N Arana-Vizcarrondo, BJ Biggerstaff, & JE Staples. (2010) The incubation periods of yellow fever. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. 83(1):183-188.
(In review) Johansson, MA, N Arana-Vizcarrondo, BJ Biggerstaff, N Gallagher, N Marano, & JE Staples. Assessing the risk of international spread of yellow fever virus: A mathematical analysis of an urban outbreak in Asunción, 2008.
11. DVBD Dengue Virus Transmission Dynamics
M. A. Johansson
Dengue is the most wide-spread arboviral disease in the world and its prevalence is increasing. To plan more effective large-scale interventions it is essential to understand the factors underlying dengue virus transmission. We develop large-scale analyses to identify and understand global patterns of incidence. Past studies have assessed the role of climate and weather on different spatial and temporal scales. Future efforts will build upon that work and investigate other potentially important determinants such as serotype interactions at the population level, socio-economic status, human mobility, population density, and vector control efforts. Approaches may include both statistical and mathematical modeling.
Johansson MA, Dominici F, & Glass GE. (2009) Local and Global Effects of Climate on Dengue Transmission in Puerto Rico. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. 3(2): e382.
Johansson MA, Cummings DAT, & Glass GE. (2009) Multiyear Climate Variability and Dengue—El Niño Southern Oscillation, Weather, and Dengue Incidence in Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Thailand: A Longitudinal Data Analysis. PLoS Medicine. 6(11): e1000168.
12. DVBD Parameters Affecting Arbovirus Transmission Dynamics
J P Mutebi
Arboviruses are not uniformly distributed throughout their distribution ranges and numerous studies have described demographic and other physical factors associated with high arboviral activity in human populations. However, there is very little information on the biotic factors associated with high and/or low arboviral activity. Our lab focuses on studying underlying biotic factors that influence arboviral distribution patterns especially over short distances where climatic factors remain relatively constant. We integrate studies on vector biology, vector genetics and population genetics, viral genetics and molecular epidemiology to understand the epidemiology of arboviral diseases. The ultimate goal is to utilize this information in planning and/or improving surveillance programs for arboviral diseases by targeting specific biotic factors associated with elevated arboviral activity.
Mutebi JP, Lubelczyk C, Eisen R, Panella N, MacMillan K, Godsey M, Swope B, Young G, Smith Jr RP, Kantar L, Robinson S, Sears S. Using Wild White-Tailed Deer to Track Eastern Equine Encephalitis virus in Maine. Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases, 2011, Jul 7 (Epub ahead of print)
Gibney KB, Pelletier AR, Robinson S, Mutebi JP, Nett, RJ, Staples JE, Fischer M. Eastern Equine Encephalitis: An Emerging Arboviral Disease Threat — Maine, 2009. Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases, 2011, 11(6):637-639.
Mutebi JP, Jones RC, Plate DK, Gerber SI, Gibbs K, Sun G, Cohen NJ, Delorey MJ and Paul WS. The Impact of Spraying on Mosquito Density in Chicago, 2005. Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association, 2011, 27(1): 69-76.
Jones RC, Weaver KN, Smith S, Blanco C, Flores C., Gibbs K, Markowski D., Plate D, Mutebi JP, Use of the Vector Index and Spatial Analysis to Prospectively Estimate and Delineate Areas of West Nile Virus Transmission Risk in an Urban Jurisdiction. Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association, 2011, 27(3):315-319.
Mutebi, J. -P., René C. A. Rijnbrand, Heinman, Kate D. Ryman, Eryu Wang, Lynda D. Fulop, Richard W. Titball, and Alan D. T. Barrett. Genetic relationships and evolution of genotype of yellow fever virus and other members of the yellow fever virus group within the Flavivirus genus. Journal of Virology 2004, 78(18): 9652-65.
Mutebi, J. -P., A. Gianelli, A. Travossos, R. B. Tesh, A. D. T. Barrett and S. Higgs. Infectivity of YFV for Bolivian Aedes aegypti. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2004 10(9): 1657-1660.
Milleron, R., J. -P. Mutebi and G. C. Lanzaro. Antigenic diversity in Maxadillan, a salivary protein from the sand fly vector of American Visceral Leishmaniasis. American Journal for Tropical Medicine Hygiene. 2004 70(3): 286-93.
McAthur, M., M. Suderman, J. -P. Mutebi, and A. D. T. Barrett. Molecular characterization of ahamster viscerotropic strain of yellow fever virus. Journal of Virology 2003, 77(2) 1494-1502.
Mutebi, J. -P., H. Wang, Li Li, J. E. Bryant and A. D. T. Barrett. Nucleotide sequence variation ofthe prM/E region of yellow fever virus identifies four distinct genotypes in Africa. Journal of Virology 2001, 75(15) 699-708.
13. DVBD Dengue Branch, Molecular Diagnostics and Research Laboratory
Our laboratory conducts dengue research in three major areas: Molecular Epidemiology, Antiviral Response to Dengue virus Infection, and Improved Molecular Diagnostics.
1- Molecular Epidemiology: The four dengue virus (DENV) serotypes are endemic in Puerto Rico and rapidly disseminate across the region, showing complex patterns of transmission and evolution. Sequencing and phylogenetic studies are conducted to better understand the molecular determinants of the long-term persistence and outbreak potential of the DENV strains. Our results show that (1) each DENV serotype evolves through periods of high and low transmission in co-existence with other serotypes, (2) virus lineages spread across the island through geographic corridors in response to important epidemiological changes, and (3) viruses find long-term refuge in geographic areas after several years of high transmission. Research to further define the viral and epidemiologic reasons for these transmission patterns may aid our efforts to prevent the spread and re-emergence of dengue in endemic areas.
2- Antiviral Response: Because dengue illness presents before a full protective antibody response is developed, our ability to eliminate the virus depends to some extend on the innate immune response. However, the virus can block the antiviral effects of interferon and remains one step ahead of the host’s ability to control infection. We know that two nonstructural proteins (NS4B and NS5) block the Jak/Stat pathway; but the precise interactions between virus and host proteins are not known. In addition, microarray studies have shown that the strong interferon response seen in patients with mild dengue illness is weakened in patients with hemorrhagic dengue or dengue shock. Our studies aim to (a) further study the interactions of NS4B and NS5 with the interferon pathway, (b) analyze the ability of currently circulating dengue strains to block interferon and stimulate T-cell response, and (c) study the expression of interferon-stimulated genes in dengue patients. This knowledge would contribute to development of specific antivirals against dengue, detect less pathogenic strains for vaccine development/improvement, and detect specific markers of disease severity useful in disease prognosis.
3- Improved Molecular Diagnostics: Most dengue patients present with symptoms when they are viremic and prior to developing a full immune response; therefore, our ability to diagnose this disease relies on detection of DENV through molecular diagnostics. However, molecular diagnostic tests are not approved in the US for commercial use. We have worked on increasing the level of sensitivity of our RT-PCR assays, evaluating high throughput and point of care diagnostic options for these assays, and conducting pre-market evaluations. These assays can positively identify 85% of confirmed cases presenting with symptoms during the first days of symptoms. Research in this area would be directed towards development of new or improved diagnostic assays and studies to validate diagnostic test algorithms.
Munoz-Jordan JL: Subversion of interferon by dengue virus. Curr Top Microbiol Immunol 2010, 338:35-44.
Munoz-Jordan JL, Bosch I: Modulation of the antiviral response by dengue virus. Frontiers in Dengue Research, Caister Academic Press, Norfolk, UK 2010:121-140.
Munoz-Jordan JL, Fredericksen B: How flaviviruses activate and suppress the interferon response. Viruses 2010, 2:676-691.
McElroy K, Henn M, Santiago G, Lennon N, Munoz-Jordan JL: Long-term dominance of dengue virus Type II Puerto Rican lineages throughout Major Epidemiological Changes, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Accepted for PublicationTomashek KM, Rivera A, Munoz-Jordan JL, Hunsperger E, Santiago L, Padro O, Garcia E, Sun W: Description of a large island-wide outbreak of dengue in Puerto Rico, 2007. Am J Trop
Med Hyg 2009, 81:467 -474.
Munoz-Jordan JL, Collins CS, Vergne E, Santiago GA, Petersen L, Sun W, Linnen JM: Highly sensitive detection of dengue virus nucleic acid in samples from clinically ill patients. J Clin Microbiol 2009, 47:927-931.
Munoz-Jordan JL, Sanchez-Burgos GG, Laurent-Rolle M, Garcia-Sastre A. Inhibition of interferon signaling by dengue virus. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2003;100(24):14333-8.
Chesler DA, Munoz-Jordan JL, Donelan N, Garcia-Sastre A, Reiss CS. PKR is not required for interferon-gamma inhibition of VSV replication in neurons. Viral Immunol 2003;16(1):87-96.
Vernal J, Munoz-Jordan JL, Muller M, Cazzulo JJ, Nowicki C. Sequencing and heterologous expression of a cytosolic-type malate dehydrogenase of Trypanosoma brucei. Mol Biochem Parasitol 2001;117(2):217-21.
Munoz-Jordan JL, Cross GA, de Lange T, Griffith JD. t-loops at trypanosome telomeres. Embo J 2001;20(3):579-88.
Munoz-Jordan JL, Cross GA. Telomere shortening and cell cycle arrest in Trypanosoma brucei expressing human telomeric repeat factor TRF1. Mol Biochem Parasitol 2001;114(2):169-81.
Munoz-Jordan JL, Davies KP, Cross GA. Stable expression of mosaic coats of variant surface glycoproteins in Trypanosoma brucei. Science 1996; 272(5269):1795-7.
14. DVBD Dengue Virus NS1 Research
Dengue is a complex of four antigenically distinct arthropod-borne viruses belonging to the Flavivirus family. It is one of the most important vector-borne diseases with more than 2.5 billion people at risk for dengue infection and 50 million infections occurring annually in over 100 tropical and sub-tropical countries. At least 500,000 people are hospitalized annually for DHF, a more severe form of the disease, with fatality rates exceeding 5% in the absence of appropriate treatment. A recent increase in hyperendemicity (co-circulation of multiple dengue serotypes) has correlated with increased frequencies of DHF and the serious dengue shock syndrome (DSS). Dengue is hyperendemic in Puerto Rico where yearly transmission occurs. The global epidemiology and the dynamics of transmission of dengue viruses have changed dramatically during the past decade due to an expansion of the geographical distribution of mosquito vector, Aedes sp., and urbanization and modern transportation. The responsibility of the Dengue Branch is to understand the pathogenesis of dengue and implement improved diagnostic tools. Conventional early diagnostic techniques for DENV infection rely on assays to detect virus including viral isolation and/or RT-PCR testing. Both of these techniques require sophisticated equipment and training which poses limitations for early diagnosis in most dengue endemic countries, most of which are resource poor. Immunoassays that detect anti-DENV IgM are more widely used for dengue diagnosis than virus isolation or RT-PCR however often requires paired serum samples. IgM antibodies are not present until five days post-onset of symptoms which is often too late for clinical management and intervention purposes. Although clinical warning signs can alert a physician that a patient is progressing into severe dengue, none of the current laboratory diagnostic techniques can determine whether a patient will progress to a more severe form of dengue (DHF or DSS) early in the infection prior to clinical warning signs. Since NS1 is secreted in the blood during the early and late phases of infection, it is an ideal target for the development of a single sample diagnostic test. Additionally, previous characterization of NS1 indicates that this viral antigen may be a marker of severe dengue disease (Libraty et al., 2002). The role of NS1 during a dengue infection with regard to disease pathogenesis is not well understood (for review, see Alcon-LePoder et al., 2006).
The purpose of this study is to 1) develop a serotype-specific enzyme-linked immunoassay assay (ELISA) for the detection of dengue virus NS1 in human serum and to 2) understand the role of NS1 in dengue pathogenesis. To achieve the first goal, peptide antisera specific for NS1 proteins produced by each of the four dengue serotypes will be generated and incorporated into an ELISA for detection of dengue NS1 in clinical samples. The results obtained from this study will contribute to the development of antibodies that are specific for NS1 proteins produced by each of the four dengue virus serotypes. In order to understand the role of NS1 in pathogenesis, the fellow will establish mechanistic assays to determine the cellular role of NS1 in culture and develop an in vitro model to determine the mechanism of exogenous NS1 in the augmentation of viral replication for all four DENV serotypes. Previous studies have determined that exogenous NS1 mediated enhancement of infection (only demonstrated with DENV-1) and that differences in NS1 glycosylation may play a role in pathogenesis (Crabtree et al., 2004) however the mechanism of this observation and its implication in human disease is unknown. These studies provide the basic research understanding that would eventually have utility for applied prevention programs for dengue. | <urn:uuid:0caa9653-834f-4951-9aea-58b4e0f7de14> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.asm.org/index.php/component/content/article/24-education/postdoc-scientist/126-division-of-vector-borne-infectious-diseases-viruses | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403826.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00056-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.827678 | 9,887 | 2.65625 | 3 |
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Members of the 43rd Bomb Group and their families contribute to this archive. Occasionally official documents from the National Archives supplement these materials in order to provide additional insight into events or people.
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Copyright for the materials in this archive rests either with contributors, with the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, or with institutions from which materials were drawn. | <urn:uuid:939fb5bb-e28b-4d7f-92a4-0f45dae995df> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://pacificairwar.org/about | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398873.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00170-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933249 | 278 | 2.515625 | 3 |
What is hunger?
These situations are the result of high profile crises like war or natural disasters, which starve a population of food. Yet emergencies account for less than eight percent of hunger's victims.
Daily undernourishment is a less visible form of hunger -- but it affects many more people, from the shanty towns of Jakarta in Indonesia and the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh to the mountain villages of Bolivia and Nepal. In these places, hunger is much more than an empty stomach.
For weeks, even months, its victims must live on significantly less than the recommended 2,100 kc that the average person needs to lead a healthy life.
The body compensates for the lack of energy by slowing down its physical and mental activities. A hungry mind cannot concentrate, a hungry body does not take initiative, a hungry child loses all desire to play and study.
Hunger also weakens the immune system. Deprived of the right nutrition, hungry children are especially vulnerable and become too weak to fight off disease and may die from common infections like measles and diarrhoea. Each year, almost seven million children die before reaching the age of five; malnutrition is a key factor in over a third of these deaths (source: Levels and Trends in Child Mortality, IGME, 2012)
How much food do you need?
The energy and protein that people need varies according to age, sex, body size, physical activity and, to some extent, climate. On average, the body needs more than 2,100 kc per day per person to allow a normal, healthy life. Extra energy is needed during pregnancy and while nursing. | <urn:uuid:4570494e-6458-4c45-9d7a-5cd848a3afea> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://m.wfp.org/hunger/what-is?device=mobile | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00187-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94702 | 335 | 3.59375 | 4 |
Bluetooth® wireless technology has received a lot of attention for wireless connectivity.
Now it's ZigBee's turn. ZigBee™ is the name of an alliance of companies formed around IEEE's recently approved (May 2003) 802.15.4 specification for low data rates in the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) radio bands. The ZigBee protocol promises to provide longer battery life (months or even years on a single battery charge) and to be a lower-cost alternative to Bluetooth for wireless sensing and control applications.
The ZigBee alliance—which includes such companies as Invensys, Honeywell, Mitsubishi Electric, Motorola, and Philips—takes its name from the zig-zag path of bees that form mesh networks between flowers. ZigBee proponents believe mesh networking is the key to unattended wireless systems in the home, business, or industry. Mesh networking, they say, provides redundancy required for unattended system operation and is essential for the reliability of the ZigBee network.
The IEEE 802.15.4 wireless standard was developed specifically for remote monitoring and control. Since it has been ratified, engineers can start considering a standards-based alternative to proprietary wireless sensing.
"802.15.4 is the first standard I am aware of that expressly focuses on low cost and low power and fairly modest bit rates," says Robert Poor, a technical editor for the 802.15.4 standards specification, and chief technology officer and co-founder of Ember Corporation. Ember was established to provide embedded wireless networking solutions and is one of the participants in the ZigBee Alliance. The 802.15.4 bit rates are specifically limited to 250Kbps compared to 1Mbps for Bluetooth.
The standard defines transmission and reception on the physical radio channel (PHY), and the channel access, PAN (personal area network) maintenance, and reliable data transport (MAC). ZigBee defines the topology management, MAC management, routing, discovery protocol, and security management, and includes the 802.15.4 portions.
To meet global regulatory requirements, ZigBee is designed to work in either the 868-through-928 MHz band to cope with regional differences, or 2.4 GHz ISM band typically available worldwide.
"Where we see the market really taking off is in the home," says Kirsten West, founder of West Technology Research Solutions, a market research and consulting company focused on emerging technologies. "There is a lot of activity occurring now in China for wireless for home automation, and ZigBee is going to be the answer." In a report published on ZigBee opportunities, West predicts that in the future it will be common to find as many as 50 ZigBee chips in the house.
The motivation for wireless connectivity in Asia/Far East is conservation. For example, washing machines cannot be run after 8:00 pm, so when owners are not at home, they must activate the appliance remotely by cell phone so the washing cycle is completed before the required deadline. Mesh networking aids such unattended system operation. The star topology used in cell phones and wireless LANs has a central control point that requires physical movement to improve connectivity. Mesh networking allows alternative paths to routing data to the target device and this process is transparent to the user. To provide low cost, the system requirements for ZigBee are much less than Bluetooth and other wireless protocols. Also, ZigBee's bandwidth is lower than Bluetooth, but the range is greater and the number of nodes is much greater. The larger node capability means that a large number of nodes can be initially established in a network or added (up to 255) as technology and system requirements change. Bluetooth is limited to eight nodes per network. Many of the potential ZigBee applications, such as networked lighting in office buildings, would require dozens and even several dozens of nodes.
Available Hardware and Design Tools
The keys to designing end products are integrated circuits, software, and design and deployment tools. Some of these ICs, software, and tools are in production and others are in pre-production or sampling/evaluation mode. The availability and choices of hardware and design tools simplify the development and reduce the risk of implementing wireless networks. With ZigBee, the risk is reduced because the hardware is not proprietary to a single supplier but is standards-based. OEMs interested in designing wireless sensing or wireless control can already evaluate the potential of ZigBee.
Ember and ChipCon co-designed and introduced an integrated circuit—ChipCon's CC2420 and Ember's EM2420—that are both 802.15.4-compliant and termed ZigBee-ready (the ZigBee protocol has not been finalized). Ember's EM2420 includes the software stack that allows the user to make the radio into a self-organizing network.
Ember's evaluation kit is comprised of a dozen wireless nodes that can be simply placed at various locations in a facility. By attaching any one of the nodes into the serial port of a PC, an engineer can immediately monitor the network connectivity and perform tests such as pinging, test route, and pairing (making application layer associations between node A and node B). They also have a developer's kit that is a dozen wireless nodes on a breakout board with an Ethernet back channel to upload firmware and develop code for a protocol stack and load the code into the wireless node.
"At this point in time this is an early adapters' market for ZigBee," says George Karayannis, vice president of sales and marketing, Helicomm. Helicomm offers ZigBee-Ready Starter Bundles, based on their IPWiNS software platform and ZMD's RFIC silicon products. The bundles allow OEMs to quickly prototype wireless mesh networking in their environment with their sensors. This provides customers who want to be early adapters with a migration path to ZigBee. Even though the ZigBee 1.0 spec will not be completely ratified until late 2004, you will see a lot of OEMs starting to design in both 15.4 and ZigBee, says Karayannis. It looks like residential lighting control could be among the first applications.
Another semiconductor supplier sampling an RF data modem designed for the 2.4 GHz 802.15.4 and ZigBee standards is Motorola. Their RF modem can be mated to an 8-bit MCU with the 802.15.4 MAC and variety of sensors including CMOS pressure, smoke detector IC and accelerometers that they also manufacture. Motorola plans on offering platform solutions, reference designs, and software to support the ZigBee standard.
Ember ChipCon, Helicomm, Motorola, and other companies demonstrated their ability to meet the 802.15.4 standard, the foundation for ZigBee, at the ZigBee Alliance Open House held on November 19, in San Jose, CA.
The Stackup: The protocol stack for IEEE
802.15.4 and ZigBee uses a cost-effective. 8-bit microcontroller to
provide the silicon hardware and run the software. The full stack is less
than 32 kbytes, while a simple node-only stack can be as small as 4
With companies such as Honeywell, Invensys, Mitsubishi Electric, Samsung, ABB, Danfoss, Eaton, Oki, Omron, Silicon Wave, and other equipment manufacturers as either promoters or participants in the ZigBee Alliance, several new ZigBee wireless sensing products can be expected in the near future. Until the ZigBee protocol is finalized, these products must be considered ZigBee-ready.
For example, Danfoss A/S, a member of the alliance, has 802.15.4/ZigBee technology in house today. According to Bernd Grohmann, manager of Danfoss' Communication Technology Centre, "The strengths of the underlying IEEE802.15.4 technology, performance of first chip implementations, focus, and direction of the ZigBee work, and the overall momentum within and around the ZigBee Alliance have convinced us to expect ZigBee to be one of the key wireless technologies in our future." Danfoss is continuing to work with WLAN and Bluetooth technologies in areas where they are appropriate. The company recognizes the potential of ZigBee for new sensor and control applications and is well beyond the evaluation phase in several of Danfoss' key products, which include refrigeration and air conditioning, heating, and industrial automation.
ZigBee Alliance promoter Ember has a customer that makes data loggers to manage cold-chain information. A wireless data logger can be placed in the shipping crate of temperature-sensitive produce or pharmaceutical products. The wireless data logger allows measurements to be made and transmitted to a receiver (one of the repeater nodes) at the customer's dock without requiring the truck to be unloaded, especially if the shipment would eventually be rejected due to unacceptable temperature exposure. This savings in time provides a substantial cost savings to customers. This product was in pilot production in late 2003.
Welcome wagon: as the newest kid on the
wireless block, ZigBee was developed to address different applications
than existing wireless standards.
Today, embedded wireless networking software is 100 percent proprietary. With the industry experts working to develop the ZigBee network layer and protocol stack and the lessons learned from Bluetooth as their experience factor, Alliance members believe that the risk involved in initiating a design based on the 802.15.4 standard is minimal, even though the ZigBee protocol is not finalized and approved. Helicomm's Karayannis says, "In the worst case scenario, ZigBee would fail to catch on broadly, in which case the ZigBee network layer would be available as yet another proprietary solution, but one built by experts from across the industry."
Some ZigBee supporters, such as Jose Gutierrez, program manager for the ZigBee specification and principal engineer in Eaton Corporation's Innovation Center, fear that adding last-minute features to ZigBee to make it more complex will imply additional cost, more difficult testing and debugging, higher implementation risks, and higher power consumption. Existing alliance members are working hard to avoid those changes. A draft specification was ready for review by Alliance members in early 2004 with final review target for Q3, 2004. Gutierrez feels confident that wireless sensing based on the 802.15.4 standard is ready to be evaluated for its potential.
Sky's the Limit: ZigBee's market growth
can easily exceeed 500 million units by 2008 if the specification is
approved on time and efforts to promote the benefits of 802.15.4 and
ZigBee are successful.
In a ZigBee presentation at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the cost of the 802.15.4 bill of materials was shown as half that of a Bluetooth node. That kind of cost reduction should generate some serious interest, especially once the ZigBee standard is approved. As Helicomm's Karayannis notes, "You have about a 9- to-12-month window to catch your competitors off guard." | <urn:uuid:cb9949b9-dc47-4f60-8dcd-5b8f133a518f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.designnews.com/document.asp?doc_id=225567&piddl_msgorder=thrd | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00177-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936279 | 2,228 | 2.71875 | 3 |
This category lists sites that provide biographies and autobiographies of well-known literary figures. All sites are suitable for children and teens to read and use for enjoyment or for schoolwork. Biographies may be brief and sites may have several, perhaps connected by occupation, but the information contained should have the basic details, e.g., birth and death dates, some details of the life lived, major accomplishments, and so forth.
Related categories 3
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] Author and illustrator of children's books. Includes an author biography, book summaries, and photographs.
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] Biography, pictures, book information, opinions, competitions, opportunities for dialogue with the author.
[ Kids ] Features biography, book information, work in progress, illustrating tips, color in area, and kids' art gallery.
[ Kids/Teens ] Official site of the authors and illustrators of books for children, Mary Jane and Herm Auch, provides question and answer pages for children and aspiring children's writers and illustrators.
Author Search Index on kidsreads.com
[ Kids ] Introduces children's authors through author profiles and interviews. Also offers e-mail addresses of select writers.
Authors of Lasting Fame
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] A brief introduction to authors Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charlotte Bronte, and Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Ferber.
[ Kids/Teens ] Complete list of books with background information and history of story ideas.
Barron, T. A.
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] Author of The Lost Years of Merlin epic and "The Kate Adventures" features personal message, responses to questions from readers, and appearances schedule.
[ Kids ] Learn about Brilliant Brits, Nessie, and How to Speak Chimpanzee on the author/illustrator's site. Find animations, games, riddles, and teacher resources.
[ Kids ] Personal site of the children's writer who created works such as Totally Unsuitable For Children and the Jeremy Brown spy spoofs. Includes a guide to his life, news, and extracts from his books.
[ Kids/Teens ] Information and biography of the illustrator and author of Miss Rumphius.
[ Kids/Teens/Mature Teens ] Includes brief biography and full bibliography of the author's sixty-nine children's books.
[ Kids ] Official site includes biography, illustrations, books, and a newsletter. Author of 'Click Clack Moo, Cows that Type'.
Curry, Jane Louise
[ Kids/Teens/Mature Teens ] Author of adventure, fantasy, time travel, mystery, and Native American tales for young people. Includes book chapters, background, illustrations, photos, reviews, and biography.
[ Kids/Teens ] Provides biographical sketch complete with a list of accomplishments, calendar, and pictures.
[ Kids/Teens/Mature Teens ] Author and illustrator of the Spiderwick Chronicles. Features news, art, biography, video, and FAQ.
[ Kids/Teens ] A short autobiography of the award-winning young adult horror writer.
[ Kids/Teens ] The official site includes a brief biography and a synopsis of the book, "The City of Ember".
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] Author of children's historical books and magazine articles. Includes biography. cover art, and articles.
Fischer, Debbie Reed
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] Author of teen fiction and young adult novels. Biography, reviews, list pf appearances and overviews of the books.
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] The Newbery Medalist's web site, offering a biography, articles, bibliography, event listings, and excerpts.
[ Kids ] A brief biography of the author with introductions to her illustrations, including reports from her current studio projects and outdoor adventures.
From Noah Webster to Merriam-Webster
[ Kids/Teens/Mature Teens ] Tells about the author of America's first dictionary.
[ Kids/Teens ] Contains biography, list of books, FAQs, author visit information, and writing tips.
[ Kids ] Official site of the children's picture book author and illustrator. Includes a photo gallery, a list of his works and awards, and a schedule of author visits.
[ Kids/Teens ] Author and illustrator of non-fiction books. Includes biography, pictures, and brief book descriptions.
Ginger Foglesong Guy
[ Kids ] Award winning bilingual books for children in English and Spanish. Site includes list of books, biography, and links.
[ Kids/Teens ] Listen to the author read parts of his stories, such as "Two Weeks with the Queen", and "Worry Warts". Contains photographs and a biography.
Great Writers and Poets
[ Mature Teens ] Directory of links to resources for numerous authors, including information on Nobel Prize winners.
Green, Roger J.
[ Teens ] Includes information about the author and his books, including a full list of books and how he started writing.
[ Kids/Teens ] Official site provides author biography, illustrations, information on characters and books, and fun and games.
[ Kids/Teens/Mature Teens ] Reviews and synopses of books and stories, information about the author, and links to sites related to writing.
[ Kids/Teens ] Official site of Jacqueline Jules, author of Noah and the Ziz, Once Upon a Shabbos, and The Hardest Word; with games and a biography.
[ Kids/Teens ] Website of author and illustrator of non-fiction books for children. Site includes a biography, links, and information on science for children.
[ Kids/Teens ] Author of "Uncanny!", "The Cabbage Patch War", and Hedley Hopkins". Contains a biography, a list of books and their covers, and some games.
[ Mature Teens ] Official site for the author of young adult fiction. Includes biography, FAQ, a synopsis of published works, and contact information.
Learning About Cynthia Voigt
[ Teens ] An 8th-grader shares what she has learned about this popular young adult writer.
Lives of Girls Who Became Famous
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] The stories of 19 girls who became famous in their adult life.
[ Kids ] Brief biography, and list of books including 'Frog and Toad Together'.
[ Kids ] Biography of the award-winning children's book author, including information about the author, her books, and scheduled school visits.
[ Kids ] Visit the magical worlds from the books, including the 5 stories about Miss Christmas and the lands visited by the Princess of Colour.
[ Mature Teens ] Official website for young adult author, includes biography, book information, appearances, and links.
[ Teens ] Has information on the author and listing of her books. Includes Mia page and news, fun stuff and princess club.
Mitali Perkins' Fire Escape
[ Kids/Teens/Mature Teens ] The author reflects on life in the melting pot, offering writing contests, a safe place to discuss immigrant life, book reviews, and other related resources, including her own writing.
Penguin Random House - David Almond
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] Includes a brief biography of the author, reviews of his books, and a list of awards won.
Penguin Random House - Iain Lawrence
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] Introduces the author of Lord of the Nutcracker Men and The High Seas Trilogy. Includes biographical sketch, stories from the author's personal life, and photos.
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] Official site of the author of the Circle of Magic books, and other popular series. Find a biography of the author, FAQs, and art work.
[ Kids/Teens ] Provides author information, books, current news, activities, and a forum. Author of 'Pink and Say'.
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] Official site of the author of "His Dark Materials"; with a biography, questions, and information about the books.
[ Kids/Teens ] Official website of teen author and poet, including poetry, biography, and books.
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] Offers introduction to the Victorian-era author. Includes poems and "seer" letters, with a brief analysis.
[ Mature Teens ] Author of science fiction and fantasy novels for children and young adults. Find autobiographical information and a synopsis of some of his books.
[ Kids ] Provides personal information about the author, a synopsis of the books she has written, and a schedule of school visits.
[ Kids/Teens ] Promotes children's author and storyteller, providing information about recent publications and booking engagements.
[ Kids/Teens ] Official site of the author of Home of the Brave, El Chino, Grandfather's Journey and Tea with Milk. Includes news, articles, and speeches by the author.
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] The official site of the author of the Cheeseburger Subversive and other short stories and poems. Includes a synopsis of his book, readings, endorsements, and a schedule of readings and events.
Schofield, Brent R.
[ Kids ] Author of "What The Cat Knows" and "Hairballs And Sticky Things". Features book descriptions and biography.
[ Kids/Teens ] Official website for the non-fiction author. Includes a biography, information about her work, and a schedule of school visits and special events.
Shulamith Levey Oppenheim
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] Presents information on the children's book author, short stories, published books and new work.
[ Kids ] Official homepage of the award-winning science author for children. Includes information on the author and his books, along with science links.
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] Answers to questions about the author of teen poetry novels including One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies, What My Mother Doesn't Know, and Stop Pretending.
[ Kids/Teens ] Author's official site. Features pictures, biography, overview of his books, news, schedule, and fun stuff.
Tagliaferro , Linda
[ Kids/Teens ] Author of biographies of Bruce Lee and Thomas Edison, and children's science and social studies books. Includes biography and information about school visits.
Van Draanen, Wendelin
[ Kids/Teens/Mature Teens ] Dedicated to authors Sammy Keyes mystery books. Contains Sammy's song, interview, short book reviews, mystery game, and biography.
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] The author of 'Click Here(To Find Out How I Survived Seventh Grade)'; with a biography and book details.
[ Kids ] Features the poems and stories of the children's author/illustrator, along with a glimpse into his personal life, photos, and answers to frequently asked questions.
[ Kids ] Official site which includes a personal blog, FAQ's, and fun games for children.
[ Kids ] Author site, featuring her Beany books, Christmas Miracle, and other works. Information on school visits, and related book activities.
[ Kids/Teens ] Children's book author and illustrator provides biographical information and teacher activities, as well as information on scheduling a school visit.
[ Teens/Mature Teens ] Offers biography, FAQ, and details of books.
[ Kids/Teens ] Known as the Hans-Christian Anderson of America, site includes her journal, awards, and activities for kids and teachers.
Other languages 4
Last update:April 4, 2016 at 5:54:09 UTC
People and Society
Sports and Hobbies | <urn:uuid:709faf0a-c28c-47f7-8972-d6378e01a546> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dmoz.org/Kids_and_Teens/People_and_Society/Biography/Authors/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00031-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.891903 | 2,503 | 2.84375 | 3 |
More market less poverty, but also more sustainable land use?During empirical research in Benin, Dutch-sponsored researcher Esaïe Gandonou demonstrated that farmers in underdeveloped parts of developing countries make little extra effort to control soil erosion if the market to which they sell their products becomes more accessible. Although the incomes of the farmers improve, this does not lead to substantial increase in erosion control measures.
Benin is one of the poorest countries in the world. Sustainable land use is therefore even more important so that, for example, soil erosion does not lead to further poverty. Therefore the main question in Gandonou's doctoral research was to what extent would agriculture on fragile slopes become more sustainable if the farmers were given more possibilities for selling their products and acquiring production resources. The study is based on empirical data collected in 1998 and 1999 in Boukombé in the northwest of Benin.
The results show that in a remote area such as Boukombé, the effects of a closer market on erosion control are marginal. This is partly because many efforts to conserve the soil are already being undertaken, and partly because incomes of farmers in this area remain very low, even if the market is nearby. Gandonou's research has made it clear that reducing the distance to the market has slight, but positive, effects on the yields of grains and therefore on the attractiveness of soil conservation. Artificial fertilisers plays a key role in this: these can only be used successfully if the subsoil has not been eroded too much and the water runoff is not too strong. This means that a farmer who wants to use artificial fertilisers will also have to take soil conservation measures. To date this study is the clearest example of how soil conservation contributes to an increased yield.
A more accessible market also provides households with more opportunities to grow other, more commercial crops or to undertake other profitable activities. Investments in an improved infrastructure can therefore contribute to improved agricultural returns, and these higher returns induce farmers to invest more in the sustainable use of slopes.
The Ph.D. thesis, 'Sustainable Land Use and Distance to the Market. Micro Evidence from Northern Benin' was written by Esaïe Gandonou at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and is part of the programme The Agricultural Transition to Sustainable Tropical Land Use financed by the NWO Stimulation Programme Environment & Economy.
Esaïe Gandonou's research was funded by NWO.
Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 30 Apr 2016
Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:a0b1bd41-0bc7-484e-95ec-b36a8859ddab> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://psychcentral.com/news/archives/2006-02/nofs-mml021506.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00109-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955535 | 528 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Columbus's enterprise to find a westward route to Asia grew out of the practical experience of a long and varied maritime career, as well as out of his considerable reading in geographical and theological literature. He settled for a time in Portugal, where he tried unsuccessfully to enlist support for his project, before moving to Spain. After many difficulties, through a combination of good luck and persuasiveness, he gained the support of the Catholic monarchs, Isabel and Fernando.
The widely published report of his voyage of 1492 made Columbus famous throughout Europe and secured for him the title of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and further royal patronage. Columbus, who never abandoned the belief that he had reached Asia, led three more expeditions to the Caribbean. But intrigue and his own administrative failings brought disappointment and political obscurity to his final years.
The Library's vellum copy of the Book of Privileges is one of four that Columbus commissioned to record his agreements with the Spanish crown. It is unique in preserving an unofficial transcription of a Papal Bull of September 26, 1493 in which Pope Alexander VI extended Spain's rights to the New World.
Much concerned with social status, Columbus was granted a coat of arms in 1493. By 1502, he had added several new elements, such as an emerging continent next to islands and five golden anchors to represent the office of the Admiral of the Sea.
As a reward for his successful voyage of discovery, the Spanish sovereigns granted Columbus the right to bear arms. According to the blazon specified in letters patent dated May 20, 1493, Columbus was to bear in the first and the second quarters the royal charges of Castile and Leon -- the castle and the lion -- but with different tinctures or colors. In the third quarter would be islands in a wavy sea, and in the fourth, the customary arms of his family.
The earlist graphic representation of Columbus's arms is found in his Book of Privileges and shows the significant modifications Columbus ordered by his own authority. In addition to the royal charges that were authorized in the top quarters, Columbus adopted the royal colors as well, added a continent among the islands in the third quarter, and for the fourth quarter borrowed five anchors in fess from the blazon of the Admiral of Castille. Columbus's bold usurpation of the royal arms, as well as his choice of additional symbols, help to define his personality and his sense of the significance of his service to the Spanish monarchs.
The Book of Privileges is a collection of agreements between Columbus and the crowns of Spain prepared in Seville in 1502 before his 4th final voyage. The compilation of documents includes the 1497 confirmation of the rights to titles and profits granted to the Admiral by the 1492 contract of Santa Fe and augmented in 1493 and 1494, as well as routine instructions and authorizations related to his third voyage. We know that four copies of his Book of Privileges existed in 1502, three written on vellum and one on paper.
All three vellum copies have thirty-six documents in common, including the Papal Bull inter caetera of May 4, 1493, defining the line of demarcation of future Spanish and Portuguese explorations, and specifically acknowledging Columbus's contributions. The bull is the first document on vellum in the Library's copy and the thirty-sixth document in the Genoa and the Paris codices. The Library copy does not have the elaborate rubricated title page, the vividly colored Columbus coat of arms, or the authenticating notarial signatures contained in the other copies. The Library's copy, however, does have a unique transcription of the Papal Bull Dudum siquidem of September 26, 1493, extending the Spanish donation. The bull is folded and addressed to the Spanish sovereigns.
Continue the Voyage with Inventing America or abandon ship and use the Outline. | <urn:uuid:7a8011a9-b64e-457c-bd2c-6fad2139793f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/1492.exhibit/c-Columbus/columbus.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402746.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00106-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969395 | 804 | 3.859375 | 4 |
Guidelines for Posting New Content
The first step, before any programming begins, is to determine what the agency needs and wants the web site to do. Beautiful sites can be created with flashing icons, dynamic colors, and interesting text. However, if the content does not meet the needs of the agency, the value is, at best, limited.
Everyone has visited a web site where navigation is impossibly difficult, where one has to spend a great deal of time "clicking" around the site, or where links to other sites do not work. Without guidelines and a quality control process, problems like these are inevitable.
The agency should develop a clear process for deciding what and how new materials are posted to the web site, including whether an approval procedure is needed for new sites and pages. The procedure may be as simple as a request for space on the agency's server, or it may be a more complex approval process involving a committee review.
It is important for the agency to distribute the guidelines for posting new content and to make sure that staff are aware of the process. Posting the procedures and content guidelines on the web site for easy access can accomplish this task. Additionally, it is imperative that the staff understand the procedures and guidelines.
Local coordinators and students may develop some of the most innovative school web sites in-house. While the agency will want to support such innovation, guidelines need to be followed in all areas of site development. As the district is ultimately responsible for the content on school web sites, it may be in the district's best interest to have a representative (e.g., a school site coordinator or webmaster) at each school who understands and is able to support district guidelines and regulations.
Where the district is unable to assign a site coordinator or webmaster, every effort has to be made to ensure that there is a person familiar with district guidelines and other regulations at each location where content may be posted.
What Should the Content on a Web Site Look Like?
The web site design should present a consistent look and feel for a sense of continuity across a site's pages. One way to accomplish this is with the use of style sheets that are embedded or linked to the site within the programming design. Style sheets, or templates, define the format for each page in terms of such elements as typeface, margin width, heading specs, spacing, and layout.
This does not mean that all pages need to look the same. Not all web pages on a site will use style sheets. The purpose of style sheets and other formatting tools or guides is to create consistency, not stifle creativity. However, each style sheet should contain:
button that returns the user to the agency's home page with one click of the mouse;
the name, address, and telephone number of the agency;
the agency's webmaster's e-mail address;
copyright notification; and
a privacy statement. | <urn:uuid:4157f011-679c-48b1-9a0d-75323424d9e9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/secureweb/ch_2.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392099.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00026-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920681 | 596 | 2.78125 | 3 |
( Level: Intermediate) In this video, we will go over a few ballet concepts that focus on strengthening and building better technique and balance, namely plies and tendus. A plie, or bend of the knees, is a building block of ballet; plies are used to initiate and terminate many movements. Tendus are a brush against the floor in which the working leg does not leave the floor; from tendus, one can build up to many other movements. It is advised that those at home use a chair, barre, or table to use as support. Also, if a full-length mirror is available to check posture, that is a good tool to have on hand. The focus of these exercises is to gradually build strength, balance, and turn-out; work within your comfort zone, making sure you are doing the movements properly, and always stopping if anything feels wrong or painful to avoid injury. | <urn:uuid:935cf9fb-690a-4ab1-bdb7-2e8cdef2fe93> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nakedyogaschool.com/video/naked-ballet-exercises-2-naked-yoga-school/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00114-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966722 | 186 | 3.53125 | 4 |
We've recently got into reading Dr Seuss books and with World Book Day today I thought now is a great time to write about our Cat In The Hat Story Sack. A story sack contains activities to help you read and engage with a story and I'm really pleased with the way our Cat In The Hat story sack has turned out.
Plus, if you've got your own book related craft, game or activity why not link up below in the World Book Day Blog Hop
I made the story sack itself by tracing the book cover onto a pillowcase with a fabric pen and adding a bit of red with fabric paint. The story sack includes the book (of course!), peg dolls including a red box for Thing One and Thing Two, a block and puzzle game, printables and dry erase pens.
The peg dolls I've posted about already and you can read all about how I made these here. As we read the story I bring out the appropriate peg doll and give them to the boys who like to act out the story with them. They also like to retell the story using them afterwards.
Next up, is our fun Cat In The Hat related game. The idea behind the blocks is that in The Cat In The Hat book the Cat tries to balance many things without dropping them so to recreate this balancing game I scanned some pages from the book and cut out some of the items he tries to balance. I then painted some cheap wooden blocks white and glued (or modge podged) them onto the blocks.
These can then be stacked up to create your own balancing game.
I also printed out a close up picture of The Cat to create a puzzle. I divided it into 12 pieces and pasted these onto another side of the same blocks.
Here's the finished block puzzle.
And, here's the older two boys testing out their block balancing skills.
Finally, I also found lots of great printables from the Dr Seuss website Seusville and from Living Life Intentionally's free Dr Seuss printables pack. I printed out colouring sheets, mazes and some simple writing sheets, laminated them and added them to the story sack with some dry erase pens. The boys loved these and they encouraged them to talk about the story even more.
I thoroughly enjoyed the crafting involved in putting this story sack together, plus its been great for us all to engage even more with this book and for the fun to continue even after we've finished the actual reading.
How have you been engaging with books recently? In honour of World Book Day I'm co-hosting the World Book Day Blog Hop please share any book related posts that you might have. The Blog Hop opens 7th March, but runs till the end of April so there's lots of opportunity to link up.
<div align="center"><a href="http://www.makingboysmen.com/2013/03/cat-in-hat-story-sack-world-book-day.html" title="Making Boys Men"><img src="http://www.herecomethegirlsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/World-book-day.jpg" alt="Here Come the Girls" style="border:none;" /></a></div> | <urn:uuid:788bb463-3c2d-4f3a-b9ea-ad57997de20d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.makingboysmen.com/2013/03/cat-in-hat-story-sack-world-book-day.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00185-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946439 | 671 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Learning the Fourth (and other) Commandment
by Robert Kisling
I am a Grade Three CCD teacher, and I am constantly looking for ways to illustrate the lessons to my class. Their young minds are open and usually eager to learn, I need to make sure that what I teach them is true, faithful to the Church and presented in such a way that they understand and retain the lesson.
An example of this is what I did to illustrate the Fourth Commandment. We are doing a 'section' on the commandments. I wanted something to give the children an example of how they could honour their father and mother.
After talking about the Fourth Commandment, I had my children decorate heart-shaped brownies with candy (each on received a freezer bag with a tiny amount of frosting to "glue" the candy onto the brownie). At first, they wanted to eat the brownies themselves, but I told them that they were making them for someone who loves them (particularly a parent, guardian or other adult who loves them). They were making something nice, and making a little sacrifice too (by not eating it) that would show the recipient their love and respect.
They first moaned and groaned, but there was plenty of leftover brownies and candies to satisfy their sweet-teeth (sweet-tooths??). So they got a reward for their sacrifice too.
I plan to repeat this activity again - next time to make a brownie for someone they don't get along with very well as kind of "love your enemy" exercise. | <urn:uuid:6f1f3ba7-39f7-4aab-9600-f7806b3665f5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.domestic-church.com/CONTENT.DCC/19990301/FRIDGE/sacrifice.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00075-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981541 | 322 | 3.03125 | 3 |
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Biology Quiz : Animal Cell Diagram
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Given the LABEL (ON DIAGRAM), identify the CELL PART
The cell membrane is also known as the plasma membrane. It is the outermost covering of the animal cell. It protects the cell and regulates the entry and exit of substances, namely ions and solutes.
The secretory granule is a vesicular structure. It is formed when the substances produced in the endoplasmic reticulum are further processed in the golgi apparatus of the animal cell.
The golgi apparatus of the animal cell consists of flat vesicular structures placed one on top of the other. It synthesizes and secretes certain substances, namely hormones and enzymes.
The ribosome of the animal cell is chiefly composed of RNA (Ribonucleic Acid). It synthesizes proteins.
Rough Endoplasmic Reticulum
The rough endoplasmic reticulum consists of tubular structures (convulated tubules) lying near the nucleus and has ribosomes attached to it. It provides support to the animal cell.
The nucleolus is contained in the nucleus of the animal cell, and is round in shape. It synthesizes proteins by producing and storing RNA (Ribonucleic acid).
The nucleoplasm of the animal cell is a dense fluid containing chromatin fibres, which are made up of DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid). After cell division takes place, these chromatin fibres undergo certain structural changes, and are called chromosomes. These chromosomes carry the hereditary information of the genes.
The nuclear membrane is the covering of the nucleus of the animal cell, and has numerous pores. It allows substances to enter and leave.
The nucleus is the most important part of the animal cell, and contains large amounts of DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid). It controls and coordinates all the activities and functions of the cell.
Smooth Endoplasmic Reticulum
The smooth endoplasmic reticulum consists of tubular structures (convulated tubules) lying near the nucleus and does not have ribosomes attached to it. It provides support to the animal cell.
The centrosome of the animal cell contains one or two centrioles, and is surrounded by microtubules or the centrosphere. It initiates and regulates cell division.
The cytoplasm is composed of a mixture of water and soluble organic & inorganic compounds, and contains most of the cell organelles. It is the house of all metabolic functions and activities of the animal cell.
The mitochondrion of the animal cell has two layers of membrane, of which the inner one is folded to form cristae. It is the site of ATP (Adenosine triphosphate) synthesis.
The lysosome of the animal cell is a membranous sac budded off from the golgi apparatus, and contains several types of enzymes. It performs intracellular digestion and destroys foreign substances.
Try the Quiz : Biology Quiz : Animal Cell Diagram | <urn:uuid:93adaa67-21b2-4f0e-be02-4d57d98ac825> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.syvum.com/cgi/online/serve.cgi/squizzes/biology/animalcell.html?question_hide | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408828.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00009-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.877296 | 665 | 4 | 4 |
Purpose of review: Carbohydrate during exercise has been demonstrated to improve exercise performance even when the exercise is of high intensity (>75% VO2max) and relatively short duration (∼1 h). It has become clear that the underlying mechanisms for the ergogenic effect during this type of activity are not metabolic but may reside in the central nervous system.
Recent findings: Carbohydrate mouth rinses have been shown to result in similar performance improvements. This would suggest that the beneficial effects of carbohydrate feeding during exercise are not confined to its conventional metabolic advantage but may also serve as a positive afferent signal capable of modifying motor output. These effects are specific to carbohydrate and are independent of taste. The receptors in the oral cavity have not (yet) been identified and the exact role of various brain areas is not clearly understood. Further research is warranted to fully understand the separate taste transduction pathways for simple and complex carbohydrates and how these differ between mammalian species, particularly in humans.
Summary: Carbohydrate is detected in oral cavity by unidentified receptors and this can be linked to improvements in exercise performance. | <urn:uuid:aa839055-3486-481b-bf4c-67ada092cfd2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://journals.lww.com/co-clinicalnutrition/Abstract/2010/07000/Oral_carbohydrate_sensing_and_exercise_performance.18.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396945.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00003-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956865 | 219 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Vladimir Pravosudov, an assistant biology professor, has a daunting research record. He has received eight federal grants, awards and research fellowships for his research. He has published 50 times in American and Russian scientific journals. And now, Pravosudov has been awarded two grants from the National Institutes of Health and one from the National Science Foundation to fund his latest projects.
The grant from NSF is funding Pravosudov $393,340 until 2010 and the grants from NIH are awarding him $568,013 until 2009 and $350,417 until 2009. According to biology department chair Jack Hayes, it is rare for one person to have three grants at one time.
"The funding available has been very low the last couple of years," Hayes said. "What he has accomplished with research funding is nothing short of amazing."
Pravosudov will be conducting projects that combine ecology, the study of animals' interactions with their environment, and neuroscience, the study of the nervous system, with a focus on memory. The research studies will also help to address broader questions about the evolution of memory mechanisms.
Pravosudov will be using food-caching birds—birds that store food and must find them later on—in all of his current projects.
"Dr. Pravosudov's projects are an insightful blend of ecology and neuroscience," Hayes said. "His research is of broad interest to ecologists, evolutionary biologists and biomedical researchers. It is a rare scientist whose work appeals to such a diverse audience."
The NSF grant is funding a research project focusing on the evolution of spatial memory and the part of the brain called the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory, using birds called black-capped chickadees, Pravosudov said. The project will also attempt to answer why some animals have better memory than others and whether advantages in memory are driven by evolution or by individual ecological experiences.
"I'll be looking at which processes control memory and how does it evolve," Pravosudov said. "It will help to understand why some species might have larger brains, large hippocampuses, and better memory than others."
Pravosudov said he will sample birds from several locations with different conditions ranging from milder southern areas to harsher northern environments to test if the environment has a strong impact on the evolution of memory and the brain.
In addition, he will raise the birds from different locations in the same laboratory conditions to see if their ability to find their food stores and the corresponding differences in the hippocampus are inherited.
"The project will ask about the evolution of spatial memory and the hippocampus and if environment is a critical component of it," Pravosudov said.
The first NIH project will address how social environment and interactions affect memory mechanisms and the brain using food-catching birds called mountain chickadees. Pravosudov said he will isolate some birds and leave others in various groups and observe if these groupings will affect how well they remember where they stored their food. Pravosudov will also observe how the birds' environment may affect neurobiological processes in the hippocampus.
According to Pravosudov, the project can be applicable to some memory abnormalities that humans encounter.
"We have normal socializing as adults, but when people get older, they become more isolated," Pravosudov said. "Can that affect memory health?"
The second NIH project will address if using memory is important for brain maintenance and if environment that favors extensive memory use also plays a role in maintaining a healthy memory and a healthy brain.
"Laboratory studies often involve environments that don't allow normal memory use," Pravosudov said. "The question is whether this is an important consideration when we design new lab studies."
Pravosudov said he is in the early stages of this newly funded research, the actual experiments of which will begin in the summer. He is currently recruiting post-doctorate, graduate and undergraduate students to assist him as well as acquiring equipment for the projects.
Pravosudov's past research has largely revolved around the same topics of ecology, neuroscience and animal behavior. Pravosudov has always been interested in birds and has been studying them his entire career. He was already helping professors and scientists with their research on birds at the University of Leningrad in his hometown of St. Petersburg, Russia at an early age.
When he was a zoology student at the University of Leningrad, his greatest curiosity involved predatory birds, until one fateful talk with his advisor.
"He said that there have to be more questions I could ask about birds," Pravosudov said. "That piece of advice shifted my entire career."
That shift in his career led him from St. Petersburg, to Siberia and ultimately to America, where he studied for his doctorate in zoology at the Ohio State University. Pravosudov worked and studied at such universities as Purdue University and UC Davis before coming to the University.
Pravosudov came to teach at the University in 2005. Seeking a permanent position, he applied to the University and to take advantage of Reno's ideal location, just an hour away from where Pravosudov studies his birds around Lake Tahoe.
"I'm living closer to the mountains so the school is good in terms of location," Pravosudov said. "I also have the means to do the research I want with the lab. It is more intimate here and they treat me well."
Hayes said Pravosudov met the criteria for the traits the department was looking for in a new professor, such as a demonstrated ability to be an enthusiastic teacher and an interest in conducting research.
"He has an excellent teaching record in animal behavior courses at UC Davis and has had a lot of publications and independent research funding already," Hayes said. "He was already a proven success in both teaching and research."
Pravosudov plans to stay at the University and conduct more research for quite some time. He has plans to involve students more in his work, combining the aspects of the importance of continual scientific research and teaching.
"Now he has the funding opportunity for students at all levels to be more involved in the research," Hayes said. "That's one of the great things about being a top research school; the experience is really different from learning in a classroom."
Pravosudov will continue his research on ecology and neuroscience , keeping in mind the importance of sharing his results with the rest of the world.
"Every study often brings more questions than answers," Pravosudov said. "Each new step leads to new paths; that's the beauty of science." | <urn:uuid:66ed481e-6a79-49e6-a840-3cecc2a271d0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.unr.edu/nevada-today/news/2007/pravosudov-a-rising-star-in-biology-faculty | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395548.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00016-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972009 | 1,393 | 2.5625 | 3 |
The federal government has been regulating prices and competition in interstate transportation ever since Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to oversee the railroad industry in 1887. Truckers were brought under the control of the ICC in 1935 after persistent lobbying by state regulators, the ICC itself, and especially, the railroads, which had been losing business to trucking companies.
The Motor Carrier Act of 1935 required new truckers to seek a "certificate of public convenience and necessity" from the ICC. Truckers already operating in 1935 could automatically get certificates, but only if they documented their prior service, and the ICC was quite restrictive in interpreting proof of service. New trucking companies, on the other hand, found it extremely difficult to get certificates.
The law required motor carriers to file all rates—also called tariffs—with the ICC thirty days before they became effective. Anyone, including a competitor, was allowed to inspect the filed tariffs. If the proposed tariffs were protested by another carrier (such as a trucker, a regulated water carrier, or a railroad), the ICC normally suspended the rates pending an investigation of their legality. In 1948 Congress authorized truckers to fix rates in concert with one another when it enacted, over President Truman's veto, the Reed-Bulwinkle Act, which exempted carriers from the antitrust laws.
From 1940 to 1980, new or expanded authority to transport goods was almost impossible to secure unless no one opposed an application. Even if the proposed service was not being offered by existing carriers, the ICC held that a certificated trucker who expressed a desire to carry the goods should be given the opportunity to do so; the new applicant was denied. The effect was to stifle competition from new carriers.
Purchasing the rights of an existing trucker became the only practical approach to entering a particular market. By the seventies the authority to carry certain goods on certain routes was selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because the commission disapproved of "trafficking" in rights, it was hostile to mergers and purchases and attempted to restrict authority as much as possible. The result was often bizarre. For example, a motor carrier with authority to travel from Cleveland to Buffalo that purchased another carrier or the carrier's rights to go from Buffalo to Pittsburgh was required to carry goods destined for Pittsburgh through Buffalo, even though the direct route was considerably shorter. In some cases carriers had to go hundreds of miles out of their way, adding many hours or even days to the transport.
ICC regulation reduced competition and made trucking inefficient. Routes and the products that could be carried over them were narrowly specified. Truckers with authority to carry a product, such as tiles, from one city to another often lacked authority to haul anything on the return trip.
Studies showed that regulation increased costs and rates significantly. Not only were rates lower without regulation, but service quality, as judged by shippers, also was better. Products exempt from regulation moved at rates 20 to 40 percent below those for the same products subject to ICC controls. For example, regulated rates for carrying cooked poultry, compared to unregulated charges for fresh dressed poultry (a similar product), were nearly 50 percent higher. Comparisons between heavily regulated trucking in West Germany and the United States and unregulated motor carriage in Great Britain, together with lightly regulated trucking in Belgium and the Netherlands, showed that charges in the highly regulated countries were 75 percent higher than in the nations with freer markets.
A number of economists were critical of the regulation of motor carriers right from the beginning. James C. Nelson, in a series of articles starting in 1935, led the attack. Walter Adams, a liberal Democrat, followed with a major critique in American Economic Review. Professors John R. Meyer of Harvard, Merton J. Peck of Yale, John Stenason, and Charles Zwick authored a very influential book, The Economics of Competition in the Transportation Industries, published in 1959.
In 1962 President John Kennedy became the first president to send a transportation message to Congress recommending a reduction in the regulation of surface freight transportation. In November 1975 President Gerald Ford called for legislation to reduce trucking regulation. He followed that by appointing to the ICC several commissioners who favored competition. By the end of 1976, these commissioners were speaking out for a more competitive policy at the ICC, a position rarely articulated in the previous eight decades of transportation regulation.
President Jimmy Carter followed Ford's lead by appointing strong deregulatory advocates and supporting legislation to reduce motor carrier regulation. After a series of ICC rulings that reduced federal oversight of trucking, and after the deregulation of the airline industry, Congress, spurred by the Carter administration, enacted the Motor Carrier Act of 1980. This act limited the ICC's authority over trucking.
Both the Teamsters Union and the American Trucking Associations strongly opposed deregulation and successfully headed off efforts to eliminate all economic controls. Supporting deregulation was a coalition of shippers, consumer advocates including Ralph Nader, and liberals such as Senator Edward Kennedy. Probably the most significant factor in forcing Congress to act was that the ICC commissioners appointed by Ford and Carter were bent on deregulating the industry anyway. Either Congress had to act or the ICC would. Congress acted in order to codify some of the commission changes and to limit others.
The Motor Carrier Act (MCA) of 1980 only partially decontrolled trucking. But together with a liberal ICC, it substantially freed the industry. The MCA made it significantly easier for a trucker to secure a certificate of public convenience and necessity. The MCA also required the commission to eliminate most restrictions on commodities that could be carried, on the routes that motor carriers could use, and on the geographical region they could serve. The law authorized truckers to price freely within a "zone of reasonableness," meaning that truckers could increase or decrease rates from current levels by 15 percent without challenge, and encouraged them to make independent rate filings with even larger price changes.
The Success of Deregulation
Deregulation has worked well. Between 1977, the year before the ICC started to decontrol the industry, and 1982, rates for truckload-size shipments fell about 25 percent in real, inflation-adjusted terms. The General Accounting Office found that rates charged by LTL (less-than-truckload) carriers had fallen as much as 10 to 20 percent, with some shippers reporting declines of as much as 40 percent. Revenue per truckloadton fell 22 percent from 1979 to 1986. A survey of shippers indicates that they believe service quality improved as well. Some 77 percent of surveyed shippers favored deregulation of trucking. Shippers reported that carriers were much more willing to negotiate rates and services than prior to deregulation. Truckers have experimented with new price and service options. They have restructured routes, reduced empty return hauls, and provided simplified rate structures.
In arguing against deregulation, the American Trucking Associations predicted that service would decline and that small communities would find it harder to get any service at all under the new regime. In fact, service to small communities has improved and complaints by shippers have declined. The ICC has reported that in 1975 and 1976 it handled 340 and 390 complaints, respectively, against truckers; in 1980 it had to deal with only 23 cases, and just 40 in 1981. A 1982 ICC study of the effect of partial decontrol on small cities and remote parts of the country found that service quality had either been improved or remained unaffected by deregulation. Increased competition has bolstered the willingness of trucking firms to go off-route to pick up or deliver freight.
Deregulation has also made it easier for nonunion workers to get jobs in the trucking industry. This new competition has sharply eroded the strength of the drivers' union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Before deregulation ICC-regulated truckers paid unionized workers about 50 percent more than comparable workers in other industries. Although unionized drivers still are paid a premium, by 1985 unionized workers were only 28 percent of the trucking work force, down from around 60 percent in the late seventies.
The number of new firms has increased dramatically. By 1990 the total number of licensed carriers exceeded forty thousand, considerably more than double the number authorized in 1980. The ICC had also awarded nationwide authority to about five thousand freight carriers. The value of operating rights granted by the ICC, once worth hundreds of thousands of dollars when such authority was almost impossible to secure from the commission, has plummeted to close to zero now that operating rights are easy to obtain.
Intermodal carriage has surged sharply since 1980: from 1981 to 1986, it grew 70 percent. The ability of railroads and truckers to develop an extensive trailer-on-flatcar network is a direct result of the MCA and the Staggers Act (1980), which partially freed the railroads.
The motor carrier industry has made little use of the rate zone provision and instead has opted for independent filings, which have increased sharply. These independent filings have increased price competition. Such filings by definition are not agreed on through rate bureaus. Truckers have been able to slash rates mainly by improving efficiency—reducing empty backhauls, eliminating circuities, pricing flexibly, and reducing by about 10 percent the proportion of employees who are drivers and helpers. At the same time, it has cut the pay of such employees by over 10 percent relative to wages of workers in the economy generally. In other words, although wages of drivers and helpers are still considerably higher than wages of comparable workers in other industries, the differential has shrunk.
One of the economy's major gains from trucking deregulation has been the substantial drop in the cost of holding and maintaining inventories. Because truckers are better able to offer on-time delivery service and more flexible service, manufacturers can order components just in time to be used and retailers can have them just in time to be sold. As a result inventories are leaner. Without the partial deregulation that resulted from the 1980 act, these changes would not have been possible. In 1981, inventories amounted to 14 percent of GNP; one study found that because of improved transportation services traceable to the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 and the Staggers Act, the total fell to 10.8 percent by 1987, for a saving of about $62 billion. A more conservative estimate by the Department of Transportation is that the gain to U.S. industry in shipping, merchandising, and inventories is between $38 and $56 billion per year.
Federal law still requires new carriers to apply for certificates of public convenience and necessity. All tariffs must be filed with the commission. Most states continue to enforce strict entry and price controls on intrastate carriers. These controls cause inefficiency. One result is that in some cases, shipping products from overseas is cheaper than shipping the same goods within the United States. Shipping blue jeans from El Paso, Texas, to Dallas, for example, costs about 40 percent more than shipping the identical jeans from Taiwan to Dallas.
The continuing obligation to file tariffs results in higher costs. Rates for shipping dog food, which are regulated, are 10 to 35 percent higher than the unregulated rates for other animal foods. Chicken, turkey, and fish TV dinners can be carried free of regulation, but a frozen dinner with a hamburger patty instead of a chicken leg requires trucking rates that are 20 to 25 percent higher. When the commission ruled that used beer bottles and kegs were exempt under the "used, empty shipping containers" provision, costs to haul the empties dropped 20 to 30 percent.
Even if the filing of tariffs did not lead to higher charges, the requirement adds to paperwork and confusion. For example, rates must be published for peanuts "roasted and salted in the shell," but a trucker carrying peanuts "shelled, salted, not roasted or otherwise" is exempt from any need to file. Truckers must submit tariffs for carrying show horses but not exhibit horses. Motor carriers must list their prices with the ICC to carry railroad ties cut lengthwise, but not if they are cut crosswise!
Current law also authorizes truckers to collude on tariff increases in rate bureaus. In any other industry such agreements would violate the antitrust laws. Although any single carrier can file separate rates, a rate bureau's filing for higher tariffs leads to pressures on all carriers to boost their prices.
Trucking deregulation is unfinished. According to one study, abolishing all remaining federal controls would save shippers about $28 billion per year. A Department of Transportation study done by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School estimated that abolishing state regulation would save another $5 billion to $12 billion.
Thomas Gale Moore is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Between 1985 and 1989 he was a member of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers.
Moore, Thomas Gale. "Rail and Truck Reform: The Record So Far." Regulation (November/December 1988): 57-62.
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. International Conference. Road Transport Deregulation: Experience, Evaluation, Research. November 1988.
U.S. Congress, House. Committee on Government Operations. Consumer Cost of Continued State Motor Carrier Regulation. House Report 101-813, 101st Congress, 2d sess., October 5, 1990.
U.S. Congress, House. Committee on Public Works and Transportation. Subcommittee of Surface Transportation. Hearings on Economic Regulation of the Motor Carrier Industry. 100th Congress, 2d sess., March 16, 1988.
U.S. Department of Transportation. Moving America: New Directions, New Opportunities. A Statement of National Transportation Policy; Strategies for Action. February 1990. | <urn:uuid:360728d5-6b40-4a7d-be87-c52700ba4a9a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/TruckingDeregulation.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00172-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964081 | 2,805 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Implementing a Universal Sustainability Scorecard: How Do Your Partners Measure Up?
As I have discussed frequently in this column, the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry is facing a major shift in response to consumer demand for more sustainable products. Although it is easy for the average shopper to identify 100 percent recycled packaging as being a step in the right direction, even the most sustainability-savvy consumer might not be able to judge if that same product made it onto shelves in the most environmentally efficient way. Many educated consumers may be well-informed on the origin of their favorite products, as well as on their labeling once it’s packaged neatly at the retail location, however the missing link in the product’s overall sustainability often lies in the supply chain.
One reason that consumers and retailers may not consider the sustainability of a company’s supply chain is that it isn’t always as easy to judge as the “Made with 97 percent sustainable ingredients” sticker stamped on the label. Many CPGs have identified this problem and implemented a system of sustainability scoring that their suppliers and manufacturers must adhere to.
At The Strive Group, we use a scorecard to continuously rate our performance in four key areas: economic (cutting costs by streamlining processes), social (conditions for employees), environment (limiting wasteful packaging or identifying efficient shipping routes) and governance (ethical behavior). Although actual criteria may vary by company and industry, most scorecards are designed to measure environmental performance and assess the company’s environmental footprint by measuring key factors such as energy use, water use, waste disposal and greenhouse gas emissions. Where differences may lie is how these factors are assessed, and what levels of each are deemed compliant.
The reason for implementing a scorecard in the first place is two-fold; it ensures efficiency throughout the supply chain while also making it clear to consumers that sustainable practices are being upheld. Employing this type of scorecard allows companies to quantify their sustainability efforts in a meaningful way that will then translate easily to the consumer.
Unfortunately, while larger companies such a Procter & Gamble and Walmart have the resources to put these systems in place, many smaller companies do not. The result of this is that supply chain partners that are working with multiple companies are either adhering to multiple sets of standards, or none.
It is for this reason, among others, that it is a necessity that CPGs implement an industry-wide scoring system that is universal amongst all suppliers and their partners.
Implementing Industry-wide Standards
The first obvious benefit of an industry-wide standard is that it will increase the rate of adoption of sustainability initiatives amongst organizations that may not have the internal assets to create those tools themselves. This will represent a significant savings to companies that do not need to create these systems in-house.
Secondly, supply chain partners that are dealing with multiple CPGs can adhere to one set of standards. The current lack of one standard creates challenges for supply chain partners who end up placing a significant amount of energy and focus on mapping to each of their CPG clients’ specific sustainability requirements. These efforts could be better spent delivering against more strategic and impactful sustainability initiatives, which ideally a uniform set of standards would allow for.
Finally, having a universal set of standards that can be reflected on labeling will make purchasing decisions easier for consumers, who will be able to see the complete sustainability picture. This translates into an obvious benefit for CPG suppliers in that those that score highly will earn points not just on the scorecard, but with their environmentally conscious marketers.
Some companies who have identified the need for such a universal scorecard have come together around trends like sustainability to trade best practices. The Foundation for Strategic Sourcing (F4SS) is a collaborative, non-profit, membership organization within the CPG industry that counts Johnson & Johnson, General Mills and Procter & Gamble as members. Doug Sharfstein, President of The Strive Group, also serves on the board. The formation of groups like F4SS is definitely a step in the right direction in terms of increasing communication on sustainability issues amongst CPGs and their suppliers.
For any company, no matter what their industry, implementing sustainability standards within their own organizations is an obvious first step. Creating a universal scorecard will not only help smaller companies without resources take that next step sooner, but will also help larger organizations streamline their processes and achieve sustainability more efficiently.
Jeff Sharfstein is president and CEO of The Strive Group. The Strive Group is comprised of four operating entities that design, manufacture and pack-out point of purchase displays for major consumer products companies. A fifth entity, Strive Logistics, LLC, provides transportation solutions to display customers and others. Jeff Sharfstein began his business career with Pride Container Corporation, a company founded by the Sharfstein family, in 1968. He left in 1990 to start World Distribution Group (now Strive Logistics) and returned to Pride Container Corporation as its president in 1997.
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- Oberlin, Ohio, Ratepayers to Receive $2.2M in Rebates for Sale of RECs | <urn:uuid:230ac693-8980-4454-b002-e97f2b8c7293> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.environmentalleader.com/2012/01/09/implementing-a-universal-sustainability-scorecard-how-do-your-partners-measure-up/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00050-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942714 | 1,164 | 2.625 | 3 |
STISUSMAN › Action steps for sustainable manufacturing
To understand and utilise the OECD Sustainable Manufacturing Indicators, you can follow a simple seven-step process below.
7 action steps to sustainable manufacturing
1. Map your impact and set priorities: Bring together an internal “sustainability team” to set objectives, review your environmental impact and decide on priorities.
2. Select useful performance indicators: Identify indicators that are important for your business and what data should be collected to help drive continuous improvement.
3. Measure the inputs used in production: Identify how materials and components used into your production processes influence environmental performance.
4. Assess operations of your facility: Consider the impact and efficiency of the operations in your facility (e.g. energy intensity, greenhouse gas generation, emissions to air and water).
5. Evaluate your products: Identify factors such as energy consumption in use, recyclability and use of hazardous substances that help determine how sustainable your end product is.
6. Understand measured results: Read and interpret your indicators and understand trends in your performance.
7. Take action to improve performance: Choose opportunities to improve your performance and create action plans to implement them.
The seven steps are not necessarily a one-way journey. We recommend that you apply them for a cyclical management process. Doing so will help you measure and understand your environmental impact, as well as improve your performance on an on-going basis. It is important to appreciate that sustainable manufacturing is not about a final destination or result, but about continuous learning, innovation and improvement. Therefore, after completing all seven steps, you may want to revisit the process regularly (e.g. yearly or every few years) to continually improve your activities.
How long will it take to go through the seven steps?
It is difficult to say exactly how long any step – or the whole process – will take in any given situation, as this will vary widely from one facility to the next. You may already be taking steps in some areas, or you may be totally new to the terrain. Your operations may be straightforward or more complex. Step 1 of the process explains about how to set your own reasonable goals.
However, you should expect to see progress in a matter of months. It should be possible, in most cases, for a facility to go from having no information at all to being able to measure at least some indicators within a year. Your timeline may also change as you progress, so be sure to communicate regularly with your colleagues along the way. This will ensure consistent expectations.
Remember, the most important thing is engaging in this process and the rest is what you make of it. No matter how much or how long you engage, the same basic seven steps will apply throughout.
For any journey you need a good map to help you get to your destination. In Step 1, we focus on where you are starting and where you want to end up, which is essential to ensure that you have all you need to get there. The aim of this first step is to establish a general understanding of your positive and negative environmental impact by mapping your activities and determining which ones affect your performance the most. There will be many ways to reduce the environmental impact of your facility and improve its performance, and no single person will have all the answers.
In this step, you will need to confirm the indicators that you are using. Let’s take a look at how to select indicators for your facility. While the 18 OECD indicators are a great starting point, they are by no means exhaustive. Some companies will benefit from adding more indicators over time, while other companies may only want to use a handful of the indicators provided.
The first set of indicators relates to the raw materials and intermediate products used in your production processes to make your products. Let’s take a closer look at the impact that material inputs can have on your environmental performance.
Let’s take a look now at what happens within your facility and the activities you undertake to transform a variety of inputs (Step 3) into end products for delivery and sale (Step 4). Here, we focus on the key processing and manufacturing functions and design of your facility and the related back-office functions as well as the emissions that arise from these operations.
We will turn our attention to the environmental impact of the products produced by your facility. These are the items or goods that you deliver to market and that – in their own right – will have a range of environmental qualities and impact arising from their composition and use.
You are now well on your way to understanding and realising the benefits of a better environmental performance. The work involved in identifying and tracking indicators will yield significant information that can help to improve your knowledge, strategy and results. The next step is to understand the different ways to review and analyse the information generated by the indicators to identify options for improving the performance of your facility.
Your efforts should be starting to pay off now. In the previous step, you have established your baseline performance on selected indicators. You have reviewed the data and taken decisions on options for improving performance. Now, you need to make your decisions happen – by setting clear targets and creating a tangible action plan. | <urn:uuid:ee204bb7-4ad1-40e1-92ce-2f2033c4b4cd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.oecd.org/innovation/green/toolkit/actionstepsforsustainablemanufacturing.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00195-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93972 | 1,065 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Colton Chambers seems ordinary enough. A soft-spoken 18-year-old in a buck print T-shirt and worn camouflage hat, he is sorting through photos of trapping trips and taxidermy mounts, wildlife and the prom, which he attended with his girlfriend, Hayley, the pretty, dark-haired girl sitting beside us in the workshed. Stylish as any city girl, she’s excitedly telling me about their competitiveness on fishing and hunting outings. Then we flip through clipping after clipping of newsprint, detailing Colton’s awards. Yet he is more interested in discussing a recent loon sighting, and how the outdoor activities he loves benefit wildlife management, than the competitions he has won.
I should have expected it really; FFA members are never ordinary. Nor is their understanding of conservation issues.
Being an FFA member requires dedication and ambition. The group’s motto is, “Learning to Do, Doing to Learn, Earning to Live, Living to Serve.” As such, expectations go beyond strong performance in the business of agriculture; the organization promotes excellence in scholarship, building interpersonal skills through teamwork and social activities, volunteerism, healthy lifestyles, and wise use of natural resources. The Department of Conservation takes pride in assisting the organization in the last.
“FFA is really important to conservation,” explained Veronica Feilner, the Department’s agriculture education coordinator. “In the long term, agriculture cannot be successful without conservation, and conservation cannot be successful without responsible agriculture. If we don’t conserve our resources and use them wisely, they won’t be available for either agriculture or wildlife.” The Department supports FFA’s efforts by developing programs and materials for teachers, assisting with annual FFA leadership camps, creating exhibits and displays for conference and career shows and by awarding the United Sportsmen League Wildlife Conservation Grant to FFA chapters. FFA supports conservation by promoting good land stewardship and respect for the resources we all depend on.
There are few partnerships more critical or mutually beneficial than the one between agriculture and conservation, and FFA not only merges these two interests, but benefits a third as well—education. “The additional resources and opportunities that FFA brings to schools helps students develop valuable study, life and professional skills,” explains Veronica, “as well as improving agricultural literacy in a society often removed from the sources of its food, fiber and natural resources.”
While conservation education is woven throughout the FFA curriculum, students may also choose to learn advanced career skills in a conservation or environment-related field. One of the proficiency areas offered is Wildlife Production and Management, Colton’s specialty.
Last October, at the 80th National FFA Convention in Indianapolis, Colton was named the national award winner of the Wildlife Production and Management—Entrepreneurship program. As a member of the North Andrews FFA Chapter, he started a successful trapping business that he continues to develop.
“Trapping is necessary to keep the population balanced,” says Colton, as he leads the way to an outbuilding that serves as his workshop. “If you do it right, trapping can lead to healthier animals repopulating the next year. And for nuisance animals, it’s one of the best ways to manage them.”
The inside of his workshop is a testament to Colton’s dedication to do it right. Well-maintained and ordered by size, hundreds of traps line the ceiling and walls. His materials are carefully organized, the workbenches clear of debris. The slightest hint of skunk scent hangs in the space, but there is no other evidence of the messy detail work he undertakes here. Refrigerators for skins share space with typical signs of teenage habitation—a television, a microwave, a road-style sign collection and the occasional poster of a pretty girl—but the room is as organized as an army barracks. This is obviously more business space than hangout.
When I inquire about a tidy assortment of animal skulls on a shelf, Colton explains that understanding animal biology and behavior is critical to his trapping success. “I never realized how much there was to learn before I started,” he says. “I read everything I can find, watch videos and go to trapping conventions.”
Though he grew up hunting and fishing, and still enjoys those activities, Colton is relatively new to trapping. His brother became interested a few years back and piqued his interest. Now the brothers and their father have taken up trapping, in addition to their other outdoor pursuits. He has also become interested in taxidermy, and his mounts can be found at every turn, both in the workshop and throughout his family’s home.
Colton turned his passion into a business, and then a national award, with the guidance of his agriculture teacher and FFA advisor, Edward Windsor. He traps both for skins to sell and to remove nuisance animals, averaging around 250 animals a year. The money he earns is re-invested in the business.
“It was quite a bit of work, but I didn’t mind,” says Colton about starting his business and, later, applying for the national proficiency award. “I don’t have as much interest in livestock. Wildlife management is really what got me involved.”
When asked what gave his project the edge in the competition, Colton says, “I think it was because I kept getting better; I gained more land, I made more money, I caught more animals. It just kept growing.” But he credits the preparation and resources his advisor gave him as the ultimate key to his success.
“Mr. Windsor set up all the paperwork and helped me figure it out,” says Colton. “He taught me how to write down goals, how to get equipment. He lets me trap on his land. He doesn’t take much credit for it, but he helped me out a lot. He really pushed me.” And when Colton got on stage at the National FFA Convention to give a speech on his project, he admits he was thankful for his advisor once again, though he winces in apparent embarrassment as he explains, “He made me write the speech, and two months before the convention he made me practice it every class in front of the other students so they could offer suggestions and ask questions.” Getting up in front of the approximately 55,000 attendees was still a little stressful, he allows, but at least he knew his speech was solid.
Colton plans to continue his business, and hopes to one day become a professional trapper, taxidermist and hunting guide. He hasn’t made a decision on college as yet, but he is sure that he will continue his involvement with FFA and wildlife management. Whatever his future pursuits, says Colton, his interest in the outdoors and conservation “is for life.”
The National FFA Organization is far more than an extracurricular activity. Founded in 1928, the organization holds a federal charter, and two of its top three executives are employed by the U.S. Department of Education. All public school students in grades 7 to 12 who are enrolled in agriculture courses can join FFA, which helps them apply classroom instruction to hands-on opportunities, such as starting their own business or working for an established company. Agriculture teachers become advisors to local FFA chapters and offer guidance on projects, competitions, and business and communication skills. As of 2007, there were 500,823 FFA members in 7,358 chapters in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Last year, the organization awarded $1.9 million in scholarships.
Brunswick FFA Chapter
Forest Management and Products Proficiency —State Award Winner
Ethan began working at Johnson’s Christmas Tree Farm in Triplett the summer prior to his eighth-grade year. At the farm, his duties included cutting, trimming, painting, drilling, shaking and netting trees. He also spent time driving tractors and mowing. But most importantly, says Ethan, working at the farm taught him a lot about the forest industry.
Ethan became interested in FFA because his brother had joined and recommended it. “He told me about all the opportunities available, so I checked it out. I felt like it suited me.” It apparently did, as he became his chapter’s vice-president.
While balancing schoolwork with FFA commitments can be challenging at times, Ethan says the skills he learns help him in the classroom as well. He has had to improve his math and science abilities to be competitive in the program. “But I like having to know this stuff,” says Ethan, “and that I need to participate and push myself.” He also enjoys the variety of activities and competitions that are available to him. Last year, he participated on his chapter’s Soils Team.
Over the summer, Ethan worked at the Land Learning Foundation in Triplett, an organization dedicated to maintaining habitat and outdoor sporting opportunities. Now in his junior year, he is looking forward to more challenges through FFA, and of his experience so far he says, “I’m having an awesome time.”
Slater FFA Chapter
Outdoor Recreation Proficiency—State Award Winner
Since the summer of 2005, Hannah has been working in outdoor recreation at Arrow Rock State Historic Site. Her duties have included coordinating nature and historical programs for children and adults, creating advertising materials and participating in demonstrations on subjects ranging from flint knapping to bugs and butterflies.
In addition to her work at Arrow Rock, Hannah was president of her FFA chapter, and has also served as area reporter and competed on meats judging, soils and farm management teams.
Although she grew up in a farming family, Hannah says, “I never realized how big a role agriculture played in everything until I joined FFA.”
Though she plans to major in psychology when she enters college this fall, Hannah says, “I wouldn’t take back being involved with FFA for anything. I’ve gained good learning and life skills, and that applies to just about everything. Also, the competitiveness of the program meant I really had to have my stuff together and be confident in my abilities. It was fun, too.” Hannah says FFA will still have a place in her future, regardless of her final career choice.
Asked if other students should consider FFA, even if they don’t plan to work in agriculture someday, Hannah says, “Absolutely. If any little part of them wants to do it, they should. It’s really worthwhile.”
Tipton FFA Chapter
Environmental Science and Natural Resources Management Proficiency —State Award Winner
Making compost isn’t too difficult, and she enjoys the work, but, “It is kind of dirty and dusty sometimes,” says Taylor, laughing. “I wish I could do something about that.”
Taylor’s ash and compost business, Ozark Gold, began with the help of her father and uncle who raised turkeys. They were looking for a way to turn turkey mortality back into profit. Taylor uses ingredients such as pencil shavings, old hay, wood chips and sawdust to increase the effectiveness of her compost, and continually looks for new ways to improve the quality of her product. She has recently started marketing the compost to local businesses and area farmers.
Taylor has a long view for the business, and though she is still in her senior year, she has already planned how she will manage when she leaves for college. “I can come home on the weekends, it’s really easy to keep going,” she says. And, after all, her product can stand to sit awhile.
Though she credits her family for the support they gave her in developing the business, Taylor says that FFA helped teach her good work ethics and confidence. “Our ag teacher always encouraged us to do our best,” says Taylor. “It made me want to do something with myself and try harder.” It also developed her understanding of conservation issues. “You’ve got to take care of the world around you. Agriculture and conservation goals are similar: Promote the well-being of your environment.”
Perryville FFA Chapter
Wildlife Management Entrepreneurship Proficiency—2nd Place National Award Winner
Because of his strong family farming background and his interest in wildlife, Andrew knew that planning for conservation was important. So he developed a conservation plan for himself that included establishing food plots for deer. In the course of his project, he learned about harvesting trees, palatability of plants, mineral and supplemental feeding techniques, and the best ways to manage food plots.
Andrew says he’s gotten a lot of support throughout the process, and he tries to reciprocate by helping others establish similar practices. “I’d like to start my own land management business someday,” he says, “but for now I just try to encourage others to manage their land and wildlife as I do.”
Juggling schoolwork and FFA, as well as participating in Conservation Youth Corps, Quail Academy and Conservation Honors, didn’t seem to faze Andrew. “It wasn’t stressful at all,” he insists. “FFA helped me branch out and learn to talk to people, and the awards and praise from the advisors let me know I was doing good work.” He adds, “You have to do everything you can to have the most fun and to get the most out of it.”
Now that he’s graduated, Andrew plans to attend college, majoring in either wildlife biology or forestry. He might even decide to work for the Conservation Department. “This is my main passion,” he says, “and what’s better than doing something you love with your life?”
Editor In Chief - Ara Clark
Managing Editor - Nichole LeClair
Art Director - Cliff White
Writer/Editor - Tom Cwynar
Staff Writer - Bonnie Chasteen
Staff Writer - Jim Low
Photographer - Noppadol Paothong
Photographer - David Stonner
Designer - Stephanie Ruby
Artist - Dave Besenger
Artist - Mark Raithel
Circulation - Laura Scheuler | <urn:uuid:613679e1-e1a5-482f-a190-89ab26c095f3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://mdc.mo.gov/conmag/2008/10/learning-doing-earning-and-serving?page=0,3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00113-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976571 | 3,036 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Mount Edgecumbe volcano is on Kruzof Island in Southeast Alaska, just west of Sitka. The Mount Edgecumbe Volcanic Field consists of more than a dozen volcanic vents and domes. The field first erupted more than 600,000 years ago, and volcanic activity continued until 5,000 to 6,000 years ago. (U.S. Forest Service/Jim Baichtal)
Seldom does one find a way to directly date a prehistoric volcanic eruption, but 11-year-old Blake LaPerriere opened such a door for excited scientists in Southeast Alaska.
Last September, Blake, his parents, and his younger brothers were exploring a beach on southwestern Kruzof Island, part of the Tongass National Forest landscape and just west of Sitka, Alaska, where they live. Blake investigated a deeply incised creek behind a pile of beach drift where he found a standing burnt tree embedded in a tall bank of pumice. He brought it to his family’s attention, asking “Do you think that’s from a volcanic eruption a long time ago?”
Curious, Blake’s father Zach took photos and sent them my way. Read more »
A fossilized tree stump on the Gallatin National Forest. The stump is part of a huge forest that was buried in a volcanic eruption 50 million years ago. (U.S. Forest Service photo)
Imagine nearing the remote, rugged crest of the Gallatin Range in Montana’s Gallatin National Forest. As you scramble up-slope, you put your hand against what appears to be a lightning-blasted stump for balance. But the stump is not weather-polished wood—it’s made of stone.
These are the 50-million-year-old remains of redwoods, pines and sycamores which make up the Gallatin Petrified Forest, where fossilized tree trunks are preserved in so much detail that cellular structures may be seen under a microscope and growth rings are often visible to the naked eye. But how did these trees turn to stone? Read more »
Welcome to the Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway All American Road.
This 500-mile byway celebrates the spectacular scenery of the volcanic landscapes between Lake Almanor in California and Crater Lake, Oregon.
Along this journey from volcano to volcano you’ll find opportunities for adventure, exploration, communion with nature and an appreciation for the culture and history of the region. You’ll also find residents eager to share the beauty and mystery of this land that is dotted with evidence of an eruptive past. Read more »
A Forest Service scientists searches for signs of aquatic life in a lake within the 1980 blast zone of Mount St. Helens. Photo from the video, “Mount St. Helens: A Living Laboratory.”
Two new Forest Service films have been honored with prestigious Silver Telly Awards for excellence in non-fiction filmmaking. Read more » | <urn:uuid:5677ba34-4ab7-488b-9803-9fa16e3ebdf0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blogs.usda.gov/tag/volcano/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00156-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934202 | 615 | 3.609375 | 4 |
New hoaxes and misinformation crop up on the Internet every day, and it can be hard to tell fact from fiction. This is especially true on the most popular platforms, but help may be on the way. Facebook, for one, has been working on reducing the spread of phony news stories in its newsfeed. And now Google is researching methods to improve how it ranks its search results.
In a February arXiv paper, Google researchers outlined progress on a new approach that would allow factual validity to contribute more heavily to a page’s search ranking. Currently the biggest factor is how many other pages link to the page in question, but this isn’t always a good metric for determining quality content. Often viral hoaxes are linked to tons of times simply because they're being talked about, not because they’re correct.
The Google research team wants to revise the current system to look for inaccuracies instead of links. The strategy isn’t being implemented yet, but the paper presented a method for adapting algorithms such that they would generate a “Knowledge-Based Trust” score for every page. To do this, the algorithm would pick out statements and compare them with Google’s Knowledge Vault, a database of facts. It would also attempt to assess the trustworthiness of the source—for example, a reputable news site versus a newly created Wordpress blog. Another component of the strategy involves looking at “topic relevance.” The algorithm scans the name of the site and its “about” section for information on its goals.
The aim is to create “web-source quality–knowledge-based trust.”
As New Scientist points out, there are already some services available that try to highlight misinformation, like the LazyTruth browser extension, which claims to surface “quality information when you receive an email forward full of political myths, urban legends, or security threats.” But adding even the most basic fact-checking capabilities to Google has the potential to produce broad-reaching effects, since so many people refer to the search engine multiple times per day.
On the other hand, algorithm tweaks that affect information surfacing can have unintended consequences, so implementing them is always a process. The Google method is still in development, but the researchers say it shows “promise” and “improvement.” | <urn:uuid:0679d03a-a4f4-4f83-a539-48f9f2403c18> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/03/02/google_researchers_try_search_ranking_based_on_factual_accuracy_instead.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392069.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00089-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941159 | 485 | 2.890625 | 3 |
view a plan
This lesson uses an interactive website to teach note identification to beginning band students
Computers & Internet, Music
6, 7, 8
Title – Note Identification
By – Kari Jo Douglas
Primary Subject – Music
Secondary Subjects – Computers / Internet
Grade Level – 6-8
Teaching Note Identification to beginning band students in the sixth grade
using Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction
1. Gain Attention
- Pique the learners’ interest in the subject:
- Give them a coded message that can only be “translated” with note identification. For example, “Giraffes can bend over and eat apples” with the “note” letters left out. The students will have to identify notes on the staff to fill in the blanks and “decode” the message.
2. Inform Learner of Objective
- Let the learners know what they will be learning:
- Today, we will learn how to read note names on the treble clef (or bass).
3. Recall Prior Knowledge
- Get the learners to think about what they already know:
- How many notes are there in the musical alphabet? What are they? How many lines and spaces are on a staff?
4. Present Material
- Teach the topic:
- Point out that there are more lines and spaces than there are notes in the musical alphabet, so some of the note names will have to be used more than once in order for each line and space to have a name.
5. Provide Guided Learning
- Help the learners follow along as the topic is presented:
- Have students go to
- and click on
- and then click on
The Staff, Clefs, and Ledger Lines
- . Have them read through the lesson at their own pace, clicking on the “next” arrow when they are ready for the next page.
6. Elicit Performance
- Ask learners to do what they have been taught:
- Have students go to “trainers” on the webpage and select
- . Students will need to go to “Settings” to select the appropriate clef by clicking on the clef and to select the range by clicking and dragging on the notes. The students will then click on “Settings” again to return to the trainer and practice identifying notes on the staff.
7. Provide Feedback
- Inform learners of their performance:
- Circulate around the classroom to observe and help the students. They will receive automatic feedback from the webpage as it keeps their total score and percentage of correct answers. Students may reset their score at any time to see how many notes they can correctly identify in a row. They may click on “toggle helpers” to have the note names appear next to the lines and spaces. They should only use the helpers for a short time before trying to identify the notes on their own.
8. Assess Performance
- Evaluate learners on their knowledge of the topic:
- Have students reset their scores and see how many notes that can correctly identify out of 100 without the toggle helper. Give them a written test in which they have to identify notes on the staff.
9. Enhance Retention and Transfer
- Aid learners in remembering and applying the new skill:
- Pass out a popular tune such as “The Happy Birthday Song” and have them identify the note names.
E-Mail Kari Jo Douglas ! | <urn:uuid:bc5ef7ac-5f35-4bba-b0e9-b2de84fe00a2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://lessonplanspage.com/musicciinteractivewebsiteteachesnoteidentification612-htm/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00127-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923156 | 728 | 3.796875 | 4 |
In a continuation of the discussion of the Limbic System to further understand PTSD, we need to examine the amygdala and hippocampus regions. These two structures are found in the temporal lobe and work together to process the sensory information fed to them by the hypothalamus. This processing involves perceptions, memories, and emotions.
The hippocampus does three things. It processes information to form memories. It coordinates those memories by time and the senses of vision and smell. It then stores these memories and allows retrieval of them. It has a high number of receptors for the stress hormone, cortisol, making it vulnerable to stress. Research shows that the hippocampus is actually smaller and less well-developed in individuals exposed to high amounts of stress. (1) Alzheimer’s Disease affects the hippocampus first. This area allows us to remember the names of things and to keep up with what just happened.
The hippocampus is actually one structure that has a foot in both hemispheres of the brain. This is crucial to the understanding of how trauma affects behavior. The corpus callosum connects the two hemispheres, but is found to be less well developed in those who have experienced trauma. (1) This leads to abrupt shifts between the two hemispheres. Whereas non-traumatized patients show memory retrieval to be harmonized, the abused patients show that they use predominantly the right hemisphere to remember bad memories. We will go into this more in next week’s essay.
The amygdala is an almond-shaped structure at the head of the hippocampus in the temporal lobes. It receives sensory information through complex connections. Some of these connections are related to whether one would freeze or flee during “fight or flight” response. PTSD is directly related to a situation in which neither solution is feasible. The amygdala is what tells the hippocampus whether a memory is a bad one or a good one. It is larger in people with bipolar disorder and is genetically different in those with panic disorder. (2) It mediates the emotions love, mood, rage, fear, and anxiety, as well as dealing with appetite and attention. Research into those with damage to the temporal lobe from seizures has shown physical changes, but important to the understanding of PTSD, it also can show dissociative symptoms. (1) Those individuals with heightened states of arousal are working from this area of the brain. The amygdala is also critical in reward cycles and motivation that can relate to drug addiction. (3)
Both of these structures are associated strongly with varying mental disorders. PTSD is one that we will continue to examine further in this four- part series.
(2) Neuroanatomical hypothesis of panic disorder, revised.
Gorman JM, Kent JM, Sullivan GM, Coplan JD
Am J Psychiatry 2000 Apr;157(4):493-505
(3) The amygdala
Current Biology, Volume 17, Issue 20, Pages R868-R874 | <urn:uuid:60ab270d-79ff-427a-9eca-04b8aa7c47f3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bellaonline.com/ArticlesP/art40309.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00180-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927683 | 594 | 3.671875 | 4 |
Sistering Floor Joists
What Is Joist "Sistering"?
Sistering a joist simply means attaching more material to the
side of the joist. This can mean a new joist of the same size and length
is screwed or nailed firmly to the old joist, or it can be a smaller
structural member. Sistering could also involve sandwiching the old joist
with new material on both sides. Typically this involves framing
lumber, but it could involve engineered lumber, structural steel or
formed steel joists that are made of heavy gauge sheet metal.
There is a fundamental problem with sistering joists: while a
certain size of lumber may physically fit in beside the old joist, getting
the new board into position usually poses serious problems, because of
walls, ceilings, and floors that were added after the original joists were
dropped in place. In the house we worked on, there was ample room for new
16 foot long 2x8 joists, but the only way to install them would have been
to cut holes in walls or remove the sub-floor of the room above.
So often joist sistering involves using multiple pieces of lumber
that are not as long as the original joist. This approach can
greatly improve the strength and stiffness of the joists. But the
placement of the joints between boards can make a difference. Joints
should be placed as far from the middle of the span as possible. In this
article, one alternative would be to use 14 foot long 2x8 lumber, placing
the board so that neither end quite reaches the ends of the original
The one hundred year old house in this article had very springy floors.
The house consists of four sections, each 16 feet wide. The first floor
was framed with 2x10 joists. It has a minor problem with deflection. But
the second floor was built with only 2x8 floor joists. (Today this would
not meet building codes.) The floor did not seem to be in any danger of
collapsing, but was very "springy". When the homeowner's 70
pound dog walked across the room, the floor would shake considerably. With
the intent of preparing the room for floor tile, we decided to spend a few
hours and a few bucks to reduce the flexing of the floor structure.
||The ceiling just after the wood lath had been removed.
We had already done some wiring changes, so we had to disconnect a few
wires that penetrated the joists we were going to double-up.
|This house is a little different than usual. The room above
is being remodeled at the same time, and a partition was built to divide
A normal partition would simply mount between the floor and ceiling,
but we decided to try something different. We used long 2x4 studs to
connect the second floor with a beam in the attic, so the second
floor literally hangs from a sturdy structure above. View
This partition runs perpendicular to the floor joists and divides the
16' joist span into two spans of about 10' and 6'. If the partition ran parallel
to the floor joists, we would have to rely strictly on joist sistering to
improve the stiffness.
Several weeks prior to this project we had removed the
plaster from the walls and installed new insulation. We could still access the
space at the ends of the joist, to allow our sisters to reach the ends of the
|Reaching the ends is not a serious requirement, however,
just a small benefit. Without getting into a long technical discussion,
let me say that the most benefit comes from adding material to the middle
of the joist span, and that the ends of the joist experience mostly shear
stress, which is less of a concern than the tensile stress on the
bottom-most fibers of wood at the middle of the span.
||We simply hoisted the joists into place and popped one nail
at each end. The air nailer really sped things up.
Note the Quick-Grip clamp used to hold the board up.
|The two sister-joists met right under the stud, which had
been dangling from above, attached in the attic to a beam.
We tacked the board in place.
||In a few minutes we had 10 pieces of lumber held loosely in
place ( we did 5 joists).
|A view looking up, showing the ends of the sister-joists and the studs that will support them.
Since the floor in this house sagged as well as felt flimsy, we decided to
lift the floor a fraction of an inch before we permanently fastened the sisters
to the old joists.
||The Heavy Artillery:
We placed a 4x6 beam under the middle of the joist span (not under the
hanging partition) and with the aid of a 12 ton hydraulic jack, we lifted
the floor about 1/4".
This is an article in itself. View that article.
|With the floor held up by the hydraulic jack and lally
columns, we used some bolts and BIG washers to clamp the hanging studs to
- The bolts are 5/16" x 6" long.
- The washers are 5/16", 7/16" and 7/8".
- We used two of each washer per bolt.
||The washers were arranged in ascending size. They need to be
kept concentric before they are tightened.
|We used one or two Quick-Grip clamps to hold the stud in
place while we tightened the nut and bolt. In hindsight, 3/8" bolts
would have been better because there would have been less risk of breaking
a bolt while tightening.
Because of the huge washers, we experienced no crushing of the wood
Because the allowable bearing pressure on wood is so much less than
steel (about 400 to 600 pounds per square inch versus tens of thousands of PSI) the
force of the bolt needs to be spread out over a large area. If smaller
washers are used, the wood fibers become crushed long before the bolt is
tight enough to clamp the pieces together. Simply using washers the same size as
the bolt is never adequate when bolting wood together.
After using the bolts to sandwich the sisters between the stud and the old
joist, we proceeded to permanently attach the sisters to the old joists.
We used our nail gun, of course, with 3-1/4" nails. If anybody has to
do this by hand, we'll gladly send them a sympathy card. Nailing like this
is just plain old work! It's even a bit of a chore with the gun.
After the nailing, we drove 3" deck screws (not drywall screws)
from the old joist into the new wood, just for kicks. We pre-drilled the holes
to prevent splitting the old, hard wood. (Plus it's hard to drive screws through
that old lumber.) This operation took two people about half an hour.
||We installed solid blocking at the middle of the 10' span...
|...except around the wiring, where we used cross-bracing.
These were attached with 3" deck screws.
||We drove deck screws to connect the stud to the joists, for
extra protection. (We have seen wood dry out and shrink, causing bolts to
|The finished job, after removing the hydraulic jack and
What a difference a hundred dollars in lumber makes.
The floor is much more stiff than before. I would estimate that 80% to 90% of
the bounce is gone. I suspect that the majority of the improvement is from
the hanging-partition method of supporting the floor. Getting this kind of
improvement with sistering alone might require either double-sistering, or using
a sister that was one or two sizes larger that the original (i.e. using 2x10's
or 2x12's instead of just 2x8's).
Whatever the case, there are some simple concepts here:
- As long as we only add material to the original structure, there
should be no harm caused by our work.
- The added material adds a small amount of weight to the load-bearing walls
of the house. Normally this is not a problem.
- In our area, building permits are not required when supplementing an
existing structure, as long as no load-bearing members are altered. This is
considered a repair, which in our area does not require a permit.
Check with your local building department.
Back To Top Of Page
- Basic Carpentry Tools
- 12 Ton Hydraulic Jack
- Pneumatic Nailer (Optional)
- Drills and Driver Bits
- 1/2" Wrenches
- Lumber, 2x8x12'
Home What's New Project
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China — White Horse Temple 白馬寺
Friday 29 January 2010, by
White Horse Temple was the first Buddhist temple in China, established under the patronage of Emperor Ming in the Eastern Han capital Luoyang in the year 68.
- White Horse Temple
WHITE HORSE TEMPLE
白马寺 - 白馬寺
Located at the 12 kilometers east of Luoyang city, the White Horse Temple is one of the oldest Buddhist temples in China and is renowned as the cradle of Chinese Buddhism. Although it is not the largest nor the most beautiful Buddhism monument in China, this temple with its large number of Buddhism items housed there, is well worth a trip.
An interesting legend related to the temple goes that a white horse carried the first Buddhist script from India here in ancient time hence the name White Horse Temple. History records that the site was original the place used by the second Han Emperor-Liu Zhuang as a summer resort and for study. In 68 AD, when Buddism reached its heyday in India, two Indian monks brought Buddhist scriptures to Luoyang on the back of a white horse. The emperor, who was a devout Buddhism believer, built the temple to house the scriptures and named it White Horse Temple. It was said that there were once thousands of monks living in the temple. It was even used as a refugee sanctuary during the social turmoil of Wang Mang in the Eastern Han Dynasty.
The two monks who brought scriptures from India were buried here. Many monks from outside China have visited the monk and many of them have spent the rest of their time in that temple. The famous Tang Dynasty monk-Xuanzang started his 17 years long pilgrimage trip to Indian from the temple. After returning, Xuanzhang became the abbot of the White Horse Temple, where he disseminated the scriptures of Buddhism for the rest of his life.
It is one of the oldest Buddhism temple in China and has been internationally regarded as the "cradle of China’s Buddhism".
How to get there? - Take bus No. 56(Luoyang Railway Station-White Horse Temple)
Entrance Fee:35 yuan
Recommeded Time for a Visit: One hour
Opening Time: 7:30 am-5:30 pm
Source : chinahighlights.com
Located in the western part of China’s central Henan Province, Luoyang is one of China’s seven ancient capitals. Comprised of six city districts and eight counties, Luoyang occupies an area of 15,492 square kilometers, with a total population of 6.16 million, 1.4 million urban. Luoyang city proper covers an area of 544 square kilometers.
Luoyang served as the capital for nine dynasties over a period of more than 1,500 years. 96 emperors from the prehistoric Xia Dynasties, through Shang, Western and Eastern Zhous, Cao Wei, Sui, Later Liang, Later Tang and Later Jin Eastern Han established their seat of power there. Luoyang’s importance in history means that it has significant influence in China’s cultural heritage and has many historical sites. Although the political upheavals in the last century destroyed some of its grand historical heritage, Luoyang still retains many of its significant ancient landmarks which are the main tourist draw cards.
In and around Luoyang, visitors will find the White Horse Temple, the first Buddhism temple in China, Longmen Grottoes, a place renowned as a treasure house of Buddhist culture and art. The natural scenery around this area is also fascinating.
WHITE HORSE TEMPLE
According to the Book of Later Han history, Emperor Ming was said to have dreamed one night in the year 64 of a golden person standing 20 metres tall and with a radiating white aureola flying from the West. The next day he told his ministers, and the minister Zhong Hu explained to him that he had probably dreamed of the Buddha from India. The emperor then sent a delegation of 18 headed by Cai Yin, Qin Jing and Wang Zun to seek out Buddhism. They returned from Afghanistan with an image of Gautama Buddha, the Sutra of Forty-two Chapters and two eminent monks.
The monks names have been variously romanized as Kasyapamatanga and Dharmavanya, Moton and Chufarlan.
The next year, the emperor ordered the construction of the White Horse Temple three li east of the capital Luoyang, to remember the horse that carried back the sutras. It was China’s first Buddhist temple.
The first version of the Chinese Sutra of Forty-two Sections (四十二章經) was produced within the temple. The temple then increased in importance as Buddhism grew within China, and spread to Korea, Japan and Vietnam. The introduction of Buddhism in China was also a significant influence on Chinese morals, thought and ethics.
- The White Horse Temple
- the first Buddhist temple on Chinese soil
In 258. a royal Kuchean monk, Po-Yen, translated six Buddhist text in to Chinese at the temple, including the important Infinite Life Sutra.
In 1175, an inscription on a stone tablet next to Qilun Pagoda—a 35 m (115 ft) tall, multi-eaved square-based tower located to the southeast of the White Horse Temple—stated that a previous fire occurred five decades previously and destroyed the temple and the Sakya Tathagata sarira stupa, a predecessor to the pagoda. The same inscription of 1175 stated that a Jin Dynasty official had the stone Qilun Pagoda erected soon after. The pagoda is built with the design style imitating the square-based pagodas of the Tang Dynasty.
In 1992, with the assistance of Thai and Chinese donors, the Hall of the Thai Buddha was constructed slightly west of the old temple. In 2008 the temple was expanded with the construction of an Indian-style stupa; the new pavillion was jointly built by the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of India.
The temple compound covers an area of 200 mu (13 hectares), and faces south. A stone paifang (archway) has been recently built 150 metres in front of the original gate. Between the archway and gate lies a pool with fountains, spanned by three stone bridges.
Entering the temple today, one sees the Hall of Heavenly Kings, Hall of the Great Buddha, Hall of Mahavira, Hall of Greeting, the Cool and Clear Terrace and the pavilion. On each side of the pavilion are the Sutra House and the Magic Weapon House. | <urn:uuid:3f3c2b3c-c584-4e8a-acbf-a872303b0ea2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.buddhachannel.tv/portail/spip.php?article4098 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394414.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00130-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946163 | 1,407 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Multiple sclerosis (MS) patients who take one of the 10 disease modifying drugs (DMDs) on the market to ease the symptoms of their disease have seen the price tag that comes with quality of life. At an average annual cost of $62,000, these drugs serve as the income-generating, reliable part of a pharmaceutical company’s portfolio, allowing them to invest the profits in riskier research.
For MS patients who depend on these drugs, being the money-making back on which new research is launched is a bitter pill to swallow. But patient advocacy organizations, doctors groups, and social-media-savvy individuals now have more power than ever to change the status quo.
MS is a chronic, progressive, and often debilitating autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system, including the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves. More than 400,000 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with MS, while worldwide that number is in excess of 2.1 million. There is no cure for MS, but the number of DMDs to treat it is growing at an astounding rate.
According to Daniel Kantor, M.D., president of the Florida Society of Neurology, founder of the Southern MS Consortium (seMSc), and medical director of Neurologique, “The first disease modifying agent was FDA-approved in 1993. Since that time, we have seen an explosion of FDA-approved products, with the most recent being on March 27, 2013, and we expect one more this year and probably two in 2014.”
All of these drugs cut relapse rates dramatically and, in some cases, delay the onset of disability.
Kantor told Healthline, “the cost of the DMDs sometimes makes it
impossible for patients to get the right drug for them, and this can
affect their quality of life.”
None of the pharmaceutical companies Healthline contacted responded to requests for interviews.
“MS DMDs are too expensive,” Kantor said. “This is almost universally recognized. The problem is that they keep increasing in price. In the U.S., the vast majority of people with MS get their DMDs at a very low price to them because of patient assistance programs. Sometimes, however, even when we try very hard we can't get the medications at an affordable price. This is especially true for...the working under-insured and people on state and federal insurance plans.”
The Impact of the Internet
Social media is a platform many use to voice a call to action, creating a grassroots effort that can spread like wildfire. With a worldwide audience, the impact of an online movement can be powerful and nearly instantaneous.
For example, when Netflix proposed a
separate pricing scheme for streaming movies and renting DVDs in 2011,
the Internet entertainment company suffered a consumer backlash never
Through Facebook posts, tweets, and online petitions on sites like Change.org, customers vented their outrage at being asked to pay an additional $7.99 per month. They stood together, unsubscribing from the service in protest. Netflix lost 800,000 subscribers, and as a result, the company abandoned its restructuring plans.
Customers were unwilling to pay an additional fee for no added benefit and put their collective foot down. All in response to being asked to shell out $8 more per month. Imagine if Netflix wanted to charge $5,200 per month.
That's the average cost a person with MS can expect to pay for medications until the drugs outlive their patent protection. The patent life for DMDs is about 20 years, so when the newest DMDs enter the market, patients will wait five to 10 years to see cheaper generic equivalents.
If You Can't Boycott, Build Bridges
For patients who benefit from them, refusing to take DMDs is tantamount to shooting oneself in the foot. According to Dr. Kenneth Kaitin, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Mass., the dilemma is that “If you think the price is too high, you could boycott it and say ‘I’m not going to take it,' but that’s not generally true with pharmaceuticals because if you need the drug, you need the drug.”
On the flip side, according to Kaitin, drug
makers are paying more attention to patient groups, especially ones that
work closely with the industry. A case in point is the Michael J. Fox
Foundation for Parkinson’s Disease, which has a strong partnership with
the drug companies Pfizer and Sanofi.
Hypothetically speaking, Kaitin said, “If the membership of the Michael J. Fox Foundation started taking out ads in the newspaper or going to their congresspeople and complaining of the price of a brand-new drug, I have no doubt that those companies would listen. They’d pay attention and would probably act accordingly. Patients have a very strong voice today...That started during the AIDS epidemic in the late 1980s and early 1990s.”
Doctors Write a Prescription for Change
Other powerful players in the way drugs are priced are physicians groups. After all, drugs don't get into patients' hands without a written prescription from their doctors.
For years doctors
have been accused of not knowing—or caring—about the prices of the
products they prescribe. But last fall a drug maker marketed an
expensive anti-cancer medication to doctors at one of the nation's leading hospitals, and they decided its marginal improvement over an existing drug did not warrant the steep price tag.
"There was a new cancer drug that was approved by Sanofi, one of the big pharma companies. The name of the drug was Zaltrap, and it was for colorectal cancer," Kaitin said. "Physicians at Memorial Sloan-Kettering hospital in NYC said, 'We’re not going to prescribe this. We’re not even going to put it on a formulary in the hospital because we think it’s too expensive,' and ultimately the company lowered the price. So even physicians...are beginning to get into the act.”
According to Kaitin, talking to their doctors is another way patients can be empowered to effect change. “Patient groups can put pressure on physicians as well and say, ‘You’ve been prescribing this drug and this drug is outrageously priced, or unfairly priced, and you have power!’”
One Voice Can Make a Difference
If you think drug prices are unfair but feel powerless to change them, think again. What constitutes a “patient group”? Look no further than your local MS support group or your regional chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (NMSS).
“Patients need to work hand in hand with the doctor community on legislative issues” said Kantor. “In Florida we started the FL NeuroAlliance to bring patients, care partners, doctors, and nonprofits together to work collaboratively on such issues.”
On their website, the NMSS says, “You can help shape the policies and programs that impact people living with multiple sclerosis. Join with thousands of other MS activists nationwide. We must work together to break down barriers to care, improve access to quality health services, and make MS therapies more affordable. We must pursue funding for more MS research and fight for disability rights. MS activists help turn those issues into national priorities.”
High Drug Prices Affect Us All
companies all have patient assistance programs in place to help cover
drug costs for the uninsured, but that’s tantamount to putting a
Band-Aid on a missing limb in today’s poor economic climate. Everyone
should care about the high cost of drugs—not only MS drugs, but all medications.
Even if you don’t need medication yourself, if you carry insurance, your healthcare plan pays for drugs for members who do. In an effort by insurers to recoup their losses, the price of your policy goes up. In the end, we all pay.
Engaging in activism has never been easier—all
you need is a computer with Internet access. For many with MS who are
unable to leave home, social media can serve as their platform. Whether
you start a petition, join a patient group, or blog about the desire for
affordable medication, Big Pharma is listening.
Patients have the power to effect change. Indeed, the power lies within us all.
Read the first story in this series here. | <urn:uuid:62ff61fa-aeb3-4c9e-b2b5-19fe36f4be3e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.healthline.com/health-news/ms-how-patients-and-doctors-can-impact-ms-drug-prices-072413 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00051-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956258 | 1,784 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
January 11, 1997
Explanation: British astronomer Sir William Herschel discovered Titania and Oberon in 1787, 210 years ago today. He wasn't reading Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream though, he was making the first telescopic observations of moons of the planet Uranus (a planet which he himself discovered in 1781). On January 24, 1986 NASA's robot explorer Voyager 2 became the only spacecraft to visit the remote Uranian system. Above is Voyager's highest resolution picture of Titania, Uranus' largest moon - a composite of two images recorded from a distance of 229,000 miles. The icy, rocky world is seen to be covered with impact craters. A prominent system of fault valleys, some nearly 1,000 miles long, are visible as trench-like features near the terminator (shadow line). Deposits of highly reflective material which may represent frost can be seen along the sun-facing valley walls. The large impact crater near the top, known as Gertrude, is about 180 miles across. At the bottom the 60 mile wide fault valley, Belmont Chasma, cuts into crater Ursula. Titania itself is 1,000 miles in diameter.
Authors & editors:
NASA Technical Rep.: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA/ GSFC
&: Michigan Tech. U. | <urn:uuid:44a71569-c061-4adf-becf-8d128664864b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.phy.mtu.edu/apod/ap970111.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925689 | 315 | 3.921875 | 4 |
Lethargy isn't a disease in itself but it is a sign that there may be something wrong with your cat. This could be something relatively minor or a sign of something more serious.
What are the causes of lethargy in cats?
There are many possible reasons why your cat is behaving lethargically. Some of which include:
- Anemia - Reduced number of red blood cells.
- Acute or chronic kidney failure - Decline in the function of the kidneys.
- Addison's Disease - Insufficient secretion of cortisone by the adrenal glands.
- Certain medications.
- Feline herpesvirus - Viral infection.
- Feline infectious anemia - Bacterial infection resulting in destruction of the red blood cells.
- Dietary (inadequate amount of food, poor quality food)
- Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP)
- Feline Immunodeficiency Virus - Viral infection which is similar to HIV in humans.
- Feline Leukemia Virus - Viral infection which causes immunosuppression and cancer in cats.
- Glomerulonephritis - Kidney disease caused by inflammation of the nephrons, which are tiny filtering units in the kidneys.
- Heartworm - Parasitic worm which infects the heart and lungs.
- Heat stroke
- Hepatic lipidosis - A form of liver disease caused by a build up of fat cells in the liver as a result of anorexia.
- High blood pressure
- Hypercalcemia - High blood calcium levels.
- Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
- Hypocalcemia - Low blood calcium levels.
- Inflammatory bowel disease
- Liver disease
- Nutritional disorders and or deficiency
- Pancreatitis - Inflammation of the pancreas.
- Pyometra - Infection of the uterus.
- Recent viral infection
- Ruptured bladder
- Yellow fat disease
This list is by no means conclusive, there are also many other possible causes of lethargy.
What are the signs of lethargy?
Lethargy describes inactivity, drowsiness, loss of interest in surroundings and activities your cat would usually enjoy (playing, spending time with you, following you around the house, chasing flies). It may or may not accompany other symptoms, depending on the cause. Some may include:
How is lethargy in cats diagnosed?
Your veterinarian will perform a complete physical examination of your cat and obtain a medical history from you, including other symptoms you may have noticed. Some routine tests your veterinarian may wish to perform include:
- Urinalysis, biochemical profile and complete blood count to evaluate the overall health of your cat including how the organs are functioning, to check for signs of infection or anemia.
These tests may or may not show results which warrant your veterinarian to investigate further with more specific tests such as;
- ACTH stimulation test - This test is to evaluate your cat's adrenal gland function.
- Fecal examination - To look for parasites.
- FIV and FeLV tests.
- Specific tests for pancreatitis.
- Heartworm tests.
How is lethargy in cats treated?
Treatment depends on the underlying cause of the lethargy and offering supportive care while your cat recovers to ensure he continues to eat and giving him IV fluids if he becomes dehydrated. | <urn:uuid:782fff4c-f61a-4bd7-ad72-51200b7d515c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.cat-world.com.au/lethargy-in-cats | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398216.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00179-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.88344 | 713 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Preventive Health Care Visits
In 2008, 75.8 percent of children under 18 years of age were reported by their parents to have had a preventive, or “well-child”, medical visit in the past year. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children have eight preventive health care visits in their first year, three in their second year, and at least one per year from middle childhood through adolescence. Well-child visits offer an opportunity not only to monitor children’s health and provide immunizations, but also to assess a child’s behavior and development, discuss nutrition, and answer parents’ questions.
The proportion of children receiving wellchild visits declines with age. In 2008, 86.7 percent of children 4 years of age and younger received a preventive visit in the past year, compared to 76.0 percent of children 5–9 years of age, 70.1 percent of children 10–14 years of age, and 66.5 percent of children 15–17 years of age.
Receipt of preventive medical care also varies by race and ethnicity. In 2008, non-Hispanic Black children were the most likely to have received a well-child visit in the past year (81.1 percent), followed by non-Hispanic White children (75.7 percent). Hispanic children were least likely to have received preventive care in the past year (72.6 percent). | <urn:uuid:2427d1ff-495c-421e-b9a3-2b2f47909254> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa10/hsfu/pages/306phcv.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00140-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98171 | 287 | 3.46875 | 3 |
Automated blood collection, or apheresis (ay-fur-ee-sis), is a donation made with the assistance of a special machine. Instead of flowing directly into a bag, your blood enters the machine where a small centrifuge "spins" the blood to separate its basic components. The machine is programmed to remove specific amounts of these components, and then return everything else to you through the same sterile tubing and needle.
Why is Blood Separated?
Different patients need different blood components,
depending on their illness or injury. We separate each blood
donation into its basic components of red cells, platelets and
plasma. Whole blood donations are separated in our laboratory.
Apheresis donations are separated automatically during the donation
Whole Blood Donation
A non-automated "whole blood" donation is the most common type
of donation and results mainly in the collection of red blood
cells. Red blood cells are the most frequently used blood component
and are needed by almost every type of patient requiring
transfusion. Red cells make up about 40 percent of your blood.
Their most important job is carrying oxygen from the lungs to
tissues, and carrying back carbon dioxide to the lungs.
If you meet certain criteria, you can make a "double red"
donation during one appointment using the automated donation
process. It allows you to donate two units - twice the number of
red blood cells - compared to a single unit from a non-automated
donation. It is as safe as whole blood donation.
Can I Donate Double Reds?
In addition to the qualifications for a whole blood
donation, you must also meet specific criteria for donating double
red cells, especially for hemoglobin, weight and height.
Double red cell donation takes about 20-30 minutes
longer than a whole blood donation. After a whole blood you are
generally eligible to donate again in two months. After a double
red donation you must wait four months.
You may feel better after a double red
donation. That's because other
components, including the liquid portion of your blood, are
returned to you. As a result, you may feel more hydrated after your
Platelets are blood cells that help control bleeding. They are
one of the main components separated from a blood donation by
- When a blood vessel is damaged platelets collect at the site of
the injury and temporarily repair the tear.
- Platelets are sticky cells that clump together to form clots
that control bleeding by sticking to the lining of
- Platelets then activate substances in plasma which form a clot
and allow the wound to heal.
- When exposed to air, cause a protein in the blood, called
fibrinogen, to turn into long threads which form a scab over the
- Platelets survive in the circulatory system for about 10 days
and are removed by the spleen.
- Outside the body, platelets can be stored for only 5 days.
Who Needs Platelets?
Many lifesaving medical treatments require platelet
- They are in high demand for patients with leukemia and other
forms of cancer and blood disorders.
- They help patients with malignant diseases who have low or
abnormal platelets due to the disease itself or chemotherapy.
- They are vital for patients receiving bone marrow or organ
transplants and open heart surgery.
- Necessary for treatment of accident, burn and trauma
Because platelets can be stored for only five days the need for
platelet donations is vast and continuous.
Platelet transfusions are needed each year by thousands of
patients like these:
- Heart Surgery Patient: 6 units.
- Burn Patient: 20 units.
- Organ Transplant Patient: 30 units.
- Bone Marrow Transplant Patient: 120 units.
What is Plasma?
Plasma is the fluid component of the blood that carries other
blood cells, nutrients, and clotting factors throughout our
- Plasma is 90 percent water and makes up more than half of total
- The remaining 10 percent of plasma is made up of protein
molecules, including enzymes, clotting agents, immune system
components, plus other body essentials such as vitamins and
- Plasma helps maintain blood pressure and keeps everything
moving through the circulatory system, supplying critical proteins
and serving as an exchange system for vital minerals.
- Plasma is frozen after collection and can be stored up to one
Who Needs Plasma?
- Automated plasma donations provide life-saving transfusions to
patients suffering from burns, traumas and bleeding disorders.
- Plasma is used to treat bleeding disorders when clotting
factors are missing. Plasma exchanges remove disease-causing
factors from a patient's plasma.
- Plasma is also used to extract cryoprecipitate, a substance
rich in Factor VIII, which is needed to treat hemophilia
- Plasma purchased at for-profit centers is sold for research and
some medical therapies.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who Can be an Automated Donor?
If you meet the requirements for donating blood, you probably
can give platelets. Apheresis donors must:
- Be at least 17 years old (16 years old with parental
- Be in good health.
- Weigh at least 110 pounds.
- Not have taken aspirin or products containing aspirin 48 hours
prior to a platelet donation.
Are Automated Donations Safe?
Yes. Each donation is closely supervised throughout the
procedure by trained staff. A small percentage of your platelets or
plasma is collected, so there is no risk of bleeding problems. Your
body will replace the donated platelets within 24 hours and donated
plasma within two to three days. The donation equipment (including
the needle, tubing and collection bags) is sterile and discarded
after every donation, making it virtually impossible to contract a
disease from the process.
How Does the Procedure Work?
Blood is drawn from your arm through sterile tubing into a
centrifuge. The centrifuge spins the blood to separate the
components, which vary in weight and density. A port is opened
along the spinning tubing at the level containing either the
platelets or plasma to be donated. These platelets or plasma are
drawn up into a collection bag, while the remaining blood
components (red cells and plasma or platelets) are returned to
How Long Does it Take?
Depending on your weight and height, the entire automated
donation process will take approximately 70-90 minutes. You may
read, watch videos, listen to music or simply sit back and relax
while helping to save a life.
How Can I Become an Automated Donor?
Call Community Blood Center at 1-800-388-GIVE and ask
for the Automated Collection Department. | <urn:uuid:5293f1e7-2a71-4759-b665-fb9bdb13438a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.cbccts.org/donate-blood/automated-donations.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393093.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00196-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.87818 | 1,446 | 3.125 | 3 |
In the Czech Republic—as in so many countries—photography took a while to come into its own. In the early twentieth century, professional photographers such as František Drtikol (1883-1961) and Josef Sudek (1896-1976) used alternative techniques to make personal work that was imitative of painting. This work, which became part of the international movement known as pictorialism, strove for beauty and atmosphere as a way to counter the mechanical coldness of photography. In the 1920s and ’30s, under the democratic presidency of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Prague was a cultural crossroads and Czech artists were exposed to a variety of artistic movements including constructivism, futurism, surrealism, and the German Bauhaus. Avant-garde artists such as Jaromír Funke (1896-1945), Jaroslav Rössler (1902-90), and Eugen Wiškovský (1888-1964) made daring experiments with photography and celebrated its special characteristics. From angular nudes to geometric light studies, to collage and abstractions that adopted cubist elements popular in Czech art at the time, this group of avant-garde photographers collaborated with writers, poets, and painters, and they showed their photographic works in the context of painting, printmaking, writing, and graphic design.
It wasn’t until after World War II that photography became fully accepted in Czechoslovakia as an independent genre. But it was mostly in the area of documentary photography that it excelled. Fine art photography often adopted a humanistic approach that privileged content over the mode of execution. Imaginative and surreal photography also flourished as a way to subtly counter the oppressive political ideology of communism. It wasn’t until the end of the 1980s and ’90s, after the Velvet Revolution that toppled communism, that photography was thoroughly questioned again as a means of artistic expression, and then usually in the works of visual artists, not photographers.
As the analog technology of photography fades away, these artists subversively employ a variety of photographic materials to investigate the potential for photographic veracity, and all of them push the idea of framing and selection to counter any perception of objectivity the medium might impart.
This exhibition brings together the work of six contemporary Czech artists (two of whom work collaboratively). All of these featured artists reflect on the materials of photography and find poetic resonance in a lack of obviously poetic subject matter. As the analog technology of photography fades away, these artists subversively employ a variety of photographic materials to investigate the potential for photographic veracity, and all of them push the idea of framing and selection to counter any perception of objectivity the medium might impart.
Instead of creating brightly colored, large, splashy digital works that dominate much of contemporary photography, they make quieter works, generally gelatin silver prints using traditional chemistry and film, a trademark that extends the rich black-and-white photographic tradition of their country. Although there is arguably an interconnectedness between artists working in the same city in a relatively small country, who know each other and have been taught and influenced by some of the same artists, it does not necessarily follow that these artists are primarily a product of their nationality. Rather, the exhibition only partly considers how the pallor of a historical circumstance—in this case stereotypically “grey” post-communist society—might affect artistic production. More important, it may provoke a reconsideration of how a nationalist label affects an artist and an exhibition in a more general sense.
50% Grey also explores what the word “photography” brings to mind and what it means to “reconsider” it, and what parallels can be found among contemporary artists whose works deal with some of the most compelling questions artists can ask…
50% Grey also explores what the word “photography” brings to mind and what it means to “reconsider” it, and what parallels can be found among contemporary artists whose works deal with some of the most compelling questions artists can ask: Where is the edge between abstraction and representation? What is the relationship between time and space? Between two and three dimensions? What sorts of spaces in the imagination are opened up by paring down information and exposing the basics of photography? These concerns, among others, occupy these artists as they deal with ideas of fragmentation, time, space, narration, and perception in different, and extremely compelling ways.
Jasanský/Polák (Lukáš Jasanský, b. 1965; Martin Polák, b. 1966) began working together as photography students during the 1990s, at a time when they were both interested in departing from the extreme subjectivity that dominated Czech fine art photography. Instead they pursued a practice based on discourse, and for more than fifteen years have worked together on conceptual, technically straightforward projects. In 2007 they were commissioned to make a public art piece at the European Parliament in Brussels, a task that seemed antithetical to most of their previous work. But they took on the challenge and created the series Brussels Sprouts (2007), which uses irony to question the potential ability of artwork to embody nationality.
One of the first things that struck the pair about the European Parliament was the artwork already permanently on view. Gifts from various nations, the artworks are intended to represent examples of cultural production from each country, and as such often feel like political tools in their display of conservatism, symbolism, or grandeur. Displayed in an institutional setting and often awkwardly positioned in transitional spaces such as hallways and mezzanines, these works are usually presented in less-than-ideal viewing conditions. Jasanský/Polák level the playing field between the works by shooting them all in an unembellished, deadpan style and in black-and-white. The context of the surroundings is almost entirely removed, and like forensic pictures, the artworks are reduced to a minimal amount of information. This makes for a true democracy, where one cannot demand more attention than the others, perhaps a fitting metaphor for the desired diplomacy of the European Parliament. It is also an institutional critique in the manner of Louise Lawler’s work that documents the contexts in which art is seen and consumed. Like Lawler’s photographs, when Jasanský/Polák’s parliament pictures are presented in a museum setting they bring added attention to the conditions surrounding the reception of artworks, and in so doing raise larger questions about the meaning and use of art.
Similarly, Jasanský/Polák’s earlier series Abstraction (1994-95) playfully questions the definition of art, while investigating photography’s ability to straddle the representational and the abstract. By attempting to make images that resemble abstract compositions using everyday objects and settings, Jasanský/Polák underscore the accepted wisdom of what an abstract image looks like usually a contrast of darks and lights, lines and shapes, that creates a feeling of dynamism. Color, often a significant and enjoyable attribute of abstract art, is siphoned out of the scene, subtly revealing our habit of visual pleasure derived from it and turning the pictures into a more controlled, almost scientific, endeavor. Irony resides in their critique, as they hint at the seeming absurdity of making abstract art with a medium best known for representation. They also turn our mental predilection to look for an image within an abstraction on its head, by creating sharp, representational images that reveal the idea of abstract form.
Compared to Jasanský/Polák, the photographs of Štepán Grygar (b. 1955) sit in a middle ground where abstract and representational elements are equal and can each alternately hold more weight. In Street (Prague), 2002, a black-and-white series shot out of a window of the street below during a snowstorm, the images are easily readable, in a manner similar to Jasanský/Polák’s “abstractions.” But displayed as a series of seven images, the graphic, patterned quality of the snow dominates as the background begins to fade away. The snowflakes are an indexical element for Grygar; they act as a trace and emphasize the impossibility of recording an instant, which we assume the camera does best. For it is not time that is captured, but rather a view of space that the snowflakes are traveling through without stopping. The element of time, for Grygar, is explored not as a chronological or cinematic phenomenon, but rather as something we experience as a mixture of knowledge, memories, and present experiences. Even though the camera’s angle and position stay the same, there are infinite views all around it that are occurring and overlapping at once, destabilizing the idea of objectivity in photography and probing the fallacy of the photographer as passive observer. Grygar highlights his presence by using flash intermittently and changing exposure times. The concrete objects such as the street lamp and car are meant to emphasize the viewer’s position, to implicate him or her as an interpreter of the scene. The abstract elements of his work, such as the snowflakes, are not about fragmentation as much as they are about a reduction of information and resisting narration.
In his other works, Grygar builds images for the camera, employing simple materials such as flour, paper, and kitchen tools to create compositions that straddle representation and abstraction, much like James Welling’s photographs of the early 1980s. Grygar adds unusual camera angles to create graphic images that defy the flatness of the photographic print, and to produce optically intricate compositions that harken back to the Czech avant-garde photographers of the 1920s and ’30s. At the beginning of his career in the 1970s, Grygar took a modernist approach and explored a specific set of aesthetics for photography. Later he began to inject irony into his work in order to emphasize the individuality of the viewer’s experience. To this end, like Jasanský/Polák, he often uses scenes and objects readily at hand. Ultimately, Grygar is not interested in abstraction for the sake of ornamentation or decoration, but rather as a means for illuminating the perceptual process.
Jirí Thýn (b. 1977) also works directly with abstraction to question the limitations of photography. In his series that inspired the title of this exhibition, 50% Grey (2009), he disrupts the illusion of photography by unveiling its science and materials. In one part of the series, he constructs “negatives” out of layered glass sheets silk-screened with blocks of bright color. He then exposes black-and-white photographic paper using the color block negatives, a process that creates different shades of grey depending on exposure time but having no relationship to the colors, which are opaque. The work is always displayed as two parts, the stratified “negative” and its corresponding photogram, a presentation strategy that reveals the reduction of information that is photography—?an image does not faithfully record the world but rather profoundly transforms it through materials and light. His presentation strategy of having two distinct elements make up one piece hints at the importance of process and, perhaps, reception, and alludes to the instability of the notion of the artwork in general.
In other works from the 50% Grey series, called Test Strips (2008), Thýn dissects images into stripes of grey using the method photographers employ in the darkroom to gauge proper exposure time. His title, 50% Grey, recalls the idea of the perfect negative and print pursued by practitioners such as Ansel Adams (American, 1902-84). One of the thrusts of Adams’s teachings about the negative is that although one ideally exposes for “middle grey,”each situation requires fine-tuning based on the conditions of the scene; there has to be room for intuition and experimentation. Thýn’s negatives and Test Strips undermine the possibility of technical perfection by positioning photography as both an act of revelation and obscuration.
In the early 2000s, Markéta Othová (b. 1968) began creating black-and-white sequential images that communicate a sense of temporality, a practice that aligned her work with photography as it was employed by conceptual artists during the 1970s. An example is her Untitled diptych made at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago in 2006. In this work, Othová records details of the interior of Crown Hall, the famous building designed by Mies van der Rohe that houses the university’s architecture school. The left hand image is of a ceiling tile shattered on the floor. The right-hand image presents a view of the suspended ceiling with one tile missing. Combining the photographs provides us with a view that could never be seen, both the floor and the ceiling at once. In this way she reconstructs the cognitive process that would occur at the scene: one would look down at the fallen tile and then look up for its origin. Othová’s choice to put the shattered tile on the left and the missing tile on the right, counter to the direction that we might sequence a storyboard, maps the trajectory of the tile in reverse and thus communicates a sense of duration.
In her more recent works, Othová focuses on the composition of images and works exclusively in the laboratory-like environment of her artist’s studio. In this way, her reverse journey through the history of photography has brought her to the experiments of the photographic avant-garde of the 1920s and ’30s. Like the avant-garde’s representatives, Othová questions the very nature of the photographic medium and the stability of the visual world. Her Leçon de Photographie (2007), for example, is composed of seven pictures that depict a white box against a white background. The color of the captured object is no different from its surroundings, so that one would expect it to remain invisible—and yet it turns out to be set off by the shading that outlines it. Thus, we end up seeing the object in the photograph only due to the difference bestowed upon it by photography. This is also made explicit in the Untitled diptych of a floral still life from 2008. Here, Othová captures one and the same bunch of flowers, first against a dark and then against a light background, with the object rendered as light-colored in the first photograph and dark-colored in the second. Combined in a single installation, we tend to consider these two independent images merely as a positive and a negative, and the stability of the visual world is disrupted.
And finally, Michal Pechouček (b. 1973) has spent most of his career making multimedia works that combine elements of film, painting and performance. Like Grygar and Jasanský/Polák, he is inspired partly by abstract painting and its potential to elicit emotion and intellectual questioning. He complicates the idea of abstraction by using photography, a medium thought of as best at recording “reality,” to shoot relatively minimal spaces with graphic qualities that relay a sense of optical illusion. HisFilmogram #1 (2007), for example, is a set of twenty-four diptychs of two views of walls and panels in an interior space, shot once every hour for an entire day, for a total of forty-eight exposures. The image pairs were made on a single roll of film with a 6 × 9 camera with a manual film advance. The unexposed gutters between negatives vary in width, creating black strips of inconsistent size that divide the two images. This strip is significant to the series as it indicates the artist’s subjectivity and control of the operation of the camera, but paradoxically it also reveals his susceptibility to its mechanical, often unpredictable, nature. The title of the piece, Filmogram, is a play on the word “photogram,” or an image made by placing objects directly on photographic paper and exposing the paper to light, thus circumventing the use of a camera and film. By making twenty-four exposures a day, and exhibiting them in a row, Pechouček refers to the fact that movie film is generally exposed at twenty-four frames per second. This cinematic quality endows the images with a sense of duration, something that is at odds with their flat, graphic composition and lack of living or moving subject matter.
Pechouček’s video Pater Noster (2005) is also an attempt to animate photographs in a very cinematic way. The words “Pater Noster” are the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer, and are also used to describe the old-fashioned elevators in Europe that do not stop but continually rotate in a circle, like the motion of a rosary in someone’s hands. Pechouček’s video is divided into two parts—a right- and a left- hand segment, one going up and the other down, like a paternoster lift. The rotating still images show stacks of shelves containing a random assortment of items, creating multiple frames within frames that also fluctuate in distance from the camera. In the images a young man climbs a ladder and holds a picture of two sisters in matching confirmation dresses. A funny take on the idea of ascension, Pechouček’ video is also a complicated meditation on time, space and perception. As the action plays out in the seemingly frozen time and space of still images, it is complicated by the footage’s up-and-down scrolling, creating a matrix of duration and direction for the viewer to navigate. The footage actually runs in two directions so that at some point in the cycle the imagery overlaps. This repetition underscores the idea that narrative is nonlinear, and cleverly reminds us of the reproducibility of photography—something also alluded to in the girls being dressed alike.
These artists all possess an authentic interest in an nearly obsolete analog medium, and use black-and-white materials to address and illustrate some of photography’s most timeless questions concerning perception, reproducibility, time, and art itself.
This exhibition represents a small, very specific slice of photography in the Czech Republic today, but it features artists who share very similar concerns. They all possess an authentic interest in an nearly obsolete analog medium, and use black-and-white materials to address and illustrate some of photography’s most timeless questions concerning perception, reproducibility, time, and art itself. All of them place a great importance on working in series, and in the case of Grygar, Othová, Pechouček, and Thýn use sequencing as a way to comment on narrative. All of the artists place a premium on installation and its potential to affect the content of the work. Finally, they all consider photography a process of suggestive abstraction, existing somewhere in the grey area between reality and illusion. At a time when analog photography is coming to its end, they use it to reconsider photography’s limitations by bringing its inherent quality of abstraction—whether it be obvious or disguised as something representational—to the fore.
—Karel Císar, Independent Curator and Assistant Professor of Aesthetics and Art Theory, University of Art, Architecture and Design, Prague
and Karen Irvine, Curator, Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago | <urn:uuid:d57e50aa-234c-43d8-9bd7-99ab4972b58d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mocp.org/exhibitions/2010/01/50-grey-contemporary-czech-photography-reconsidered.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392527.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00192-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955958 | 4,047 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Clinical Practice Guideline
Developed for the
Aerospace Medical Association
by their constituent organization
Overview: Thrombocytosis, also called thrombocythemia, is generally defined as a platelet count greater than a defined upper limit of normal that may vary between 350,000/μl to 600,000/μl, depending on the laboratory or medical reference. The most common cut off for normal is <450,000/μl.
Elevated platelet counts are often an incidental or unexpected finding on a complete blood count (CBC) conducted to evaluate an unrelated condition.10 For those individuals found to have thrombocytosis without associated bleeding or thrombosis, the first challenge is to find the cause.
The causes of thrombocytosis are separated into two categories: autonomous (primary) thrombocytosis and reactive (secondary) thrombocytosis. Autonomous thrombocytosis occurs as a result of myeloproliferative disorders, myelodysplastic disorders, or rarely as a result of a hereditary condition.19 Reactive thrombocytosis is most often a normal physiologic response to coexistent inflammatory condition (e.g., infection, chronic inflammatory condition). Distinction between these two categories is important since autonomous thrombocytosis is associated with a significantly increased risk for thrombotic or hemorrhagic complications whereas reactive thrombocytosis is not.12
The most important medical complications of thrombocytosis are hemorrhage and thrombotic events. Thrombosis occurs more frequently in arterial vessels but also occurs in large veins, potentially resulting in deep vein thrombosis, portal vein thrombosis, or pulmonary embolus.10 The most common location for an arterial thrombus is in the brain.10 Platelet counts that exceed 1,500,000/μl have an increased risk of bleeding.5 Thrombocytosis with counts less than 1,000,000/μl are more often associated with thrombosis but the relative platelet count is not proportional to an individual’s risk of thrombosis.11
Thrombocytosis is frequently present without the symptoms of hemorrhage and thrombotic events. When other symptoms do occur they may be subtle and non-specific. Microvascular thrombi are thought to be the cause of erythromelalgia, pain and warmth with erythema or mottling of the skin. Erythromelalgia is usually present on the extremities but may also affect the face.11 Other non-specific symptoms may include headache and paresthesias.
A. Reactive (secondary) thrombocytosis
The most common reason for an elevated platelet count is reactive thrombocytosis.12 Reactive thrombocytosis is most often a normal physiologic response to a coexistent inflammatory condition or surgery. Lifetime reactive thrombocytosis may also be present in patients who have had a splenectomy. Recent studies have found that between 87% and 96% of people found to have platelet counts over 500,000/μl had reactive thrombocytosis.1, 4, 9
Reactive thrombocytosis is generally a self-limiting condition that resolves with the inciting condition. Thrombosis or bleeding occurs in less than 1% of patients with reactive thrombocytosis.1 The list of conditions that may lead to a reactive thrombocytosis is lengthy. The platelet count should normalize within days after “correction” of whatever problem caused the thrombocytosis. A more prolonged elevation of the platelet count suggests an undiagnosed problem, such as a persistent infection. Common conditions include tissue damage from surgery, infection, malignancy, asplenia, and chronic inflammatory disorders.11 Other conditions associated with transient thrombocytosis include acute blood loss, “rebound” from thrombocytopenia, iron deficiency, and even exercise.10, 11
Reactive thrombocytosis may be a result of a subclinical disorder or occult cancer. Therefore, asymptomatic patients with thrombocytosis must have a comprehensive physical evaluation for malignancy or other potentially treatable disease.
B. Autonomous (primary) thrombocytosis
1) Myeloproliferative disorders.
a) Polycythemia vera (PV) causes thrombocytosis with an increase in blood viscosity. Thrombosis in the brain or other vital organs is a significant threat for PV patients.13 PV is not a waiverable condition.
b) Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) – The leukemias have many significant medical complicating factors other than thrombocytosis that have the potential for progression and performance decrement. CML is not a waiverable condition.
c) The natural history of chronic idiopathic myelofibrosis is associated with marrow failure and transfusion-dependent anemia. Median survival for this condition is 5 years. Thrombocytosis associated with chronic idiopathic myelofibrosis is not waiverable.
d) Essential thrombocytosis (ET) is a diagnosis of exclusion. No single specific clinical, cytogenic, or molecular test is available for the diagnosis.8 Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) present in 95% of polycythemia vera, is also present in 50% of ET.18 ET should be suspected in the asymptomatic patient found to have a chronically elevated platelet count, especially if the count exceeds 1,000,000/μl. The criteria for making this diagnosis have recently been updated by the World Health Organization and must include all four of the below items.18
i. A platelet count greater than or equal to 450,000/μL.
ii. A bone marrow biopsy consistent with ET.
iii. A lack of any criteria for PV, CML, myelofibrosis, or myelodysplastic syndromes.
iv. The demonstration of a JAK2 mutation or other clonal marker; or in the absence of a clonal marker, no evidence for reactive thrombocytosis.
Most commonly, ET is found incidentally on complete blood counts (CBCs), but less commonly it may be found due to complications. Complications of ET can generally be categorized into thrombotic, hemorrhagic, or progression into one of the other three myeloproliferative disorders.10 Determinants of an increased risk for complications are generally agreed upon to be age over 40, previous thrombotic event, or presence of cardiac risk factors. The annual risk of thrombotic complications in a cohort of untreated/treated patients was found to be 6.6%/patient-year.3 In this cohort, the most common thrombotic event was a cerebral arterial thrombosis. The annual risk of thrombotic and hemorrhagic complications in a cohort of untreated patients with age range of 16-55 was found to be 2.3%/patient-year.17 The risk of hemorrhage or progression to another myeloproliferative disorder is less than that of a thrombotic event.
Treatment of ET is generally categorized into one of two types of therapy. Aspirin therapy is indicated for relief of erythromelalgia symptoms and to reduce the risk of thrombotic events. It is very important to emphasize that aspirin therapy in these patients is not without risk. ET patients with platelet counts over 1,500,000/μl may develop an acquired von Willebrand’s disease. Aspirin in these patients greatly increases their risk of hemorrhagic complications. The second category of therapy for ET is cytoreductive therapy. This category includes the antineoplastic drugs such as the alkylating agent busulfan and the antimetabolite hydroxyurea. The newest cytoreductive drug indicated for ET is anagrelide. These drugs are not approved for flying status. Furthermore, even if one were to reduce the platelet count to normal range with a cytoreductive drug complication rates still exceed acceptable aeromedical standards (probably because the platelets are still qualitatively abnormal).
2) Myelodysplastic disorders cause different degrees of cytopenia and abnormal cell maturation. These patients are therefore at increased risk of anemia, infection, and bleeding which are often refractory to treatment.
3) Hereditary thrombocytosis is an extremely rare and heterogeneous genetic disorder that presents clinically like ET.
C. Non-specific thrombocytosis. A recent “expert panel” has recommended that a platelet count of 400-450,000 needs no further evaluation.18 Any platelet count > 450,000 does need evaluation. If there is no evidence of a “reactive” thrombocytosis, then Janus kinase 2 mutation (JAK-2) testing should be done. A bone marrow biopsy should also be done, which would include testing for the Ph+ chromosome. Commonly, if these tests are negative, the individual platelet count is between 450,000/μl and 600,000/μl, and no evidence of reactive process then the individual is labeled “non-specific thrombocytosis.”
A. Essential thrombocytosis. The most significant aeromedical concern is the greater than 1%/year risk of a thrombotic event (most common cerebral). Unfortunately the level of thrombocytosis does not predict thrombotic events. Hemorrhagic complications are seen with elevated thrombocytosis levels (>1.5 million/µl).
B. Secondary thrombocytosis. Thrombotic and hemorrhagic complications do not occur in reactive thrombocytosis unless the underlying condition itself predisposes to such complications (e.g., individuals who are post-operative or with malignancy).12 The elevated platelet count by itself will not cause complications that affect physical or cognitive performance. For the condition to be labeled a reactive thrombocytosis, a credible underlying etiology must be identified. Individuals who have had a surgical splenectomy frequently have lifelong reactive thrombocytosis19 and once again do not have an increased risk for thrombosis or bleeding.4
Medical Work-Up: The approach to an individual found to have an elevated platelet count should begin with an evaluation for reactive thrombocytosis. In this case, the primary medical problem should be managed first. Once the platelet count returns to baseline, no disqualifying platelet condition exists and the individual may be returned to flying status as long as the primary medical condition doesn’t require a waiver.
Patients who are asymptomatic and found to have an elevated platelet count require additional testing to rule out autonomous thrombocytosis or an occult illness causing reactive thrombocytosis. If the history does not identify a risk factor for thrombocytosis, the physical exam should focus on evidence of bleeding or thrombosis. The spleen may be enlarged in cases of autonomous thrombocytosis.
If history and physical exam are non-contributory the most useful laboratory tests will be a repeat platelet count, the peripheral blood smear, and serum iron studies including plasma fibrinogen and ferritin. Other tests that may suggest an occult inflammatory process is present include an erythrocyte sedimentation rate and C-reactive protein levels. Although platelet production is regulated by the hormone thrombopoeitin, serum thrombopoeitin levels are not helpful in differentiating reactive from autonomous thrombocytosis.19 Additional testing must also include stool for occult blood and chest x-ray for occult malignancy. Cases of persistent thrombocytosis in an otherwise normal patient must have a formal hematological evaluation.
Aeromedical Disposition (military): Air Force: The USAF standards require removal from flying status anytime platelets are found to exceed 450,000/μl. In the case of reactive thrombocytosis, the pilot is returned to flight status once the platelet count has returned to a normal value. The guide for a waiver request states that the aeromedical summary for an initial waiver should include the following:
A. Comprehensive history – to include thrombosis or bleeding episodes (negatives included), symptoms, course of platelet values, treatment, and cardiac risk
B. Physical – complete, special attention to skin, neurology and abdomen.
C. Current CBC with differential.
D. Serum iron, ferritin, fibrinogen, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C-reactive protein, occult blood studies, chest x-ray.
E. Hematology consultation to include bone marrow biopsy and clonal markers.
Navy: No standards exist regarding elevated platelet count. Individual complications such as thrombosis or other diagnoses causing thrombocytosis such as PV are disqualifying.
Army: No standards exist regarding elevated platelet count. Individual complications such as thrombosis or other diagnoses causing thrombocytosis such as PV are disqualifying.
Aeromedical Disposition (civilian): Waivers have been granted for ET. No standard exists regarding an absolute platelet count that may not be exceeded. Aeromedical disposition will depend on the presence and/or severity of complications. Hematologist evaluation and follow up are required for special issuance.
Waiver Experience (military): Review of the Air Force database through November 2007 showed only six patients with thrombocytosis were considered for waiver; only two were pilots. Of these two pilots, one case was granted waiver for essential thrombocytosis, not requiring medication. This case progressed to myelofibrosis and was subsequently disqualified from flying duties.
Waiver Experience (civilian): There is no single pathology code for thrombocytosis in the FAA’s Aeromedical Certification system so civil aviation experience with this condition cannot be determined at this time.
ICD 9 Code for Thrombocytosis
Essential thrombocythemia (primary thrombocytosis)
Chronic myelomonocytic leukemia
Myelodysplastic syndrome, unspecified
Myelofibrosis with myeloid metaplasia (idiopathic myelofibrosis [chronic])
1. Aidogan, T, et al. Incidence and etiology of thrombocytosis in an adult Turkish population. Platelets. 2006; 17: 328-31.
2. Barbui T, Barosi G, et al. Practice guidelines for the therapy of essential thrombocythemia. A statement from the Italian Society of Hematology, the Italian Society of Experimental Hematology and the Italian Group for Bone Marrow Transplantation. Haematologica. 2004; 89(2): 215-232.
3. Cortelazzo S, Viero P, Finazzi G, D’Emilio A, Rodeghiero F, Barbui T. Incidence and risk factors for thrombotic complications in a historical cohort of 100 patients with essential thrombocythemia. J Clin Oncol. 1990 Mar; 8: 556-62.
4. Griesshammer M, et al. Aetiology and clinical significance of thrombocytosis: analysis of 732 patients with an elevated platelet count. J Intern Med. 1999; 245: 295-300.
5. Harrison CN,
6. Harrison CN, Campbell PJ, Buck G, et al. Hydroxyurea compared with anagrelide in high-risk essential thrombocythemia. N Engl J Med. 2005; 353 (1): 334-5.
7. McIntyre KJ, Hoagland HC,
9. Ruggeri M, Tosetto A, Frezzato M, Rodeghiero F. The rate of progression to polycythemia vera or essential thrombocythemia in patients with erythrocytosis or thrombocytosis. Ann Intern Med. 2003; 139: 470-5.
10. Sanchez, S, Ewton, A. Essential Thrombocythemia. A review of diagnostic and pathologic features. Arch Pathol Lab Med. 2006; 130: 1144-50.
11. Schafer, AI. Chapter 111 – Essential Thrombocythemia and Thrombocytosis. Lichtman MA, et al. Williams Hematology, 7th ed. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 2006.
12. Schafer, AI. Thrombocytosis. N Engl J Med. 2004; 350: 1211-9.
13. Spivak, JL. Chapter 95 – Polycythemia vera and other myeloproliferative diseases. Kasper, DL, et al. Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, 16th ed. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 2005.
14. Storen EC, Tefferi A. Long-term use of anagrelide in young patients with essential thrombocythemia. Blood. 2001; 97(4): 863-866.
15. Tefferi A. Diagnosis and clinical manifestations of essential thrombocythemia. UpToDate. Online version 15.3, September 13, 2007.
16. Tefferi A. Prognosis and treatment of essential thrombocythemia. UpToDate. Online version 15.3, May 9, 2007.
17. Tefferi A, Gangat N, Wolanskyj AP. Management of extreme thrombocytosis in otherwise low-risk essential thrombocythemia; does number matter? Blood. 2006; 108: 2493-2494.
18. Tefferi A, Thiele J, Orazi A, et al. Proposals and rationale for revision of the World Health Organization diagnostic criteria for polycythemia vera, essential thrombocythemia, and primary myelofibrosis: recommendations from an ad hoc international expert panel. Blood. 2007; 110: 1092-7.
19. Vannucchi, AM, Barbui T. Thrombocytosis and Thrombosis. Hematology Am Soc Hematol Educ Program. 2007: 363-70.
20. Vardiman JW, Harris NL, Brunning RD. The World Health Organization (WHO) classification of the myeloid neoplasms. Blood. 2002; 100(7): 2292-2302.
July 22, 2008 | <urn:uuid:8f252cf6-6ebf-4442-b245-66b665a9fc4d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.asams.org/guidelines/Completed/NEW%20Thrombocytosis.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396959.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00129-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.899146 | 4,056 | 3.328125 | 3 |
Linked by Razvan T. Coloja on Mon 3rd Jan 2011 23:30 UTC
To understand what the BeOS and Haiku operating systems are, we first must remember that BeOS was developed with the multimedia user in mind. BeOS wanted to be what OS X has become today: an easy to use, attractive operating system. However, BeOS was a niche OS, destined for the media-hungry user. The percentage of audio and video applications available for Haiku is greater than the one in Linux, OS X or Windows, and the inner workings of the operating system were created in such a way, that the same multimedia passionate would find it easy to work with the user interface and files. Each application can interfere with other applications of its kind. A WAVE file selection can be dragged from a sound editor and onto the desktop, to create an audio file. Audio applications can interfere with each other via the Haiku Media Kit -- the corespondent of a Linux sound server. Applications like Cortex are a perfect example of how BeOS and Haiku deal with multimedia files: you can have more than one soundcard and use each one of those soundcards independently or separately. You can link one soundcard to the Audio Mixer, start a drum machine application and link that software to the Audio Mixer. If you want to output whatever you create with the audio application, all you have to do is drag the microphone and link it to the application's icon in Cortex. | <urn:uuid:2668e3b5-db44-48e3-96b0-cef145b56959> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.osnews.com/thread?455958 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00126-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945563 | 303 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Metaphysical poetry in English literature
The metaphysical poets were a group of 17th-century poets who concerned themselves with the experience of man and the nature of being on the world. What is our place within the world and how to best define that place? Taking up the philosophy of metaphysics, first set forth by Aristotle, the metaphysical poets wrote of experience, including love, romance, beauty, imagination and man’s relationship with God. Less concerned with expressing feeling than with analyzing it .metaphysical poetry is marked by bold and ingenious conceits, metaphor, drawing something forced parallels between apparently dissimilar ideas or things complex and subtle thought, frequent use of paradox and a dramatic directness of language.
Although in no sense a school or movement proper, they share common characteristics of wit, inventiveness, and a love of elaborate stylistic maneuvers. Metaphysical concerns are the common subject of their poetry, which investigates the world by rational discussion of its phenomena rather than by intuition or mysticism.
WHAT IS METAPHYSICAL POETRY?
Metaphysical poetry is concerned with the whole experience of man, but the intelligence, learning and seriousness of the poets means that the poetry is about the profound areas of experience especially - about love, romantic and sensual; about man's relationship with God - the eternal perspective, and, to a less extent, about pleasure, learning and art. Metaphysical means dealing with the relationship between spirit to matter or the ultimate nature of reality
Metaphysical poems are lyric poems. They are brief but intense meditations, characterized by striking use of wit, irony and wordplay. Beneath the formal structure (of rhyme, meter and stanza) is the underlying (and often hardly less formal) structure of the poem's argument. Note that there may be two (or more) kinds of argument in a poem. In “To His Coy Mistress” the explicit argument (Marvell's request that the coy lady yield to his passion) is a stalking horse for the more serious argument about the transitoriness of pleasure. The outward levity conceals (barely) a deep seriousness of intent. You would be able to show how this theme of carpe diem (“seize the day”) is made clear in the third section of the poem.
ORIGIN OF THE NAME:
‘Metaphysical poets’ the name given to a diverse group of 17th‐century English poets whose work is notable for its ingenious use of intellectual and theological concepts in surprising conceits, strange paradoxes and far‐fetched imagery.
The word metaphysics is formed from the Greek meta ta phusika, a title which, about the year A.D. 70, was related by Andronicus of Rhodes to that collection of Aristotelian treatises which since then goes by the name of the "Metaphysics"
The term "metaphysical" when applied to poetry has a long and interesting history. The term "Metaphysical Poet" was first coined by the critic Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) in his book ‘Life of Cowley’ and he used it as a disparaging term. Earlier, John Dryden had also been critical of the group of poets he grouped together as too proud of their wit. Johnson and Dryden valued the clarity, restraint and shapeliness of the poets of Augustan Rome (which is why some 18th century poets are called "Augustan," and therefore were antagonistic towards poets of the mid-17th century.
The Metaphysical poets were out of critical favor for the 18th and 19th centuries (obviously, the Romantic poets found little in this heavily intellectualized poetry). At the end of the 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th century, interest in this group picked up, and especially important was T.S. Eliot's famous essay "The Metaphysical Poets" Interest peaked this century with the New Critics school around mid-century, and now is tempering off a bit, though Donne, the original "Big Name" is being superceded now by interest in George Herbert, who's religious seeking and questioning seems to be hitting a critical nerve.
CHARACTERS OF METAPHYSICAL POETRY:
The metaphysical poems have been written following some chief characteristics. Such as:
o Use of ordinary speech mixed with puns, paradoxes and conceits (a paradoxical metaphor causing a shock to the reader by the strangeness of the objects compared; some examples: lovers and a compass, the soul and timber, the body and mind)
o The exaltation of wit, which in the 17th century meant a nimbleness of thought; a sense of fancy (imagination of a fantastic or whimsical nature); and originality in figures of speech
o Abstruse terminology often drawn from science or law
o Often poems are presented in the form of an argument
o In love poetry, the metaphysical poets often draw on ideas from Renaissance Neo-Platonism to show the relationship between the soul and body and the union of lovers' souls
o They also try to show a psychological realism when describing the tensions of love.
o These poems are full of Obscurity-which means confusion and haziness for common readers.
EXAMPLE OF SOME METAPHYSICAL POEMS:
John Donne- The Good-Morrow, The Sunne Rising, The Anniversarie, The Canonization, A Valediction Forbidding Mourning and A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day
George Herbert- Jordan (I), The Pearl, The Collar, Discipline and Love (III)
Andrew Marvell- The Coronet, Bermudas, To His Coy Mistress, The Definition of Love and The Garden
Henry Vaughan- He retreat, The World, Man and “They Are All Gone into the World of Light”
SOURCES OF METAPHYSICAL POEM:
The poems are from the activities of every spheres of life especially from craft, all the school of science, alchemy, Aristotle’s theory, philosophy, history, mythology, law, religion and different beliefs.
POETS OF THE METAPHYSICAL WORLD:
This is a very broad term, but it joins together a number of 17th century poets, most notable among them John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughn and Abraham Cowley.
The last decade of sixteen century and early seventeen century a very strange style of verse is written by jone donne. He creates a new tend for writing poetry in the history of English literature. That’s why he possessed one of the keenest and most powerful intellects of the time. His poetry is noted for its ingenious fusion of wit and seriousness and represents a shift from classical models towards a more personal style. In that time he took the major position for writing metaphysical poetry.
John Donne born on 1572, Donne came from a Roman Catholic family,
Despite his great education and poetic talents he lived in poverty for several years. He started writing religious poems after his wife’s death, before that he wrote many love poems. He died on March 31, 1631.
Specialty of John Donne’s poetry:
Donne is considered the master of the metaphysical poetry. In his poem we get some unique versatility. Such as, He yoke together two entirely opposite ideas and told very serious matter with the help of playfulness.
Intellectuality, cleverness, unique diction sparklingly express through his poem. He draws the material of his figure of speech from highly unpoetical sources. The material is abstract but Donne gives it full poetic concrete Pictures. Specially his imagistic writing, use of conceit, abrupt opening with a dramatic style and colloquial diction made his poems highlighted.
George Herbert was born in Montgomery, Wales, on April 3, 1593, the fifth son of Richard and Magdalen Newport Herbert.
His poetry shows that to a large extent he followed the lead offered by Donne, but he also made contributions which were quite distinct. Herbert's poems are characterized by a precision of language, a metrical versatility, and an ingenious use of imagery or conceits that was favored by the metaphysical school of poets.
Herbert's distinguishing characteristic is his simplicity of diction and metaphor. He retains the colloquial manner, and, to an extent, the logical persuasive presentation of ideas, but he draws his metaphors from everyday domestic experience, employing a range of simple commonplace imagery in contrast to the sophisticated imagery of Donne. A technique Herbert introduced was the ending of a poem with two quiet lines which resolve the argument in the poem without answering the specific points raised by it. . Herbert occasionally explores his doubts in intellectual terms, but answers them with emotion. Herbert's poetry is certainly about struggles of a religious kind. In these respects Herbert can be considered to have broken new ground, into which Henry Vaughan followed later.
Henry Vaughan was born in 1621 to Thomas Vaughan and Denise Morgan. He is considered one of the major Metaphysical Poets, whose works ponder one's personal relationship to God. He shares Herbert's preoccupation with the relationship between humanity and God. He saw mankind as restless and constantly seeking a sense of harmony and fulfilment through contact with God. Vaughan, in contrast, has the arrogance of a visionary. He feels humility before God and Jesus, but seems to despise humanity. In contrast, Vaughan's images are more universal, or cosmic, even to the point of judging man in relation to infinity. The term 'visionary' is appropriate to Vaughan, not only because of the grand scale of his images, but also because his metaphors frequently draw on the sense of vision.
Andrew Marvell was born at Winestead-in-Holderness, Yorkshire, on March 31, 1621. The life and work of Andrew Marvell are both marked by extraordinary variety and range. Gifted with a most subtle and introspective imagination. His technique of drawing upon philosophy to illustrate his argument gives the poem an intellectual appeal, not just a visual one. There is also complete devotion displayed in this first stage of the argument, namely:
"I would Love you ten years before the flood. And you should, if you please, refuse till the conversion of the Jews."
In Marvell we find the pretence of passion (in To His Coy Mistress) used as a peg on which to hang serious reflections on the brevity of happiness. The Definition of Love is an ironic game - more a love of definition let loose; the poem is cool, lucid and dispassionate, if gently self-mocking
Marvell considers whether the poetic skill which has formerly (and culpably) served to praise his "shepherdess" can "redress that Wrong", by weaving a "Chaplet" for Christ.
Richard Crashaw was born on 1613. He was the only son of William Crashaw, a puritan preacher in London who had officiated at the burning of Mary, Queen of Scots. He wrote many metaphysical poems following Donne. Though his verse is somewhat uneven in quality, at its best it is characterized by brilliant use of extravagant baroque imagery.
Crashaw owed all the basis of his style, as has been already hinted, to Donne. His originality was one of treatment and technique; he forged a more rapid and brilliant short line than any of his predecessors had done, and for brief intervals and along sudden paths of his own he carried English prosody to a higher refinement, a more glittering felicity, than it had ever achieved. Thus, in spite of his conceits and his romantic coloring, he points the way for Pope, who did not disdain to borrow from him freely.
Metaphysical poets created a new trend in history of English literature. These poems have been created in such a way that one must have enough knowledge to get the actual meaning.
Metaphysical Poets made use of everyday speech, intellectual analysis, and unique imagery. The creator of metaphysical poetry john Donne along with his followers is successful not only in that Period but also in the modern age. Metaphysical poetry takes an important place in the history of English literature for its unique versatility and it is popular among thousand of peoples till now. | <urn:uuid:53dd5fc1-e9ee-42b8-9049-6e06b0a47524> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://englishhelp4.blogspot.com/2009/12/metaphysical-poetry.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408828.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00077-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958043 | 2,554 | 3.25 | 3 |
An article with innumerable quotes from The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible pp.80-85, E.R. Achtemeir, and liberally interspersed with thoughts from Art Katz.
Righteousness as understood in the OT (Old Testament) is a thoroughly Hebraic concept, foreign to the western mind and at variance with the common understanding of the term. The failure to comprehend its meaning is perhaps most responsible for the view of OT religion as “legalistic”…but thanks largely to recent German scholarship, this important motif of biblical faith has been clarified.
Righteousness is not a behavior that is in accordance with an ethical, legal, psychological, religious, or spiritual norm; neither is it conduct that is dictated by human or divine nature. It is not an action appropriate to the attainment of a specific goal; neither is it a ministry to one’s fellow man. Rather, righteousness in the OT is the fulfillment of the demands of a relationship, whether that relationship be with men or with God…Each of these relationships brings with it specific demands, the fulfillment of which constitutes righteousness…There is no norm of righteousness outside the relationship itself. When God or man fulfills the conditions imposed upon him by the relationship, he is, in OT terms, righteous.
Etymology: “Tzadik” means “straightness or “firmness.” It is employed for justice, right, equity, uprightness; a concept of relationship that he who is righteous has fulfilled in the demands laid upon him by it. David was righteous because he refused to slay Saul with whom he stood in covenant relationship (I Sam.24:17; 26:23).
Generally, the righteous man in Israel was the man who preserved the peace and wholeness of the community, because it was he who [preserved] fulfilled the demands of communal living. Like Job, he was a blessing to his contemporaries. He cared for the poor, the fatherless, the widow…even defending their cause in the law court (29:16; 31:21; Prov. 31:9)…He was a good steward of his land and work animals…and his servants were treated humanely…he lived at peace with his neighbors, wishing them only good…When he was in authority the people rejoiced, and he exalted the nation (Prov.14:34). He lived in peace and prosperity because he upheld the peace and prosperity. He upheld the physical and psychical wholeness of his community by fulfilling the demands of the communal covenant relationship (Cf. Ps.15:2-5; Isa.33:15).
For this reason, Tzadik (righteousness) sometimes stands parallel with shalom, “prosperity” (Prov.8:18). At other times, it stands for “truth,” for right speech, which upheld the covenant relationships existing within a community (Isa.59:4; 45:19) it is. The “wicked” rasha who exercises force and falsehood, who ignores the duties which kinship and covenant lay upon him, who tramples the rights of others…with whom he stands in relationship…destroys the community itself.
Righteousness is the fulfillment of community demands, and righteous judgments are those which restore community (Ps. 82:3; Prov.17:15). Thus the constant plea of the prophets is for righteousness within the gate, for a restoration of the foundations of community life (Jer.22:3, 15; Ps.72:2). In such contexts there is no difference between ethical and legal standards. They are one…The king’s covenant duty was to preserve righteousness, and in so doing, he himself was righteous. When the Messiah comes His Kingdom will prosper through righteous judgments (Isa.9:7; 11:3-5; Jer. 23:5-6; 33:14-16). Yahweh’s station within the covenant relationship was that of Lord…its initiator, its defender, its preserver. He alone upheld it. Only He could break it. Israel could reject her God and thereby bring His wrath upon her, but she could not escape her relationship with God…God initiated the covenant. He alone could nullify it (cf. Ps.89:28-37). Yahweh was not dependent upon her righteousness…Yahweh had chosen her; that was the basic fact of her existence. All else followed after.
Thus in the OT there is nothing legalistic about this relationship with her God. It is not based on law but grace, on Yahweh’s loving choice…as his peculiar treasure; a relationship received with joy and gratitude…Celebration, joyfulness and praise – these are the primary notes of Hebrew faith. Within this relationship of grace, law is given as a guide by God to his covenant people…as also an act of his grace, for all the people of the earth. He who does not in faith accept the context of the law, the Lordship of Yahweh, cannot be righteous…The relationship to Yahweh, the relationship of faith, is primary. This is evidenced in the law itself providing [as it does] for a day of atonement (Lev.16)…[so that there is] a constant provision for restoration of right relationship with God and with community.
The OT equivalents unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit as rebellion against His lordship, lack of repentance, faithlessness, the failure to acknowledge Yahweh’s lordship in humility and repentance and the failure to accept in faith his provision for restoration to communion with Him. For they constitute a faithless rejection of Yahweh’s grace, and the law without grace is useless. Faith [i.e., the recognition of God’s grace in the giving of the law and the enablement for its keeping] is the fulfillment of the relationship to Yahweh and is thereby righteousness. Yahweh is righteous…the witness to God’s person as He reveals Himself in his actions…not in works that conform to some norm or standard of right outside and above Him…Yahweh’s righteousness is His fulfillment of the demands of the relationship which exists between Him and His people Israel; His fulfillment of the covenant which He has made with the chosen nation….Only he who stood within the covenant could speak of Yahweh as righteous…The purpose of His judgment[s] is the preservation of community, of His covenant with Israel (Ps.89:94).
Thus Israel constantly appeals to Yahweh’s righteousness for deliverance from trouble (Ps.31:188:12;143:11), from enemies (Ps.5:8; 143:1), from the wicked, for vindication of her cause before her foes (Ps.35:24). His righteousness consists in His intervention for His people, in His deliverance of Zion (Ps.50:15; 102; Isa.35; 54:14-17). [The church’s identification (Ps.102) and participation (Isa.35; Ro.11:25b), the statement of their righteousness, are the key to Israel’s final redemption! In short, Yahweh’s righteous judgments are saving judgments (Ps.36:6), "a righteous God and a Savior" (Isa.45:21). Yahweh’s salvation of Israel is His righteousness, His fulfillment of His covenant with her! Israel’s righteousness consists in the fact that she is oppressed or afflicted and deprived of her right (Isa.54:14). Those who are righteous are those who are victims of oppressors…of violent men (Ps.140:13). And their hope is the Lord…who saves those who are bowed down (Pss.116:6; 146:8). His judgments always favor the oppressed, the hungry, the prisoner and the blind, the widow and the fatherless, the alien and the poor (Amos 2:6).
Righteousness and Sinfulness
These facts seem strange that often in the OT he who is called "tzadik" is at the same time sinful. The OT consistently portrays Israel’s persistent sin before God. Ps.143:2 declares that "no man living is righteous before Him." The Psalmists witness to God’s salvation despite their sinfulness…and unhesitatingly number themselves among the righteous. For Yahweh’s righteousness is the source of their forgiveness (Ps.51:14; 103:11-12,17)! His righteousness consists not in ethical or moral blamelessness. He often openly confesses his transgressions. The poor and the oppressed have a further righteousness, and this righteousness is their faith, their fulfillment of their relationship with Yahweh…characterized by a complete dependence upon God. They trust in Yahweh, crying to Him in their distress, bowing before His judgments (Ps.94:12; 118:18), acknowledging their sin, offering to him a broken and a contrite heart (Ps.51:17). Such faith is the righteousness of the afflicted. Because she repents of her sin she throws herself upon His mercy (Isa.1:27-28; Ps.37:39-40). Her faith is the fulfillment of her relationship with Yahweh…not because of her merit or moral blamelessness, but because she believes God is her refuge. He alone is righteous who has had righteousness imputed to him. In this sense, righteousness is justification by Him, a "being-declared-righteousness" by the Lord of the covenant (Isa.60:21)!
Those judgments that bring salvation to Israel at the same time bring destruction upon her foes (Isa.11:4; 61:1-2; Hab.3:12-13; Mal.4; Hag.2:22-23; Zeph.2:8; Zech.14). In the Day of the Lord, His vengeance and righteousness go hand in hand. When Yahweh saves, He also recompenses (Isa.35:4; 40:10; 62:11). However, Yahweh’s righteousness is never solely an act of condemnation and punishment…His punishment is an integral part of His restoration…His righteousness is His restoration! The gift of such righteousness is announced in the great eschatological witness of Deutero-Isaiah. Israel is a sinful folk, sunk in idolatry (44:9-20;50:11), full of transgressions (53:5-6,8,11), who is unable to confess her God rightly (48:1), who has burdened Him with her evil (43:24), who has refused to call upon her Savior (43:22). For this reason Yahweh has given her into the hand of her captors (42:24-25; 47:6) to suffer double punishment for her sins (40:1), to drink the full measure of the wrath of the Lord (51:17-20), to be refined in the furnace of affliction (48:9-11), and to be bruised (53:10) and forsaken (54:7-8).
And in the middle of her exile, Israel thinks herself to be lost, her way hidden from the Lord (40:27), rejected forever (49:14;50:1)…But Deutoro-Isaiah’s glad message is that the covenant still stands. Yahweh cannot forget His child…He has not divorced His wife Israel (50:1;cf.54:5-6). His relationship with His people endures. His word, His promise and agreement stand forever (40:8;55:11). This is Israel's hope! …If she seeks deliverance, let her look to the Rock from which she was hewn, to the promise to Abraham and the covenant with the fathers (51:18). There is Israel’s hope. For the word of the Lord endures forever. Without such a word Israel has no hope, for she has no righteousness of her own…she has no faith and therefore ultimately no righteousness of her own but Yahweh will save Israel, for Yahweh has chosen her!
His covenant stands despite Israel’s unfaithfulness. God intervenes for the cause of his afflicted folk before all the peoples of the earth (51:22). He will deliver her from exile (43:14), He will forgive her sin (43:25;44:22cf.54:9), He will care for her as a shepherd cares for his flock [i.e., Abel, David] (40:11). In short, Yahweh will fulfill the demands of the covenant…He will do so by justifying Israel, by imputing righteousness to her who has no righteousness…and this will be Israel’s righteousness before all the world (50:9 cf.52:13-53:12). In God’s righteousness Israel will be established (54:14; 45:24-25), “for while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). | <urn:uuid:af7c77b1-fdbe-42dd-8758-b1ab21ea9811> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://artkatzministries.org/articles/righteousness-in-the-old-testament/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402479.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00050-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950492 | 2,766 | 2.796875 | 3 |
The Nature of Science and the Scientific Method
This GSA document illustrates a methodical approach to studying the natural world. Science asks basic questions, such as how does the world work and how did it come to be? It also helps discover what was the world was like in the past, what it is like now, and what it will be like in the future. The document promotes understanding of the nature of science and how the scientific method is used to advance science, focusing in particular on the Earth sciences. It also includes talking points for those who would like help explaining the nature of science to others who have developed misconceptions.
Download PDF: The Nature of Science and the Scientific Method
[Ref: McLelland, Christine V., "The Nature of Science and the Scientific Method," The Geological Society of America, August 2006, http://www.geosociety.org/educate/NatureScience.pdf] [512 KB PDF] | <urn:uuid:41851722-4c89-4a8b-9d9e-8d6756bbd483> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://geosociety.org/educate/NatureOfScience.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00062-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929798 | 191 | 3.484375 | 3 |
Exercise reorganizes the brain to be more resilient to stress
Physical activity reorganizes the brain so that its response to stress is reduced and anxiety is less likely to interfere with normal brain function, according to a research team based at Princeton University.
The researchers report in the Journal of Neuroscience that when mice allowed to exercise regularly experienced a stressor — exposure to cold water — their brains exhibited a spike in the activity of neurons that shut off excitement in the ventral hippocampus, a brain region shown to regulate anxiety.
These findings potentially resolve a discrepancy in research related to the effect of exercise on the brain — namely that exercise reduces anxiety while also promoting the growth of new neurons in the ventral hippocampus. Because these young neurons are typically more excitable than their more mature counterparts, exercise should result in more anxiety, not less. The Princeton-led researchers, however, found that exercise also strengthens the mechanisms that prevent these brain cells from firing.
The impact of physical activity on the ventral hippocampus specifically has not been deeply explored, said senior author Elizabeth Gould, Princeton's Dorman T. Warren Professor of Psychology. By doing so, members of Gould's laboratory pinpointed brain cells and regions important to anxiety regulation that may help scientists better understand and treat human anxiety disorders, she said.
From an evolutionary standpoint, the research also shows that the brain can be extremely adaptive and tailor its own processes to an organism's lifestyle or surroundings, Gould said. A higher likelihood of anxious behavior may have an adaptive advantage for less physically fit creatures. Anxiety often manifests itself in avoidant behavior and avoiding potentially dangerous situations would increase the likelihood of survival, particularly for those less capable of responding with a "fight or flight" reaction, she said.
"Understanding how the brain regulates anxious behavior gives us potential clues about helping people with anxiety disorders. It also tells us something about how the brain modifies itself to respond optimally to its own environment," said Gould, who also is a professor in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.
The research was part of the graduate dissertation for first author Timothy Schoenfeld, now a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health, as well as part of the senior thesis project of co-author Brian Hsueh, now an MD/Ph.D. student at Stanford University. The project also included co-authors Pedro Rada and Pedro Pieruzzini, both from the University of Los Andes in Venezuela.
For the experiments, one group of mice was given unlimited access to a running wheel and a second group had no running wheel. Natural runners, mice will dash up to 4 kilometers (about 2.5 miles) a night when given access to a running wheel, Gould said. After six weeks, the mice were exposed to cold water for a brief period of time.
The brains of active and sedentary mice behaved differently almost as soon as the stressor occurred, an analysis showed. In the neurons of sedentary mice only, the cold water spurred an increase in "immediate early genes," or short-lived genes that are rapidly turned on when a neuron fires. The lack of these genes in the neurons of active mice suggested that their brain cells did not immediately leap into an excited state in response to the stressor.
Instead, the brain in a runner mouse showed every sign of controlling its reaction to an extent not observed in the brain of a sedentary mouse. There was a boost of activity in inhibitory neurons that are known to keep excitable neurons in check. At the same time, neurons in these mice released more of the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA, which tamps down neural excitement. The protein that packages GABA into little travel pods known as vesicles for release into the synapse also was present in higher amounts in runners.
The anxiety-reducing effect of exercise was canceled out when the researchers blocked the GABA receptor that calms neuron activity in the ventral hippocampus. The researchers used the chemical bicuculine, which is used in medical research to block GABA receptors and simulate the cellular activity underlying epilepsy. In this case, when applied to the ventral hippocampus, the chemical blocked the mollifying effects of GABA in active mice.
The paper, "Physical Exercise Prevents Stress-Induced Activation of Granule Neurons and Enhances Local Inhibitory Mechanisms in the Dentate Gyrus," was published May 1 in the Journal of Neuroscience. This research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health grant MH091567. | <urn:uuid:16cb5088-b83c-4148-94e4-5d98cbf091fb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.princeton.edu/research/news/video/archive/index.xml?id=10642 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403826.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00137-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952868 | 918 | 2.984375 | 3 |
People with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities need full-time help with every aspect of their lives, including eating, drinking, washing, dressing and toileting etc.
Learning Disability includes the presence of a significantly reduced ability to understand new or complex information, to learn new skills (impaired intelligence), with
- a reduced ability to cope independently (impaired social functioning)
- which started before adulthood, with a lasting effect on development.
Further information regarding people covered by definition can be found in the document 'Valuing People - A New Strategy for Learning Disability for the 21st Century'.
Although, from a social care perspective, an Intelligence Quotient (IQ) of seventy or less is not sufficient reason for deciding if an individual should be provided with additional health and social care support, the following definition is applied within the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services Secondary Uses Data Set in the specific circumstance where data providers do not have an explicit data item to capture whether a PATIENT has a Learning Disability.
Someone is considered to have a Learning Disability when they function at a level of intellectual ability which is significantly lower than their chronological age. This is usually considered to be equivalent to having an IQ of seventy or less:
- Mild Learning Disability (roughly equivalent to an IQ of fifty to seventy) is comparable to the educational term 'Moderate Learning Difficulty'. It is usually caused by a combination of restricted learning and social opportunities plus a high rate of low to average intellectual ability and Learning Disability in close relatives.
Further information on Learning Disabilities, can be found on the internet, for example:
This supporting information is also known by these names: | <urn:uuid:5cdeeecf-bfcd-459c-bb5a-ea36312749a0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.datadictionary.nhs.uk/data_dictionary/nhs_business_definitions/l/learning_disability_de.asp?shownav=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404405.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00003-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92086 | 338 | 3.703125 | 4 |
A brief description
of what a Search Engine is.
a Search Engine?
A search engine is software that scours the Internet
collecting data about every web site and every web page within
a web page that it can. Each link that is encountered along
the way is added to a list of pages to be scanned. This type
of software has a lot of different names like a bot, a robot,
a crawler or a spider. It takes all this collected data and
stores it in a huge database. When you do a search on a "search
engine" you are actually searching its database and not the
actual Internet. Like many terms used on the Internet and computers
in general this term is often misused and abused. For the sake
of our discussion here we'll call the "Search Engine" the piece
of software that scours the web day and night updating its database.
a Search Engine Work?
Basically the search engines read pages that have
been submitted to it via a submission form. From there it reads
the entire page, boils it down to essential keywords and adds
all the links it finds to the search list. Then it takes the
next page off the list and starts all over again. You can see
that just one submission to a search engine can generate thousands
of pages in its database. All pages on the Internet are subject
to being scanned by a search engine. If you don't want your
pages to be scanned you have to take steps to prevent it. You
can do this with Meta Tags or a small file named robot.txt located
on your site.
a Search Engine Rate a Website?
No one knows. "WHAT?!?!" I hear you thinking. "I
came here to find out how a search engine works." Well
the simple fact is that every search engine does things a little
bit differently and the method for collecting, cataloging and
rating the data that it does have changes probably on a daily
base. Also the people who create these search engines would
rather not tell us how it's all done. If I told you how to get
your site at the top of search engines would you? Most people
would say yes. Be honest now, does your site belong at the top
of the search engines? Is it the best site in your category?
If not, you'd be cheating the system, and that's what the creators
of these search engines hope to prevent. Remember this is just
software lurking around the Internet trying to determine which
sites are the most relevant to any particular search query that
they get at some future time. Basically what they hope to be
able to come up with is a system that brings the most relevant
and substantial site to the top of each query no matter what
the category may be.
Vs Search Engines
Manage Multiple WordPress Sites
From One Installation (easy update) | <urn:uuid:5f47bfdc-c241-4da5-859d-697e7792d900> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.anybrowser.com/searchengines.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399425.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00078-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913799 | 606 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Lumber, timber, or trees cultivated and harvested for commercial purposes, is used in a wide range of industries. Timber's end products are among the most basic yet widely used goods in the world and include lumber, paper, cardboard, and various containers and packaging materials. In addition to these staple goods, timber has recently been used in the production of cellulosic ethanol, a promising source of renewable energy.
The timber industry is unique in several important ways. First, different end uses require different types of trees. Geographic location largely determines the types of trees timber companies produce, which can limit the industries to which a company can sell its timber. For example, a timber company that operates in just one region where only paper-grade trees grow would be unable to do business with lumber companies. A second notable feature of the timber industry is that its products continue to grow until they're harvested. Unlike other goods from living sources, trees have an extremely long shelf life, allowing the timber industry to weather periods of poor market conditions with relative ease.
Due to its role as a supplier to many different industries, the timber industry itself is subject to a number of external market forces. Conditions in the markets for paper, lumber, or other timber products largely determine the demand, and therefore pricing, in the timber industry as a whole. In addition to events specific to individual markets, general changes in macroeconomic conditions, such as an interest rate increase, can have implications for the timber industry.
Lumber Futures contracts are traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange under ticker symbol LB and are delivered in January, March, May, July, September, and November of ever year. (For more information on commodity tickers, check out the commodity ticker construction page.)
The largest end market for timber products is the construction market, particularly the residential construction market. An average new home built in the U.S. contains over 14,000 board feet of lumber. As such, conditions in the housing market can have a significant impact on lumber-grade timber prices. Increases in residential construction would increase demand and prices for lumber, while housing slumps can put downward pressures on prices as demand declines.
Interest rates can impact timber prices in several ways. Rising interest rates can have a negative impact on consumer spending, especially in the housing market. As interest rates rise and it becomes more expensive to purchase a home, residential construction will likely slow, decreasing demand for lumber. This would likely lead to lower timber prices. Falling interest rates, on the other hand, could stimulate the housing market and increase residential construction by making it more affordable for people to buy houses. The increased demand would drive prices upward as a result.
Declining demand doesn't necessarily lead to lower prices. Timber companies can somewhat offset lower demand by reducing production capacity, thereby tightening the supply of timber goods as well. Due to the organic nature of its products, the timber industry has a particular incentive to cut production and wait out periods of low demand. Instead of harvesting more trees and producing more end products to compensate for lower prices, timber companies can reduce output and wait for market conditions to improve. By the time demand for timber products increases again, the companies' timberlands will have grown in both size and value. Though it requires patience and a belief that the timber market will rebound, many companies take this approach, as it maximizes per-tree profitability.
Chinese timber companies, however, have not scaled back production in times of low demand. They have instead increased production capacity, building more plants and mills despite declining global demand. The Chinese demand for timber goods, particularly paper products, is currently stronger than in the global market, and much of the extra production is consumed domestically. In spite of this, the fact that China is importing less paper from other countries exacerbates the already-decreasing demand facing U.S. timber companies. Increased Chinese production capacity can put downward pressure on timber and paper prices around the world.
Perhaps the paragraph above was true when written but it is highly doubtful now. China has a serious shortage of timber at a time when it's domestic demand for lumber for housing is increasing dramatically. Historically China has imported logs and done the conversion to lumber. This, too, has been changing rapidly and today China is shifting and more lumber is being imported. This is a significant trend reversal. "Softwood lumber imports to China have increased by 81% in 2009. It is not inconceivable that China will import more lumber than Japan in 2009, a historical first. Canadian sawmills have been the major beneficiaries of this new fast-growing market, reports the Wood Resource Quarterly."
Timber prices can be significantly impacted by natural disasters. Domestically, timber-producing regions are located in several parts of the country, exposing them to various natural disasters, including forest fires in the West and hurricanes in the East and Southeast. The risk of damaging insect infestations can also pose a substantial threat to timber companies across North America. For example, an estimated 17 million acres of lodgepole pine trees in British Columbia, Canada, have been destroyed in the last fifty years by the mountain pine beetle. These events can all decrease the supply of available timber. In the case of hurricanes and wildfires, demand for timber is likely to increase as well because of the need to replace or repair damaged property, pushing timber prices even higher. Interestingly, all three of these natural disasters are more likely to occur at higher temperatures, indicating that global warming might be a growing factor in the price of timber products.
Environmental conservation groups often criticize the timber industry, claiming that its logging practices are harmful to U.S. forests. These groups lobby for increased legislation governing the actions of timber companies and protecting certain areas of forest lands. About one-third of the forestland in the United States is publicly owned and has been withdrawn from production. Of the remaining 500,000 acres, 29% is publicly owned and contributes very little to the Nations timber output. The timber industry is always at risk of increased governmental regulation, though there have been few instances of this happening in recent years. A Democratic victory in the 2008 presidential election could spur a rise in the number of bills aimed at conserving forests. Legislation such as this would likely decrease the size of commercially harvestable timberlands and drive timber prices upward.
TIMO: Timberland Investment Management Organization | <urn:uuid:34e8ef46-0ad0-4e0c-ada2-e55ff153e9ab> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wikinvest.com/commodity/Lumber | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394605.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00073-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955916 | 1,289 | 3.25 | 3 |
Indian classical music is based on the ragas which are scales and melodies that provide the foundation for a performance.Like western classical music, that is deterministic, Indian classical music allows for a much greater degree of "personalization" of the performance, almost to the level of jazz-like improvisation. Thus, each performance of a raga is different. The goal of the raga is to create a trancey state, to broadcast a mood of ecstasy. The main difference with western classical music is that the Indian ragas are not "composed" by a composer, but were created via a lengthy evolutionary process over the centuries. Thus they do not represent mind of the composer but a universal idea of the world. They transmit not personal but impersonal emotion. Another difference is that Indian music is monodic, not polyphonic. Hindustani (North Indian) ragas are assigned to specific times of the day to night and to specific seasons. Many ragas share the same scale, and many ragas share the same melodic theme. There are thousands of ragas, but six are considered fundamental: Bhairav, Malkauns, Hindol, Dipak, Megh and Shree. A raga is not necessarily instrumental, and, if vocal, it is not necessarily accompanied. But when it is accompanied by percussion the rhythm is often rather intricate because it si constructed from a combination of fundamental rhythmic patterns (or talas).
Re: Indian Classical Music 06:37 on Tuesday, May 14, 2013
The style is sometimes called North Indian classical music or Shāstriya Sangīt. It is a tradition that originated in Vedic ritual chants and has been evolving since the 12th century CE, primarily in what is now North India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and to some extent in Nepal and Afghanistan. Today, it is one of the two subgenres of Indian classical music, the other being Carnatic music, the classical tradition of South India | <urn:uuid:afa48840-53c3-41bf-a76c-0a46cefe5250> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.8notes.com/f/9_344428.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00107-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945063 | 400 | 3.515625 | 4 |
India has entered into bilateral and regional trading agreements over the years. These agreements, besides offering preferential tariff rates on the trade of goods among member countries, also provide for wider economic cooperation in the fields of trade in services, investment, and intellectual property.
The preferential arrangement/plans under which India is receiving tariff preferences are the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) and the Global System of Trade Preferences (GSTP). Presently, there are 46 member countries of the GSTP and India has exchanged tariff concessions with 12 countries on a limited number of products.
Other such preferential arrangements include the SAARC Preferential Trading Agreement (SAPTA), the Bangkok Agreement and India–Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement (ISLFTA). These arrangements/ agreements prescribe Rules of Origin that have to be fulfilled for exports to be eligible for tariff preference.
India and Singapore have signed a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement, which is an integrated package of agreements embracing trade in goods, services, investments and economic co-operations in education, science and technology, air services, and intellectual property. The agreement, which came into effect on August 1, 2005, provides wide-ranging exemptions and reductions on basic customs duty on products imported from Singapore into India.
The Indian Ministry of Commerce projected recently that 60 percent of India's future trade would be accounted for by free trade agreements (FTAs), with such countries as Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan and even China. The Indian government is in talks with the Mercusor (a trade association comprising Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) and the SACU (South African Customs Union) and is looking to increase bilateral engagements with more countries. In a major policy shift, the government has decided to convert all Preferential/Free Trade Agreements (PFA/FTA) into Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreements (CECA). This goes beyond the Indian government's bid in recent months to embrace bilateralism aggressively. The decision seems to be aimed at mollifying the World Trade Organization (WTO), which cautioned India against negotiating exclusively PFAs/FTAs. PTAs/FTAs usually involve structured reduction in tariffs between two countries.
CECAs would cover preferential relaxation of FDI rules vis-à-vis the partner country, tax holidays on investment and income, easing of visa restrictions etc. Trade in services too would come under the purview of CECA. The proposed free trade agreements (FTAs) with Thailand, Mercosur and Asean would now be made CECAs. This has already been done with Sri Lanka.
The preferential trade agreement (PTA) with the South Africa Customs Union (SACU) would be merged with new CECA with South Africa. The Minister added that efforts were on to convert the SAARC Preferential Trade Area into a full-fledged FTA to be called SAFTA. This came into effect in January 2006. Other proposed alliances with Russia, China and Israel would also be CECAs, rather than mere FTAs. The proposed agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is envisaged to be a CECA, as is the India-Singapore agreement.
The Indian government has also nominated certain authorized agencies to issue a Non Preferential Certificate of Origin in accordance with Article II of International Convention Relating to Simplification of Customs formalities, 1923. These Certificates of Origin evidence the origin of goods and do not bestow any right to preferential tariffs. India and the U.S. are not part of any specific free trade conglomerate of nations, and this, experts feel, is an imperative to bolster both trade and partnership between the two countries. | <urn:uuid:c225c677-e793-49dc-afc3-dd9ddd0eb5f0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.globaltrade.net/f/business/text/India/Trade-Policy-Trade-Agreements--in-India.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00123-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949019 | 747 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Carroll Cabin Barrens
CARROLL CABIN BARRENS STATE NATURAL AREA
CLASS II NATURAL - SCIENTIFIC STATE NATURAL AREA
State of Tennessee
West TN Uplands
Barrens is a 200-acre natural area located near the Tennessee
River in Decatur County. It was previously owned by Weyerhaeuser
Company and was designated as a natural area in 2002. The State
received the property from Weyerhaeuser as a donation. Carroll
Cabin Barrens is a series of dramatic Silurian aged limestone
glades and barrens. The glades and barrens are well developed and
occur in longitudinal bands on the hillsides above the Tennessee
River. Little bluestem (Schizachrium scoparium) dominates
the open, gravelly portions of the glades as well as the margins.
Forbs, unique to the glades and barrens complex, grow sporadically
in open glades and congregate around the barren periphery. The
surrounding woods are a mixture of hardwoods of varied ages with
the edges of the glades dominated by stunted eastern red cedars (Juniperus
virginiana). The most common forest is an oak-hickory with
short leaf (Pinus echinata) and Virginia pine (Pinus
Carroll Cabin Barrens is located in the
Western Valley of the Tennessee River, which is recognized by some
experts as a separate physiographic region with a unique flora.
The Silurian glades and barrens are floristically similar to but
lacking the endemism associated with Middle Tennessee glades.
There are several state rare plants considered disjunct from the
Southern Great Plains and Ozarks found at Carroll Cabin that give
an interesting western affinity to the flora. Rare plant species
found at Carroll Cabin Barrens include the state threatened
barrens silky aster (Aster pratensis), hairy fimbristylis (Fimbristylis
puberula), and slender blazing star (Liatris cylindracea),
and state special concern blue sage (Salvia azurea var.
grandiflora). The Silurian limestone outcroppings in the
Western Valley are considered some of the most extensive in the
un-glaciated United States. This glade/barrens complex is
classified as a Western Valley Limestone Hill Barren community and
is considered a globally imperiled community.
There is a joint cooperative
agreement in place between the Decatur County Parks and Recreation
department 190 Civic Lane, Parsons, TN 38363, phone (731) 847-6225
and the Division of Natural Heritage,
Jackson Environment Assistance Center, 362 Carriage House Drive,
Jackson, TN 38305, phone (731) 512-1369. Division of Natural
Heritage, 14th Floor, L&C Tower, 401 Church Street, Nashville, TN
37243-0447, phone (615) 532-0431.
A parking area is provided at
the trail head entrance located at the corner of Smith Gravel Pit
Road and Carroll Cabin Road. Visitors may Hike the two mile trail
to enjoy the scenic beauty of the park. There is an information
Kiosk located at the trail head adjacent to the parking lot to
give visitors an overview of the park and its boundaries.
From Interstate 40, exit at U.S.
Hwy 69/641 (exit #126). Continue south through Parsons (crossing
Hwy 412) and Decaturville (crossing Hwy 100). From the 4-way stop
at Hwy 100, go approximately 11 miles. Turn left on Bob's Landing
Road and continue for about 1.5 miles then turn right on Smith
Gravel Pit Road. The natural area is on the right hand side of the
road after the first curve to the left. | <urn:uuid:2a50504a-e80e-4fe5-b93f-e32aca6e0556> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.decaturcountytn.org/carroll_cabin_barrens.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397864.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00188-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.872451 | 842 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Bug of the Week
Baptisia Seed Pod Weevils (Family Brentidae)
In anticipation of things green and blooming ...
A teacher friend told the BugLady that her students were grossed out when they collected prairie seeds and then found the bags crawling with tiny beetles the next day (and some of the seed pods full of frass (BugPoop)). She produced some beetles, and the BugLady photographed these Baptisia Seed Pod weevils (aka Wild indigo weevils or Say’s weevils) lying between the lines of her notepad (thanks, Jean). Baptisia is both a common name and the genus name for the Wild Indigos/False Indigos.
Weevils (Family Curculionidae) are the largest family in the beetle order, but despite its common names, the Baptisia seed pod weevil (BSPW) (Apion rostrum) is (now) in the Family Brentidae, the “primitive” or “straight-snouted” weevils. Brentids have straight-ish beaks, while the beaks of true weevils curve downwards (older references put Apion in with the true weevils; more recent sources put them with the Brentidae). Apion is a huge genus with more than 1000 species of generally small beetles (at about 4mm, the BSPW is larger than average). As veteran BugFans know, the BugLady is a history geek, and she was thrilled to find this (abridged) description of the genus Apion in the 1852 edition of The Rural Cyclopedia:
"A large genus of insects of the coleopterous order. It comprises many of the smallest individuals of the weevil tribe ... About ninety species of it have been enumerated by Naturalists; but many of these can be distinguished from one another only by the aid of a microscope; and only two or three are conspicuous enough in mischief to challenge any notice. The largest insects of the genus do not exceed two lines and a half in length, and some scarcely measure one line. Their crust is usually very hard, and not unfrequently adorned with somewhat vivid metallic tints, and sculptured with deep parallel furrows and catenulated [having a chainlike form] lines. They take their name from a Greek word which signifies a pear, and present a considerable miniature resemblance to that fruit in shape; their antennae are scarcely or not at all bent ... In their states of at once larva, pupa, and perfect insect, they feed on plants; and in the case of several of their species, they are permanently and exclusively attached to particular plants in the same appropriating manner as the species of aphids.”
They just don’t write science like that anymore.
|Baptisia is also called Wild Indigo|
BSPWs are “Baptisia-centric” (though an issue of The Ohio Naturalist from 1905 lists them as Black Locust feeders, too). It seems that the denser flower stalks that make some species of Baptisia more attractive to bumblebees (their main pollinator) also make them more attractive to BSPWs (their main seed eaters). Adults eat leaves and flowers in very early summer, moving from one Baptisia species to the next as they bloom. When the green pods form, the females bore into them, preferring the larger pods. Remember, a weevil’s chewing equipment is located at the tip of its cute little snout, making the BSPWs mandibles tiny indeed. According to one source, after she excavates the hole in the pod and lays her egg, she uses her snout to push the egg into the pod.
The BSPW larvae (grubs) are called “pre-dispersal seed predators” because they don’t wait for the nutrient-rich seeds to fall, they hatch and start noshing on the developing seeds within their pods. BSPW larvae pupate inside the pods, too, and the freshly-minted adults must either bore a tiny escape hole in its side or wait for the pod to dry and split. Some even overwinter within the pods. BSPW populations wax and wane, but at their peak, they can wipe out a fair chunk of the summer’s seed crop. The BugLady is a big fan of prairies and of Baptisia, but she doesn’t lose any sleep over the depredations of BSPWs because the long-lived Baptisia is, as a fellow prairie-fancier says, a “thug” on the prairie. In fact, an Iowa DNR publication calls the BSPW “Mother Nature’s control of Baptisia species.”
The Bug Lady | <urn:uuid:4217028a-70b8-41ad-a238-b068944ec02f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www4.uwm.edu/fieldstation/naturalhistory/bugoftheweek/baptisia-seed-pod-weevils.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395548.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00011-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952631 | 1,016 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Print version ISSN 0042-9686
Bull World Health Organ vol.86 n.5 Genebra May. 2008
PUBLIC HEALTH REVIEWS
Equité et stratégies en faveur de la survie des enfants
Equidad y estrategias para la supervivencia infantil
EK MulhollandI; L SmithII; I CarneiroII; H BecherIII; D LehmannIV, 1
IDepartment of Epidemiology and Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, England
IIDepartment of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, England
IIIDepartment of Tropical Hygiene and Public Health, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
IVTelethon Institute for Child Health Research, Centre for Child Health Research, University of Western Australia, West Perth, Australia
Recent advances in child survival have often been at the expense of increasing inequity. Successive interventions are applied to the same population sectors, while the same children in other sectors consistently miss out, leading to a trend towards increasing inequity in child survival. This is particularly important in the case of pneumonia, the leading cause of child death, which is closely linked to poverty and malnutrition, and for which effective community-based case management is more difficult to achieve than for other causes of child death.
The key strategies for the prevention of childhood pneumonia are case management, mainly through Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI), and immunization, particularly the newer vaccines against Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) and pneumococcus. There is a tendency to introduce both interventions into communities that already have access to basic health care and preventive services, thereby increasing the relative disadvantage experienced by those children without such access. Both strategies can be implemented in such a way as to decrease rather than increase inequity.
It is important to monitor equity when introducing child-survival interventions. Economic poverty, as measured by analyses based on wealth quintiles, is an important determinant of inequity in health outcomes but in some settings other factors may be of greater importance. Geography and ethnicity can both lead to failed access to health care, and therefore inequity in child survival. Poorly functioning health facilities are also of major importance. Countries need to be aware of the main determinants of inequity in their communities so that measures can be taken to ensure that IMCI, new vaccine implementation and other child-survival strategies are introduced in an equitable manner.
Les récents progrès dans la survie des enfants ont souvent été obtenus au prix d'une inéquité grandissante. Des interventions successives ont été appliquées aux mêmes secteurs démographiques sans jamais bénéficier à certains enfants d'autres secteurs et ont généré une tendance de plus en plus forte à l'inéquité dans la survie des enfants. Ce phénomène est particulièrement notable dans le cas de la pneumonie, principale cause de mortalité de l'enfant et fortement liée à la pauvreté et à la malnutrition, pour laquelle une prise en charge communautaire des cas est plus difficile à obtenir que pour d'autres causes de mortalité infanto-juvénile.
Pour prévenir la pneumonie chez l'enfant, les principales stratégies sont la prise en charge des cas, principalement par le biais de la Prise en charge intégrée des maladies de l'enfance (PCIME), et la vaccination, notamment par les nouveaux vaccins contre Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) et pneumococcus. Il existe une tendance à introduire l'une et l'autre interventions dans des communautés ayant déjà accès aux soins de santé de base et à des services de prévention, d'où un désavantage relatif accru pour les enfants sans accès à ces prestations. Il est pourtant possible de mettre en uvre ces deux stratégies de façon à diminuer plutôt qu'à augmenter l'inéquité.
Il importe de surveiller l'aspect équité lorsqu'on introduit des interventions en faveur de la survie des enfants. La pauvreté économique, telle que mesurée par des analyses reposant sur les quintiles de richesse, est un déterminant important de l'inéquité dans les événements sanitaires, mais dans certains pays, d'autres facteurs peuvent revêtir une importance plus grande encore. Les conditions géographiques et l'appartenance ethnique peuvent aussi empêcher d'accéder aux soins et donc conduire à des inéquités dans la survie des enfants. Le mauvais fonctionnement des établissements de soins joue aussi un rôle majeur. Les pays doivent connaître les principaux déterminants de l'inéquité dans leurs communautés de manière à pouvoir prendre des mesures pour garantir une introduction équitable de la PCIME, des nouveaux vaccins et d'autres stratégies en faveur de la survie des enfants.
Los recientes progresos en materia de supervivencia infantil se han conseguido a menudo a expensas de un aumento de la inequidad. Las sucesivas intervenciones se centran en los mismos sectores de la población, mientras en otros sectores los niños son ignorados sistemáticamente, lo que se refleja en una tendencia al aumento de la inequidad en lo referente a la supervivencia infantil. Esa tendencia es harto patente en el caso de la neumonía, que constituye la principal causa de mortalidad en la niñez, está estrechamente asociada a la pobreza y la malnutrición, y plantea más dificultades que cualquier otra causa de mortalidad en la niñez para lograr un manejo de casos comunitario eficaz.
Las estrategias clave para la prevención de la neumonía en la niñez son el manejo de casos, principalmente mediante la Atención Integrada a las Enfermedades Prevalentes de la Infancia (AIEPI), y la inmunización, en particular con las nuevas vacunas contra Haemophilus influenzae tipo b (Hib) y contra el neumococo. Se tiende a emprender ambas intervenciones en comunidades que ya tienen acceso a los servicios de atención básica y preventiva, lo que acentúa la desventaja relativa que padecen los niños que carecen de ese acceso. Sin embargo, ambas estrategias pueden aplicarse de manera que reduzcan la inequidad, en lugar de aumentarla.
Es importante vigilar la equidad cuando se llevan a cabo intervenciones de fomento de la supervivencia infantil. La pobreza económica, determinada mediante análisis basados en los quintiles de riqueza, es un determinante importante de la inequidad en los resultados sanitarios, pero en algunos entornos hay otros factores que pueden ser más relevantes. La geografía y el grupo étnico pueden ambos entorpecer el acceso a la atención de salud, y favorecer por consiguiente la inequidad en materia de supervivencia infantil. El mal funcionamiento de los centros de salud es también un factor de gran importancia. Los países deben saber cuáles son los principales factores determinantes de la inequidad en sus comunidades a fin de poder adoptar medidas que garanticen que la aplicación de la AIEPI, de la inmunización con nuevas vacunas y de otras estrategias de supervivencia infantil se realice de forma equitativa.
In human rights law, the term "equity" is used to represent equality with fairness. This is synonymous with the notion of distributive justice, or fair distribution of good things within a society, whether they be material possessions, access to health care, or simply survival. There is nothing that highlights the inequity of our world more starkly than child mortality, and we believe that pneumonia is the cause of childhood death that most strongly reflects this inequity. Between countries the differences in child mortality rates are enormous and well documented. For a child born today, the risk of death in the first 5 years of life in Japan is 6 per 1000, while in Afghanistan, Angola and Sierra Leone the risk is over 40 times as great.1 This is considering survival only; the chances of a child fulfilling their cognitive and growth potential are similarly inequitable.
Within countries there is also gross inequity in child health and child survival, about which much less is known. In Africa it is common to find mothers who have lost more than half of their children. These high-risk families are representatives of high-risk communities or high-risk strata within communities. To address the problem of inequity in child survival we must understand who these groups are and why they are at particularly high risk.
Modern health interventions have been the dominant factor in recent reductions in child mortality rates in the developing world. Health services, initially curative and later preventative, have generally originated in the cities and towns and moved out to rural areas, often very slowly. In the pre-20th century era this was appropriate, as the cities had higher child mortality rates in all parts of the world. However, during the 20th century the cities became healthier places to live in with improved food supplies, water and sanitation, and health services. Consequently, in the latter part of the 20th century, as health services were rolled out into developing countries, they inevitably reached the urban areas first, often not extending beyond these areas into the more deprived rural areas. Consequently, since modern health facilities have been available, they have contributed to the growing gulf in health between urban areas and remote, rural areas in developing countries. As has been emphasized by Tugwell et al.,2 the reduced effectiveness of interventions delivered to the most disadvantaged children only serves to increase the survival gap and inequity between high- and low-risk groups within a community.
Dahlgren and Whitehead3 propose a system for evaluating the equity of health services which is relevant for both developed and developing countries. The Affordability Ladder Programme (ALPS) framework assesses the equity of access to health care from the user or "demand" perspective, in contrast to the more common approach of focusing on the provider or "supply" side in this field. There are several stages in accessing effective health care (no care, informal care, formal care, and higher quality of care) each of which is influenced by the external policy environment and each of which can have potential negative health and social consequences. The ALPS framework can assist in the identification of potential barriers to accessing health care and suggest approaches to overcoming them.
"Demand" is determined by perceptions of need and recognition of the presence of serious illness. In the case of pneumonia, respiratory distress associated with rapid breathing or indrawing of the lower chest wall, often associated with difficulty feeding, indicates serious illness. Recognition of this will be determined by the mother's education level, cultural perceptions of the cause of illness and exposure to public health messages on the subject. Having determined that a child is ill, the family must then decide what to do. In some settings, the process is obstructed by the mother's inability to make decisions about care-seeking. For many poor families, the absence of an accessible health system means that the only options are no care or informal care that is usually inadequate. The result is a significant increase in the risk of death for the child, highest in the very young (Fig. 1).4 In some cases, informal care may be adequate to prevent death, as almost any of the common broad-spectrum antibiotics can be effective but they must be given in appropriate doses for at least 3 days.5 In many areas these can be purchased in local pharmacies. If the family decides to seek health care, there are invariably costs involved. These involve direct costs for transport, user fees at the health facility, drugs and medical supplies, and lodging for family members. In addition, there will usually be substantial indirect costs, due to lost earnings or lost time working on the family's farm. Both direct and indirect costs will be much greater for families living in remote areas.
Thus, we would expect children living in otherwise similar economic circumstances in more remote settings to be even less likely to access care, leading to increased likelihood of pneumonia death. This is likely to be the dominant factor in settings where many children live far from health facilities. Where health services are more readily available, but costs are mainly comprised of user fees and drug costs, we would expect economic wealth, or more specifically the ability to raise cash at short notice, to be a more dominant factor. In some settings, care-seeking may be profoundly affected by ethnic differences in perceptions of the cause of disease and the likely cure.6 This may be compounded by the relative exclusion of some ethnic groups from routine health services.
It follows that the risk of pneumonia death will be greatest in younger children, those living in more remote areas, those whose families do not have access to ready cash, and those whose mothers have not been able to access public health messages. Yet when public health officials approach a community with a new intervention to prevent childhood pneumonia, these are the groups most likely to miss out.
Children with the highest risk of pneumonia should be the first recipients of new interventions. If this is not the case then the "inverse equity hypothesis" described by Victora et al. may be observed, whereby reductions in overall mortality rates mask increasing inequities as the least vulnerable initially enjoy the greatest access to interventions and subsequent gains in health improvement.7 This may be seen as the public health equivalent of the "inverse care law," described by Tudor Hart in 1971, which states that "the availability of good medical care tends to vary inversely with the need for it in the population served".8 This paper will discuss these issues in relation to pneumonia death and propose approaches to avoid increasing inequity as global efforts to control pneumonia mortality gather pace.
Economic deprivation and pneumonia death
Most of the work that has been undertaken in the field of equity over the past decade has been based on analyses of communities by wealth quintiles, focusing on wealth inequality as the main source of inequity in either risk of disease, access to health interventions or mortality. Studies rarely attempt to investigate all three components.
The pathway from economic poverty to death due to pneumonia or another childhood disease is logical and not in dispute. It involves undernutrition, poor living conditions, and a lack of resources for transportation to a health facility, user fees and additional costs. Socioeconomic status is also strongly related to maternal education level, which impacts on the risk of disease through child-rearing practices such as breastfeeding, and the likelihood of appropriate care-seeking.9 The role of malnutrition as a risk factor for pneumonia death has been demonstrated robustly in numerous studies.10,11 Elements of the household environment associated with poverty, especially crowding and indoor air pollution, are also important risk factors for pneumonia.12,13
While effective treatment of pneumonia at the community level is feasible, it is more complex and demanding than treatment of other major childhood diseases. Specific training is needed to identify which children with acute respiratory infections need antibiotics for likely pneumonia, or referral for severe pneumonia. Training is also needed to guide effective treatment, in contrast to diarrhoea and malaria, which can be managed effectively in poor households based on the recognition of key symptoms. For these reasons we would expect poor economic status to be an important determinant of pneumonia mortality in children and this is borne out by the evidence. Within-country studies show that low economic status is associated with increased rates of infant and child mortality.1417 However, in such studies, there are examples of settings where the risk gradient is rather less than expected.18 It may be that such settings represent more equitable societies but it is more likely that, in those societies, inequity is better defined by factors other than wealth quintiles.
While there is little doubt that, globally, poverty is a major determinant of inequity, the complete picture is more complex with economic factors being dominant in some communities and geographic or ethnographic factors being dominant in others. In addition, the relative importance of the different determinants may change over time.19 We would predict that in settings with more challenging geographic conditions, where much of the population live far from a health facility, economic factors would be less important than geography. This appears to be the case in Ethiopia where wealth quintiles do not correlate with child mortality risk, whereas urban/rural residence does.20
Geography and pneumonia death
There is considerable evidence that the risk of child death is affected by where one lives. This is usually assessed using the relative risk of mortality between urban and rural areas. Recent data from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) show that, in a survey of 63 developing countries, rural communities suffer 52% higher child mortality rates than urban communities, a differential that is similar to that between the richest 40% and the remainder of the population.21 For mortality from pneumonia, we would expect this to be a continuous relationship, with mortality risk increasing with remoteness, up to the point where there is effectively no access to health services. Beyond that point, mortality can be expected to remain at a similar, high level, reflecting the incidence of pneumonia and the untreated case fatality rate (Fig. 1).
There are several studies relating geographical access to use of health facilities. As one would expect, members of communities that are more distant use the facilities less than those that are nearer, but this may not always translate into increased risk of mortality.22,23 It is possible that the more remote communities would only use the services for severe, life-threatening cases. However, the few data that are available on this issue indicate that in Africa, and probably in many settings in Asia and elsewhere in the developing world, distance from a health facility is an important independent determinant of child mortality.22,24
Results of a study on access to health care and mortality conducted within the Asaro Valley demographic surveillance site (DSS) in Papua New Guinea demonstrated a significant increase in all-cause mortality in children aged less than 5 years with increasing distance from the province's referral hospital as shown by stratification of the study population according to urban, peri-urban and increasingly remote rural areas (Table 1).25 This same pattern was evident for infant pneumonia deaths, although interestingly the pattern was not seen for children over the age of 1 year. This probably indicates that older children will not deteriorate as rapidly as young infants, allowing their parents more time to get appropriate treatment. Utilization of the hospital for treatment of the terminal illness decreased with increasing distance from the hospital. To some extent, this was compensated for by greater use of the local aid post in the most remote areas. However, the more common response was no treatment at all,26 which may indicate issues with the quality of services provided by the rural aid posts, compounded by the long distance to the hospital.
The impact of distance from a health facility on child mortality is particularly acute in settings where a substantial proportion of the population lives in areas with either very difficult or no access to reasonable care. Sadly this includes much of sub-Saharan Africa as well as countries like Papua New Guinea. In such circumstances it can be expected that most children who develop pneumonia have no access to antibiotics, the essential component of effective treatment. Strategies to improve access to effective pneumonia treatment for children living in remote areas include training health workers at remote health posts or community health workers to recognize and treat the common childhood illnesses such as pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria. It is not clear how many small health posts function well in this role.
Separating the impacts of geography and poverty will always be difficult since those living in rural areas are generally (although not always) poorer than their counterparts living in urban areas who are closer to markets and other income-generating activities.
However, this argument cannot be used to fully explain the differences in health-care utilization and mortality shown by the Papua New Guinea data, since the effects of distance continued to be seen between two rural areas which had different levels of remoteness but were similar in socioeconomic characteristics. These data suggest a direct relationship between geographical access to a health facility and mortality, which is what one would expect in a setting where all of the population are similarly poor.
The importance of ethnicity
Another important determinant of inequity is ethnicity. Historically, dramatic differences in child survival between ethnic groups have been attributed to child-rearing practices, particularly nutrition. For example, in 19th century Canada and the United States of America, mortality rates among infants of Jewish families were less than one-third of the rates in children from families of French origin probably due to differing child-rearing and nutrition practices.27 Some families may fail to access care for their sick child because of their ethnic group as they may perceive, rightly or wrongly, that they will not be treated well in the hospital.28 They may use the hospital as a last resort, presenting only when the child is in extremis, too late for effective treatment. Furthermore, members of minority ethnic groups may have atypical views of the causation of disease which can also contribute to delayed access to care.29 Ethnicity may affect risk of death because of differential exposure to environmental factors such as indoor air pollution.
Studies from different parts of Africa have shown that child mortality risk differs between ethnic groups.30,31 A study from the Nouna demographic surveillance site in Burkina Faso highlights the extraordinary variability in risk of child mortality, even between villages in the same district. In that study one village had an under-5 mortality risk of 39%, compared with a mean under-5 mortality risk of 16% among the other 38 villages in the study32 (Fig. 2). This high mortality rate is of a similar magnitude to what was described in west Africa in the period before modern health care was introduced.33 When the study was undertaken, the investigators were unable to explain the high mortality rate using the standard variables collected as part of the routine demographic surveillance, such as fertility, family size, age of the mother at child's birth.22 However, further studies within the DSS have provided more insight into the high mortality in this particular village. The village is inhabited almost exclusively by an ethnically distinct tribe which experiences higher than average mortality in other settings. In addition, the village experiences less favourable living conditions, such as worse water supply, and is more remote, located further from health facilities. The excess mortality in this village is due to pneumonia and diarrhoeal diseases, often in combination with malnutrition. The extent to which the higher mortality is attributable to economic poverty or poor child-rearing and care-seeking practices is unclear. Indeed, in this particular village, ethnic differences, and related social and lifestyle factors, may be the most important determinants of inequity in child survival.
The importance of health-care quality
Compounding the other factors is the impact of dysfunctional health services, which create communities that appear to have adequate health services, but fail to derive the health benefit from them.34 Many small hospitals in the developing world have unacceptably high case-fatality rates for childhood pneumonia, often as high as 1520%. Most of these deaths are avoidable with adequate care.
Understanding the effect of dysfunctional health facilities on overall pneumonia mortality is extremely difficult. If risk of death could be mapped for an entire country, mortality in the catchment area of a dysfunctional health facility would probably appear as a dark area, perhaps with mortality as high as that seen in areas with no health facilities. Since such data are never available, it is important for countries to develop systems to monitor the quality of child health care in district hospitals on a continuous basis. WHO has developed tools for this and strategies for the improvement of poorly performing hospitals.35,36
Access to a poorly functioning facility may be equivalent to no access or, in some cases, worse than no access at all. In such cases, everything might appear to go as it should. When a child develops pneumonia, the signs of pneumonia are recognized by his educated mother and he is taken promptly to a health facility. However, at the facility he receives either no treatment or inappropriate treatment and subsequently dies.37 Under such circumstances, the presence of a poor health facility may have prevented a family from accessing a better service, which may have averted the child's death. Tragically, these families may have done everything right in the care of their sick child, only to be failed by the health services. Such scenarios may be avoided either by educating the mothers to recognize incompetent health staff and inappropriate treatment, or by improving the quality of the health services. Neither are easy options, but this issue must be addressed.
The impact of existing child-survival strategies on equity
In general, child-survival strategies have been implemented without consideration of equity, with the resultant clustering of interventions at the level of the child.38 The approach has generally been to first reach the children who can be most easily reached. Sadly, the children who are easiest to reach are those whose risk of mortality is lowest, the basis of Victora et al.'s "inverse equity hypothesis".7 As a result, children at greatest risk are the least likely to receive the interventions. Moreover, those children who receive one intervention are those most likely to receive the next.38
In the developing world, the two child-survival strategies with the potential to have a significant impact on pneumonia mortality are: (1) standardized case management within the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI); and (2) immunization, with Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) conjugate vaccine now in wide use and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines due to be implemented in the first African countries in 2008.
IMCI is an integrated package of case management strategies designed to lead to effective management of the common causes of child death, including pneumonia. It has been designed (and to a large extent implemented) by WHO over the past 15 years and is now a pillar of child-survival strategies in most developing countries of the world. Because of its nature, IMCI requires a functioning primary health-care system for effective implementation. WHO guidelines specifically direct countries to implement IMCI first in settings with good health-care structures and access to referral care.39 This is likely to increase inequity in child health outcomes. A study of the experiences of selected countries with IMCI found that in Brazil it was implemented mainly in better developed, higher income areas closer to the state capital, whereas these trends were not seen in Peru where the government chose to implement IMCI in the highest mortality areas first.40 The consideration of issues of equity influenced the way IMCI was implemented in Peru, with the result that it served to reduce inequity, in contrast to Brazil.
To improve the equity dimension of IMCI at the global level it will be important to emphasize equity issues at the time of implementation to avoid contributing to existing inequity in the community. Choosing the districts with greatest need, rather than those that are easiest to reach, is important. However, the effectiveness of IMCI is dependent on effective and accessible referral level care, which is not possible in many countries for large sectors of the population. IMCI planners must avoid the temptation to exclude or delay introduction into the most difficult districts. Instead, the absence of a health infrastructure in a difficult area should encourage the development of community-based approaches, more suitable for such settings.
Immunization is the most effective child-survival intervention to date. At present, almost all routine immunizations are delivered through existing health services. In a study of countries that had undertaken at least two Demographic and Health Surveys during the 1980s and 1990s and shown an overall improvement in child survival, eight of 14 countries showed a widening gap in child mortality between the richest and poorest wealth quintiles.41 In most of the countries, immunization and other child-survival interventions are delivered disproportionately to the richest quintile, while the poorest groups are the last to have access to new health initiatives. The same principles also apply to the implementation of Hib vaccine, the first vaccine shown to prevent childhood bacterial pneumonia. The first decade of its use, from 19902000, saw Hib vaccine implemented in the parts of the world with the lowest pneumonia rates.42 Since 2000, the poorest countries of the world have had access to Hib vaccine with the assistance of the GAVI Alliance, but the vaccine has only been implemented with routine vaccination, with the exception of an emergency setting in Pakistan where a campaign was used to implement Hib vaccination. In sub-Saharan Africa, 34% of children fail to receive the third dose of diphtheriatetanuspertussis (DTP3),43 which is when they would also receive their final dose of Hib vaccine. This may affect equity in health outcomes by two mechanisms. Those children who do not receive DTP3 may also be at higher risk for other reasons and are now not as well protected against Hib disease. In addition, Hib vaccine has been shown to exert a substantial herd immunity effect, protecting unvaccinated children. However this effect, which depends on the impact of the vaccine on nasopharyngeal carriage, is best seen when children are fully vaccinated; so, if poorly vaccinated children live together in the same areas, Hib may continue to circulate in those communities.
Pneumococcal vaccines have also been shown to exert a herd effect,44 and this has strengthened the argument that these vaccines actually reduce inequity. Whether or not this proves to be the case with the implementation of pneumococcal vaccines in the developing world, will be an important determinant of their overall impact on equity in child health and child survival. Clearly, the herd effect is a major means by which vaccines can reduce inequity.
The global immunization community is aware of the potential of new vaccines to add to inequity in child survival. The new WHO/UNICEF immunization strategy45 outlines a range of ways to address inequity in immunization coverage, such as the Reaching Every District strategy, which aims to ensure that outreach services are sent to the most remote districts at least four times each year. A challenge facing immunization planners will be to devise appropriate regimens to ensure that new vaccines, particularly Hib and pneumococcal vaccines, are used effectively under such conditions.
Monitoring the equity dimension of child-survival interventions
Given the evidence that child-survival interventions can increase inequity,38,46,47 it is appropriate for the implementation of child-survival interventions to be accompanied by indicators of their impact on equity. At present, the working group responsible for monitoring progress in child survival with respect to Millennium Development Goal 4 has only one indicator of equity the percentage of children receiving six or more child-survival interventions in both the richest and poorest quintiles.1 While this gives an indication of the distribution of interventions, it fails to acknowledge that in different settings there may be determinants of inequity other than economic poverty that are more important, particularly in Africa.
There is a fundamental philosophical dilemma that must be faced by all health planners in developing countries. Coverage is less than 100% for any intervention. In most settings, immunization coverage of 90% would be considered excellent. In such circumstances and with limited resources, health planners are frequently placed in a situation where they must choose between reaching the remaining 10%, often at great cost, or implementing another intervention, such as a new vaccine, knowing that the same 90% will be reached and the remaining 10% will still receive nothing. The total benefits for the community may be much greater with this latter approach, but it will be at the cost of growing inequity. This is a central and unresolved dilemma in health planning.
Monitoring inequity requires identification of the children who are at highest risk of dying. In many countries, wealth quintiles will adequately describe which children are at highest and lowest risk. However, in other countries ethnicity or geography may be of equal or greater importance. National health surveys should seek to define which parameter is the most sensitive by looking at the household-level determinants of access that drive inequities in child mortality. Inclusion of indicators of the three key parameters of inequity poverty, geography and ethnicity will enable a simple analysis to define the relative importance of these. Then, for any new intervention, the appropriately designed implementation can be assessed against the most important of these parameters, ensuring that children at greatest risk are preferentially covered, rather than systematically excluded.
Expensive new interventions like pneumococcal conjugate vaccine may require a more active pro-equity approach. Recognition that those most likely to die of pneumococcal disease are those least likely to access routine immunization and basic health care should drive health planners to consider alternative approaches to the use of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine and other expensive vaccines, such as limiting their use to outreach programmes in remote areas. Selective use of expensive vaccines for the poorest children has been tried before in Peru, where the Hib vaccine was initially introduced only for the lower socioeconomic classes.48 With a growing menu of vaccines to choose from, it may be time to revisit this concept.40
Pneumonia remains the leading cause of child mortality in the world. Risk of pneumonia is largely driven by factors associated with malnutrition, poverty and poor home environment. In general, it is the poor who suffer from these problems and who are in greatest need of interventions to prevent childhood pneumonia. The same factors plus poor access to basic health care are associated with risk of death from pneumonia. Difficulties in accessing basic health care may be associated with poverty, geographical isolation or ethnic issues. Countries seeking to improve child survival in line with the achievement of Millennium Development Goal 4 should deliver interventions and monitor their impact with careful reference to those particular factors that are responsible for inequity in child survival in their community.
Competing interests: None declared.
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(Submitted: 13 December 2007 Revised version received: 30 March 2008 Accepted: 1 April 2008) | <urn:uuid:ca384c3c-f5b7-47db-97fc-05c0750a8a79> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0042-96862008000500018&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00115-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.85673 | 10,362 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Frequently Asked Questions
On this Page
- What is PulseNet?
- What is the role of the CDC's PulseNet?
- How we detect clusters?
- Why was PulseNet developed?
- Why is PulseNet important to the public’s health?
PulseNet is a national laboratory network consisting of 83 public health and food regulatory laboratories. PulseNet groups together people who most likely ate the same contaminated food, or who were exposed to illness-causing microorganisms in some other way. The network does this by analyzing DNA fingerprinting on the bacteria making people sick, and on the bacteria found in food and the environment. People and foods infected or contaminated with bacteria with the same fingerprint are likely to be part of an outbreak. Public health and regulatory investigators use this information to identify the source of illness, such as an unrecognized problem in the food supply chain. Microbiologists generate these fingerprints using molecular subtyping tools such as pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), multiple-locus variable number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA), and whole genome sequencing (WGS). Associated networks, including CaliciNet and CryptoNet have similar functions for norovirus and Cryptosporidium parasites.
Every state has at least one public health laboratory that can match up bacteria from sick people in many different locations using PulseNet's DNA fingerprinting techniques and databases. PulseNet tracks what is being reported to CDC in real time, compares it to what was reported in the past, and looks for any increases that could signal an outbreak. The PulseNet databases keep growing for this reason. They contain over half a million fingerprints, or patterns of bacteria, from human illness, food, and the environment.
- PulseNet has revolutionized how we detect and investigate foodborne disease outbreaks since it started in 1996. Before PulseNet, these outbreaks often went undetected or were discovered only after they grew very large.
- PulseNet is undergoing a major technological transformation from 20 years of PFGE data to a more powerful and precise method, WGS. This will improve the network’s ability to find and investigate outbreaks. Implementing whole genome sequencing will provide the most accurate bacterial fingerprinting data possible today.
PulseNet identifies clusters of illness, or groups of persons ill with the identical bacteria that may be the cause of an outbreak. Once a cluster is identified, PulseNet works with laboratory and epidemiological investigations teams at CDC, the federal food regulatory agencies – the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA/FSIS) – and state and local health departments to figure out what is making people sick. Each year PulseNet identifies:
- About 1,500 clusters of foodborne disease at local or state levels
- About 250 clusters that span multiple states
- About 30 multistate outbreaks that are linked to a food source
PulseNet detects outbreaks rapidly making it possible to recall and remove thousands of contaminated food products, totaling over a billion pounds. Most importantly, many products and services are safer today because of investigations PulseNet initiated. These outbreak investigations have stimulated production changes in the food industry and helped federal agencies create new or improved guidance, policy, and regulations that have prevented thousands of foodborne illnesses making our food supply safer.
The graph below shows groups of matching patterns, or clusters, of a common serotype of Salmonella over a year in the United States. PulseNet database managers create these graphs and look for clusters that are above the expected number of patterns seen in a month. In this example the database manager would investigate and notify an epidemiologist in the month of December that this cluster could be an outbreak.
In 1993, more than 700 people fell ill and four died in the western United States after eating at restaurants of a large, regional fast food chain. More than a month after the first person fell ill, investigators found the cause—a bacterium called Escherichia coli O157:H7. Two weeks later, burger patties were identified as the culprit. During this outbreak, CDC scientists performed PFGE to determine that the strain of E. coli O157:H7 found in patients was the same as the strain found in the hamburgers.
CDC scientists decided that outbreaks could be identified and stopped sooner if all public health laboratories could perform the same DNA fingerprinting tests on bacteria from patients and share results with all other laboratories. This idea was the beginnings of PulseNet.
CDC worked with the Association of Public Health Laboratories(APHL) to develop PulseNet. The goal was to get a DNA fingerprint of all foodborne bacteria as they were submitted to public health laboratories in the states, gather the information locally and nationally, and continuously monitor these databases for clusters of cases with the same DNA fingerprints to speed up the recognition and investigation of outbreaks.
PulseNet achieved this by implementing the same methods for testing bacteria at all participating laboratories which ensured that the results, or fingerprints, could be compared in the shared databases.
- PulseNet helps public health scientists determine where our food safety systems have failed so that solutions can be developed to prevent future illnesses.
- PulseNet also helps scientists determine whether an outbreak is occurring, even if only a few people are ill or if they are geographically far apart.
- The network allows us to identify outbreaks and their causes in a matter of hours rather than days or weeks.
- Epidemiologists across the country use PulseNet data to help determine what specifically is making people sick. They also work with public health regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA/FSIS), to find solutions to end outbreaks and prevent them from ever happening. These solutions include immediate measures, such as food recalls, and long-term measures, such as enhanced guidance, policies, and regulations that lead to new production practice.
PulseNet is effective because all of the laboratories in its network subtype all foodborne bacteria in real time and follow the same procedures using the same standards. As a result, we can compare fingerprints generated by different laboratories. In PulseNet, the quality and uniformity of the data are ensured by a quality assurance and quality control program.
- A person falls ill and visits a doctor.
- The doctor suspects a foodborne illness and asks for a sample (usually a stool sample), which he or she sends to a laboratory at a clinic or hospital.
- The clinical laboratory processes the sample to isolate (pull out) the bacteria that is making the patient ill—for example, Salmonella.
- The clinical laboratory notifies the doctor, who will tell the patient and discuss treatment options. The clinical laboratory also sends the sample to a local or state public health laboratory.
- The public health laboratory determines what kind of Salmonella it is—for example, Salmonella serotype Enteritidis. Public health laboratories are a first line of defense to protect the public against foodborne illnesses and other health hazards.
- The public health laboratory produces a DNA fingerprint of the bacteria, traditionally using a process called pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), to get the unique pattern.
- The public health laboratory uploads the pattern into an electronic database in its laboratory and also to the national databases at CDC.
- Microbiologists and epidemiologists review the laboratory reports to decide whether something unusual or unexpected is occurring that warrants further investigation.
- Epidemiologists interview the patients. These interviews may gather simple facts of their illness, or they may ask about everything they ate before they got sick, where they have been, and other questions that might provide a clue as to what caused their illness.
- The microbiologists continuously search the databases for identical patterns. For example, if they find a pattern—which comes from five different samples, from five different ill people—that appears to be the same, it is a clue that these five people may be part of a single outbreak, caused by a single food (or other source).
- These groups of matching patterns, called clusters, spur investigations by local, state, and national agencies to identify the source of the outbreak. To identify specific causes of the outbreak, they can:
- Compare answers to interview questions among ill people in the same cluster.
- Connect PFGE patterns in patients to patterns found in food monitoring programs.
- Conduct epidemiological studies.
- When these agencies are able to identify an outbreak’s source, they can collaborate to control further spread of the outbreak and to develop strategies to prevent the outbreak from happening again.
What we eat and how we eat in the United States has changed. In the early 1900s, most food was consumed close to where it was produced. Food safety gaps were usually discovered only when groups of people in the same location became ill, such as picnics or schools. Then and now, such outbreaks are caused by unsafe food preparation practices, such as improper cooking or refrigeration. In the last half-century, food production has become increasingly centralized, and food products are often transported great distances before arriving at our dinner tables. Illnesses caused by errors in food production can sicken people over a wide area and may not be recognized as a problem in any one community. PulseNet is helping to change that. Since PulseNet began 20 years ago, we have seen a dramatic increase in our ability to detect widespread outbreaks that occur across many communities, even when there are only a few illnesses in each community.
PulseNet strengthens our ability to identify and investigate outbreaks by
- Identifying which illnesses are truly part of an outbreak. DNA fingerprinting combined with epidemiology information can help differentiate outbreak-associated illnesses from unrelated illnesses occurring at the same time.
- Detecting national outbreaks through surveillance. DNA fingerprinting can link bacteria found in sick people in one community to bacteria found in sick people around the country. Those fingerprints connect the dots to help find outbreaks.
Preventing outbreaks from occurring is the ultimate goal of food safety policies and programs, including good manufacturing practices, food safety inspections, and hazard analysis and critical control points plans. Because of the complexity of food production, distribution, and preparation, we may not be able to completely eliminate foodborne disease, but PulseNet will allow us to quickly stop outbreaks and save lives.
PulseNet, with other foodborne illness surveillance systems, is our best tool for detecting problems within our food safety system that otherwise would go unrecognized. Identifying these problems allows us to take rapid action in the short term, to identify the contaminated food and remove it from the market; in the longer term, by helping pinpoint defective food manufacturing practices which can be altered, thereby rendering the food supply safer.
- Page last reviewed: February 16, 2016
- Page last updated: February 16, 2016
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Think you’re smart? You’re right! Everyone is intelligent, but you just have to figure out how you’re smart. You might already have a pretty good idea that you’re terrific in science and math, or that you can write mean essay. But being smart isn’t just about the honor roll at school. Being intelligent can also mean being gifted in athletics
or art. In fact there are eight intelligences – which one (or two, or three) are you?
Are you a great story teller or always seem to have the right words when you need them? You’re likely “word smart.” This is one of the intelligences that shows up easily at school, especially in your writing or English classes.
Another easy one to see is the “number smarts.” If math just comes easily for you or you can see patterns and solutions in logic, you’ve got math smarts. This is another one that shows up easily at school. Kids with number smarts are also great at logic puzzles and crime scenes that make the rest of us nuts.
If you can take a hunk of clay or chicken wire and turn it into a masterpiece you have “picture smarts.” Spatial intelligence is the ability to see and understand space and how objects fit into that space. Give me a blank canvas and I draw a happy face. Give you a blank canvas and you rival the artistic greats. You’ll see picture smarts in art or photography classes.
As a girl who runs only if chased, “body smarts” are something to be envied. If you’re one of those people who can run for miles, win races, or take the team to State, you’ve got the “body smarts” I wish I had. This sort of intelligence comes out in physical education classrooms or the dance studio – not to mention the courts or track.
Play an instrument? If you seem better than your friends and don’t have to practice as much, you’ve probably got musical intelligence. Music smarts can be as simple as playing well and enjoying it or you might be one of those musical prodigies who can hear a piece of music and duplicate it immediately. The band or choir room is your natural area.
People person? You’ve likely got “people smarts.” There are some individuals who are terrific around others. They are comfortable talking to strangers and also comfortable on stage. If you’re outgoing and like to chat with anyone and everyone, your gifts likely come out between classes or accidentally while the teacher is talking. You might even get in trouble from time to time for showing off your gift to others.
If you’re shy or introverted, you very likely have “self smarts.” If you know yourself better than anyone and can analyze your thoughts and feelings within seconds doing a bit of self-reflection, you’re using a skill that many people don’t possess. Knowing yourself is the kind of smarts that shows up anywhere, but maybe not to your advantage at school if you’d stay silent and hidden in a classroom.
Some people just have a way with nature and plants. If you can raise chickens and grow fruit trees without giving it a second thought, you likely have “nature smarts.” You might love nothing more than to be outside exploring the woods and mountains, or you might just have a strong desire to till the land and grow a garden. Either way, this kind of smarts is obvious outside, not inside, a classroom or school building. | <urn:uuid:f65f79b1-c30c-401a-80f0-3892a8b03292> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.thedollpalace.com/dollnews/article_01.php?frontpage_extreme_news_id=5308&page_id=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00068-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944954 | 769 | 2.859375 | 3 |
One of several dune fields within Death Valley National Park, the Mesquite Flat dunes owe their existence to the local terrain which slow the winds in the area so that they drop their cargo of sand. To the south rise the Tucki Mountains. To the east rise the Grapevine and Funeral Mountains. The main source of sand for the dunes is thought to come from the Cottonwood Mountains to the north and northwest.
An ancient lake bed underlies all the dunes and shows in some places between dunes. Creosote and mesquite create havens for wildlife. The largest dune, Star dune (shown here), rises 140 feet above sea level and is formed at the convergence of several prevailing winds in the valley. In addition to star shaped dunes, the field contains crescent and linear dunes as well. | <urn:uuid:2ebbddae-5218-47c3-9ddd-f37c35f7860d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.360cities.net/image/mesquite-flat-sand-dunes-02-death-valley-national-park-california-usa | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397842.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00077-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928682 | 170 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Shelfmark: NHD 48/14
The plant shown here is a relative of Pandanus odorus, ‘fragrant screw pine’ or pandan, which is used all over Southeast Asia for its distinctive sweet smell. From the Pandanaceae family, this is a plant of great cultural significance, with many important uses.
Photo by Izham Khalid
While still on the plant, pandan leaves are scentless, but when extracted and slightly crushed they release an aroma similar to that of dried grass. Pandan is used to add fragrance to food, such as rice and desserts. To flavour rice, the pandan leaves are tied together and put in with the boiling rice while it cooks.
Seri muka sweets made with Pandan juice
Photo by Taufiq Wan
Pandan leaves can be used to wrap food before cooking, and also as a natural food colouring by boiling them in water. The juice extracted is used as a green colouring for traditional sweets such as seri muka and the modern ‘pandan swiss roll’ found in western supermarkets in Malaysia. One popular Malay dish is chicken wrapped in pandan.
Pandan leaves are also used as a source of fragrance in Southeast Asian homes, and knotted and dried, they are even used to freshen the air in Malaysian taxis! In days gone by, pandan leaves were kept in cupboards to make clothes smell nice. They were also used in jars of dried face powder to give it fragrance. At Malay weddings, the pandan leaves are cut thinly and mixed with other flowers to make a kind of potpouri called bunga rampai, to give away to guests.
However, the same fragrance that attracts people is found to be repulsive to cockroaches. Pandan leaves left in drawers and cupboards can act as a natural insect repellent, and help to keep cockroaches away.
Another variety of pandan leaves called mengkuang is used in its dried form by Malays to make a range of woven products such as mats, bags, fans, boxes and even slippers. These are very popular among tourists. Haslina Anuar, a weaver from the state of Terengganu in the north-east of Malaysia, explains how the leaves are prepared and boiled to take off the colour. They are then dried and dyed with different colours before being woven into bags or mats.
Weaving mengkuang leaves
Photo by Taufiq Wan
A variety of wild pandan with thorny leaves could even be used as a make-shift knife to cut fish, and to make traps. Pandan also has medicinal properties as the entire plant is diuretic; the roots are believe to have anti-diabetic properties, and the leaves are traditionally used for treating diseases of the skin.
Text by Nur Hannah Wan
Interview with Haslina Anuar from HKY Collections at the World Travel Market at Excel, London, 8-11 November 2010 | <urn:uuid:320aa48c-59f1-4b76-b2e3-2ac190af81ca> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/spicetrail/pandan/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00161-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965896 | 621 | 2.765625 | 3 |
For Release: December 7, 2009
David Corriveau, Media Relations Officer, Dartmouth Medical School, at [email protected] or 603-653-0771
Tara Yates, American Association for Cancer Research, at [email protected] or 267-646-0558
Sargent, colleagues target cinematic smoking
After four years of studying the way Mexican-American adolescents respond to movie scenes of characters smoking cigarettes, Dartmouth pediatrician James D. Sargent, M.D. and his fellow researchers are urging families and Hollywood to slap more than a "PG" on some cinematic offerings.
"Parents of adolescents should limit the number of movies their children watch per week and use discretion about movies that incorporate cigarette smoking in a 'positive' light," says Sargent, professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School (DMS) and director of the Cancer Control Research Program at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center (NCCC). "Movies featuring smoking scenes should be rated R."
Collaborating with University of Texas epidemiologist Anna Wilkinson, Ph.D., on a grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Sargent followed 1,328 adolescents ages 11 to 13 over four years, to assess which movies the youths viewed from among a randomly-selected list of 50 featured between 1999 and 2004. The researchers also evaluated whether acculturation plays a role in the relationship between exposure to smoking by characters in the movies and experimenting with smoking in these Mexican-American households.
Details of their results appear in the December issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (AARC), as part of a special focus on tobacco.
While 10 percent of the adolescents experimented with smoking at the start of the study, 17 percent tried it at the end of the study. As exposure to smoking scenes in the movies increased, so did their chances of ever experimenting.
"Exposure to movie smoking predicted smoking onset even after controlling for several established risk-factors, like exposure to friends who smoke," said Wilkinson, an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Texas's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. "Our study supports an R-rating for smoking in the United States and highlights the global implementation of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which includes guidelines for countries to restrict youth access to movies with smoking by using their movie ratings systems."
Results showed that the effect of movie watching was smaller than published studies conducted in white adolescents. This effect was stronger for Mexican-born than U.S.-born adolescents.
This NCI-supported study is part of a larger, population-based study to investigate smoking rates and risk among Mexican-American teens, recruited from a cohort jointly funded by the 1999 Master Tobacco Settlement and the Anderson Cancer Center.
A companion paper, conducted by Wilkinson and colleagues, is also published in the December issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. | <urn:uuid:a8b77824-2225-48f0-899b-7042da7ea8dd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://geiselmed.dartmouth.edu/news/2009/12/07_sargent.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00095-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94357 | 621 | 2.515625 | 3 |
|Tropical Fish||Marine Fish||Pet Birds||Dogs||Cats|
|Reptiles||Amphibians||Small Pets||Insects & Spiders||Wildlife|
Canine herpesvirus (CHV) can cause a severe and often fatal hemorrhagic disease in puppies. The mortality rate is very high for puppies less than three weeks old. If the puppy is less than a week old, the mortality rate is around 80 percent. If the puppy is 3-5 weeks old, it has a much greater chance of survival but it can still develop a latent infection that causes future health problems. In adult dogs it is seldom lethal, but it is a sexually transmitted disease that can cause reproductive problems.
Canine herpes virus background
The canine herpesvirus was discovered during the 1960s. It is today known to occur in England, Germany, the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia.
Canine herpesvirus in puppies
If the mother is infected by CHV, she can transmit the disease to her puppies via the birth canal. The puppies can also contract the disease from oral and nasal secretions from the mother or other infected dogs that are allowed to come close to the puppies. CHV is not transmitted through the air.
The CHV virus seek out the surface cells of the tonsils, pharynx and the nasal mucosa. They will start to multiply rapidly and eventually spread to the rest of the body. A low body temperature makes it even easier for the virus to spread.
CHV symptoms in puppies
Loss of sucking reflex
Soft yellow faeces
Discharge from the nose
The canine herpes virus can also lead to necrotizing vasculitis which can cause hemorrhage around the blood vessels in the puppy. Sometimes it is possible to see bruises on the belly, and eye problems such as uveitis, keratitis, reinitis, retinal dysplasia, and optic neuritis can set in.
< 1 week of age
If the puppy is less than one week old, it will usually die within one or two days after showing the initial symptoms.
3-5 weeks of age
If the puppy is 3-5 weeks old, CHP normally gets less severe since the puppy can maintain its body temperature and even develop a fever (the increased temperature makes it more difficult for the virus to spread).
A surviving puppy can develop a latent CHP infection, and some puppies develop neurological problems, including blindness and trouble walking properly. If the dog is subjected to stress or is given immunosuppressive drugs it can cause a latent CHP infection to become reactivated.
Canine herpesvirus in adult dogs
An infected dog can release the virus in secretions from the reproductive organs (vaginal or penile secretions), and sometimes raised sores can be seen on the reproductive organs. The CHP is therefore a sexually transmitted disease among dogs. As mentioned above, the disease can also be transmitted to puppies during or after birth, and through discharge from the nose.
Canine herpesvirus can cause Kennel cough.
If the mother is infected with CHV, it can lead to infertility, miscarriages and stillbirths.
Canine herpesvirus vaccine
In Europe, a vaccine named Eurican Herpes 205 has been available since 2003. This vaccine is administered to the female dog twice; the first time during heat or early pregnancy and the second time 1-2 weeks before its time for her to give birth to the puppies.
Canine herpesvirus treatment
There is no cure for dog herpes, but keeping the puppy warm can help it survive. Some veterinarians have achieved success by injecting antibodies to CHV into the abdomen of diseased puppies.
Virus infections in dogs: (click for more info)
Canine coronavirus in dogs
Canine distemper in dogs
Canine herpesvirus in dogs
Canine influenza in dogs
Canine minute virus in dogs
Canine parvovirus in dogs
Infectious canine hepatitis in dogs
Kennel cough in dogs
Pseudorabies in dogs
Rabies in dogs
West Highland White Terrier | <urn:uuid:9dd7823f-6fab-4e86-a6f7-a2ed5e4f83e0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/dog/health/viral/herpesvirus.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00054-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.897412 | 863 | 3 | 3 |
Intellectual property is defined as intangible products of creative effort (technical information, inventions, software, databases, designs, models, methods, literary works, data).
Protect Your Intellectual Property
Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs) address the exchange of research materials between individuals at separate organizations. Case-by-case negotiation of MTAs often is necessary, particularly when intellectual property or ownership issues are involved.
Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture.
A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted for a limited period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an invention. A patent is a right to exclude others from making, selling, or using the patented invention for a limited term and is essentially a legally recognized monopoly that the government grants in exchange for a disclosure of how to make and use an invention. Patentable inventions must be new, useful, and non-obvious.
Trademarks are a form of intellectual property. Like patents, copyrights, and know-how, trademarks can be licensed, sold, donated, litigated, and abandoned. A trademark or service mark includes any word, name, symbol, device, or any combination, used or intended to be used to identify and distinguish the goods/services of one seller or provider from those of others, and to indicate the source of the goods/services. It is more common to use the terminology and symbol, Trademark (™), rather than the term service mark or (sm). A trademark does not prevent others from producing similar goods or services.
Submitting a disclosure of your innovation to UNHInnovation is the first formal step in obtaining proper intellectual property protection. Innovators are strongly encouraged to submit invention disclosures early in their invention development process to avoid any potential problems.
Inventions conceived or first put into practice by faculty or staff in furtherance of university research should be promptly disclosed in writing to UNHInnovation.
Research Support Units
UNHInnovation (UNHI) is the unit of the UNH Research Office that advocates for, manages, promotes, and commercializes UNH’s intellectual assets. UNHI facilitates the transfer of UNH research results to the public, while... | <urn:uuid:1290959f-bc6b-4784-9078-ccb187602384> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.unh.edu/research/intellectual-property | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00088-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906694 | 478 | 2.546875 | 3 |
National and International Institutions and resources:
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (WMO + UNEP)
EPA Climate Change (USA)
Sites or articles relevant to climate change
Living with Climate change - overview (Aust) [PDF]
Stonger evidence but new challenges: climate change science 2001-2005 (Aust Greenhouse Office) [PDF]
National Briefing on the IPCC Working Group 2 Report - Sydney (Tue 10 April 2007)
Professor Steffen's 2007 presentation is now available on the EIANZ website under the ACT Division section.
The presentation is large (16 MB) as it contains all the slides from his excellent presentation.
Sites or articles of relevance to botanic gardens, herbaria, and plants
‘Phenological trends among Australian alpine species: using herbarium records to identify climate-change indicators’ by R.V. Gallagher, L. Highes and M.R. Leishman of
. [Aust. J. Botany, 2009, 57,1-9] Macquarie University
The role of botanical gardens in climate change research - Primack & Miller-Rushing - from New Phytologist, January 2009 [PDF].
Plants and Climate Change: which future? - BGCI Publication May 2008
Plants and climate change - resources (UK)
Climate change and plant conservation - plant conservation strategies need to anticipate climate change (UK)
Survey of what botanic gardens could do with respect to climate change issues July 2006 (BGCI Kew)
Climate Change Observations in Botanic Gardens Around the Globe March 2007 (BGCI Kew)
Phenology of cultivated Australian native plants in relation to climate change (CPBR/ANBG Canberra)
Shift In Flowering Dates Of Australian Plants Related To Climate: 1983-2006 Keatley M.R. and I.L. Hudson, in Proceedings of the International Congress on Modelling and Simulation in New Zealand on 10-13 December 2007
The Impacts and Management Implications of Climate Change for the Australian Government's Protected Areas (March 2008), includes a section on botanic gardens, links to Word or PDF version.
Sites or articles of relevance to biodiversity conservation
Assisted Colonization and Rapid Climate Change Hoegh-Guldberg et al 2008 (global) [PDF]
Climate Change and Nature - Adapting to the Future (IUCN) [PDF]
Climate Change and Botanic Gardens (ANBG Library)
(a detailed listing with comments)
Conferences, workshops etc
Managing Climate Variability Program
R. Nelson, (2006) PB061083, Land & Water Australia
Helping Australian manage climate risk; better seasonal forecasts; accessible climate knowledge and tools - for farmers and natural resource managers.
(order by phone: (02) 6293 8383 or Freecall: 1800 776 616) | <urn:uuid:57548b20-7d2e-46fa-89b1-601d4fd4c01a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.anbg.gov.au/gardens/about/management/climate-change/botanic-gardens-resources.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00046-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.786557 | 607 | 2.96875 | 3 |
HTML5 is a core technology of the Internet which was originally proposed by Opera Software. As the acronym suggests it is a markup language for presenting the content for the world wide web. As of October 2012 this 5th revision of HTML standard which was created in 1990 is still under development. The developers are making it with the aim of improving the language with support for the latest multimedia at the same time keeping it readable by humans and understood by computers.
This is not installable software but a new version of HTML language. The browser developers have to make the browsers compatible to support this new version so that users can access the services designed using HTML5.
Many new syntactic features such as, <video>, <audio>, and <canvas> elements, integration of scalable vector graphics content, MathML for mathematical formulas are added in HTML5. It deals with semantic markup, provides information about the content it describes and it does all this on desktop and mobile devices alike. The developers have claimed it as the next big thing. Web development in India which is providing quite appreciable web services have already undergone the transition and have started using HTML5 standard for new projects.
Reasons Why HTML5 Matters
A New Standard
HTML5 is becoming a standard for developers designing new services. Developers want to use HTML5 which is making it all the more popular and so it suggests that it is here to stay. All the modern browsers which cover a large chunk of internet users all around the world support HTML5. This allows developers to use new and exciting features to be integrated with the web services for more dynamic end results. Whether it is a new plugin, a UI mobile framework or anything else the developers want it to be done in HTML5.
Faster & Cheaper
With HTML5, developers make functionalities which work and look good while using the latest browsers. All the latest browsers support this new standard. Thus developers have to focus only on the new browsers and its’ functionalities while designing a new application without being held up by the old ones. This makes the development process much speedier. And as far as cost is concerned the upgrade HTML5 comes free of cost and the only cost involved in the process is about development.
CSS3 which is the newest iteration of CSS is included in HTML5 standard. This inclusion allows achieving great visual effects like rounded corners, shadows, or animations to be integrated with the service using just a couple of lines of code, unlike the image slicing techniques. This improves the quality of the visual graphics used and it also reduces the time of development significantly. Apart from this the site is quite lightweight and this helps it in loading quickly.
Support for mobiles
With all the features mentioned till now that makes a website which is light-weight, user-friendly and with great graphics a great advantage comes up. It is the support for mobile devices that makes web services designed in HTML5 very important. With all the modern browsers supporting HTML5, the content was never closer to the end user. Whether one is using an HTML5 base service on desktop or mobile device it doesn’t matter. With new Smartphone devices and operating systems coming up daily HTML5 supports the whole spectrum of mobile vendors so that none of the users face difficulty in using the web services designed using HTML5.
With the growing demand in the web world for HTML5 based services it is quite clear that the major changes in this standard are accepted by developers and it is used for providing the best possible web services to the end-users. | <urn:uuid:e9b811b6-4b95-4a78-8049-5aa78382f44d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://theapptimes.com/why-html-5-matters/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00017-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933858 | 717 | 2.875 | 3 |
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Significance and Use
5.1 For advanced ceramics, Knoop indenters are used to create indentations. The surface projection of the long diagonal is measured with optical microscopes.
5.2 The Knoop indentation hardness is one of many properties that is used to characterize advanced ceramics. Attempts have been made to relate Knoop indentation hardness to other hardness scales, but no generally accepted methods are available. Such conversions are limited in scope and should be used with caution, except for special cases where a reliable basis for the conversion has been obtained by comparison tests.
5.3 For advanced ceramics, the Knoop indentation is often preferred to the Vickers indentation since the Knoop long diagonal length is 2.8 times longer than the Vickers diagonal for the same force, and cracking is much less of a problem (1).5 On the other hand, the long slender tip of the Knoop indentation is more difficult to precisely discern, especially in materials with low contrast. The indentation forces chosen in this test method are designed to produce indentations as large as may be possible with conventional microhardness equipment, yet not so large as to cause cracking.
5.4 The Knoop indentation is shallower than Vickers indentations made at the same force. Knoop indents may be useful in evaluating coating hardnesses.
5.5 Knoop hardness is calculated from the ratio of the applied force divided by the projected indentation area on the specimen surface. It is assumed that the elastic springback of the narrow diagonal is negligible. (Vickers indenters are also used to measure hardness, but Vickers hardness is calculated from the ratio of applied force to the area of contact of the four faces of the undeformed indenter.)
5.6 A full hardness characterization includes measurements over a broad range of indentation forces. Knoop hardness of ceramics usually decreases with increasing indentation size or indentation force such as that shown in Fig. 1.
1.1 This test method covers the determination of the Knoop indentation hardness of advanced ceramics. In this test, a pointed, rhombic base, pyramidal diamond indenter of prescribed shape is pressed into the surface of a ceramic with a predetermined force to produce a relatively small, permanent indentation. The surface projection of the long diagonal of the permanent indentation is measured using a light microscope. The length of the long diagonal and the applied force are used to calculate the Knoop hardness which represents the material’s resistance to penetration by the Knoop indenter.
1.2 The values stated in SI units are to be regarded as standard. No other units of measurement are included in this standard.
1.3 Units—When Knoop and Vickers hardness tests were developed, the force levels were specified in units of grams-force (gf) and kilograms-force (kgf). This standard specifies the units of force and length in the International System of Units (SI); that is, force in newtons (N) and length in mm or μm. However, because of the historical precedent and continued common usage, force values in gf and kgf units are occasionally provided for information. This test method specifies that Knoop hardness be reported either in units of GPa or as a dimensionless Knoop hardness number.
1.4 This standard does not purport to address all of the safety concerns, if any, associated with its use. It is the responsibility of the user of this standard to establish appropriate safety and health practices and determine the applicability of regulatory limitations prior to use.
2. Referenced Documents (purchase separately) The documents listed below are referenced within the subject standard but are not provided as part of the standard.
European StandardCEN ENV 843-4 Advanced Technical Ceramics, Monolithic Ceramics, Mechanical Properties at Room Temperature, Part 4: Vickers, Knoop, and Rockwell Superficial Hardness Tests Available from European Committee for Standardization (CEN), 36 rue de Stassart, B-1050, Brussels, Belgium, http://www.cenorm.be.
C730 Test Method for Knoop Indentation Hardness of Glass
C849 Test Method for Knoop Indentation Hardness of Ceramic Whitewares
E4 Practices for Force Verification of Testing Machines
E177 Practice for Use of the Terms Precision and Bias in ASTM Test Methods
E384 Test Method for Knoop and Vickers Hardness of Materials
ICS Number Code 19.060 (Mechanical testing); 81.060.99 (Other standards related to ceramics)
|Link to Active (This link will always route to the current Active version of the standard.)|
ASTM C1326-13, Standard Test Method for Knoop Indentation Hardness of Advanced Ceramics, ASTM International, West Conshohocken, PA, 2013, www.astm.orgBack to Top | <urn:uuid:182ee2da-9a23-4094-9d43-906922edcb46> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.astm.org/Standards/C1326.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398628.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00129-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.886235 | 1,130 | 3.0625 | 3 |
This chapter has been published in the book SOUTH ASIA 1800-1950.
For ordering information, please click here.
By 1881 India had 253,890,000 people. Viceroy Ripon's finance minister, Major Evelyn Baring, lowered the duty on salt and removed all import duties except on alcohol, salt, opium, arms and ammunition, thus allowing free trade. Because very few Indians had been able to pass civil service exams in England by the age of 19, Ripon raised the age limit back to 21. He added Oriental language as a subject, but the Secretary of State rejected these and other reforms. Ripon tried to ban employment of children under eight years, but Bengal's lieutenant governor Ashley Eden persuaded him to make it under seven; working hours were limited for children under twelve instead of fourteen.
In 1882 Prime Minister Gladstone told India to bear the £1.75 million cost of sending troops to Egypt, but Ripon got the Home Government to contribute £500,000. He appointed the Hunter Commission to look into educational reforms, but science was still preferred over literary and moral education. After consulting the provincial governments, in 1882 the Governor-General and his Council passed a resolution allowing much more self-government in local communities. Within three years all the provinces were allowing local elections. In 1882 the Sirhind Canal was completed with a length of 3,700 miles. During Ripon's four years railways were extended by 2,000 miles to more than 11,500 miles in India. In 1883 Law Minister Courtenay Ilbert introduced a controversial bill that allowed Indian judges to hear cases of Europeans. Planters were so upset that Ripon was insulted in the streets of Calcutta. Finally they agreed to let Europeans request a jury of which half were to be Europeans. Ripon retired at the end of 1884 so that the liberal Gladstone could choose his successor, the Earl of Dufferin (Frederick Temple Blackwood), who had served in Egypt.
In 1876 the British Resident had refused to remove his shoes and kneel before King Mindon in Upper Burma, and his visits ceased. Thibaw became king of Burma in 1878, and British merchants and residents sent complaints to India. After Resident R. B. Shaw died in Upper Burma in June 1879, his successor Col. H. A. Browne and his staff left Mandalay. Two British steamers complained they were mistreated by Burmese officials. In 1881 the British set boundary pillars between Burma and Manipur, which the Burmese Government did not accept. King Thibaw tried to mollify the British by abolishing his monopolies in February 1882, but the next year he sent a trade mission to Paris.
France made a treaty with Burma in January 1885, and later the British learned of secret arms importing from Tonkin. Thibaw demanded a loan of £220,000 from the Bombay-Burma Trading Company for a royal concession in teakwood. When the Company refused, the Government of Burma fined the Trading Company ten lakhs of rupees (£230,000) in August for having bribed the governor of Ningyan to harvest the timber. Burma prepared to grant the concessions to France. In October the British sent Burma an ultimatum demanding a permanent Resident at Mandalay, control over Burma's foreign policy, arbitration of the timber case, and Burma's help trading with Yunnan. King Thibaw rejected this on November 9, and General Prendergast with 10,000 men took over Mandalay on November 28. The Burmese army dispersed in the jungles and became robber bands. Thibaw had killed so many possible successors that on the first day of 1886 Viceroy Dufferin proclaimed the British annexation of Upper Burma into the Indian empire. As many as 30,000 troops and five years were needed to pacify the brigands. Six more years were spent trying to control the Shans and Chins on the borders.
The Russians occupied Merv in 1884, and General Komaroff drove the Afghans from Panjdeh with heavy losses in March 1885. The British mobilized for war, but Abdur Rahman was visiting Viceroy Dufferin and agreed to concede Panjdeh rather than precipitate an Anglo-Russian war in his country. Gladstone thus arranged to let the Russians keep Panjdeh in exchange for the Afghan Amir retaining the Zulfiqar Pass. In 1886 a commission agreed on an Afghan border running from the Oxus River to the Zulfiqar Pass. That year Dufferin replaced the license tax on trade with an income tax, and the age of admission to the Indian Civil Service was raised to 23.
Chandrakirtti ruled Manipur from 1850 until his death in 1886. He had ten sons by six queens. Sura-chandra became maharaja; Kula-chandra was named heir apparent; and after Jhala-kirtti died a few months later, Tikendrajit became Senapati (commander-in-chief). Tikendrajit was the only brother who knew Hindustani well and could converse with the British agent, F. S. C. Grimwood. At midnight on September 21, 1890 two other brothers, Angao Sena and Zilla Gumba, led several hundred men and took over the palace. The Maharaja gave no order for fighting, and the British political agent Grimwood had British sepoys disarm the Manipuri troops. The two brothers favored the popular Tikendrajit, but he waited for Kula-chandra to return and be crowned. Maharaja Sura-chandra went into exile but did not abdicate.
In February 1891 Viceroy Lansdowne and Chief Commissioner J. W. Quinton declared they would recognize Kula-chandra as maharaja of Manipur if he was advised by the British agent, deported Tikendrajit, and allowed 300 British soldiers in the Residency. Quinton went to Manipur with four hundred Gurkha soldiers under Col. Skene in March and planned to arrest Tikendrajit by inviting him to a durbar. Tikendrajit was kept waiting at the gate, learned of the extra soldiers, and returned home. A British attack on his house failed, but the British killed some people and burned down a dozen nearby houses. The Manipuris had four guns and began bombarding the Residency. During a truce Tikendrajit and his brother Angao Mingto met with Quinton, Grimwood, Col. Skene, and two others; but as the five were leaving, they were attacked by a mob, who killed Grimwood. While Tikendrajit was sleeping, Tongol General had the four Englishmen and their bugler beheaded. When he awoke, Tikendrajit was angry at Tongol General and freed the other British soldiers and subjects. In a trial before a special court Tikendrajit was convicted of abetting Tongol General. The Governor-General commuted the death sentences of Kula-chandra and his brother Angao Sena to transportation for life and confiscation of property, but both Tongol General and Tikendrajit were hanged on August 13. Accounts of Tikendrajit's trial indicate it was unfair, and his death had been called a judicial murder. The British recognized a five-year-old as maharaja and administered Manipur.
After being governor-general of Canada for five years, the Marquess of Lansdowne became viceroy of India in December 1888. He extended British control into the Zhob Valley in northern Baluchistan in 1889 and into the Kurram Valley in 1892. Irrigation increased cultivated area, but the population of India was growing even faster, thirty million in a decade. The value of silver decreased almost in half as Germany demonetized silver, and Lansdowne closed down the free coinage of silver in Indian mints. Gold was made legal tender in India. Lansdowne enacted a law to prevent cruelty to animals. He encouraged the election of local councils, and an act in 1892 allowed legislative councils to discuss the budget and public issues. However, by authorizing separate representation for Hindus and Muslims they practiced the imperial method of divide and rule.
Communal conflicts between Hindus and Muslims increased between 1885 and 1893, breaking out in 1885 in Lahore and Karnal, in 1886 in Delhi, in 1889 in Hosiarpur, Ludhiana, Ambala, and Dera Ghazi Khan, and in 1891 in Madras. During six days of riots in 1893 in Bombay 65 people were killed, and more than five hundred were injured. In the spring of 1893 riots erupted in Bihar over the killing of cattle. When the Chief Commissioners of Assam raised land assessments by more than seventy percent in 1893, people spontaneously revolted. They were suppressed by force, and leaders were arrested. On January 10, 1894 several thousand people gathered at Rangiya and refused to disperse until in the evening they were fired on by the military and police. A similar incident occurred in Darrang on January 28, but the police charged with fixed bayonets instead. The Deputy Commissioner was transferred, and the land revenue was reduced.
The Russians claimed the Pamirs in 1892, and the next year Mortimer Durand negotiated the Afghanistan boundary. Amir Abdur Rahman was allowed to import arms, and his annual subsidy was increased from 12 to 18 lakhs. The British tried to assert their authority over the Afridis, Mahsuds, Waziris, Swats, and the chiefs of Chitral and Gilgit. The tribal chiefs had not been consulted, and the boundary divided the Mohmand tribal area in two parts. Dr. Robertson was sent to help the new Mehtar of Chitral and decided to stay because of the hostility of Umra Khan of Jandol. In January 1895 the Mehtar was murdered, and Umra Khan proclaimed a jihad in Dir, Swat, and Bajaur. The Chitralis and Pathans besieged Dr. Robertson at Fort Chitral in March. Col. Kelly marched 350 miles in 35 days from Gilgit in Kashmir, and Robert Low went by way of Malakand. Chitral was garrisoned, but Salisbury's government vetoed it in August. The boundary dispute was settled the next month. In June 1897 Dawaris in the Tochi Valley requested British aid, but the political officer's escort was attacked at Maizar. Sadullah Khan led an uprising in Swat and attacked Malakand and Chakdarra. Then the Mohmands led by Najm-ud-din revolted. The Orakzais and Afridis captured the Khyber forts, but a force of 35,000 men under Bruce Lockhart was used to subdue them. The British forward policy once again had provoked violence.
Victor Alexander Bruce (1894-99) was the ninth earl of Elgin and the son of a viceroy. He was inexperienced and depended on advice by telegraph from Whitehall. A five percent import duty was put on cotton in 1894, and the Lancashire interests quickly got a countervailing excise of five percent imposed on cotton manufactured in India. These were both reduced to 3.5 percent two years later. A drought began to spread in 1896, and sixty million people were affected in western and central India. By 1897 about 4,500,000 people had died. A meteorologist called it the worst drought in two centuries. Bubonic plague spread from Bombay in August 1896 and took another 193,000 lives by 1898. This was followed by a second famine in 1899; despite extensive Government relief efforts spending more than £6,000,000, estimates of the number of people who died ranged from the Government's 1,250,000 to William Digby's 3,250,000.
Shri Birsa revived the Munda faith in Chotanagpur and urged his followers to worship the one God he called Sing Bonga. They tried to purify their lives by being chaste and abstaining from intoxicants and animal food. Some of his followers were Christian converts, and they considered Birsa a prophet and an incarnation of God. Thousands of Mundas made the pilgrimage to his village Chalkad. The British government believed their goal of self-government was dangerous, and they arrested Birsa and many followers at night on August 24, 1895. Birsa and fifteen followers were sentenced to a fine and two years imprisonment while others only had to pay a small fine. After Birsa was released in January 1898, he began training his followers to use swords and bows and arrows. They were urged to fight against their oppressors and planned an uprising for Christmas 1898. They attacked mission houses and fought police. On January 7, 1899 about three hundred Mundas attacked the Khunti Police Station, killed a constable, and set houses on fire. Troops were called in and killed about two hundred Mundas, including women and children. Complaints were later made that some wounded also had been buried in deep trenches. Birsa's general Gaya Munda was shot dead, but Birsa was not captured until February 2, 1900. He died of cholera in jail four months later. About 450 followers of Birsa were arrested, and 87 were tried; two received capital sentences, and the rest were transported or imprisoned.
From 1881 the number of students increased over the next twenty years by 49% in primary schools and 180% in secondary schools. By 1902 about four million students were being instructed in 105,000 schools, plus 600,000 pupils in 43,000 private schools. The 145 arts colleges had 17,500 undergraduates. Yet with India's huge population this still meant that only one boy in six was in a primary school and only one out of forty girls. Twelve female colleges had only 177 students. Secondary schools had 9,800 girls, and primary schools had 380,000 girls.
Dayananda Saraswati (1824-83) objected to idol worship at the age of fourteen. Five years later he ran away from home to avoid being married and became a sannyasi in the Saraswati Order. After fifteen years of ascetic wandering, he studied the ancient Vedas under a blind old teacher who beat them into him. He learned that the Vedas did not sanction idol worship nor child marriage nor the subjection of women. He founded Arya Samaj in Bombay in 1875 to spread Hinduism in northern India, and he went to the Punjab in 1877. He took a more fundamentalist attitude toward the Vedas than the liberal Brahmo Samaj. His strict view of karma made forgiveness impossible. His Satyartha Prakash argued that Hinduism is better than other religions, and he founded the Cow Protection Association in 1882 to try to stop Muslims from slaughtering cattle. Dayananda stated that the primary purpose of Arya Samaj is to improve the physical, spiritual, and social conditions of humanity by treating everyone with love, justice, and a due regard for their merits. He was attacked by the orthodox and was eventually poisoned by a woman after he had criticized the loose living of a prince.
Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842-1901) enrolled in the first class at Bombay University in 1859. Two years later he was the English editor of the Indu Prakash, and he began teaching history at Elphinstone College in 1866. Ranade was a judge for thirty years and served on the High Court of Bombay. He urged Hindus to embrace all humanity, and he criticized asceticism and contempt for the world. In his Theist's Confession of Faith he emphasized the unity of God, the reality of God's creation, and the spiritual nature of the human soul. Although he considered congregational worship and ceremonies helpful, he found asceticism, adoration of gurus, and belief in saviors and miracles unnecessary. Ranade led the Prarthana Samaj (Prayer Society), which began missionary work in 1882. He advised obeying conscience instead of expediency and urged social reforms because he believed that all humans are essentially equal. He justified reform as the work of liberation based on reason, and he emphasized the divine principle in everyone as more important than great and wise men.
Ranade founded the Indian National Social Conference in 1887. He advocated abolishing caste, recognizing inter-caste marriages, prohibiting child marriage, and legalizing widow's remarrying. He repudiated the seclusion of women, promoted female education, and opposed all irrational and cruel customs that degrade human beings. He argued that the law of karma could be controlled by making one's will serve the higher will and the law of duty (dharma). Ranade urged Hindus and Muslims to work together as they did in Akbar's time; he warned against the mistakes of Aurangzeb. In 1890 he inaugurated the Industrial Association of Western India. Two years later his essay on "Indian Political Economy" suggested that many economic functions such as education, postal service, telegraphs, railways, canals, and insurance could be discharged by the state. He noted that in India the state was the sole landlord and the largest capitalist in the country, being involved in iron and coal fields and experiments with cotton, tobacco, tea, coffee, and cinchona plantations. In 1900 his Rise of the Maratha Power was published.
Viceroy George Nathaniel Curzon arrived at Calcutta on January 3, 1899, eight days before his 40th birthday. He was interested in every aspect of government and energetically worked for improvements. Sugar from imported European beets had increased tenfold in the previous decade, and so he imposed a duty on subsidized sugar-beet imports in order to protect Indian growers of sugar cane. The bill was passed in March, and Curzon, who believed in free trade, explained that the new duties made up for the sugar-beet bounties. He visited areas suffering from famine and pestilence. Three and a half million people were on Government relief, and he was severely criticized in the press for warning provincial governments against spending too much for famine relief. Curzon favored self-reliance and generally had a low opinion of Indians. Yet he felt he was the only official willing to punish soldiers for killing Indians. He asserted his authority by punishing officers and the regiment that obstructed justice after a Burmese woman was raped by British soldiers in Rangoon. The Indian press praised this justice. However, he antagonized the Indian nationalists when he curtailed the elected officials in the 1899 Calcutta Municipal bill in order to make administration more efficient. Curzon traveled the country and encouraged the rajas to do their duty. The silver rupee had stabilized at 1s 4d, and with less military spending the economy prospered during his years.
Curzon opposed forward defenses on the borders and saved six lakhs of rupees on fortifications. He reduced the 10,200 troops in the northwest to 5,000 by 1904. He limited the importation of arms and encouraged the tribes to maintain peace and stop crime by granting them allowances. His policy was to let tribal forces defend their own country, and he concentrated British troops in the rear as a safeguard and support. During the previous five years military operations on the northwest frontier had cost £4,584,000, but in his nearly seven years they would spend only £248,000. He organized this region and five districts from the Punjab into the new North-West Frontier Province under a chief commissioner. The old North-Western Provinces were renamed the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. In 1900 India sent over 8,000 British troops for the Boer War in South Africa along with 3,000 Indians for non-combatant service. In 1901 Abdur Rahman died. His oldest son Habibulla insisted that his agreements with the British be continued, though he did not draw the subsidy for a few years. After the Boer War ended in 1902, Curzon refused to permit Indians to be recruited as indentured laborers for the Transvaal gold mines. He confirmed the principle that when India loaned troops for a colonial war, the imperial Government must pay the expenses.
Curzon sent Col. Francis Younghusband to Tibet in July 1903, and they killed at least 600 Tibetans who tried to stop them before they reached Gyantse in April 1904. While Curzon was in England, Younghusband pushed on to Lhasa. The Dalai Lama fled, but Younghusband got Tibetan officials to agree to a British official residing at Gyantse with the right to visit Lhasa, and he imposed an indemnity of three lakhs of rupees per year for the next 25 years. This violated his own instructions, and the British Government changed it to 25 lakhs of rupees to be paid in three years. Then the British troops would be withdrawn. The British Government reprimanded Curzon for his aggressive policy that turned a trade mission into an armed invasion.
The Punjab Land Alienation Act of 1900 limited the sale of land to agriculturalists so that moneylenders could not take over farms. In 1904 Curzon enacted Cooperative Credit Societies to address the problem of farmer's debts, and the next year he persuaded Henry Phipps to contribute £30,000 to establish the Agricultural Research Institute at Pusa in Bengal. In 1905 a report recommended that they spend £30,000,000 in the next twenty years to irrigate 6,500,000 acres. In the previous twelve years the area of food crops increased by only three percent while the area of non-food crops grew by 29 percent. As the population increased by fifteen million, the increased food was only half enough. The Suspension and Remissions Resolution of 1905 allowed for flexibility in collecting land revenue in hard times, and Curzon established the principle that land taxes should not exceed ten percent of all revenues.
In 1904 Viceroy Curzon appointed a commission that improved police training and increased their pay. The number of police expanded from 150,000 to 175,000. He also enacted a law to preserve and protect ancient monuments. However, his Universities Bill of 1904 aroused protests because they believed fixed fees would block new universities from starting. Curzon wanted to improve the teaching at institutions that had become primarily examining boards. In 1905 he created a Department of Commerce and Industry. He encouraged mining by removing obstructive regulations. During his viceroyalty more than 6,000 miles of railway lines were added to the 27,000 miles already in India.
Bengal contained 190,000 square miles, and the population had increased to 78 million. So in 1905 Curzon divided it into two parts, leaving Muslims the majority in the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam. Hindu political leaders in Calcutta protested this because the Biharis and Oriyas now outnumbered those speaking Bengali in the province Western Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. They began boycotting British textiles and promoted the Swadeshi cloth made in India. The partition took effect on October 16, 1905, and 50,000 people gathered at the Kali temple near Calcutta. They sang "Bande Mataram" and bathed in the Ganges. Sisters tied woolen threads around their brothers' wrists as they vowed to undo the partition of Bengal. This rakhi-bandhan ceremony became an annual ritual. Gurkha troops were stationed in East Bengal. Surendranath Banerji said that the agitation would not stop until the partition was cancelled.
Two British titans clashed when H. H. Kitchener became commander-in-chief. He wanted to eliminate the military member on the Council who administered the military department and also offered the Viceroy a second opinion. Viceroy Curzon objected to the change because he thought the current system worked well by relieving the commander-in-chief of much administrative work. When the British Government chose a compromise that favored Kitchener, Curzon resigned in August 1905, staying on for three more months.
Ananda Mohan Bose had first suggested at the 1898 Indian National Congress that India should be represented in the British Parliament, and in 1905 the Congress passed a resolution that each province should have at least two members in the House of Commons. That year Gokhale founded the Servants of India Society to promote the national interests of the Indian people. He noted that the death rate in India had risen from 24 per thousand in 1883 to the current 34 per thousand. The 1905 partition of Bengal provoked Tilak into advocating a boycott of British goods that grew into a movement that swept the nation.
Gadadhar Chattopadhyaya (Chatterji) was born into a poor Brahmin family in a small village in western Bengal just before dawn on February 18, 1836. From the age of seven he had mystical experiences, often falling into trances. He attended school but preferred to spend his time with wandering sadhus. He went to Calcutta when he was seventeen, and three years later he began assisting his older brother Ramkumar at a temple devoted to the goddess Kali at Dakshineswar. There he had more mystical experiences and eventually took the name Ramakrishna Paramahansa. His life was devoted to God and searching continually for greater God realization. He spent long hours in prayer and meditation or singing and wailing to Kali. Because he had so many peculiar trances and visions, he was relieved of the usual priestly duties.
When Ramakrishna was 24, he was married to a girl who was only five years old. A Bhairavi yogi observed that Ramakrishna's odd behavior was similar to that of the famous Vaishnava Chaitanya, and she initiated him into Tantric sadhana (spiritual practice). He practiced this for two years, going through the stages. Then in 1863 he became a Vaishnava and had a vision of Krishna. For a while he dressed and acted like a woman, longing for Krishna. The nondualist guru Tota-puri taught him how to practice Vedanta. Bhairavi warned him that if he became a nondualist, he would lose his devotion; but Ramakrishna went ahead. He could easily experience Kali, and by destroying her image in his consciousness he could empty his mind and attained nirvikalpa samadhi in one day. Tota-puri was surprised because it took the guru forty years of ascetic practice. Ramakrishna believed that every religion is a path to God and proved it to himself by practicing the spiritual disciplines of various Hindu sects and other religions until he experienced God by their methods. When Ramakrishna was initiated as a Sufi, he ate and dressed like a Muslim and prayed to Allah. After three days he had a vision of God. Another three days of Christian practice resulted in his vision of Jesus Christ.
When Ramakrishna's wife Sarada Devi came to Dakshineswar, he worshipped her as his mother. They were celibate. She accepted this, served him, and asked him to teach her how to realize God. In 1867 Ramakrishna went on a pilgrimage for four months. He served as a sweeper and scavenger to clean up after outcastes and Muslims, and he became known as a saint.
Keshab Chandra Sen, the influential leader of the Brahmo Samaj, visited him. In 1875 Ramakrishna went to see him and his disciples, speaking in parables. Keshab was won over and published an influential sketch of Ramakrishna's life and teachings. Keshab agreed that his daughter could marry the wealthy Maharaja of Cooch-Behar before she was fourteen years old. A split emerged in the Brahmo Samaj because Vijay Krishna Goswami and others accused Keshab of hypocrisy. They adamantly opposed child marriage and formed General Samaj. Ramakrishna said he opposed hard and fast rules but remained friendly with both sides. Keshab liked Ramakrishna's universality and was impressed by his vision of Jesus. Keshab worked on integrating the teachings of Hinduism and Christianity as a way forward, and in 1879 he declared a "New Dispensation, the Religion of Harmony." He hoped that Europe would enter the heart of Asia, and Asia the mind of Europe in a universal synthesis. He suggested they include and absorb all humanity without hating or excluding anyone. He wanted to unite East and West in one undivided and universal church of God in order to reconcile faith and modern science, philosophy and inspiration, and asceticism and civilization. On October 27, 1883 Keshab invited Ramakrishna on a chartered steamer, and he brought Vijay with him. In this way the two leaders were reconciled, though, as Ramakrishna predicted, their followers still continued the feud.
Many spiritual seekers came to see Ramakrishna, and he conversed with them. He accepted neither money nor expensive gifts. He could not even bear the touch of silver or gold coins. When he was asked how to eliminate passion, Ramakrishna asked why it should be eliminated. He recommended directing one's passion toward God. He taught that God is both with form and formless. He warned against setting limits to God's nature, and he found by experience that various ways of worshipping God can be successful. He said that to gain a vision of God one must practice spiritual discipline because one "cannot see him just by wishing." Kristodas Pal, editor of the Hindu Patriot newspaper, said that Ramakrishna's renunciation was an escape, and he believed in working to improve social conditions. Ramakrishna detected a note of egotism in "helping the world" and suggested that "serving the world" with less sense of self came from doing what the Divine Mother gave one to do.
Ramakrishna practiced exceptional devotion; but he also emphasized that one must always speak the truth to find God because God is truth. He taught the golden rule of doing what you wish others to do to you. He warned that people are quick to blame or praise, and so you should not be concerned about what others say of you. He noticed that people tend to develop the propensities of those around them, and they seek the company of those with similar propensities. Ramakrishna often taught in parables. He compared religion to the rain from heaven that becomes dirty depending on the medium through which it manifests. He said that as long as one lives, one may learn every day of the mysteries of love and devotion. He advised that the best course is to renounce desire and work unattached. Ramakrishna recognized Narendranath Datta as the one who would spread his teachings, but Ramakrishna himself never started a new religion or sect. He got cancer and finally departed from his body on August 16, 1886.
Narendranath Datta was born into a wealthy Kshatriya family in Calcutta on January 12, 1863. His family tried to get him to marry, but Narendra resolved to remain celibate and refused. He attended English schools and graduated from Calcutta University in 1883. He studied the writings of John Stuart Mill, David Hume, and Herbert Spencer. Narendranath liked Spencer's ideas on evolution, corresponded with him, and translated his book Education into Bengali. He attended the Brahmo Samaj and made contact with Keshab Chandra Sen.
When Narendranath first visited Ramakrishna in 1881, the saintly mystic told him that he was an incarnation of Narayana (Vishnu). Ramakrishna said that one can communicate with God. He asked Narendra to promise to come back soon. At the second visit Ramakrishna put his foot on him, and Narendra had an unusual experience. His consciousness changed so much that he thought he was dying and asked the master to stop it. Ramakrishna put his hand on Narendra's chest, and he returned to his normal awareness. On another occasion the master touched him, and Narendra realized that everything is part of God, that there is nothing in the universe but God. He was impressed how Ramakrishna combined the devotion of bhakti with the knowledge of Vedanta. He once said that Ramakrishna was a bhakt outwardly and a jnani (knower) inwardly while he was a jnani outwardly and a bhakt inwardly. While Ramakrishna emphasized the devotion of bhakti, Narendra would practice the karma yoga of working. They both taught that human misery would continue until human character changed. Thus lasting social reform depends on spiritual and ethical culture.
Narendra's father liked to spend money, and at his death in early 1884 he left behind more debts than assets. Narendra had to give up his clerkship and was suddenly poor. He was studying law and asked Ramakrishna to pray so that he would get a job. Ramakrishna said he did not make such requests, but he urged the educated Hindu to pray to Kali. Despite his reluctance to worship an idol, Narendra did so and came to accept the Divine Mother. As he experienced her, he too only prayed for detachment, devotion, and knowledge. A few days before he died, Ramakrishna passed his energy to Narendra. Though other disciples went back to school or work, Narendra and a few others started a fraternity of monks in a dilapidated house in Baranagar near Kasipur. They barely survived on rice and salt, but eventually others joined.
In July 1890 Narendra began a pilgrimage and traveled around India for three years. The rajas of Ramnad and Khetri urged him to represent Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions meeting at the World Exposition at Chicago in 1893 in commemoration of Columbus, and they offered to pay his expenses. While meditating on the rock at Cape Comorin, the southern tip of India, Narendra realized that India needed food and the West needed spirituality. The Raja of Khetri suggested he call himself Swami Vivekananda, and he sailed from Bombay on May 31, 1893, stopping at Colombo, Hong Kong, and Japan before reaching Vancouver. Vivekananda arrived at Chicago in mid-July but learned the Parliament was delayed until September. So he went to Boston, where he gave talks and became a local celebrity. The Swami spoke five times to the Chicago conference and was very well received. His comments before reading his paper on Hinduism were widely reported in the American press. He criticized the English Christians for putting their foot on the neck of 250 million Asians, and he reminded them of the Spanish conquest of America. He warned that the Muslim sword could destroy India, and he said, "Blood and sword are not for the Hindu, whose religion is based on the laws of love."1
Swami Vivekananda suddenly became a world figure, and his intelligent interpretation of Hinduism lifted its philosophy to a new level of recognition in India and the world. A lecture tour was quickly organized for him, and in the next two years he spoke often in Chicago, Detroit, Boston, New York, and other cities. He preached self-reliance and individual effort. Scriptures can be a guide until one is strong enough to do without them. He believed that only the spiritually aware could be great teachers of humanity. In the summer and fall of 1895 he visited London and Paris, and he inspired Max Müller to publish Ramakrishna - His Life and Teachings. He went back to New York and then returned to England in April 1896 on his way home. He had gained some western disciples who worked for Indian education and freedom in various ways. Vivekananda believed that education is the key to the development of equality and democracy. When people develop their own inner powers, they will become free.
Vivekananda observed that the western world especially had become very materialistic and so needed the spiritual understanding that India could offer. He combined the need for spiritual awakening with patriotic Indian nationalism. Yet he went beyond nationalism, which he considered an incomplete stage of development, to international solidarity with international laws as a more lasting solution to human conflicts. He believed that India is immortal because she persists in searching for God; but he warned that if they went in for politics and caused social conflicts, she would die. Just as hatred cannot be conquered by hatred but by love, materialism cannot conquer materialism. When armies try to conquer others, armies multiply and make brutes of humanity. He suggested that spirituality will conquer the West. Western civilization since the Greeks has sought happiness, but the Hindus seek spiritual liberation. Vivekananda observed how human societies had first been dominated by priests (Brahmins) and then by the nobility (Kshatriyas). In modern times the merchants (Vaishyas) had taken control. In 1896 he prophesied that the fourth epoch would bring domination by the workers (Sudras), and he predicted that the first proletarian state in the world would be Russia or China. He criticized the social Darwinism of competition, saying,
The attempts to remove evil from the world
by killing a thousand evil-doers,
only adds to the evil in the world.
But if the people can be made to desist from evil-doing
by means of spiritual instruction,
there is no more evil in the world.
Now, see how horrible the Western struggle theory becomes!2
In Vivekananda's idea of spiritual evolution the highest level is attained through sacrifice. He found that fighting put back human progress fifty years rather than moving it forward. He urged the other monks to become Christs themselves in order to aid in redeeming the world. They could deny themselves to realize God as Jesus had done.
Vivekananda landed on Ceylon in January 1897 and then returned to Calcutta. They had founded the Ramakrishna Order, and Brahmananda (Rakhal Chandra Ghosh) welcomed him home to the Alambazar monastery. Vivekananda handed him all the money he had raised and had to borrow pennies to take the ferry back across the Ganges. On May 1 Vivekananda spoke to the monks and announced his plans for the Ramakrishna Mission to teach the masses what they need for material and spiritual welfare. Their goals would be spiritual and humanitarian rather than political. The Ramakrishna Mission was instituted four days later, and monasteries were established throughout India. They immediately began working on famine relief and plague relief, founding hospitals and schools.
Vivekananda urged that the nation, like an individual, must learn to help itself. He said, "Modern India admits spiritual equality of all souls-but strictly keeps the social difference."3 He denounced untouchability and worked on raising the status of women and the masses. He recommended beginning slowly and working from the ground up. He believed that India needed to go beyond recalling her past by improving upon it. Vivekananda lectured tirelessly and published a book on Ramakrishna as well as Jnanayoga, Rajayoga, Karmayoga, and Bhaktiyoga. He believed that removing poverty was more important than preaching. He found God in the poor, the miserable, and the weak. He suggested that everyone should be treated equally because God is in everyone. Every individual and nation must work out their own salvation. Having power in the world does not necessarily make one happy, but by conquering oneself one may find happiness. Vivekananda taught that God unifies the variety of the universe. In God all humans are one, though every person is different. In the summer of 1899 Vivekananda visited California. There his health improved, and he began Vedanta centers in Los Angeles and San Francisco. After touring Europe he returned to India in December 1900. His health declined, but he taught a class and walked two miles on the day (July 4, 1902) he died with an expression of ecstasy on his face.
Brahmananda had succeeded Vivekananda as president of the Mission in February 1901, and he continued to serve in that position for the next 21 years. He emphasized that more time should be spent on learning how to know God than on serving humanity.
Helena Petrovna von Hahn was born on August 12, 1831 in the Ukraine. Her mother was an excellent novelist, but she died at the age of 28. When her governess told Helena that because of her fiery temperament she could not even marry an old man she considered ugly, the 17-year-old got him to propose to her. Helena tried to get out of marrying the elderly Nikifor Blavatsky but could not and after two months of resisting his "conjugal rights" she escaped to her grandmother. Helena traveled to Turkey, Greece, Egypt, and France, and in London she met her Hindu master. In 1852 Madam Blavatsky went to America and India but could not get into Tibet. She got the idea of combining science and religion and continued to travel around the world, sometimes dressing as a man. She participated in spiritualist experiments and astounded people by willing or evoking tapping sounds across a room that answered questions. In 1860 she began answering questions verbally or by writing. She volunteered to help Garibaldi, and at the battle of Mentana on November 3, 1867 she suffered five wounds. Blavatsky claimed that she spent three years in Tibet studying with her masters, but this has been questioned. She lived in Cairo in 1871 and went to New York in 1873.
On September 7, 1875 the Theosophical Society (TS) was founded in New York with Col. Henry Steel Olcott as chairman and William Quan Judge as secretary. At the first meeting the next day HPB (Blavatsky) agreed to be corresponding secretary. The main purposes are 1) to promote universal brotherhood without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color; 2) to study ancient and modern religion, philosophy, and science; and 3) to investigate unexplained laws of nature and the divine powers latent in humanity. Blavatsky published Isis Unveiled in September 1877 in two long volumes entitled Science and Theology. The first volume explores the occult sciences as an important part of psychology, and the second volume takes on traditional Christian theology as an obstacle to free thought in a society of "increasing materialism, worldliness and hypocrisy." In the last chapter HPB outlined the fundamental propositions of Oriental philosophy in ten points that are summarized as follows:
1. A “miracle” occurs because of eternal and immutable laws.
2. Nature has visible objectivity and an inner vital principle and above them eternal and indestructible spirit.
3. Humans have a physical body and an astral body but are sovereign and immortal spirits.
4. Magic is a science and an art for applying knowledge to control nature’s forces.
5. Arcane knowledge may be misapplied as sorcery or be used beneficently as wisdom.
6. Mediums are passive, but adepts actively control inferior powers.
7. All things are recorded and can be known by an adept.
8. People differ in spiritual gifts.
9. Adepts can withdraw the inner person from the physical body consciously, but mediums do so unconsciously.
10. Magic is based on knowing how magnetism and electricity affect humans and animals.
Magic is spiritual wisdom;
nature, the material ally, pupil and servant of the magician.
One common vital principle pervades all things,
and this is controllable by the perfected human will.4
Madam Blavatsky became a citizen of the United States in July 1878. She and Olcott went to Bombay in January 1879 and announced that they were being guided spiritually by the mahatmas who live in the Himalayas. They recommended abstinence from alcohol and pure living in order to develop psychic and spiritual abilities. They taught occult science and considered clairvoyant intuition more important than rational analysis. The British secret service put HPB under surveillance because they thought she might be a Russian spy. She was the first editor of the monthly Theosophist, which began in October. Alfred Percy Sinnett was the editor of The Pioneer, the most influential newspaper in India that was a mouthpiece for the Government. The Theosophists visited him and his wife Patience in Allahabad, and Allan Hume became interested in Theosophy.
Blavatsky and Olcott first visited Ceylon in May 1880. The Sinnetts visited England and published The Occult World in June. Correspondence from Master KH helped Sinnett write Esoteric Buddhism. HPB said she met Master M in Lahore, and he told her to tour northern India. After that tour the Theosophists moved their headquarters from Bombay to Adyar in Madras in December 1882. Theosophy has a special appeal in India because of its primary doctrines of karma and reincarnation that are universally accepted by Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains. Thousands of educated Indians joined the Theosophical Society. Olcott helped Ceylon increase the number of Buddhist schools there from two in 1880 to two hundred by 1900. He did so much to revive Buddhism in Burma that a national committee of Japanese priests sent a representative to escort him to Japan.
HPB and Olcott traveled in Europe for seven months in 1884. Alexis Coulomb and his wife Emma had been expelled from the Theosophical Society in May for extortion, slander, and misuse of TS funds. In October 1884 HPB replied to a scandalous article in the London Times based on their accusations of fraud saying that she never tried to gain money for herself or the Society by means of her psychic gifts. In December 1885 Richard Hodgson issued a report for the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) based on the Coulombs' charges and incriminating letters. This scandal was widely believed at the time. Olcott persuaded Blavatsky to accept the recommendation of the Theosophists committee not to sue her defamers because a trial might ridicule the sacred names of the Masters. Blavatsky nearly died from an illness, and in March 1885 she resigned as corresponding secretary of the TS. Ironically this scandal gave Theosophy so much publicity that many more people joined. In 1884 the Theosophical Society had 104 chartered branches in the world, but by 1890 this had increased to two hundred. A century later handwriting expert Dr. Vernon Harrison made a thorough investigation for the SPR of the letters and concluded that the Coulombs had forged letters, that Hodgson was biased, and that the SPR had not checked his report critically. He also found that the letters attributed to the mahatmas were not written by HPB.
From 1885 to 1888 Blavatsky worked on writing The Secret Doctrine while she was living in Germany and then in London. Letters were given to Dr. William Hübbe-Schleiden, president of the TS in Germany, from the masters M and KH saying that they wrote The Secret Doctrine with HPB. The two long volumes on Cosmogenesis and Anthropogenesis contain many long quotations from other books that HPB copied and cited by psychic perception. Dr. Bertram Keightley had a typed copy of the manuscript made, looked them up in the British Museum, and found that most were accurate word for word. The first volume was published in October 1888, and the second volume came out three months later. HPB based her work on three premises: 1) that an "omnipresent, eternal, boundless, and immutable principle" is the basis "of all that was, is, or ever will be;" 2) that the eternal universe is a boundless plane in which the universal Spirit as souls (monads) experience a cycle of incarnations; and 3) that the souls are one with the universal over-soul.
The Secret Doctrine elucidates the mysteries and essential teachings of various religions in order to show their unity. Blavatsky also intended to reveal the occult side of Nature that modern science was not approaching. For HPB evolution is spiritual and mental as well as physical. She wrote of the one Universal Life, and she perceived that matter and force are two sides of the same substance. She explained karma as action and the universal law of cause and effect or ethical causation that governs the world of being. This law of retribution is unerring; but it does not predestine because humans plan and create the causes. Destiny is self-made. The doctrine of karma explains the origin of evil, but all actions are resolved into universal harmony by the law of justice. Science by being too materialistic has left out the inner, spiritual, psychic, and moral aspects of human nature. The aggregate of individual karma becomes national karma, and the world is the total of national karma. Because of the principle of Harmony we reward and punish ourselves for our own actions. HPB wrote,
With right knowledge,
or at any rate with a confident conviction
that our neighbors will no more work to hurt us
than we would think of harming them,
two-thirds of the World’s evil would vanish into thin air.
Were no man to hurt his brother,
Karma-Nemesis would have neither cause to work for,
nor weapons to act through.5
When one breaks the laws of harmony and life, one falls into the chaos that is produced. Avenging angels only represent the reaction. The doctrines of karma and reincarnation explain the apparent injustices in life. When humans learn to act from their inner spiritual intuitions with real altruism instead of by the impulses of the selfish body, then brotherhood will become actual. Humans are their own destroyers but their own saviors as well. HPB warned that Europe was on the eve of a cataclysm because of its racial karma. In other writings she warned of future wars and an instantly devastating new weapon.
Mohandas Gandhi discovered Theosophy and met HPB in 1889 while he was studying law in London. He first read the Bhagavad-Gita in Edwin Arnold’s English translation, and he joined the Blavatsky lodge in March 1891. In her last years HPB began a secret Esoteric Section for more than a thousand people. From The Book of Golden Precepts she wrote The Voice of the Silence and “The Seven Portals” with its seven keys of love (charity), harmony in word and action, patience, detachment, courage to find truth, meditation, and wisdom. She published The Key to Theosophy to answer basic questions. The motto of the Theosophical Society is “There is no religion higher than truth.” The Wisdom-Religion has been known since ancient times and is passed on by initiates, profound seekers of truth, in all cultures. HPB divided human nature into seven levels: 1) physical body (rupa), 2) vital principle (prana), 3) astral body (linga sharira), 4) animal desires (kama rupa), 5) mind (manas), 6) soul (buddhi), and 7) Spirit (atman). However, in Indian traditions buddhi usually means intuition; atma is soul, and Brahman is God or Spirit. Blavatsky rejected the dangerous doctrine of atonement, that the sacrifice of Jesus can wipe out the enormous crimes against human and divine laws. Yet she described God’s mercy as boundless. She opposed retaliating against evil and advised leaving people to their karma. Because others do evil is no reason for doing evil oneself.
Blavatsky died on May 8, 1891, and her body was cremated. The Theosophical Glossary she wrote was published after her death.
Annie Wood was born October 1, 1847 in London. She married the Anglican priest Frank Besant in 1867. They had two children, but he abused her. When he said that she must accept Church dogma to stay with him, she left him and Christianity in 1873. Annie Besant joined the National Secular Society the next year, wrote for the National Reformer, and worked for woman suffrage, penal reform, trade unions, birth control, and against vivisection. She lectured on the political status of women and called for "equality before the law for all in public and in private." She said,
The man shall bring his greater strength
and more sustained determination,
the woman her quicker judgment and purer heart,
till man shall grow tenderer, and woman stronger,
man more pure, and woman more brave and free.6
She was secretary of the Malthusian League and educated people about birth control. In 1877 she and her mentor Charles Bradlaugh were prosecuted for republishing The Fruits of Philosophy by Charles Knowlton, and their acquittal allowed information on contraception. Because of her work for birth control, she lost custody of her daughter. Besant wrote The Law of Population: Its Consequences and Its Bearing upon Human Conduct and Morals. She argued that celibacy is not natural to men or women, and bodily needs require legitimate satisfaction. She suggested that by limiting population they would deprive the capitalists of their crowded labor market. Workers would have more opportunities with limited families. She was threatened with prosecution but not indicted, and the book eventually sold 175,000 copies. In February 1878 she helped organize the International Labor Union.
Annie worked to stop the imminent war in Afghanistan by writing the pamphlets Rushing into War and England, India, and Afghanistan. During the elections of 1879 she published "The Story of Afghanistan: or, Why the Tory Government Gags the Indian Press: A Plea for the Weak Against the Strong." This excellent summary of British interventions in Afghanistan boldly criticized the crimes of the Tory Government that murdered men and froze women and children by burning villages. She accused Disraeli of bullying, boasting, and imperialism. She noted that Amir Sher Ali's delayed response in the summer of 1877 was because of the forty-day mourning period for his son Abdulla Jan. Public opinion in England was misled, and the Indian press was gagged. She concluded that the defeat of the Tory party would mean peace, liberty, and hope for South Africa, India, and Afghanistan.
Becoming a friend of George Bernard Shaw and Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Annie Besant joined the socialist Fabian Society in January 1885. She and Shaw were also on the executive committee of the Social Democratic Federation. She agreed with the Fabians' gradual approach to reform as evolution instead of revolution. Besant wrote pamphlets on why she was a socialist and on the socialist movement. During her atheistic phase she also wrote several pamphlets criticizing the Christian religion and in 1887 Why I Do Not Believe in God. She formed the short-lived Law and Liberty League in November 1887 with Jacob Bright and William Morris.
She was one of the leaders of the Social Democratic Federation that organized a march in Trafalgar Square with 10,000 people on November 13. Two thousand police and four hundred troops beat people, and one was killed on this “Bloody Sunday.” Two leaders and hundreds of others were arrested, but police refused to detain Besant.In 1888 Besant and Willam T. Stead began editing The Link for humanitarian purposes. The Government issued an order against collecting money at public meetings; but Besant defied it in June 1888, and the rule was rescinded. She was in love with the socialist Herbert Burrows, and they helped organize a strike by women who worked at the Bryant and May match factory in East London and suffered terribly from starvation wages and phosphorus fumes that caused cancer. Shaw explained why Annie was different than himself and the Fabians when he wrote, "Injustice, waste, and the defeat of noble aspirations did not revolt her by way of irony and paradox; they stirred her to direct and powerful indignation and to active resistance."7 In 1889 Besant was elected to the London School Board, and her reforms included free meals and medical examinations for children in the elementary schools.
Annie Besant discovered Theosophy in 1889 when William Stead asked her to write a review of The Secret Doctrine. Like Shaw, she became a vegetarian. He asked her if she knew that Madam Blavatsky had been exposed by the Society for Psychical Research, and Blavatsky herself asked her to read the SPR report. Annie found that the allegations were not credible, and even if true they did not affect the teachings of Theosophy. She studied The Secret Doctrine and wrote a favorable review. In May 1889 she became a Fellow of the Theosophical Society and was blessed by Blavatsky and her master KH (Kuthumi). Besant became his disciple and soon was co-editing the magazine Lucifer (Light-bringer). She spoke on "Why I Became a Theosophist" and published it as a pamphlet, explaining that materialism had failed and that she was trying to follow the truth. In 1890 she published "The Trades Union Movement" pamphlet in which she wrote,
Now Trades Unionism is spreading among women,
and large and powerful unions
are springing up among unskilled workers;
so that there is hope that at last
all workers will be enrolled in disciplined hosts,
and there will be no stragglers from the army of labor.
When each Trade Union comprises
the majority of the workers in its Trade,
and when these unions are united
in a National Trade Federation,
then will come the time for the International Federation,
which will mean the triumph of labor
and the freedom of the workers everywhere.8
Besant gave her farewell speech to the secularists on August 30, 1891. She defended Blavatsky and said she had letters from the mahatmas in the same handwriting after her death. Besant, G. R. S. Mead, and Herbert Burrows emphasized that the principles of Theosophy were more important than occultism, but people still wanted to hear more about the mahatmas than brotherhood. Besant succeeded Blavatsky as head of the Esoteric Society in Europe, and she went on a speaking tour in the United States in 1892. She and her guru Gyanendra N. Chakravarti spoke at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago the next year.
After spending a week in Ceylon and visiting a Theosophical college there, Besant arrived with Olcott in India on November 16, 1893. Many Indians joined the Theosophical Society because they did not have to give up their religion. Some Hindu women came out of purdah to attend a convention, but Muslim women were more reluctant. Besant spoke to three thousand people in Madras on "India and Its Mission." Olcott gave her the Hindu name Annabai, and she followed most Hindu customs. Olcott had been reviving Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, and she hoped to do the same for Hinduism. She gave several lectures in Calcutta and stayed with Dr. Bhagavan Das. The London Times quoted her as telling Bengalis, "If the youths of India would act up to the traditions of their past, instead of fawning on a foreign power, they would not long remain under a foreign yoke."9 However, she explained in a letter that she came to India as a spiritual and educational worker rather than for political work. In four months she gave 121 lectures to audiences ranging from 600 to 6,000. Besant would spend the rest of her life as a resident of India, but she would travel to England annually for conferences and occasionally to America.
Besant learned from her own master that the mahatma letters she had found had been written by W. Q. Judge, who engaged in a struggle for power in the TS with Olcott and her. Judge was suspended and then reinstated as the head of the American TS. Besant widened her base of support by traveling to Australia and New Zealand in 1894. On October 29 the Westminster Gazette began a series of articles on "Isis Very Much Unveiled: The Truth about the Great Mahatma Hoax." The Theosophical Society in America declared itself the original and genuine TS. President Olcott in India expelled Judge and cancelled the American charters. Many branches in America formed independent associations. Besant learned Sanskrit and translated the Bhagavad-Gita in 1895. In The Ancient Wisdom she explained that on the higher planes whether a motive is good or bad can be even more important than whether the action is beneficial or not because one can learn from the results. She worked with the clairvoyant Charles W. Leadbeater and published books on thought forms and other spiritual studies. Judge died on March 21, 1896, and the spiritualist Katherine A. Tingley became Besant's rival by traveling to Europe and India. Leadbeater got into trouble by advising boys to use sexual self-gratification and for having close relations with them. Besant repudiated these, and they continued to work together.
In 1898 Besant founded the Central Hindu College, which became Benares Hindu University. She believed that the spiritual wisdom in India's philosophies could help the entire world. Theosophists started 250 schools that included women and the poor. They opposed caste restrictions and child marriage while helping outcasts and widows. To discourage child marriage she refused to admit married boys to the elementary departments and doubled the fees for boys who married in college. In 1903 Besant said that India must be governed by Indians and Indian ideas. However, in 1905 she refused to allow students to attend the college without shoes as part of the Swadeshi protest.
In her book A Study in Consciousness, which was first published in 1904, Besant observed that our knowledge of right and wrong comes from many experiences; but it can be guided by ideals. She suggested that studying divine teachers such as Krishna, Buddha, and Christ could be helpful. Evil desires will fall away if good desires are fostered. One way to avoid bad desires is to imagine the likely consequences that bring misery. The emotion of love directed to a living being is virtue, and vices springing from hate can be eradicated. What is right is in harmony with the great law and brings bliss, but what is wrong brings unhappiness. Love draws people together, whether it be a family, tribe, or nation. Right reason works actions of love into permanent obligations or duties. The will expressing as desire is not free but bound by those impulses. When the will is directed as love, the self-determined person is free. She served as the president of the Theosophical Society from 1907 until her death in 1933.
Surendranath Banerjea (1848-1926) was one of only a handful of Indians who qualified for the Indian Civil Service, but he was dismissed for failing to correct the false report of a subordinate. He went to London to appeal and was not even allowed to take the bar examinations. He decided to dedicate his life to redressing wrongs and protecting rights, both personal and collective. When he was arrested for criticizing a judge, he began the Indian tradition of welcoming imprisonment in order to expose the injustice of the Government's policies. In 1876 he founded the Indian Association of Calcutta to work for a united India. The next year he launched a national campaign against the reduction of the age limit for the Civil Service Examination, holding large meetings in Calcutta, Agra, Lahore, Amritsar, Mirat, Allahabad, Delhi, Kanpur, Lakhnau, Aligarh, and Benares. They petitioned for a higher age and exams in India as well as England, and they sent the Bengali barrister Lalmohan Ghosh to England as their representative.
In 1878 Banerjea urged college graduates to dedicate their lives to helping their country. He argued that violence was not necessary to redress grievances. He believed that under the British they could secure their rights by constitutional agitation. He noted that Nanak, who founded the Sikh empire, did much to unite Hindus and Muslims, and he preached good will between all religions. By living worthy, honorable, and patriotic lives they could live and die happily while making India great. Their next protest was against the oppressive Vernacular Press Act. During the debate over the controversial Ilbert Bill in 1883 they formed an All-India National Fund and the Indian National Conference.
Allan Octavian Hume had been secretary to the Government of India, but in 1879 Viceroy Lytton removed him for asserting his independent views. After he retired from the Indian Civil Service in 1882, Hume worked on forming a political organization that would unite the efforts of Indians. His idea was to have leading Indian politicians meet annually to discuss issues and plan strategies. He founded the Indian National Union in March 1885, and they planned a conference for the last week of December. Because of a cholera epidemic in Poona, the conference was moved to Bombay, and 72 volunteer delegates to the first Indian National Congress met on December 28. Bengali barrister W. C. Bonnerjea presided, and they passed nine resolutions that called for a royal commission to investigate the Indian administration, abolishing the Secretary of State's Indian Council, creating more legislative councils and allowing more elected members and discussion of budgets, reducing military spending, and simultaneous public service examinations in England and India with older candidates. They also protested the annexation of Upper Burma as part of India and sent the resolutions to political associations. Coincidentally in 1885 the second session of the Indian National Conference was meeting in Calcutta. This group merged with the Indian National Congress, which met annually the last week in December in various cities, followed by second and third sessions in Calcutta and Madras. Hume served as general secretary of the Congress for 21 years, and he often went to England to promote their causes.
The second annual Congress at Calcutta was attended by 434 delegates, 230 of them from Bengal. Dadabhai Naoroji presided and called for unity on the political program even though communities have social differences. They wanted India to have the same representative institutions as the British colonies of Canada and Australia. Madan Mohan Malaviya made his first speech and said there should be "no taxation without representation." Viceroy Dufferin invited members of Congress to a garden party as did the Governor of Madras the next year. In 1886 Dufferin appointed six Indians among the fifteen members of the Public Service Commission. The Civil Service was reorganized, and more Indians were recruited into the provincial and subordinate services. However, before leaving office in December 1888, Viceroy Dufferin objected to the methods of the Indian Congress and called them a "microscopic minority" of educated Indians.
In 1888 the Congress demanded that the minimum taxable income be raised to 1,000 rupees. The fifth annual Congress in 1889 was attended by 1,502 delegates, including 254 Muslims. Congress used constitutional agitation, and they published the journal India. Its editor William Digby established the Congress Agency in London, and William Wedderburn was elected chairman of the British Committee of the Indian National Congress and served in that position until his death in 1918. In 1890 Charles Bradlaugh introduced a bill in the House of Commons to expand the legislative councils. When an eleven-year-old bride died after intercourse in Calcutta, agitation increased to raise the age of marriage for girls from ten to twelve or fourteen. Behramji Merwanji Malabari was a Parsi and had published Notes on Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood in 1884. This reform campaign led in 1891 to the Age of Consent Act that prohibited marriage before the age of twelve. In 1892 Naoroji was elected as a Liberal to the British House of Commons, and he argued that Europeans were not natural leaders of India because they did not belong to the people.
Malaviya noted at the eighth Congress that it was unjust to compel Indians to travel 10,000 miles to take an examination for service in their own country. In 1893 the House of Commons favored simultaneous exams in India and England for the Civil Service, but all the governments of India except Mysore opposed this, believing it would exclude Muslims and Sikhs. In the Congress that year Malaviya spoke about the miserable poverty of fifty million Indians because of British exploitation. In 1894 a delegate from Natal persuaded the Congress to pass a resolution asking the British Government to veto a law disenfranchising the Indians in South Africa. In 1895 "Surrender-not" Banerjea suggested that they could transplant the spirit of free institutions that made England a great nation. Never before had an ancient civilization been so influenced by modern ideas. Civilization had moved, like the sun, from east to west, and the west owes a great debt to the east. He hoped that the debt would be repaid by the enfranchisement of their people. In 1896 the Congress sponsored an Industrial Exhibition and a Social Conference.
Although they encouraged Muslims to attend and chose Badruddin Tyabji as president for their third annual meeting, only a few Muslims joined the Congress. Tyabji urged all educated and public-spirited citizens to work together for reforms to benefit all. He tried to persuade Muslims that Congress would not interfere with their religion. Sayyid (Syed) Ahmad Khan emphasized education and had founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh in 1877. He advocated working with Hindus to support each other; but he generally opposed the Indian National Congress because he believed the Hindus and Muslims had conflicting interests. He trusted the British more than the Hindus. He formed the Annual Muslim Educational Congress in 1886, and they held their sessions at the same time of year as the Indian Congress.
Theodore Beck was the first principal of the Aligarh College, and he devoted his career to serving the Muslims in India. He was instrumental in forming the United Indian Patriotic Association in 1888 and the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental Defence Association of Upper India in 1893. These organizations were parallel to the Indian National Congress and were intended to protect the political rights of Muslims by strengthening British rule in India. Sayyid Ahmad was concerned that Muslims as only one-fourth of the population of India would be outvoted by Hindus in a democratic government. His writings in Urdu in a clear style were influential. Beck died in 1899, and Theodore Morison was the principal of Aligarh College until 1905. He continued the hostility toward the Indian Congress, emphasizing educational and economical development rather than political agitation. Sayyid Ahmad died in 1898, and his policies were also followed by his successor, Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk.
Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915) was strongly influenced by his teacher Ranade and carried on his work. When he graduated from Elphinstone College in 1885 he joined the Deccan Education Society in Poona, taking a vow of poverty for twenty years and dedicating his life to public service. That year Fergusson College was founded, and he began teaching English and mathematics. Gokhale first spoke at the Indian National Congress in 1889 and his annual speeches at Calcutta on the budget began in 1902. They called for self-government in the central and provincial governments, abolishing the India Council, spreading education, reducing military expenditures and military training for Indians, separating the judicial and executive functions in criminal justice, employing more Indians in higher public offices, reducing taxes, and using surpluses to promote medical relief, scientific agriculture, and industrial education. He argued that the large annual surpluses of the Government did not indicate success but that taxes on the people were much too high.
In 1903 Gokhale spoke about how they must improve the conditions of the low-caste Hindus by helping them get education and employment to improve their social standing and self-respect. He said it was monstrous that a class of people should be condemned to utter wretchedness, servitude, and degradation by permanent barriers that were impossible for an individual to overcome. He recalled how Gandhi had reported on the discrimination Indians were suffering in South Africa and how Ranade became an advisor to Gandhi. Ranade pointed out that Indians should correct the disgraceful oppression and injustice in their own country. Modern civilization is making greater equality a priority over the privilege and exclusiveness of the old world. Gokhale asked how they could realize their national aspirations if so many of their countrymen remained in ignorance and degradation. He served on the Bombay Legislative Council from 1902 until his death, and Gandhi considered him his political guru. Gokhale declined a position on the Secretary of State's Council and a knighthood. He urged the Parliament to pass mandatory education for boys and educational provisions for girls.
In 1905 Gokhale founded the Servants of India Society for those willing to take vows of poverty to serve the poor and help India to achieve self-government. Their five goals were to create love of the motherland, organize political education and agitation, promote goodwill and cooperation among different communities, assist in educating women and the poor, and lift up the depressed classes. Each member joining the Society took a vow to think of one's country first, serve it without seeking personal advantage, regard all Indians as brothers, be content with provisions provided by the Society, lead a pure life, quarrel with no one, and always work for the aims of the Society.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak was born on July 23, 1856 as a Maratha Brahmin. He earned a university degree and taught mathematics in Poona. He founded the Deccan Education Society and Fergusson College in 1884; but he resigned in 1890 after his associates gave up the ideal of selfless service by keeping their outside earnings. Tilak advocated action for political reforms and published two weekly newspapers - Kesari (which means "The Lion") in Marathi and The Mahratta in English. He argued that no alien government has the right to interfere in social customs no matter how worthy the cause. As a Hindu nationalist he opposed all British laws that restricted their religion, including banning the marriage of young girls. Yet he led by example and did not allow his own daughters to marry until they were at least sixteen. Tilak suggested self-help and national revival. He considered untouchability a cancer in the body of Hindu society and said it must be eradicated at all costs. He was so opposed to the Indian National Congress letting the Indian National Social Conference use their tent that he threatened to burn it down.
Tilak began organizing Ganapati festivals in 1893 to worship the popular Hindu god Ganesha. Tilak admired the Maratha warrior Shivaji and began the annual Shivaji festival in 1895. Rabindranath Tagore wrote a famous poem about the 17th-century hero of Maharashtra. Tilak urged civil disobedience for political change years before Gandhi began his experiments in South Africa; but he was a freedom fighter and considered nonviolence only a strategy, not a moral principle. Gandhi would later call Tilak the "maker of modern India." Tilak favored revolutionary action in politics but moderate evolution in social reforms. When the famine occurred in 1896, he demanded that victims receive the benefits mandated by the Famine Relief Code.
In May 1897 Tilak wrote in Kesari that Shivaji was justified in murdering the Mughal general Afzal Khan, and he suggested that it was not wrong to kill "for the good of others." He objected to the destruction of Hindu property as a means to prevent the bubonic plague from spreading. The Plague Commissioner W. C. Rand ordered stringent inspections and measures in Poona, and the next week on June 22 he and his assistant were shot after celebrating Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee. Both died, and two Natu brothers were detained. Tilak was tried in September, and six Europeans on the jury found him guilty of sedition while the three Indian jurors voted not guilty; the judge sentenced him to eighteen months. The Indian newspapers censured the Government and praised Tilak. Eventually Balkrishna Chapekar and his brother Damodar Chapekar confessed and were hanged. Because of public pressure, Tilak was released early on September 6, 1898. The two Dravid brothers who informed on the Chapekar brothers were murdered on February 8, 1899 by a third brother, Vasudev Chapekar, and his friend, and they were also hanged. Going to prison made Tilak a hero, and he was given the name Lokamanya, which means "leader of the people." He demanded self-government (swaraj) and coined the slogan, "Swaraj is my birthright, and I will have it."
Using Government records, William Digby calculated that the capital drained out of India in the 19th century was £6,080,172,021. This figure represents how much the Europeans were exploiting the natural and human resources of India. India's public debt increased from 94 crores of rupees in 1860 to 312 crores by 1901.
Arabinda Ghose (later called Sri Aurobindo) was born on August 15, 1872 in Calcutta. His father was a barrister, and in 1879 he sent him to Manchester, where he was taught English, Latin, and French by Mr. and Mrs. Drewett. In 1884 Aurobindo went to St. Paul's in London and then to King's College at Cambridge in 1890 on a classics scholarship. He learned more languages and liked writing poetry. He passed his examination in only two years but did not apply for the degree he had earned. Not wanting to be in the Indian Civil Service nor disobey his father, he failed the examination by not showing up for the horse-back riding test.
Aurobindo returned to India at the beginning of 1893. When his father heard that the ship his son was sailing on had sunk, he died of heart failure; but Aurobindo had taken another ship. He taught college in Baroda and was described as speaking little, being desireless, self-controlled, and always given to study. In his series of articles "New Lamps for Old" in Induprakash he ridiculed those who talked about "the blessings of British rule." He criticized the Congress for being too middle-class and selfish without being a popular organization. Ranade warned the editor that he might be prosecuted for sedition, and young Aurobindo had to tone down his rhetoric. He and others began to form secret societies dedicated to Indian freedom such as the Lotus and Dagger Society. His poetry was published as Songs to Myrtilla in 1895. No press would publish his pamphlet "No Compromise" in 1903, but the Maratha revolutionary Kulkarni printed a few thousand copies at night and freely distributed them. Aurobindo became vice principal of the college in 1904 and began yoga. By practicing breath control (pranayama) five hours a day he found his mind worked much better, enabling him to write two hundred lines of poetry in a half hour.
Aurobindo tried to remain hidden behind the scenes. During the time of the Bengal partition, he wrote the revolutionary booklet Bhawani Mandir arguing that India needed to be reborn by developing the Shakti power of the Divine Mother. He wrote that we are all gods and creators with the energy of God within us. He noted that Ramakrishna came, and Vivekananda preached. Now it was up to them to work for progress. Influenced by Bankim Chandra's novel Anandamath and the "Bande Mataram" anthem, he devised rules for a new Order of Sannyasis that would practice strict discipline and work to instruct and help the poor, educate the middle class, and persuade the rich to benefit the public for the general welfare of the country.
1. Quoted in British Paramountcy and Indian Renaissance, Part II, p. 127.
2. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume VII, p. 153 quoted in Indian Idea of Freedom by Dennis Gilmore Dalton, p. 52.
3. “Historical Evolution of India” in Speeches and Writings of Swami Vivekananda, p. 100.
4. Isis Unveiled: Volume 2 Theology by H. P. Blavatsky, p. 590.
5. The Secret Doctrine: Volume 1 Cosmogenesis by H. P. Blavatsky, p. 643.
6. “The Political Status of Women” by Annie Besant, p. 14 in Selection of Social and Political Pamphlets of Annie Besant.
7. Quoted in The First Five Lives of Annie Besant by Arthur H. Nethercot, p. 275.
8. The Trades Union Movement by Annie Besant, p. 28 in Selection of Social and Political Pamphlets of Annie Besant.
9. Quoted in The Last Four Lives of Annie Besant by Arthur H. Nethercot, p. 22.
This chapter has been published in the book SOUTH ASIA 1800-1950.
For ordering information, please click here. | <urn:uuid:6534c084-9a58-4ae7-9385-2fbf7752b53d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.san.beck.org/20-3-India1881-1905.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397842.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00163-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978545 | 16,861 | 3.8125 | 4 |
Tropical Storm Tim formed over the Coral Sea on March 13, 2013, and remained off the coast of northeastern Australia for the next four days. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASAís Terra satellite captured this true-color image of Tim on March 17. At that time Tim was being battered by wind shear and weakening, although it still retained the compact, spiral shape of a tropical cyclone.
Unisys Weather reported that Timís wind speeds rose to 55 knots (100 kilometers per hour) on March 14, but by March 17, speeds had dropped to 35 knots (65 kilometers per hour). Over the next few days the remnants of Tropical Cyclone Tim remained close to the Queensland coast, bringing strong winds and rain to the region. | <urn:uuid:e41b93d8-8991-497c-ad0b-74451f116c32> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://modarch.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2013-03-26 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394414.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00084-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954315 | 158 | 2.921875 | 3 |
HIGH POINT, N.C., June 5, 2014 – More than 100 second-grade students from Montlieu Academy of Technology learned through LEGOs at High Point University this week.
The second-graders took part in a LEGO Showcase, constructing catapults, creating simple machines, configuring robotic animals and recreating natural habitats and life cycles with LEGOs to enhance their understanding of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
“For the kids that still need that extra stimulation to learn a concept, LEGO days are great. It’s engaging and the students are focused,” says Cyteria McSwain, a second-grade teacher at Montlieu and recent graduate of HPU. “We are starting to expose our students to STEM concepts at Montlieu, and this is a perfect way to kickstart that.”
In her classroom at Montlieu, McSwain’s students are learning about the biological life cycles of animals. When they came to campus, her students built underwater LEGO habitats that represented each stage in the life cycle of a fish. Participating in LEGO activities that supplement classroom learning, McSwain says, helps students with nontraditional learning styles meet curriculum goals.
Frequently heard in each rotation was “LEGO down!” a phrase that signaled everyone to raise both hands while a student searched for a dropped or misplaced piece.
“We host LEGO days for schools because we are trying to ignite the passion and motivation in building 21st century skills by using tools that students don’t have access to in the regular classroom,” says Dr. Shirley Disseler, assistant professor of education at HPU and member of the LEGO Education Advisory Board.
The event also serves as great real-world teaching experience for HPU education majors. Students assisted with the event by hosting learning stations throughout the School of Education.
“These programs provide our students opportunities to utilize strategies, classroom management styles and all the things they’re learning about how to run a classroom and write lesson plans,” Disseler adds.
Annabelle Ketchum, a fifth-year master’s student at HPU, says LEGO days help the Montlieu students develop skills like teamwork, attention to detail, following directions, patience, mechanics and even computer programming. Ketchum recently traveled to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., with seven other HPU education majors to learn more about the knowledge and teaching tactics surrounding STEM.
McSwain adds that the LEGO program not only teaches students valuable problem-solving skills and self-learning concepts that prepare them for the 21st century, but the students also enjoy getting out of the classroom as well.
“If they run into a problem, the students have to figure out a solution without a teacher telling them exactly what they need to do,” she says. “Your boss isn’t going to tell you how to fix a problem; they’re just going to tell you to find a solution. And a different environment is better for the students because they’re relaxed and think it’s fun – I don’t think they realize it’s work!”
HPU holds an ongoing partnership with Montlieu, hosting spring and fall festivals for the children, providing academic mentorship and putting iPads in the hands of each elementary student. As part of the community-driven iPad Project, HPU education majors assist children in the classroom throughout the year during their student teaching, while the university’s information technology staff provides technical training and support. In addition to holding a technology partnership with the Academy, HPU is also currently moving toward becoming a partner of LEGO education with Montlieu. | <urn:uuid:74d920e0-4811-43db-a173-6fc31b5ae7d1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.highpoint.edu/blog/2014/06/lego-down-hpu-hosts-lego-day-for-montlieu-academy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397696.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00102-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949103 | 787 | 2.71875 | 3 |
It would seem intuitively appealing that the brain’s billions of minuscule information exchanges-the synapses-may be the main site of destruction in Alzheimer’s disease. After all, if no more transmitter buzzes across the narrow cleft and no more currents crackle on the receiving side, memories, learning, and other functions must surely disappear. Even so, surprisingly little is understood about what happens to synapses in the years preceding frank Alzheimer’s. This is beginning to change, however. Here in Orlando, a two-day satellite event to the main Neuroscience conference drew 140 researchers to focus attention on just this question. Featuring 22 talks and 45 posters, the symposium brought together basic synapse biologists with neurodegeneration researchers in an attempt to fire up some excitatory activity in the field and trigger new research projects. The journal Neurobiology of Aging sponsored the event, titled "Molecular and Cellular Basis of Synaptic Loss and Dysfunction in Alzheimer’s Disease."
Paul Coleman (University of Rochester), who co-chaired the conference, said that while certain populations of neurons clearly die in Alzheimer’s, they don’t disappear quickly, extinguishing well-functioning synapses overnight. Instead, he said, synapses probably fade away slowly long before the cell dies. The gradual dysfunction and structural disintegration of synapses deserves study in its own right independent of neuronal loss, which has received the bulk of attention to date.
To support his contention, Coleman reviewed studies in his and other labs showing that living neurons of people with AD are already losing synapses. Older studies showed that the dendrites of neurons in AD shrink first at the tips and then further towards the cell body while the neuron is still alive. Others showed that those regressing dendrites contain fewer synapses than do dendrites of normally aging brains. More recent work in Coleman’s lab showed that neurons that are filled with tangles in people with AD express much smaller amounts of certain synaptic markers than do neighboring neurons that have no tangles yet. Taking the same experiment a step earlier, Coleman said that even neurons from AD patients that have no tangles yet express lower levels of synaptic marker proteins than comparable neurons from normally aging people, suggesting that synapses decline in AD before classic pathology becomes visible.
Other work amplifying mRNA from individual neurons and analyzing it on microarrays identified a slew of synaptic proteins whose expression drops in still-living AD neurons, including dynamin, the adapter protein AP3MuB, and others. Interestingly, Coleman’s group found that genes involved in synaptic function decline even while structural synaptic markers remain normal, suggesting subtle synaptic dysfunction as an early sign of Alzheimer’s.
Most of the important questions remain wide open for study, said Coleman. This includes the mystery of what starts this decline, what its sequential steps are, and how these steps relate to pathology and cognitive function. Also unclear is why cholinergic neurons are supremely vulnerable while GABAergic neurons, for example, are relatively spared. Finally, it is also unclear whether synaptic loss precedes neuronal loss and symptoms in other neurodegenerative diseases.
Even so, one thing seems clear. "Cognitive decline is largely a function of the decline of synapses. The therapeutic notion that follows is, we should try to rescue the synapses, not just neurons. Once the synapses are lost, what’s the point in saving the cell body?" Coleman said.
What, then, should the intrigued AD investigator study? The remaining talks of the first day described different aspects of basic synapse biology that introduced some of the "whos" and "hows" of synaptic plasticity. Together, they offered numerous angles and candidate molecules to scrutinize in neurodegeneration studies. For example, co-chair David Bredt of the University of California, San Francisco, described the postsynaptic density (PSD) of the typical glutamatergic synapse. So named years ago because it appeared in electron microscopy as a stripe of fuzzy black dirt just below the nice clean line of the postsynaptic membrane, his dynamic organelle contains roughly 100 proteins. Especially prominent is a large, 30-protein signaling complex of glutamatergic AMPA and NMDA receptors, sodium and calcium channels, and anchoring and adaptor proteins for these channels called GRIP, homer, PSD-95, shank, as well as signaling proteins such as CaM kinase 2, immediate early genes such as arc, and c-fos, cell adhesion and cytoskeletal proteins (Kennedy, 2000).
Many of these proteins are highly dynamic; they respond to synaptic activity by turning on genes, recycling and trafficking receptors. For example, Bredt described studies of a protein underlying a spontaneous mutant mouse strain kept at Jackson Labs in Bar Harbor, Maine, that was dubbed stargazer because it stares upwards during epileptic seizures. Stargazin, it turns out, recruits intracellular AMPA receptors to the membrane and chaperones their glycosylation in the ER. All this happens in the dendrite, into which the ER extends. PSD-95 then recruits extrasynaptic receptors to the synapse, and both PSD-95 and stargazin activity changes with synaptic stimulation in ways that remain poorly understood, Bredt said. The stargazin variety in the unfortunate mouse strain is active in cerebellar granule cells, but one family member clusters AMPA receptors in glial cells, another in hippocampus, Bredt said.
Oswald Steward of UC Irvine outlined work into the poorly understood question of how the synapse communicates with the nucleus as a synaptic activity is being consolidated into a lasting memory. "There must be signaling from the synapse to the nucleus to turn on gene expression. Newly synthesized gene products must then be delivered back to the active synapses and changes take place over time that create an enduring alteration in synaptic efficacy," Steward said.
To get at this problem, Steward first pointed out that the base of dendritic spines (synapses ring the top of these spines) contains membranous polyribosomes that translate mRNAs. James Eberwine of the University of Pennsylvania reported that up to 600 different mRNAs get transported from the nucleus to these spines, and Steward finds about 20 of those in high abundance. These include cytoskeletal proteins, kinases, MaP2, calmodulin, G-protein, BDNF, and the many other components of the PSD signaling complex.
Consider the immediate early gene arc, for example. Synaptic activity induces its mRNA expression; in the hippocampus, a single large stimulus involving NMDA receptor activation strongly turns on its expression, said Steward. Interestingly, arc mRNA then is transported only to those synapses that were active, and accumulates there within two hours, about the time period during which consolidation takes place. In addition, Steward said, arc mRNA that is already present in the dendrite at the time of stimulation gets targeted to active synapses within minutes.
How does the call for arc expression reach the nucleus? Steward’s research favors the MAP kinase pathway in such a way that NMDA activation would trigger Erk phosphorylation (Erk is a downstream member of this pathway and translocates to the nucleus when activated.) The targeting of the resulting mRNA back to active synapses, however, works through a different signal, Steward said, perhaps CAM kinase 2, and further stimulation of the requisite NMDA receptors then trigger docking of arc protein to the postsynaptic density. He suggested this sequence as a possible pathway for how repeated stimulation can dynamically change a given set of synapses, but he added that it remains unknown whether and how these signaling mechanisms change in age-related memory disorders.
Eberwine expanded on Steward’s reference to mRNA transport and translation in the dendrites. Dendrites make up 90 percent of the cell surface of many neurons, he said, so it is not surprising that incipient neurodegeneration would begin there. Eberwine reviewed the clever methods his lab developed to remove individual dendrites from cultured primary hippocampal neurons, amplify their mRNA content, and screen microarrays to identify them.
To show that these mRNAs are actually translated into protein locally in the dendrite, his group sprayed tagged mRNA directly into dendrites and then detected its protein with antibodies. They developed a GFP marker for local translation in the dendrites, as well. Moreover, they found that regions in the mRNAs and in the local ribosomes control the particular characteristics of dendritic translation, which differ from those in the soma. Which mRNAs are translated in dendrites? One example is glutamate receptor mRNA, which is locally made and then inserted into dendritic membranes.
How do the mRNAs get into the dendrites? Signal transduction is not enough, since nucleic acids do not float unaccompanied through the cytoplasm. Eberwine showed the mRNAs travel with RNA-binding proteins, such as translin or PABP. However, it remains unknown which RNA-binding proteins bind which cargo RNAs, or how this binding controls transport. While this area is in its infancy, Eberwine stressed that RNA-binding proteins’ ability to modulate the transport and distribution of particular mRNAs will make RNA-binding proteins important in understanding neurodegenerative diseases. One example exists in their role in Fragile-X, the most common form of mental retardation, and Eberwine recommended that researchers look for differences in the functioning of these proteins in Alzheimer’s.
Paul Worley of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, reviewed the function of three immediate early genes that function at the excitatory synapse. Narp (neuronal activity-regulated protein) is made and secreted into the excitatory hippocampal synapse, peaking at about 16 hours after strong stimulation (typically, immediate early proteins peak at two hours). Narp expressed in one cell can cluster AMPA receptors on a contacted cell. In this mechanism of synaptic plasticity, narp can act as a presynaptic aggregator for postsynaptic receptors. In this sense, narp is a cousin of agrin, a molecule well-studied for its key role in the clustering acetylcholine receptors on the developing neuromuscular junction. Similarly, NP1 is another immediate early gene that induces AMPA receptor clusters. NP1 and narp can dimerize and form mixed hexamers that can cluster AMPA receptors more stably.
A member of a rapidly growing family, the immediate early homer plays a role in the calcium dynamics and G-protein signaling of the metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR). Together with arc, homer is the most dynamic of all known immediate early genes in neurons, Worley said. Homer is both a scaffolding protein and a catalyst of receptor function. It has an EVH1 domain, much like mena, Wasp, and other proteins known to be able to change the assembly of the actin cytoskeleton that runs just underneath the dendritic membrane. Homer also is able to crosslink the mGluR receptor with the endoplasmic reticulum, meaning that this organelle comes into very close contact with the postsynaptic density, extending right to the top of the dendritic spines.
Interestingly for Alzheimer’s, perhaps, introducing homer into dendrites of cultured neurons produced a receptor clustering that dramatically increased calcium influx in response to stimulation, Worley said. Intracellular calcium signaling and homeostasis are known to play a role in APP processing (see further below).
Regarding the immediate early gene arc, Worley said that it truly is a postsynaptic density protein that may be a chaperone or scaffold for other proteins bearing an SH3 domain. In addition to the ERK-mediated transcription Steward described, Worley said his lab detects arc transcription as early as three minutes after a mouse is beginning to explore a new cage.
While in general, immediate early genes are thought to enhance synaptic transmission, there are also indications that they can dampen transmission following a large stimulus. How these roles relate to neurodegeneration is still unclear, Worley added.
Howard Federoff of the University of Rochester, New York, presented the newest results of his ongoing studies of NGF. Federoff said NGF is much more than a developmental survival factor for neurons. He believes it is a key regulator of synaptic plasticity, in part because it is present on the postsynaptic side, its expression is regulated by activity, and its release from hippocampal neurons and dendrites is controlled by depolarization.
Federoff’s lab created inducible NGF transgenics. The mice develop normally while the transgene is dormant; then the researchers can express it in any brain region by injecting a Herpes simplex-derived activator. Federoff’s group turned the NGF on in the hippocampus of young adult mice to study its effect on cholinergic input into the hippocampus from the basal forebrain. This septohippocampal projection in the mouse corresponds to the human perforant pathway going from layer two of the entorhinal cortex to the molecular layer of the dentate gyrus in the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and degenerates early in Alzheimer’s. It turned out that mice with gain of NGF function in their hippocampus are better at special learning than are controls. (Incidentally, spatial learning is the behavioral category that generally shows the most robust results, i.e., decline, in APP-transgenic mice, as well.) The mice had extensive spatial reorganization of the cholinergic fibers into the hippocampus, and the extra NGF further strengthened this effect.
Federoff also reported that his group ran microarray tests of gene activation in the NGF-enhanced hippocampus compared to the control side, and of the septum area that projects to the hippocampus. (The NGF released by hippocampal neurons is taken up and transported back to the septal neurons.) He is currently analyzing genes whose expression changed; these include signaling molecules, synaptic proteins, ion channels, and transcription factors.
Finally, Federoff described some unpublished work on NGF expression in cultured primary neurons. Almost all of the NGF they saw was in the postsynaptic density. Apparently, the neuron maintains two pools of NGF. A constitutive pool in the soma may be the one that maintains survival, and a regulated pool in the dendrites may be the one that responds to activity by the presynapse. When NGF levels rise in the neuron, it re-apportions the relative amounts in those pools.
Mark Bear of Brown University, Rhode Island, presented work on long-term depression (LTD), a negative form of synaptic plasticity usually induced by stimulation of NMDA receptors. In LTD, the expression of AMPA receptors and their number in the synaptic membrane declines. Protein kinase A, the phosphatase 2B, and the anchoring protein AKAP 150 mediate this loss and could be checked for changes in Alzheimer’s, Bear said.
In a demonstration of what "Use It or Lose It" means in molecular terms, Bear also reported on work with monocular deprivation. Traditionally, shutting off sensory input from one eye has been used to study synaptic pruning and activity-based refining of connections in the visual cortex during a particular sensitive period in postnatal development. Temporarily covering one eye is also used to help correct certain eye asymmetries in children. Here, Bear asks if the known molecular mechanisms of LTD underlie changes at postnatal synapses that have fallen silent. When Bear analyzed synaptic currents in the visual cortex from rats kept with a closed eye, he found a signature typical of LTD. Not only were there 20 percent fewer synaptic AMPA receptors in slices cultured from rats after only 24 hours of deprivation, but also, the GluR1 subunit of AMPA receptors had a telltale dephosphorylation at serine 845. Previously, Bear had reported dephosphorylation of this site by cAMP-dependent PKA in in-vitro experiments with pharmacologically induced LTD.
What this might mean for Alzheimer’s is unclear. Bear said that while in postnatal life, LTD is the effect of insufficient activity, in aging it might occur in response to inappropriate activity. Coleman replied that the rapid time course seen in Bear’s study does not jibe with the presumably gradual decline of synapses in the degenerating brain; however, the mechanisms of LTD deserve exploration because it is especially prominent during two periods of life, namely postnatal development and aging.
Edward Ziff of New York University reported that palmitoylation of AMPA receptor-binding proteins is a newly appreciated mechanism by which these proteins control the trafficking of AMPA receptors between the synapse and other intracellular vesicle-like structures. He introduced PICK as an AMPA receptor-binding protein that may be involved in LTD by dissociating the Glur2 AMPA receptor from the membrane; a protein called NSF antagonizes this action. Ziff described other work with protein complexes called SNARE and SNAP, which determine the mobility of AMPA receptors.
Switching gears, Mike Ehlers of Duke University in Ithaca, New York, described recent research into how groups of proteins of the postsynaptic density change in response to synaptic activity. The talk visibly fascinated the audience with its implication of the proteasome as a force behind these changes, and not the lysosomal system, which has previously been implicated in synaptic protein turnover.
Ehlers said that while most of the components of the PSD are known, their relative abundance was not, nor was there a global understanding of the dynamic changes within them. He said the PSD is so highly plastic that many components reorganize within minutes of activity; lasting changes in activity alter the strength of the synapse, the number of receptors in it, as well as the size-and even appearance and disappearance-of the PSD.
To assess multiprotein changes, Ehlers developed a method to isolate, from cultured neurons, PSDs that were in a similar state of activity, and analyzed their protein content with gel density measurements. Following increased synaptic activity, he saw discrete groups of proteins go up and down in concentration, and the mirror image of that occurred following blocking. These changes reached a plateau after one day and reversed when the activating or blocking drugs were washed out. Overall protein content did not change.
To understand further some of the underlying mechanisms-in addition to the translational and transcriptional findings as described by Steward and Eberwine-Ehlers looked at protein turnover with pulse-chase experiments. He found that the proteins of the PSD are normally turned over every five hours; again, synaptic activity sped this up and blockade slowed it down.
What might be controlling this protein turnover? One candidate is the ubiquitin-proteasome system. It is not clear how it affects synapses, but it recently has been implicated in LTP and synapse development, Ehlers said. With fractionation experiments, he found that he could detect ubiquitin conjugation (the step marking proteins for degradation) in fractions containing synaptic proteins, and this ubiquitin labeling increased with synaptic activity.
These data, while preliminary, may open a new aspect for the role of the proteasome in neurodegenerative diseases. What if the proteasome slows down too much? Could that impair the ability of the postsynaptic side to meet the demands posed by signals coming from the presynaptic side?
If indeed proteasome activity declines in the run-up to AD, one protein that might accumulate is tau. Eva-Maria Mandelkow of the Max-Planck Institute in Hamburg, Germany, updated her and her husband’s hypothesis that tau’s role in AD pathogenesis might derive from its blockade of axonal transport, starving the synapse of vital ingredients including APP (see previous news story). Even very minor elevations of tau concentration, over time, might cause neurodegeneration in this way, Mandelkow said.
Jesus Avila of University of Madrid, Spain, described a conditional transgenic mouse in which overexpression of GSK3, one of numerous kinases known to phosphorylate tau, can be induced with tetracycline. In these mice, tau was hyperphosphorylated, but tangles did not form. Avila suggested that the cytoskeleton would change as hyperphosphorylated tau is no longer able to stabilize microtubuli. This concludes the first day of presentations delivered at the Neuroscience Conference in Orlando. Please see Day 2 summary.-Gabrielle Strobel.
- Tau Accused of Blocking Transport, Causing APP to Linger and Nerve Processes to Wither
- Synapses Sizzle in Limelight of Symposium Preceding Neuroscience Conference, Orlando: Day 2
No Available Further Reading | <urn:uuid:78b25cf3-3cc9-400d-83b5-eee14a5d3ccb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.alzforum.org/news/conference-coverage/synapses-sizzle-limelight-symposium-preceding-neuroscience-conference | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00161-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935026 | 4,417 | 2.875 | 3 |
The accurate intuition of experts are better explained by the effects of prolonged practice than by heuristics.
It is the mark of effortful activities that they interfere with each other.
It is easier to recognize other people's mistakes than our own.
A sentence is more easily understood if it describes what an agent does than if it describes what something is, what properties it has.
You will find in the changing size of your pupils a faithful record of how hard you worked.
Cognitive strain is affected by both the current level of effort and the presence of unmet demands.
This quality of pastness is an illusion. The truth is, as Jacoby and many followers have shown, that the name David Stenbill will look more familiar when you see it because you will see it more clearly.
I find this astonishing. A sense of cognitive ease is apparantly generated by a very faint signal from the associative machine, which "knows" that the three words are coherent (share an association) long before the association is retrieved.
Do the good feelings actually lead to intuitions of coherence? Yes, they do.
An important principle of skills training: rewards for improved performance work better than punishment of mistakes.
Professional golfers putt more accurately for par than for a birdie.
A single cockroach will completely wreck the appeal of a bowl of cherries, but a cherry will do nothing at all for a bowl of cockroaches. [Paul Rozin]
Our brains are not designed to reward generosity as reliably as they punish mistakes.
In addition to improving the emotional quality of life, the deliberate avoidance of exposure to short-term outcomes improves the quality of both decisions and outcomes. | <urn:uuid:f97798bc-681a-496f-b235-97423eaaf818> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://jonjagger.blogspot.com/2013_01_08_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398873.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00155-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952797 | 351 | 2.609375 | 3 |
What Is Gastritis?
Gastritis is an inflammation, irritation, or erosion of the lining of the stomach. It can occur suddenly (acute) or gradually (chronic).
What Causes Gastritis?
Gastritis can be caused by irritation due to excessive alcohol use, chronic vomiting, stress, or the use of certain medications such as aspirin or other anti-inflammatory drugs. It may also be caused by any of the following:
Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori): A bacteria that lives in the mucous lining of the stomach; without treatment, the infection can lead to ulcers, and in some people, stomach cancer.
Pernicious anemia: A form of anemia that occurs when the stomach lacks a naturally occurring substance needed to properly absorb and digest vitamin B12
Bile reflux: A backflow of bile into the stomach from the bile tract (that connects to the liver and gallbladder)
Infections caused by bacteria and viruses
If gastritis is left untreated, it can lead to a severe loss of blood and may increase the risk of developing stomach cancer.
What Are the Symptoms of Gastritis?
Symptoms of gastritis vary among individuals, and in many people there are no symptoms. However, the most common symptoms include:
How Is Gastritis Diagnosed?
To diagnose gastritis, your doctor will review your personal and family medical history, perform a thorough physical evaluation, and may recommend any of the following tests:
Upper endoscopy. An endoscope, a thin tube containing a tiny camera, is inserted through your mouth and down into your stomach to look at the stomach lining. The doctor will check for inflammation and may perform a biopsy, a procedure in which a tiny sample of tissue is removed and then sent to a laboratory for analysis.
Blood tests. The doctor may perform various blood tests, such as checking your red blood cell count to determine whether you have anemia, which means that you do not have enough red blood cells. He or she can also screen for H. pylori infection and pernicious anemia with blood tests.
Fecal occult blood test (stool test). This test checks for the presence of blood in your stool, a possible sign of gastritis. | <urn:uuid:aab058e1-e0be-4374-be37-f99803f3b0cc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/digestive-diseases-gastritis?src=rsf_full-4093_pub_none_xlnk | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00122-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920607 | 475 | 3.765625 | 4 |
Deconvolution in Optical Microscopy
Deconvolution is a computationally intensive image processing technique that is being increasingly utilized for improving the contrast and resolution of digital images captured in the microscope. The foundations are based upon a suite of methods that are designed to remove or reverse the blurring present in microscope images induced by the limited aperture of the objective.
Practically any image acquired on a digital fluorescence microscope can be deconvolved, and several new applications are being developed that apply deconvolution techniques to transmitted light images collected under a variety of contrast enhancing strategies. One of the most suitable subjects for improvement by deconvolution are three-dimensional montages constructed from a series of optical sections.
Deconvolution is a computationally intensive image processing technique that is being increasingly utilized for improving the contrast and resolution of digital images captured in the microscope.
Discussed in this section are the most commonly utilized algorithms for deconvolution in optical microscopy can be divided into two classes: deblurring and image restoration.
Artifacts are often not caused by computation, but by histology, optical misalignment, or electronic noise. To diagnose the source of an artifact, the first step is to compare the raw image with the deconvolved image.
Resolution in optical microscopy is often assessed by means of an optical unit termed the Rayleigh criterion, which was originally formulated for determining the resolution of two-dimensional telescope images, but has since spread into many other arenas in optics.
Selected Literature References and Internet Resources
Listed in this section are links to web resources on deconvolution analysis, including software packages, hardware (microscopes and accessories), and laboratories involved with the technology.
A number of review articles on deconvolution in optical microscopy have been published by researchers in the field and were utilized as references to prepare discussions included in this Digital Image Processing Section. | <urn:uuid:d4b50a7e-f12d-4601-ae71-58d99ce58556> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.olympusmicro.com/primer/digitalimaging/deconvolution/deconvolutionhome.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404826.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00141-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940373 | 387 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Getting a rocket into space is complicated business. In addition to expertise in physics, materials science, and electronics, you need the business savvy to create a sustainable company in an industry replete with flameouts.
By Ted O'Callahan
Inside an immaculate but otherwise nondescript industrial building just outside the Beltway in suburban Virginia, half a dozen engineers and technicians, wearing lab coats, shoe covers, and hairnets, hover beside a silver-grey 10-foot-diameter metal puck.
For years, the bulk of Orbital Sciences Corporation's work has been designing, building, and launching commercial, scientific, and defense satellites—probably the closest thing there is to a reliable, profitable niche in the space business. Now the company is trying something new. In 2012, this silver and gold puck bristling with guidance sensors and wing-like solar arrays—Orbital's cargo-carrying Cygnus Advanced Maneuvering Spacecraft—is scheduled to navigate itself to a rendezvous with the International Space Station.
Any company in the business of space must be prepared for extreme complexity, as technical, logistical, regulatory, political, operational, and management challenges collide. The up-front costs are tremendous; the returns are uncertain. Tolerance for error is close to zero, yet the materials and engineering must push the bounds of what is currently possible. And though they seem innumerable, every contingency must be planned for. This isn't just rocket science; it's the business of rocket science.
Orbital has to complete a test mission to show that Cygnus, once released from a rocket about 150 miles above Earth, can navigate itself to the space station, which is orbiting at an altitude of 250 miles. It is an exercise akin to a car automatically merging onto a freeway and matching speeds with a particular car—but in three dimensions. Once Cygnus has found the space station, it must hold a position about 30 feet away while astronauts complete the hookup using a grappling arm.
Because it's a test flight, the cargo will be inexpensive, but needed, items like t-shirts, underwear, and food. The astronauts on the Space Station will unload the cargo, and then repack it with trash. Cygnus is an expendable craft, meaning that when it re-enters the atmosphere, much of it will burn up any surviving pieces will fall into a remote part of the Pacific.
Before Cygnus can head out on its demonstration flight, the engineers and technicians must grind through tedious, meticulous tasks such as testing every possible combination of connections among 17,000 wires running through the device. Nonetheless, there is real energy in the room: people at Orbital say that it's exciting and fun to build a spacecraft. But the company also has a lot on the line: a successful demonstration by Cygnus enables a $1.9 billion contract with NASA for eight additional missions.
Risking to Grow
Cygnus is new, but it draws on the technology and production practices that Orbital has been developing for nearly 30 years. It will be carried into orbit in the nosecone of Orbital's new Antares rocket (originally branded as the Taurus II), which will launch from a new launch pad developed by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) and the Virginia Spaceflight Authority at NASA's Wallops Island facility on the Virginia shore. Any one of these three projects—spacecraft, rocket, or launch pad—would be a major undertaking for any organization. Orbital's ability to bring all three together will define the company's future.
The company has been building rockets and spacecraft long enough to know that each one is a new gamble. "With craft manufacture where you're making a few a year—and these are very complex, very high-energy devices that operate near materials and physical limits—the chance of accurately predicting how long it will take to develop these systems is, I think, near zero," says Bill Claybaugh '83, senior director for human space systems at Orbital.
One thing is certain: it won't be cheap. Aerospace compensation can average $200,000 a year, and, Orbital has more than 600 employees contributing to Cygnus, the rocket, and the launch pad. From 2007 through the 3rd quarter of 2011, Orbital had $350 million in research and development costs, primarily attributed to the Antares and Cygnus programs.
The Commercial Space Industry
People who get into the space industry tend to be passionate about it. Claybaugh worked with NASA and invested venture capital in the industry before joining Orbital. To unwind after a hard week, he builds amateur rockets—not the cardboard, light-a-fuse-on-the-bottom sort, but the kind that starts as a block of aluminum on his lathe and eventually flies to 60,000 feet at four times the speed of sound. And he isn't an engineer at Orbital; he's a business guy, one of the few who wears a suit at a company where jeans and t-shirts are more common.
Claybaugh reports to Frank Culbertson, a former astronaut who went on three shuttle missions and was the only American in space on September 11, 2001 (from the windows of the International Space Station, Culbertson saw the smoke plume coming from Manhattan and the gash in the Pentagon). The CEO of Orbital is a NASA and Hughes Aircraft veteran with aeronautics degrees from Caltech and MIT and an MBA from Harvard. It's a company and industry of high performers.
Claybaugh suggests internal drive is a key factor for people who get into commercial space, since it's never been easy to make a buck. "Total profitability of the entire American airline industry since 1903 is negative," he says. "And that's almost certainly true of space transportation as well. It's the kind of business that is unlikely to generate any significant profit, and will probably, in the long run, generate a negative profit. This is due to what is called the public benefit, private cost problem: the often very large benefit of transportation is in the increased economic activity that it allows, but that benefit is generally captured by government (through taxation) rather than by the transportation industry—the industry is a commodity business in which prices are inevitably driven to near—or below—cost."
Henry Hertzfeld, professor of space policy and international affairs at George Washington University, says, "The overall return from space is, I believe, positive, but it's so diffused through so many sectors there isn't any equivalent to a business ROI for government R&D." He adds, "A lot of things that we take for granted, people don't see as coming out of expenditures on the space program… They just see the shuttle accidents. They read about how expensive it is."
A great many daily activities are touched by the space program—some everyday technologies come directly from the space program; for others, development was sped up and stimulated by the business of getting into space. These include things like GPS systems, weather tracking, many noninvasive medical procedures, electronics and computer miniaturization, and clean-room systems, along with numerous materials and lubricants. And, of course, much of our communication and entertainment passes through satellites.
NASA's budget is around $18 billion annually. The Department of Defense spends more than that on space but the full figures aren't known. In difficult economic times, there's pressure on those budgets. Government agencies try to reduce costs by passing risks and uncertainty to private firms. Many aerospace startups have burned brightly and briefly before disappearing over the past forty years.
Orbital employs some 3,700 employees in six facilities around the country; it had revenue of $1.3 billion and net income of $47 million in 2010. The company has been around since 1982, making it much younger than the old guard of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics (and also entirely space focused, unlike those behemoth aerospace/defense corporations). On the other hand, Orbital represents demonstrated experience compared to a crop of recent startups led by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), started in 2002 by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, which is also building a cargo delivery system with a NASA contract.
Because space companies tend to depend on anchor customers—typically NASA or the DOD—small- and mid-sized companies can face challenges in trying to work with those massive organizations.
"One of the shocking things that all startups go through in dealing with the government is the day that they're holding some review and the company has four people and the government shows up with fourteen," says Claybaugh. "Boeing and Lockheed know to send twenty even though the presentation only takes four because this is a contact sport. You need to be one-on-one with every one of those government guys to make sure they are getting what they want."
Another barrier to entry into the business is the bureaucracy involved. Here's an example: components for the communication system of the International Space Station are made by a Japanese company. To order a part, Orbital must go through the State Department, because such components are controlled by International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). This means that the component arrives packed in a padlocked stainless steel case with vibration sensors both outside and in. If the component doesn't work, Orbital must obtain a license to export it back to the maker—and can't discuss what is wrong with the supplier. To put that in perspective, there are roughly 7,000 parts in Cygnus alone.
Engineering for Space
Setting aside a gaggle of largely unproven new companies, Orbital is the only space-focused startup to have succeeded since 1970 (SpaceX may be joining this very short list). Over its lifetime, Orbital has launched 200 satellites and 165 of its own launch vehicles with a 95% success rate; the challenges are such that failing only one time in twenty is remarkable. And mistakes are very visible: one of Orbital's smaller rockets, the Taurus XL, had two consecutive failures, each destroying a payload of NASA science satellites with a combined value estimated in excess of $600 million.
Failure can come in many ways. Beyond the physics of lifting a large object out of the atmosphere, there are details like electromagnetic radiation in space, which can cause electronics to fry or reset in unpredictable ways. And tiny bits of debris litter space; they can hit a spacecraft with about the force of a 50 caliber bullet—which is why the craft is tested to see how it stands up to fired projectiles.
"Space is a very harsh environment. These machines are exceedingly complex. That's what makes them expensive," says Hertzfeld. "And we've learned a lot over the years, but there's always something new. The FAA certifies a type of plane, the 777, for example, and every flight is almost identical. I don't think there was ever a shuttle flight that was identical to the one preceding it. NASA certifies flights, not the vehicle. We practically rebuilt the thing each time."
That is why the work on the ground is so painstaking with any space project. "The entire point of this business is that there should be no surprises while you are in operation," says Claybaugh.
One bay in Orbital's manufacturing building is devoted to testing equipment—a $100 million capital investment. In one part of the facility, a commercial satellite is sealed in the Thermal-Vacuum Chamber, which, over several days, in a near-vacuum, reproduces the temperature extremes experienced by the sun-facing and dark-facing side of a craft.
In a separate part of the bay, there is a vibration test underway on another satellite. A cluster of engineers watch a small monitor set outside the massive blast door. The entire building rattles and roars. A Cygnus craft already being built in anticipation of a successful demonstration flight sits waiting for a turn in machines that do electromagnetic and UV radiation tests.
A New Rocket and a New Launch Pad
SpaceX took four and a half years and $300 million to develop the Falcon 9 rocket, which will be launching its cargo missions to the Space Station (a NASA study found it would have cost $1.4 billion to build the same rocket within NASA). Because the up-front costs are so high, aerospace companies typically develop a new rocket only if they have a contract to do so. But Orbital is paying for Antares itself. This new, larger rocket will open up opportunities for the cargo missions and a wider range of satellite launches. Asked when Orbital expected a financial payoff from the Antares, Claybaugh says, "Sometimes investments are strategic rather than purely economic. Orbital's investment in Antares can be best understood as a Real Option: Antares allows multiple future business opportunities that do not exist in the absence of that transportation capability."
Rather than starting from scratch, Orbital decided to assemble a rocket from components built largely by other companies. For example, the company bought mothballed engines that had been manufactured for the Soviet moon program. While such recycling isn't unusual, it comes with its own risks: during an engine test last summer, a piece of corroded metal failed, leading to a burnout. To lower the risk of such an event in flight, Orbital developed a non-invasive test to detect corrosion. The company will also perform a full launch test of Antares before sending Cygnus aloft.
For all the technical challenges of the rocket and the spacecraft, the new liquid fuel launch pad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island has been the hardest project to keep on budget and on schedule. The initial plan for the launch pad called for the state of Virginia to be the owner, enabling it to provide launch services to other organizations. Additional costs have required investment by Orbital and a more complicated business arrangement.
Beyond the financing and ownership challenges, the pad is creating the need for new infrastructure for liquid-fueled rockets. "For the last 50 years there has been a liquid fuel competency developed in Florida around Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center," says Les Kovacs, the Wallops site project manager. The area has gathered multiple layers of contractors, subcontractors, and sub-subcontractors with increasingly niche skills. "In Florida, if you need to get a hose cleaned to liquid oxygen capability, you get it back in half a day," Kovacs says. "Here, because there is no in situ capability, we have to send it to New Jersey and it may be a four or five day turnaround. The schedule implications are much more severe."
Launching a rocket is a controlled explosion of extraordinary power. The sound alone is so powerful that it could bounce off the ground and knock the rocket off its path or destroy it all together; during a launch, nozzles on the launch mount shoot water into the thrust plume of the rocket to dampen the sound. More water is dumped over the entire mount to keep it from being damaged. (Some 200,000 gallons will be used in each Antares launch, roughly the volume of 10 swimming pools.)
Even tucked into the nosecone of the rocket, Cygnus will experience much of the violence of liftoff. Back at the Orbital manufacturing building, the craft undergoes a special test to make sure it will stand up to these conditions: sound technicians who usually rig stadiums for rock concerts surround the spacecraft with a wall of speakers and bombard it with white noise that reproduces the shock and shuddering of liftoff.
Cygnus's test mission is expected to take place during 2012 (in addition to coordinating the completion of spacecraft, rocket, and launch pad, Orbital must find a launch date that fits into the space station's surprisingly crowded schedule). If things go well, Claybaugh says, "You are going to see at least one company in the business of transporting cargo to the space station. That's literally a new line of business that has not existed previously." | <urn:uuid:4e4ec74c-217e-486f-91b1-bd2f112f8c30> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/there-profit-outer-space | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00171-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955345 | 3,270 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Origins of Colonial Chesapeake Indentured Servants: American and English Sources
By Nathan W. Murphy, AG
[This article was originally published in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Vol. 93, No. 1 (Mar 2005): 5-24, and has been reproduced by permission.]
Indentured servants were not glamorous or famous figures in colonial
America. Nevertheless, family historians are interested in knowing that an ancestor—male or female—may have been indentured. More important, the designation “indentured servant” signifies that the individual immigrated—a fact that surviving colonial sources often do not clarify and one that can open doors to finding the ancestor in European records.
Indentured servants can be found among the forebears of most people with southern colonial ancestry. Identifying an ancestor as indentured, however, is a challenge. These men and women created few records while bound and, once they became free, records might not mention their previous status. More daunting is tracing known indentured servants back to their arrival in America and from there to a European port of departure and place of birth. Some original records generated specifically about these servants have been lost, but many sources survive in the United States and Europe that can help researchers identify these ancestors and understand their lives.
The term indentured servant arose in the context of a system for financing immigration to North America primarily during the colonial period. Europeans who could not afford passage to America sold themselves to merchants and seamen in exchange for transportation to the colonies. This arrangement was spelled out in a contract—called an indenture—in which the emigrant agreed to work without compensation for a fixed term, typically four or five years. Servants often entered into such contracts freely but sometimes merchants and ship captains, in a practice called “spiriting,” kidnapped impoverished children and youths, forcing them into an indenture. Shiploads of these volunteers and victims disembarked in colonial port towns and along river banks, where ship masters sold them to plantation owners and others who needed workers. These strangers became the servants’ masters and literally owned them for the duration of their contracts.
Labor shortages in America’s middle colonies enabled indentured servitude to flourish there for more than 150 years. Increased African slave imports during the eighteenth century triggered its decline. By the early 1800s the system had disappeared among Britons coming to the United States.
The origins and destinations of indentured servants varied widely. They embarked from many European countries, including England, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Settlers used them as laborers primarily in the middle, southern, and West Indian colonies but the custom prevailed in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Records in the diverse countries of origin and the colonial destinations of these servants vary greatly. This article will focus on servants from England who were imported to the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia.
Indentured servants resembled other groups of colonial migrants, including African slaves and transported convicts. Indentured servants, in fact, often were called “white slaves.” All three groups experienced mistreatment. The groups also differed. Convict servants were the only group whose emigration and unpaid labor were penalties imposed for criminal behavior. Whether indentured servants were voluntary or forced laborers, their indentures were temporary, unlike the Africans, who were enslaved for life. Table 1 compares some characteristics and privileges of indentured servants with transported convicts and free immigrants.
Social historians, who have laid the groundwork for understanding the lives and migrations of indentured servants as a whole, have made broad generalizations concerning the birthplaces of those in Maryland and Virginia. They have had to rely on a narrow sample of servant origins to understand the group. One historian has stated that “the backgrounds of the vast majority [of Chesapeake colonists] are forever lost.” This is not necessarily true. Genealogical methods can be used to trace origins of many more such servants and other colonial settlers of the area and create a better sample from which to understand the social origins and experiences of Chesapeake colonists.
Most English servants left the country from three major ports—Bristol, Liverpool, and London—with a minority emigrating from smaller cities, including Bideford, Dartmouth, Exeter, Lyme, Newcastle, Plymouth, Poole, Portsmouth, Southampton, Weymouth, and Whitehaven. The principal ports had differing years of heavy emigration. London served as a key point of departure during the entire colonial period. Bristol rose to prominence during the mid-1600s, followed by Liverpool in the late 1600s to early 1700s. Surviving lists suggest that many indentured servants came into these cities from within a fifty-to sixty-mile radius. Consequently, a researcher who knows a servant’s port of departure but not the previous residence might learn the place of origin by studying records from surrounding jurisdictions.
In the Chesapeake’s early days, indentured servants worked close to rivers and the Atlantic coast, often in tobacco cultivation. In contrast, during the 1700s, many planters preferred African slaves for field labor and sold the servants to backcountry landowners. Notorious “soul drivers,” who treated indentured servants cruelly, transported many of them inland.
Personal characteristics and cultural traditions of the English Chesapeake colonists—including speech, person-and place-naming customs, religion, architectural patterns, social graces, and settlement patterns—were similar to many found in southern and western England. Comparative historians have concluded from these parallels that most Chesapeake colonists came from those English regions. In fact, however, the specific roots of the upper classes are better known than those of their servants. In addition, customs characteristic of the upper classes may have trickled down. The precise origins of lower-class indentured servants, which may have affected their contribution to Southern culture, are largely unknown. Historians and genealogists should generate a wider sample of indentured servants’ birthplaces to learn whether they came from the same areas as the aristocrats.
Researchers trying to identify English origins of indentured settlers in colonial Maryland and Virginia face several challenges:
• Because indentured servants rarely traveled in groups of relatives and neighbors, unlike immigrants who paid cash for their passage, tracing associates to identify their origins seldom succeeds.
• Record destruction and the servants’ lower-class status compel researchers to extricate and synthesize fragmented bits of information from a variety of sources.
• Researchers need skills in reading old handwriting and interpreting underused records to understand original sources concerning indentured servants.
Despite the complex undertaking, family historians can locate the English origins of indentured servants if they know what records are available and can find them on both sides of the ocean.
Researchers tracing any immigrant should exhaust American sources before searching abroad. Colonial American records may identify an ancestor as an indentured servant or may provide details of that person’s life, including the port of departure or place of origin. The identification may also rest upon indirect evidence. A remark like “paid freedom dues,” for example, denotes previous indentured servant status.
Few statewide indexes name indentured servants. Unless researchers know a county of residence, they will need to undertake painstaking county-by-county searches of a variety of records. American sources identifying indentured servants include church registers, court records, deeds, servant contracts, journals and other personal narratives, land patents, merchant account books, newspapers, passenger lists, and probate records.
Pursuant to ordinances passed in 1660, Virginia suppressed all religions except the Church of England, to which most Virginia colonists belonged. Surviving colonial parish registers from the Chesapeake area—primarily from Virginia— contain baptismal, marriage, and burial entries for thousands of colonists. Transcriptions of most of the records have been published and are indexed in the International Genealogical Index (IGI). Because the IGI omits descriptive data, researchers must consult the register to see if an entry contains an occupational title like “servant” appended to a name.
Extant colonial Anglican parish burial registers often identify indentured servants by status. For example, seventeenth-century burial records for Christ Church Parish, Middlesex County, Virginia, name dozens of them who died in harsh conditions before completing their terms. Colonial laws forbade the servants to marry during their contracted labor terms without permission. Consequently, few of them appear in marriage registers. Marriage restrictions also decrease chances of finding parents identified as indentured in infants’ christening records, except those for illegitimate children resulting from illicit liaisons.
Court cases resulting from misdeeds may identify indentured servants who violated the law. Infractions include conceiving a child out of wedlock, which was not uncommon because the servants were not allowed to marry without permission, and assaulting a master. For example, in 1742, Thomas Webster petitioned the Northumberland County Court concerning his servant, Patrick Martial, “seting forth that the sd servant abused him by words & Blows Contrary to Law, Judgment is granted that the sd Webster against the sd Martial, his servant, for one year’s service for his sd offence after his other time of service expired.” Many indentured servants were undoubtedly abused, as were African slaves. Although relatively few cases concerning the abuse appear on court dockets, researchers nevertheless should check for records.
Court records may also document the confiscation or temporary “alienation” of an indentured servant to pay off a master’s debt. For example, according to Kent County, Maryland, court proceedings dated 1655, Henery Carline “(Attorney to Mr. Thomas Hawkines) [did] Assigne ouer [over] all the Right tittle & Intreast of a Certaine seruant [servant] named James Gunsseill, with his Indentures…to John Deare.”
Owners could sell their indentured servants. The recording of such sales in deed books is unusual, but researchers should not overlook the possibility of a deed record documenting the sale of an ancestor who was indentured.
In Maryland, freed servants received fifty-acre “freedom dues.” For example, on 14 November 1673, “Came Thomas Broxam of Dorchester County and proved Right to fifty acres of Land for his time of Service performed in this Province.” The servants often sold this property quickly, which also created a deed record of their former indentured status. One researcher noted that 5,000 servants entered Maryland each decade in the late 1600s and “between 1669 and 1680 a count in the books shows that 1249 servants proved their rights, each to fifty acres of land as freedom due. Of these, 869 immediately, or very soon after the proof, assigned their rights to others.”
Indentured Servant Contracts
Because freed indentured servants probably had little incentive to preserve their contracts, which were loose manuscripts, few servant indentures survive in America. (Many exist in England, however. See the discussion, below, under “English Sources.”) In exceptional cases, clerks in the Chesapeake copied indentures into court records. Unlike Pennsylvania clerks, however, they did not compile the servant contracts in book form.
Journals and Personal Narratives
Most contracted servants arrived in America impoverished and uneducated. Few had the skills to create personal accounts and narratives of their experiences. An exception is John Harrower, an educated Scot who emigrated from England. His journal describes his fall into indentured servitude, the transatlantic passage, mistreatment of fellow servants, on-deck sale of servants in Virginia, “soul drivers,” conditions for obedient servants during the term of indenture, and his attempt to maintain contact with his wife and children in the Shetland Islands. Another man, Richard Frethorne, wrote his parents in England in 1623 and described dismal conditions in Jamestown. Such narratives, although scarce, may be located in archival and historical society collections.
Under a headright system, the British crown awarded land to individuals for bringing others to the colonies. Typically ship captains and merchants received fifty acres for each indentured servant they transported. In Virginia, the colonial land office and county courts issued headright certificates. As a form of currency, a certificate might have changed hands several times until an applicant submitted it with a request for a land patent. Records of certificates issued by the land office no longer exist, but those issued by county courts may be found in surviving county court order books. Often the applicant submitted the certificate several years after the passengers arrived in the Chesapeake, so the date of the land patent does not necessarily indicate a recent arrival.
Indentured servants and other passengers are named in registers that scrupulously document the crown’s land grants to those who transported immigrants. Indexes to these colonial land patents exist for both Maryland and Virginia.
The lists typically provide names only, but researchers may be able to extrapolate additional data. For example, average ages of persons listed in surviving indentured servant contracts indicate that the majority of male servants left England between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four. Extending the typical pattern to those whose ages were not recorded provides their approximate birth years, which may help identify them in English records.
Merchant Account Books
Colonial merchants maintained ledgers recording business transactions. Some of these account books have survived and contain references to indentured servants. For example, an entry in Edward Dixon’s ledger, dated 22 July 1743, reports “paid Mary Welch for her Freedom Dues.” The books themselves may be found in archives, historical societies, and libraries throughout the country. In some cases, microfilm publications are available. Others are indexed and abstracted in periodicals and books.
Figure 1. Runaway Indentured Servant Advertisement. Source: Maryland Gazette, 17 November 1764, MSA SC 2731, Maryland Gazette collection, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis.
Alongside notices for masters seeking fugitive slaves, colonial newspapers published advertisements for runaway servants. Many identify the servant’s name, age, and birthplace. For example, when John Cyas ran away in Talbot County, Maryland, in 1768, his master reported his occupation, height, complexion, age, English county of origin, and last residence in England as well as the ship in which Cyas had immigrated and the date it landed. See figure 1. Such advertisements often list the county or region of origin to encourage colonists to be alert to strangers speaking a distinguishing dialect. Many eighteenth-century newspapers have survived. Indexes and finding aids facilitate identifying indentured servants in both Maryland and Virginia newspapers.
Colonial newspapers, land patents, and labor contracts may disclose the name of a ship on which servants traveled. Such passengers rarely are identified, however, in the few colonial lists that survive on either side of the Atlantic. Some records differentiate indentured servants from convicts. For example, the scribe on the ship Elizabeth & Ann, which sailed from Liverpool, England, to Yorktown, Virginia, in 1716, distinguished between political rebels transported as indentured servants and those not indentured.
Indentured servants may be named in wills because their masters could bequeath them as property. For example, in 1662 “John Neuill [Nevill] of Charles County, Maryland, gentleman,” devised personal property to his son-in-law John Lambert. The property included livestock and “boath the saruants [servants].”
Inventories in both testate and intestate proceedings may name indentured servants and assign them a value. One example is the inventory of “Mr. Thomas Haukins” [Hawkins], of Popplers Island, Kent County, Maryland, dated 1656, which lists three servants: Mary Bally, Thomas Simons, and Henery Wharton. The estate’s appraisers noted the length of time remaining on their contracts and valued each servant differently. The reference to contracts indicates that the three were indentured. Even without such a reference, however, researchers should recognize servants in an inventory as indentured because wage-earning household servants could not have been valued like property.
Most indentured servants in the Chesapeake originated as lower-class Britons, a population depicted as “a faceless, depersonalized mass, as mere names.” Nevertheless, genealogists may be able to find the English birthplaces and families of American servants in records that give some context to their lives. Available sources include church registers, indentured servant contracts, manor records, parish chests, probate records, surname sources, tax lists, and urban occupational records.
In theory, researchers should be able to find a christening record for every English immigrant to colonial America, including indentured servants. Typically, the records provide a baptismal or birth date and name the infant’s parents. Researchers must locate the correct parish, however, from among more than eleven thousand Anglican parishes. Uncounted nonconformist congregations (such as Baptist, Presbyterian, and Quaker) also operated in England in the 1600s and 1700s.
Many of the American or British records discussed in this article might identify an indentured servant’s parish of origin, enabling the researcher to find the servant’s christening record with little difficulty. One study, however, suggests that only about half of the servants correctly identified their birthplace. Many named neighboring towns—larger than their actual native villages—when communicating information to registrars. Researchers who do not find the baptismal entry in the indicated parish should search the surrounding countryside.
Other possibilities exist. Genealogists who know the port of embarkation but not the parish may find the servant recorded in the registers of a parish near the port. As mentioned previously, many emigrants originated within sixty miles of the port from which they departed. Alternatively, if a researcher has sufficient identifying information or if a servant’s surname is unusual, a parish of origin may be found in national indexes like Boyd’s Marriage Index, British Isles Vital Records Index, Great Card Index, International Genealogical Index, National Burial Index, and Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills Index. Countywide marriage indexes produced by English genealogical societies also may help place an indentured servant in an English parish.
Even when the servant’s home parish is known, a researcher may not find the desired church record. The English civil war and interregnum in the mid-1600s wreaked havoc on record keeping. Registration decreased after the war, perhaps because the new government frightened or replaced experienced parish clerks.
Regardless of the cause, many births—including those of future indentured servants—went unrecorded during these turbulent decades. Moreover, even the aforementioned indexes to church records taken together are incomplete for the pertinent time periods. Researchers should search burial and marriage registers as well as the christening records. Negative findings in a burial register can support the identity of presumed ancestors, showing that they neither died in infancy nor remained in the parish longer than expected. Finding a death record might disprove a presumed identity. Uncovering a marriage record, on the other hand, might not necessarily discredit a possible match. Indentured servants sometimes abandoned their English spouses and families to emigrate. Bristol’s mayor in 1662 reported, “Some are husbands that have forsaken their wives, others [are] wives who have abandoned their husbands; some are children and apprentices run away from their parents and masters.” Genealogists, therefore, may find records of spouses and families on both sides of the ocean for one indentured servant.
Indentured Servant Contracts
To stop the involuntary “spiriting” of children and youth into indentured servitude, the British government required clerks in each port to record servant contracts, which they compiled into registers. In addition to the servant’s name, the records might contain any of the following details:
- Name and occupation of the agent to whom the servant was bound
- Date of the contract and the term of service
- Servant’s birthplace and age
- Servant’s father or mother
- Servant’s occupation
- Person the servant will serve abroad
- Witnesses to the contract
- Ship’s name and destination
Information in the surviving contracts varies greatly, and few report the servant’s birthplace. Others name the port where the servant had lived temporarily as the prior residence, whether it is accurate or not. For example, Alexander Steward, who sailed to Virginia in 1774 as an indentured servant, identified London as his “former” residence. He had lived there less than four months, however, and his place of origin was the Shetland Islands.
Surviving contracts and registers name only a small percentage of all indentured servants who went from England to the Chesapeake. Relatively few of the volumes have survived but they represent England’s major ports and a range of years. See table 2. The principal extant lists of indentured servant contracts and a master index have been published. Minor collections, some of which have not been published, may exist among parish-level records in the west of England. Abstracts of fifteen thousand contracts concerning servants leaving from London and Bristol are online. Images of the contracts—for servants going to Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Caribbean—are in repositories with Virginia Colonial Records Project microfilms.
Between twenty-five thousand and sixty-five thousand manors existed in medieval England. Their boundaries did not coincide with those of the eleven thousand contemporary ecclesiastical parishes, and manors created their own records, which begin several centuries before parish registration. The poor, including families of many future American indentured servants, appear in these records as manorial tenants, participants in local squabbles, and scofflaws.
Genealogists must pinpoint a specific location to know which manor’s records to search and must have a working knowledge of scribal abbreviated medieval Latin to interpret them. Most manorial records have not been microfilmed or indexed and must be searched on site. The multi-volume Victoria County History, arranged by county, is a helpful resource for determining the manorial jurisdictions where ancestors might have lived. The Manorial Documents Register identifies repositories that house manorial records.
Parish Chest Records
Aside from parish registers, which provide primarily birth, marriage, and death information, Anglican parish chest records may give glimpses into the lives of lower-class Britons in the 1600s and 1700s. These documents—including apprenticeship indentures, churchwardens’ accounts, settlement papers, removal orders, overseers of the poor accounts, bastardy bonds, and poor rate books—can reveal biographical and genealogical details about a servant’s life before indenture and emigration.
County record offices house most parish chest documents. Microfilms of many manuscripts are available from the Family History Library where they may be catalogued as “Church Records,”“Poorhouses, poor law,”or “Parish Chest Records.” Many English county record offices have generated countywide name indexes to such records, but a nationwide index does not exist. Researchers therefore must know the servant’s county or parish of origin to locate the records.
Because servants probably came mainly from lower-class households, their fathers and relatives in England would typically have left fewer wills than better-off folk. At the time indentured servants were emigrating, English probate processes fell under ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Researchers looking for probate records for servants’families must therefore determine the jurisdictions where testators filed their wills.
Indentured servants’surnames may help to identify their origins. Most surnames in England are uncommon. Many are rare and often are peculiar to a locality from which the name derives. English families, including those of indentured servants, usually resided for generations near the places where their surnames originated and were clustered, especially before the Industrial Revolution.
Several nationwide indexes are helpful in researching indentured servant origins by linking English surnames to locations where they were concentrated in the 1600s and 1700s. Mentioned previously, such resources include the International Genealogical Index, British Isles Vital Records Index, National Burial Index, Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills Index, Boyd’s Marriage Index, and Great Card Index. Especially valuable for unusual surnames, the compilations provide starting points for research in England. In addition, compendia of Stuart-era location spellings can aid researchers seeking origins connected to specific surnames.
The Protestation returns of 1641–42 are lists of males over age eighteen who swore oaths of allegiance to the King, Parliament, and the Church of England.
They survive for roughly one-third of the English population and, where they have been published and indexed, provide countywide name indexes. The House of Lords Record Office in London possesses the existing returns, and researchers have created a finding aid for published transcriptions.
A commercial computer program enables researchers to manually enter data from the International Genealogical Index to create surname distributions in the 1600s and 1700s. Software can also display distribution maps by county or registration district for all of the surnames found in the 1881 census of England, Scotland, and Wales.
The Guild of One-Name Studies, which defines its objective as locating every occurrence of a specific surname and its variants throughout the world, can also be helpful. Many of its members have generated lists of all known British emigrants who carried their surnames and have begun to trace their families.
The marriage act tax, collected by the British crown in the middle 1690s to finance King William’s War, serves as a census that names the head of household, spouse, and children in each family in Bristol and most of London. Unfortunately this source does not survive for other cities. The enumeration identifies the specific parish—out of 17 possibilities in Bristol and 110 in greater London—in which a future indentured servant might have lived. The Bristol records for 1696 and the London register for 1695 are indexed. The records are available on microfilm.
English citizens paid lay subsidies—a form of tax—from the Middle Ages to the 1600s. Among the taxpayers listed are people who later would become indentured servants. Researchers can find the majority of subsidies in the exchequer records at the British National Archives, which provides an online guide to published and unpublished lay-subsidy holdings by jurisdiction but not a personal name index.
Families of prospective indentured servants may also be found in records of a hearth tax taken from 1662 through 1689. The lists name householders with hearths and some of the poor who were exempt. An ongoing project is microfilming, indexing, transcribing, and publishing these rolls.
Urban Occupational Records
Most indentured servants had become city residents before emigrating from England. Urban occupational sources during the 1700s, when the demand for specialized labor was high, may name prospective indentured servants, especially among apprentices. Uncompleted apprenticeship terms may signify emigration.
From 1710 to 1811 the British government charged a nationwide tax on apprentices. The resulting records can help pinpoint immigrant origins. A partial index, covering 1710 through 1774, is available on microfilm. In addition, major port cities maintained records of apprentices, some of whom may have emigrated as indentured servants. Boyd’s “Inhabitants of London” (also called
“Citizens of London”) indexes, among others, those learning crafts and trades in the capital during this time. A commercial Web site also provides an index to three hundred thousand London records that typically name apprentices, parents (usually fathers), and masters. The city of Bristol’s records document tradesmen from 1532 forward. Apprenticeship oaths name the father and previous residence of those who came to the city for training. Liverpool also maintained apprenticeship registers.
Peter W. Coldham and the late P. William Filby are among the immigration experts who have recognized the need to bring colonial immigration records within easy grasp of genealogists. To that end each has compiled more than twenty volumes. Most of Coldham’s books focus on criminal indentured servants, but five list non-convicts. Filby’s Passenger and Immigration Lists Index dwarfs all other immigration projects. Many individuals indexed in his compilation arrived as indentured servants during the colonial period and, as shown in table 2, these volumes index all known published English labor contracts.
A Brigham Young University project is in progress to locate all surviving emigration records created in the British Isles. The initiative, still in its infancy, promises to help family historians find English ancestors, including indentured servants. Similarly, volunteers with the Immigrant Ship Transcriber’s Guild are transcribing all extant immigrant passenger lists to publish online. Some,
which date to the colonial period and cover British vessels, include passengers identified as indentured servants.
[Addition: since the publication of this article, the Immigrant Servants Database has been launched.]
Several authors have published works documenting the English origins of early colonists in Maryland and Virginia. They include numerous references to indentured servants.
Many Chesapeake area colonists were indentured servants born in England. Some voluntarily signed contracts agreeing to work without monetary compensation for a fixed number of years in exchange for transatlantic passage. Others were forced into such agreements. Personal motivations aside, eventually—after their liberation—they began new lives in a new country. Countless survivors worked for hire, married, started families, and acquired personal estates—and became ancestors to millions of Americans. Tracing these laborers’ lives and origins will contribute to identifying more ancestors and understanding the geographic and social origins of many American colonists.
© Nathan W. Murphy, AG; Opal Court, Block B, 13B; 60 Lancaster Road; Leicester, LE1 7HA, UK; [email protected]. Mr. Murphy, who is accredited in English and southern United States research, has received specialized training in tracing immigrant origins and deciphering early modern English and Latin texts. He recently earned a B.A. in Family History and Genealogy from Brigham Young University, where he was a research assistant in the Immigrant Ancestors Project. He attends the English Local History M.A. Programme at the University of Leicester.
- David Hackett Fischer—citing Wesley Frank Craven, White, Red and Black: The Seventeenth Century Virginian (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1971), 5—reports that more than 75 percent of Virginia’s colonists arrived as indentured servants. See David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 227.
- Abbot Emerson Smith, Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607–1776 (1947; reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1998), 3–25.
- Clifford Lindsey Alderman, Colonists for Sale: The Story of Indentured Servants in America (New York: Macmillan, 1975), 28–52. Chapter 3 covers children who were “spirited” (kidnapped) and brought to America as indentured servants. Chapter 4 covers the practice of “snatching” poor people in Ireland and Scotland and forcibly exporting them as white slaves. Alderman’s bibliography identifies additional publications on this topic.
- Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 221–23.
- The following works outline the period of American history when indentured servitude was replaced by free and slave labor: Charlotte Erickson, Leaving England: Essays on British Emigration in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994); Aaron S. Fogleman, “From Slaves, Convicts, and Servants to Free Passengers: The Transformation of Immigration in the Era of the American Revolution,” Journal of American History 85 (June 1998): 43–76; David W. Galenson, “The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis,” Journal of Economic History 44 (March 1984): 1–26; and Henry A. Gemery, “Markets for Migrants: English Indentured Servitude and Emigration in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Colonialism and Migration: Indentured Labour Before and After Slavery, ed. P. C. Emmer (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986) 33–54.
- For books and collections regarding indentured servants in Pennsylvania, see Daniel Meaders, Eighteenth-Century White Slaves: Fugitive Notices, vol. 1, Pennsylvania, 1729–1760 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993); Farley Grubb, Runaway Servants, Convicts, and Apprentices Advertised in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728–1796 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1992); Sharon V. Salinger, “To serve well and faithfully,” Labor and Indentured Servants in Pennsylvania, 1682–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); and County of Chester., Pa., “Chester County Archives: Indentured Servant and Apprenticeship Records, 1700– 1855 (RG 4100.038).” Also, a fee-based Web site provides an index to a colonial Philadelphia newspaper. See Accessible Archives Inc., “Pennsylvania Gazette 1728–1800.”
- Louis Ruchames, “The Sources of Racial Thought in Colonial America,” Journal of Negro History 52 (October 1967): 259–60.
- Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 221–23.
- James Curtis Ballagh, White Servitude in the Colony of Virginia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Studies, 1895); David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly, Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000); Eugene Irving McCormac, White Servitude in Maryland, 1634–1820 (1904; reprint, Westminster, Md.: Heritage Books, 2003). For an interactive simulation depicting the process of becoming an indentured servant in London and traveling to the new world, see Thinkport, “Exploring Maryland’s Roots: Classroom Resources.”
- James Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 26.
- Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 307–37. The appendix titled “The Number and Distribution of Indentured Servants” tabulates the numbers and origins of indentured servants. For a list of minor English ports operating during the colonial period, see Peter Wilson Coldham, The Complete Book of Emigrants 1700–1750 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1992), vii. For the international trade experience of historic Bristol, Hartlepool, Liverpool, London, and Southampton, see National Maritime Museum, Hartlepool Borough Libraries, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services, Bristol City Council, and Southampton Reference Library, Port Cities U.K.
- Paul G. E. Clemens, “The Rise of Liverpool, 1665–1750,” Economic History Review, new series, 29 (May 1976): 211–25.
- Fischer, Albion’s Seed, 236–40; and Horn, Adapting to a New World, 39–48, 69–76, 80–81, 420–21. Both scholars draw conclusions from the surviving London and Bristol registers.
- Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), 347; and Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 256–60. Bailyn generated a map showing the trading circuits of soul drivers in the Virginia backcountry who drove servants as far inland as the Bedford County courthouse.
- Fischer, Albion’s Seed, 207–418.
- Horn, Adapting to a New World, 22–24.
- Fischer and Kelly, Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement, 46–47.
- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “International Genealogical Index.” To learn which parish register baptisms and marriages for Virginia and Maryland are on the IGI, the year ranges, and the batch numbers, see Hugh Wallis, “IGI Batch Numbers—British Isles and North America.”
- National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Virginia, The Parish Register of Christ Church, Middlesex County, Va. from 1653 to 1812 (Richmond: Wm. Ellis Jones, Steam Book and Job Printer, 1897), 7–10, 21–22, 31, 36, 39, 53. Some of those named might have been servants who were paid wages rather than those who were indentured in exchange for transatlantic passage.
- Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 270–74.
- Ibid., 104, 130, 231, 243–44, 246–47, 257, 261, 268, 386, and 391, reference court cases concerning indentured servants in Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties, Maryland, and Gloucester, Lancaster, Northumberland, Spotsylvania, and Stafford counties, Virginia.
- W. Preston Haynie, Records of Indentured Servants and of Certificates of Land: Northumberland County, Virginia, 1650–1795 (Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1996), 285. This page contains a transcription of Northumberland Co. Order Book 1737–43: 244, County Court, Heathsville, Va.
- Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 233.
- J. Hall Pleasants and Louis Dow Scisco, Proceedings of the County Courts of Kent (1648–1676), Talbot (1662–1674), and Somerset (1665–1668) Counties (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1937), 68.
- Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 233.
- Abbot Emerson Smith, “The Indentured Servant and Land Speculation in Seventeenth Century Maryland,” The American Historical Review 40 (April 1935): 469–70.
- Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 18, writes in reference to indentured servant term contracts: “For one living the life of a laborer in the plantations it was not always an easy matter to keep possession of these small scraps of paper.” The Virtual Jamestown Web site contains a transcription of the labor contract of Richard Lowther, 1627, found in the Preston Davie papers, Mss1D2856a2, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond. See “Richard Lowther Servant Indenture,” Virtual Jamestown.
- Pleasants and Scisco, Procedings of the County Courts of Kent (1648–1676), Talbot (1662–1674), and Somerset (1665–1668), 124, 248, 375, and 622, identify four contracts registered in the court proceedings of colonial Maryland.
- Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 225, discusses a Pennsylvania book in which officials registered the terms of indentured servants. See John Gibson and William Fisher, Record of Indentures of Individuals Bound Out as Apprentices, Servants, etc.; and of German and Other Redemptioners in the Office of the Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, October 3, 1771 to October 5, 1773 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1973).
- Farley Grubb, “Fatherless and Friendless: Factors Influencing the Flow of English Emigrant Servants,” Journal of Economic History 52 (March 1992): 85–108.
- Edward Miles Riley, The Journal of John Harrower: An Indentured Servant in the Colony of Virginia, 1773–1776 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1963).
- Richard Frethorne, “The Experiences of an Indentured Servant,” Virtual Jamestown.
- James W. Petty, “Seventeenth Century Virginia County Court Headright Certificates,” Virginia Genealogist 45 (January–March 2001): 3–22; and 45 (April–June 2001): 112–22.
- Patent Series of the Maryland Land Office, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis; microfilms 0,013,063–143, Family History Library (FHL), Salt Lake City, Utah. Also, Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 405, writes, “The twenty-six volumes of Land Books in the Land Office, Hall of Records, covering the period from 1633 to 1680, contain the names of more than 21,000 immigrants, nearly all servants, who were registered during that period for the purpose of obtaining headrights.” Also, Patents 1623–1774, 42 vols., Library of Virginia, Richmond; FHL microfilms 0,029,318–59.
- For Maryland, see Gust Skordas, The Early Settlers of Maryland: An Index to Names of Immigrants Compiled from Records of Land Patents, 1633–1680, in the Hall of Records, Annapolis, Maryland (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1968); and Carson Gibb and Gust Skordas, A Supplement to “The Early Settlers of Maryland:” Comprising 8680 Entries Correcting Omissions and Errors in Gust Skordas, “The Early Settlers of Maryland.” (Annapolis: Maryland State Archives, 1997). For Virginia, see Marion Nell Nugent, Denis Hudgins, and Virginia Genealogical Society, Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, 1623– 1776, 7 vols. (Richmond: Virginia Genealogical Society, 1934–99).
- Horn, Adapting to a New World,35–37.
- Ruth Sparacio and Sam Sparacio, Abstracts of the Account Books of Edward Dixon (Merchant of Port Royal, Virginia), vol. 1, 1743–1747 (McLean, Va.: The Antient Press, 1990), 2.
- For example, Records of John Glassford and Company, 1743–1886, Colchester Store, 1758–69; microfilm publication, 71 rolls (Washington: Library of Congress Photoduplication Service, 1984).
- Edgar MacDonald, “A Merchant’s Account Book: Hanover County, Virginia, 1743–44,” Magazine of Virginia Genealogy 34 (Summer 1996): 185–87; Richard Slatten, “A Merchant’s Account Book: King and Queen County, Virginia, 1750–1751,” Magazine of Virginia Genealogy 28 (February 1990): 61–64; and Sparacio and Sparacio, Abstracts of the Account Books of Edward Dixon.
- Runaway indentured servant advertisement, Maryland Gazette, 17 November 1764, MSA SC 2731, Maryland Gazette collection, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis.
- Lester J. Cappon and Virginia F. Duff, Virginia Gazette Index, 1736–1780 (Williamsburg, Va.: Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1950); and The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Past Portal: Colonial Williamsburg’s Portal to American History. Also, Richard J. Cox, “Maryland Runaway Convict Servants,” NGS Quarterly 62 (June 1980): 105–14; 68 (September 1980): 232–33; 68 (December 1980): 299–304; 69 (March 1981): 51–58; 69 (June 1981): 125–32; 69 (September 1981): 205–14; and 69 (December 1981): 293–300. Also, Karen Mauer Green, The Maryland Gazette, 1727–1761: Genealogical and Historical Abstracts (Galveston, Tex.: Frontier Press, 1989).
- Doreen M. Hockedy, “Bound for a New World: Emigration of Indentured Servants Via Liverpool to America and the West Indies, 1697–1707,” Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 144 (1995): 115–35.
- Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild, “Ship Elizabeth and Ann.”
- Pleasants and Scisco, Proceedings of the County Courts of Kent (1648–1676), Talbot (1662–1674), and Somerset (1665–1668), 329–30.
- Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 233.
- Pleasants and Scisco, Proceedings of the County Courts of Kent (1648–1676), Talbot (1662–1674), and Somerset (1665–1668), 101–2.
- David Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), viii.
- Mark D. Herber, Ancestral Trails: The Complete Guide to British Genealogy and Family History (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1998), 88.
- Anthony Salerno, “The Social Background of Seventeenth-Century Emigration to America,” Journal of British Studies 19 (Autumn 1979): 33.
- Anthony Salerno, “The Character of Emigration from Wiltshire to the American Colonies, 1630–1660,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1977, 45.
- Fischer, Albion’s Seed, 236–40; and Horn, Adapting to a New World, 39–48, 69–76, 80–81, 420–21.
- English Origins, “Boyd’s Marriage Index, 1538–1940.”
- British Isles Vital Records Index, CD-ROM (Salt Lake City, Utah: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2000).
- “Great Card Index, ca. 1100–1900,” Society of Genealogists Library, London, U.K.; FHL microfilms 1,938,196–2,220,319 and 2,220,325, items 1–10.
- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “International Genealogical Index.”
- National Burial Index for England and Wales, CD-ROM (Bury, U.K.: Federation of Family History Societies, 2004).
- The National Archives, “About the Wills,” provides a link to search the Prerogative Court of Canterbury wills index covering the years 1384–1858.
- For a listing of available countywide marriage indexes accessible through correspondence with English genealogical societies, see Jeremy Gibson and Elizabeth Hampson, Marriage and Census Indexes for Family Historians (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2001).
- Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 82–83.
- William Dodgson Bowman, N. Dermott Harding, and R. Hargreaves-Mawdsley, Bristol and America, A Record of the First Settlers in the Colonies of North America 1654–1685: Including the Names with Places of Origin of More Than 10,000 Servants to Foreign Plantations Who Sailed from the Port of Bristol to Virginia, Maryland, and Other Parts of the Atlantic Coast, and Also to the West Indies from 1654 to 1685 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1970), viii–ix, 15–16; and Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 71–74.
- For Steward’s indentured servant contract, see Weekly Emigration Returns, 1773–1774, piece 47/9/54–57, Various Establishments and other Registers, HM Treasury, The National Archives, Kew, U.K.
- Riley, The Journal of John Harrower, 17, 168, 177.
- Fischer, Albion’s Seed, 227.
- Peter Wilson Coldham, The Bristol Registers of Servants Sent to Foreign Plantations, 1654–1686 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1988); The Complete Book of Emigrants, 1661–1699 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1990); The Complete Book of Emigrants 1700–1750 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1992); The Complete Book of Emigrants, 1751–1776 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1993); and Emigrants from England to the American Colonies, 1773-1776 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1988). Also, Elizabeth French, List of Emigrants to America from Liverpool, 1697-1707 (1913; reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1969); and P. William Filby, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index (Detroit: Gale Research, 1981–2004).
- Peter Wilson Coldham, e-mail message to author, 20 September 2004.
- Virtual Jamestown.
- “Quarter Sessions Records: Servants Indentures,” microfilms 567–69, and “Servants to Foreign Plantations,” microfilms 768 and 898, Virginia Colonial Record Project, Library of Virginia, Richmond. See John T. Kneebone et al., A Key to Survey Reports and Microfilm of the Virginia Colonial Records Project (Richmond: Virginia State Library and Archives, 1990), 2: 543–44, 620.
- Herber, Ancestral Trails, 497.
- The contents of forty-five volumes of this series currently appear on the Internet. See Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust, British History Online.
- The National Archives, “Manorial Documents Register.” The entire index has not yet been digitized but the card index may be searched at the National Archives in Kew, Surrey. Once a researcher establishes a specific place of origin, it will lead to many sources for tracing English ancestors.
- Herber, Ancestral Trails, 285–301. W. E. Tate, The Parish Chest: A Study of the Records of Parochial Administration in England (Chichester: Phillimore, 1983), 84–119, 188–241.
- Salerno, “The Character of Emigration from Wiltshire,”56, reports finding the will of an indentured servant’s wealthy father in Wiltshire.
- Bryan Sykes and Catherine Irven, “Surnames and the Y Chromosome,”American Journal of Human Genetics 66 (March 2000): 1417–19.
- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “International Genealogical Index.”
- British Isles Vital Records Index.
- National Burial Index for England and Wales.
- The National Archives, “About the Wills,” provides a link to search the Prerogative Court of Canterbury wills index.
- English Origins, “Boyd’s Marriage Index, 1538–1940.”
- “Great Card Index, ca. 1100–1900,”Society of Genealogists Library, London, England; FHL microfilms 1,938,196–2,220,319 and 2,220,325, items 1–10.
- [Survey of English place-names], 75 vols. (Nottingham, U.K.: English Place-name Society, 1924–98). For individual titles and authors, see English Place-Name Society, “List of Publications.”
- Herber, Ancestral Trails, 411; and J. S. W. Gibson and Alan Dell, The Protestation Returns 1641–2 and Other Contemporary Listings: Collections in Aid of Distressed Protestants in Ireland; Subsidies; Poll Tax; Assessment or Grant; Vow and Covenant; Solemn League and Covenant (Birmingham, U.K.: Federation of Family History Societies, 1995).
- Steven Archer, Genmap UK, computer software (Dartford, Kent, U.K.: Archer Software, 2002).
- Steven Archer, Surname Atlas (Dartford, Kent, U.K.: Archer Software, 2003).
- Guild of One-Name Studies.
- The 110 London parishes include thirteen outside the city’s walls. The assessments from seventeen London parishes are missing. See David Victor Glass, London Inhabitants Within the Walls, 1695 (Leicester: London Record Society, 1966), xlii. For an attempt to replace the missing data, see “A Supplement to the London Inhabitants List of 1695 Compiled by Staff at Guildhall Library,” Guildhall Studies in London History 2 (April and October 1976).
- Elizabeth Ralph and Mary E. Williams, The Inhabitants of Bristol in 1696 (Bristol: Bristol Record Society, 1968); and Glass, London Inhabitants within the Walls, 1695.
- For Bristol, see “William and Mary, Tax on Marriages, Births and Burials, and Bachelors and Widowers for War on France and Other Reasons, 1696–1706…,” in Poll Tax and Aid to the Crown, 1662–1834, Record Office, Bristol, England; FHL microfilm 1,749,357, items 8–11. For London, see Assessment Taxes upon Births, Marriages and Burials in Accordance with An Act of Parliament for the Various Parishes, City of London Record Office; FHL microfilms 0,574,646–51.
- Salerno, “The Character of Emigration from Wiltshire,” 45, reports finding several indentured servants in Wiltshire subsidies.
- The National Archives, “E 179 Database: Records Relating to Lay and Clerical Taxation.”
- Ibid. A guide to the extant hearth tax rolls are included in this online resource.
- Roehampton University, The Hearth Tax Project.
- E. H. Bates Harbin, Quarter Sessions Records for the County of Somerset, vol. 3, Commonwealth 1646–1660 (London: Harrison, 1912), lvii, 358. An apprentice was brought before the Quarter Sessions in 1658 because he and another young man attempted to emigrate to America as indentured servants before completing their apprenticeship terms. After arriving in Bristol, one of the young men changed his mind and returned home, while the other emigrated.
- Inland Revenue Office, Apprenticeship Books of Great Britain: Town Registers, October 1711–January 1811 and Country Registers, May 1710–September 1808, and Indexes to Apprentices, 1710–1774 and Indexes to Masters, 1710–1762, London Public Record Office; FHL microfilms 0,477,624–37 (indexes) and 0,824,633–84 (registers).
- Percival Boyd, comp., “Pedigrees with Index of London Citizens, abt. 1600–1800,” manuscript, The Society of Genealogists, London; FHL microfilms 0,094,515–645.
- British Origins, London Apprenticeship Abstracts 1442–1850.
- Apprenticeship Records, 1532–1988, Record Office, Bristol, U.K.; FHL microfilms 1,565,024;1,565,063; 1,565,064, items 1–3; 1,565,065, items 1–5; 1,565,066; 1,565,102, item 1; 1,597,442, items 2–5; 1,597,443; 1,702,212, item 1; and 1,749,551, items 3–4.
- Apprentice Enrollment Books, 1707–1881, Record Office, Liverpool, U.K.; FHL microfilm 1,647,413, items 4–7.
- Coldham, The Bristol Registers of Servants Sent to Foreign Plantations, 1654–1686; The Complete Book of Emigrants, 1661–1699; The Complete Book of Emigrants 1700–1750; The Complete Book of Emigrants, 1751– 1776; and Emigrants from England to the American Colonies, 1773–1776.
- Filby, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index. This index is available online. See Gale Research, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s–1900s, MyFamily.com.
- Immigrant Ancestors Project, Discover Your Immigrant Ancestors, Center for Family History and Genealogy, Brigham Young University.
- Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild, “Bringing Our Ancestors Home.”
- Robert W. Barnes, British Roots of Maryland Families and British Roots of Maryland Families II (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1999–2002); Robert W. Barnes et al., Colonial Families of the Eastern Shore of Maryland (Westminster, Md.: Family Line, 1996–2004); John Frederick Dorman, Adventurers of Purse and Person: Virginia, 1607–1624/5, 3 vols. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2004–); and Elise Greenup Jourdan, Early Families of Southern Maryland (Westminster, Md.: Family Line Publications, 1992–2004). | <urn:uuid:64dbd8c9-51bb-443b-ab2f-2e0ff48f4adf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pricegen.com/origins-of-colonial-chesapeake/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396222.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00170-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903038 | 12,112 | 4.125 | 4 |
|Operations on Band and Circular Sawing Machines - Course: Mechanical woodworking techniques. Trainees' handbook of lessons (Institut für Berufliche Entwicklung, 19 p.)|
Figure 2 Assembly of a table circular sawing machine 1 stand, 2 receding table, 3 stop for cross and angle cuts, 4 splitting wedge, 5 guard hood, 6 saw blade, 7 machine table, 8 stop rule
The stand bears the machine table and movable receding table and also houses the height-adjustable motor.
The machine table is directly attached to the stand and serves to direct the workpieces to the saw blade.
A stop rule which is adjustable and parallel to the saw blade is on the machine table - to the right of the saw blade. This stop rule serves to set the width of oblong cut workpieces.
This is positioned in a movable manner vis-a-vis the stand and serves to undertake cross and angular cuts whose angle setting can ensue by means of a stop.
Motor, motor shaft and saw blade
Motor and motor shaft can be adjusted up to an angle of 45° by means of hand wheels. The saw blade is attached to the saw shaft by means of two flanges and a chucking nut.
Figure 3 Adjusting the saw blade 1 saw blade at maximum angle setting at 45° - motor swiveling, 2 saw blade in vertical position with motor in horizontal position, 3 hand wheels to adjust the motor
The table edges close to the saw blade and the machinable material are interchangeable.
The distance between saw blade and table edges must not be greater than 3 mm in order to prevent the drawing in of narrow wood pans!
Splitting wedge and guard hood are protective devices of the circular sawing machine. The machine shall not be used without these protective facilities, otherwise considerable accident risk!
The splitting wedge is adjustable and aligned to the curve of the saw blade whereby the distance from saw blade shall not exceed 10 mm!
Figure 4 Required protective distances 1 machine table, 2 splitting wedge, 3 guard hood, 4 workpiece, 5 saw blade
The splitting wedge is safeguarded from slipping, adjusting or moving upwards and shall keep apart the separated workpieces thereby ruling out upward and backward sliding of the workpiece. The guard hood is attached to the splitting wedge and consists of machinable material. The saw blade is thus covered up from above. Chips arising are deflected through an escape slot.
The guard hood must protrude 20 mm above the cutting circle of the saw blade feed in the machine table!
Distance of guard hood to workpiece surface shall not exceed 8 mm in rest position!
During the cutting operation the guard hood shall only expose the saw blade section required for cutting. After the cutting operation is over the saw blade must be completely concealed.
If these hints are not observed serious accidents may result!
What is the purpose of the splitting
What is the purpose of the receding
What is the stop rule | <urn:uuid:2ed7928e-d103-4677-a9f6-efcb93f7fe7a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nzdl.org/gsdlmod?e=d-00000-00---off-0cdl--00-0----0-10-0---0---0direct-10---4-------0-1l--11-en-50---20-help---00-0-1-00-0--4----0-0-11-10-0utfZz-8-10&a=d&c=cdl&cl=CL2.15&d=HASH7df92bfb5bee1177f69263.3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.81399 | 618 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Mystery revealed of how owls can spin their heads
Undated composite image showing the 'extreme neck rotation' of a barred owl on Amherst Island, Ontario. (CTV/ Hester Riches)
Published Friday, February 1, 2013 11:33AM EST
Last Updated Friday, February 1, 2013 1:33PM EST
Of all the amazing things that owls can do, one of the most fascinating – and creepiest – is their ability to turn their heads almost completely around.
Owls can rotate their necks 270 degrees – more than twice as much as a human can turn. This ability is needed to help them hunt for prey because their large, tubular-shaped eyes cannot move.
But what’s always baffled scientists is how owls can spin their heads to such extremes without tearing the delicate blood vessels in their necks, or pinching off the blood supply to their brains.
In a human, such large and sudden neck twists would almost certainly rip a blood vessel, which would be either instantly fatal or would cause a blood clot and eventually, a stroke.
Now, a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University thinks they know how owls twist their necks without injury.
The team studied the bone structure and blood vessel systems in the heads and necks of snowy owls, barred owls and great horned owls, using birds that had died of natural causes and been collected by nature centres.
They injected contrast dye into the birds’ vessels and used X-ray imaging and CT scans while they manually turned their heads, to understand what makes owl necks so special.
What they found were four major adaptations.
The most striking was that the blood vessels at the base of an owl’s head, just under the jaw bone, grow larger as they branch out and can pool into reservoirs. We humans, on the other hand, have neck arteries that generally tend to get smaller as they go up into our brain.
The reservoirs in owl necks allow for blood flow to continue into the brain, even if the arteries are pinched lower down by a neck twist.
As well, they found that when owls’ arteries thread through the vertebrae in their necks, the holes they go through are much wider than in humans. In fact, the bone cavities are about 10 times larger in diameter than the artery going through it. This extra space creates a kind of cushioning air pocket that allows the artery to move around when twisted without being damaged.
This is an important feature, says one of the team’s researchers Fabian de Kok-Mercado, who’s a medical illustrator and who helped illustrate the team’s findings.
"In humans, the vertebral artery really hugs the hollow cavities in the neck. But this is not the case in owls, whose structures are specially adapted to allow for greater arterial flexibility and movement," he said in a release from Johns Hopkins.
The team also found that owls’ main neck artery leaves the vertebrae and enters the neck higher up than in other birds -- going in at the owl's 12th cervical vertebra instead of the 14th -- allowing for more vessel slack.
Finally, they found that there were unique vessel connections between two major neck arteries -- the carotid and vertebral arteries – connections that humans don’t have. These connections appear to allow blood to be exchanged between the two blood vessels, allowing for even more uninterrupted blood flow to the brain during extreme neck rotation.
Researchers next plan to examine hawk anatomy to see if other bird species possess the same adaptive features for head rotation.
The study senior investigator, Dr. Philippe Gailloud, an interventional neuroradiologist, says this study answers a lot of questions.
"Until now, brain imaging specialists like me who deal with human injuries caused by trauma to arteries in the head and neck have always been puzzled as to why rapid, twisting head movements did not leave thousands of owls lying dead on the forest floor from stroke," he said in a statement.
The team won first prize in the posters and graphics category of the National Science Foundation's 2012 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge. The win is noted in the Feb.1 issue of the journal Science.
The research team plans to publish their full study findings soon. | <urn:uuid:d25cc5ee-4c98-4223-9fe7-0e5c48258f35> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/mystery-revealed-of-how-owls-can-spin-their-heads-1.1138959 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402479.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00026-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961685 | 892 | 3.53125 | 4 |
Unintended pregnancy remains a major public health problem in the United States. Access and cost issues are common reasons why women either do not use contraception or have gaps in use. A potential way to improve contraceptive access and use, and possibly decrease unintended pregnancy rates, is to allow over-the-counter access to oral contraceptives (OCs). Screening for cervical cancer or sexually transmitted infections is not medically required to provide hormonal contraception. Concerns include payment for pharmacist services, payment for over-the-counter OCs by insurers, and the possibility of pharmacists inappropriately refusing to provide OCs. Weighing the risks versus the benefits based on currently available data, OCs should be available over-the-counter. Women should self-screen for most contraindications to OCs using checklists.
(C) 2012 by The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:16148767-720e-4987-b69e-e23ab17e0fe8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Abstract/2012/12000/Committee_Opinion_No__544___Over_the_Counter.46.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398628.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00192-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932202 | 195 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Grade Level: Middle School to Early High School; Type: Physical Science
To determine if the material and the tensile strength of different types of skateboard wheels significantly affects the friction co-efficient- and therefore the velocity- of a skateboarder.
- What effect does friction have on velocity?
- What is the molecular composition of urethane?
- In what types of products do you find urethane?
- What is acceleration?
- What is velocity?
- How do hardness and tensile strength affect rebound?
Skateboarding, as a sport, took off in earnest in the 1970’s. It is not a coincidence that this correlated with the invention of the urethane wheel- it gave riders much more control of the skateboard, and provided a much less bone-jarring ride.
The wheel has evolved into many different ‘species’ so to speak, over the last few decades. While the base material is the same- urethane- the wheel now comes in many different strengths, diameters and widths. There has been some standardization in the machining process used to create the wheels, though, and this standardization allows us to isolate single characteristics. ‘Hardness’ – basically how much the wheel squishes - is the variable we will try and isolate here, but this can be substituted with any other characteristic, depending on your interest.
You will obviously need a skateboard- it isn’t suggested that you attempt this project if you have never skateboarded before. Besides this, you will need at least to sets of wheels, with different hardness, but THE SAME diameter, in order to isolate hardness as a single variable. Another option is to choose wheels of the same hardness, but different diameters. You can isolate any variable you choose, as long as you choose only one.
Besides these, you will need a stopwatch, a section of road or pavement that has a slight incline and little or no traffic, measuring tape, and tools to switch wheels- a socket wrench will do the trick.
- Chose a stretch of road or concrete with little or no traffic
- Make sure the area has an incline enough so that while standing on the skateboard, you will start rolling without needing to push off the ground
- Measure off 50 meters (or 20 or 100- enough to get some speed, in a distance that makes the math easy.)
- Starting from 0 meters, allow the skateboarder to step on the skateboard. Once both feet touch the board, start the stopwatch.
- Time how long it takes to complete the track.
- Convert the speed into a figure in meters/second
- Do this at least ten times, so that you can get an average figure for all trials. The more data, the better.
- Switch out the wheels
- Repeat all of the steps for the second set of wheels. If you are using more than one set, do this for all wheels.
- Display your raw data in a chart form.
- After you have collected all data and computed averages, graph the data comparing each wheel. As you are doing average velocity and not adjusting as time progresses, it might be a good idea to use a bar graph rather than a line graph.
- Take photos, display the wheels used and set up an attractive display for the science fair!
Terms/Concepts: Velocity;Friction; Drag; Acceleration; Urethane and Polyurethane; Hardness; Tensile strength; Radius; Rebound | <urn:uuid:8744e7be-e6bd-45ce-982b-93205b9b6bd9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.education.com/science-fair/article/skateboard-wheels/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00163-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912862 | 740 | 3.6875 | 4 |
Discover the physics of sound as you make your own musical instruments with recycled materials.
Continue reading →
Use recycled materials to design and create a home for insects.
Quench your thirst by inventing your own citrus flavored drink.
Practice fun ways of making unique prints, scribbles and doodles.
Build and launch a high-flying rocket that is out of this world.
Investigate circular shapes while learning about science, math and art.
Join us for science story
time and use NYSCI’s Picture Dots app to add colorful dots,
text, silly sounds and your own voice to make the story
come to life.
Little Makers invites families with young children to tinker, design and create together.
A list of story time books compiled by the Science & Technology librarian.
Download these helpful guides to bring along so you can enjoy NYSCI Family activities even more: Shape Hunt Look Out for Sound
Children and their grown-ups will explore the world around them through creative art projects and innovative science experiments.
A protected area where our youngest visitors can experience multi-sensory activities. | <urn:uuid:9c802969-ba77-4b36-9367-d1ee251fe821> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nysci.org/tag/preschoolers-folio/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00075-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.894468 | 236 | 3.5625 | 4 |
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2007 August 12
Explanation: Tonight is a good night to see meteors. Comet dust will rain down on planet Earth, streaking through dark skies in the annual Perseid meteor shower. While enjoying the anticipated space weather, astronomer Fred Bruenjes recorded a series of many 30 second long exposures spanning about six hours on the night of 2004 August 11/12 using a wide angle lens. Combining those frames which captured meteor flashes, he produced this dramatic view of the Perseids of summer. Although the comet dust particles are traveling parallel to each other, the resulting shower meteors clearly seem to radiate from a single point on the sky in the eponymous constellation Perseus. The radiant effect is due to perspective, as the parallel tracks appear to converge at a distance. Bruenjes notes that there are 51 Perseid meteors in the composite image, including one seen nearly head-on. This year, the Perseids Meteor Shower is expected to peak after midnight tonight, in the moonless early morning hours of August 12.
Authors & editors:
Jerry Bonnell (USRA)
NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U. | <urn:uuid:bf061615-cc07-408d-8818-3d9e7b91f69e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap070812.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00122-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.894208 | 284 | 3.59375 | 4 |
When I was a medical student (so long back that it was actually in the last century), two of the cases placed before us as spotters (look and diagnose, dont touch or question) in an examination were children with kwashiorkor (lethargic and disproportionately swollen with fluid) and marasmus (wizened, wasted and looking like a wise elder). Both were common conditions, the result of malnutrition.
Such diseases are rare today. In fact, now doctors have to spot diagnose children at the opposite end of the spectrum. About 20 per cent of children (some less than a year old) and teenagers in India can be defined as overweight, obese or morbidly obese. Their weights exceed that expected for their heights by 20 per cent, 50 per cent, and even 80-100 per cent. The BMI (body mass index, calculated as weight divided by height in meter squared) which should be 23 is often well above 30. Many of these children maintain their obese status into adult life.
In addition to having a paunch, big hips, knock knees and a double chin, such children have a peculiar velvety black discolouration of the skin — called acanthosis nigricans — on the nape of the neck. No amount of scrubbing will remove it, nor talcum powder conceal it. It is a marker for obesity that is likely to progress in diabetes.
This unhealthy state of over nutrition starts in infancy. Babies are breast fed for less than a year and weaned early. They are often force fed high energy, ready-to-eat carbohydrate substitutes instead of healthy, home cooked weaning foods. Older children gorge on unhealthy packaged snacks that often serve as a substitute for meals.
The children also have limited outdoor activity. Schools do not encourage physical training or games, as academics takes precedence over sports. In the evenings, tuition, homework and television usurp their time. Many parents do not have the time, inclination or space to take the children out.
Energy intake soon overtakes energy expenditure. In children, the waistline expands and fat is deposited in the abdominal regions. A paunch develops and pushes up the stomach and other abdominal contents against the diaphragm (a muscle that separates the abdomen from the chest). The chest is unable to expand fully and breathing becomes shallow, noisy and inefficient. Infections are frequent.
The excess fat is also deposited in muscles and liver tissue. The fat makes the body resistant to the actions of its own insulin. Even young children develop relative insulin resistance. Glucose intolerance and hypertriglyceridemia begin to develop in them. Fat gets deposited in the blood vessels. And this can cause the blood pressure to rise and result in premature coronary artery disease.
Adolescent obesity causes hormonal imbalances. In obese girls, androgens are present in excess. They develop unsightly facial hair and menstrual irregularities. This may result in PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome). In men, estrogen levels rise and gynacomastia develops. Eventually, these obese adolescents become subfertile adults. Pregnancy occurs only after expensive and frustrating treatment.
Obese children are also prone to numerous orthopedic problems. They may develop bowlegs. The ends of the growing bones may slip causing deformities. All this results in the early onset of arthritis.
Moreover, children are psychologically affected by their obesity. They are often the brunt of jokes. They are often excluded from sports and cultural events.
Quite often, the overweight children appear to have a familial obesity. This correlation is likely to be due to the environment with excessive food intake, limited exercise and almost compulsive television viewing. In these children, the obesity is not genetic but a result of the upbringing.
Boys (not girls) who are obese in childhood and adolescence are at risk for sudden death from coronary artery disease (CAD) as adults. They are also at increased risk for gout and colorectal cancer. This risk remains constant even if they manage to lose weight as adults. Girls who are obese become women at high risk for arthritis.
Television viewing should be restricted to a minimum. If the parents watch television for many hours every day, children too get hooked on to it. It is better to enroll them in coaching classes for activities like cricket, swimming, tennis, football or basketball. The Sports Authority of India conducts camps during summer vacations. Children who attend these camps should be encouraged to maintain the momentum even after school re-opens. Daily running or jogging for 20-40 minutes will help them keep up their stamina and maintain weight till the next round of coaching starts.
As parents and elders, we have to keep our children fit and not fat.
Dr Gita Mathai is a paediatrician with a family practice at Vellore. Questions on health issues may be emailed to her at [email protected] | <urn:uuid:644a81f0-bc43-4539-990f-f6b2c0544657> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100712/jsp/knowhow/story_12669374.jsp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00079-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959178 | 1,012 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Weather and Climate Systems
A Regional Climatology and Synoptic Pattern Analysis of Winter Storms in the Southern Great Plains 1993-2011
OU School of Meteorology / CIMMS
30 October 2013, 1:00 PM
National Weather Center, Room 3902
120 David L. Boren Blvd.
University of Oklahoma
Winter storms in the southern United States can have significant impacts on infrastructure and the economy. Between 2000-2010 several damaging winter storms, the majority of which involved accumulation of freezing rain, produced in excess of $500 million in aid expenditure to Oklahoma alone. In this study, National Climatic Data Center Storm Event database and local climate summaries are used to develop a spatial and synoptic climatology for freezing precipitation (inclusive of freezing rain, drizzle and ice pellets) and snowfall over the Southern Great Plains during 1993-2011. One of the key aims is to differentiate the common synoptic evolutions of storms exhibiting an area of freezing rain versus those primarily producing snowfall to the region. The spatial distribution of freezing precipitation and snowfall is evaluated by estimating the average number of days per year that precipitation of said type was observed to have occurred. Subsequently, a subset of 33 (42) freezing precipitation (snowfall) events are selected, based on a series of criteria determining the dominant phase of precipitation, and rotated principal component analysis performed for the 500 hPa height field at the approximate onset time of precipitation. The five most frequently observed patterns are retained for each precipitation type. Composites of temperature, moisture, pressure and wind-fields are constructed for each pattern, and extended 24-hours prior to and after precipitation initiation to track average storm evolutions. All circulation fields involve a mid-level trough, which is typically located somewhat further west in the majority of freezing precipitation events. Two-of-five snowfall patterns involve a deeper surface cyclone, while all freezing precipitation composites reveal southward propagation of an arctic anticyclone 24-hours ahead of event onset, this higher sea level pressure being found to be statistically distinct from snowfall-dominant storms. High impact ice storms in the region often exhibit slow moving upper level flow, persistent isentropic ascent over a surface quasi-stationary front, in the presence of significant positive moisture anomalies, with melting layer airmass trajectories originating over the Gulf of Mexico. The results are preliminary, and are based on a small sample size. However, this work is intended to be of value for forecasters as an aid in predicting the evolution of precipitation within Southern Plains winter storms.
For accommodations based on disability, or more details, please call 325-6561. All visitors without NOAA or University of Oklahoma identification must register at the registration desk on arrival. Visitor parking is available for all University visitors. However, faculty/staff/students must have a current multi-purpose parking permit. Additional parking is available at the Lloyd Noble Center (LNC) for those individuals who do not have a parking permit. You do not need a permit to park in one of 1,200 spaces reserved for CART bus riders, although you must ride the CART shuttle to park in the reserved area. This area is on the north central side of the Lloyd Noble Center. Elsewhere at the LNC, permits are required.
The University of Oklahoma is a smoke-free / tobacco-free campus. | <urn:uuid:7f818d79-599a-4f3a-a41c-8e4c28eb48e9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://som.ou.edu/seminars/abs.php?id=808 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00161-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918424 | 691 | 2.546875 | 3 |
We then propose the use of the general symmetry transform . This is an annular sampling region which detects edge configurations that enclose an object. Unlike template matching, a perceptual measure of symmetric enclosure is computed and blob centers are detected. When applied at the appropriate scale this transform consistently detects circular objects. The dark symmetry transform is a variation that restricts the wave propagation so that only dark radial symmetry is computed. In other words, the algorithm will generate a strong response from circular objects that are darker than the background.
Beginning with a phase and edge map of the image, we perform wave propagation. The wave propagation integrates cocircular edge segments in a computationally efficient way. For each point in the image p, at each scale or radius r and for each symmetry orientation we find the set of cocircular pairs of edges . The magnitude of axial symmetry in the (p, r, ) space is as follows:
where and are the edge intensities of the two co-circular edges and is the angle separating their normals.
Then, radial symmetry, I(p), is determined from the axial symmetry map as in Equation and Equation . Finally, the symmetry map undergoes Gaussian smoothing and local maxima are determined.
We apply the symmetry transform twice for each image. First, on the interior of the table, we apply the general symmetry transform to find both dark and bright balls. Then, on the periphery of the table, we apply dark symmetry to find the consistently darker pockets.
Figure: Pool Table Periphery
Figure shows a pool table and the periphery where we might expect to find pockets (computed from the previous stage). Figure (a) displays the edge map of the interior of the table and (b) displays the edge map of the periphery of the table. Edge maps and phase maps (not shown) are computed using the Sobel operator. The edges due to green portions of the table are suppressed and the edge maps undergo some processing (non-maximal suppression and thresholding).
Figure: Edge Detection
We then compute the symmetry transforms and obtain peaks of symmetry which have been overlaid on the table image in Figure . These peaks are triggered by balls and pockets (mostly) but there are some weak false alarm triggers. So, we wish to filter these candidate balls and pockets to reject false ones and also to label them.
Figure: Ball and Pocket Candidates | <urn:uuid:7c81f55c-1c20-4d0c-9cbb-313b1f2a0ebe> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~jebara/htmlpapers/ISWC/node10.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398628.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00127-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.876291 | 495 | 3.125 | 3 |
Careful What you Apply to Your Skin, Study Proves Food Can Be Absorbed Through Weakened Skin Barrier
A new study from King’s College London and the University of Dundee has demonstrated that “food allergies may develop via immune cells in the skin” when the skin barrier is weakened in babies with eczema. According to the article in US News & World Report, “It’s believed that the breakdown of the skin barrier in infants with eczema leaves active immune cells found in skin exposed to environmental allergens — in this case food proteins — which then triggers an allergic immune response, the researchers explained.”
The study was conducted on infants, but it seems possible that adults with a weakened skin barrier and a weakened immune system could also develop sensitivities or allergies to foods via the skin. Now, I’m certainly not a scientist, but it seems to me this would mean so much else could be absorbed through the skin and into our blood stream. I’ve always heard mixed comments from physicians about what can be absorbed through the skin. Many claim that commercial and pharmaceutical skincare products are formulated so they cannot be absorbed through the skin, but I’ve personally always questioned this as I’ve heard of many people developing allergies to ingredients like propylene glycol (also see this post)and to treatments like cortisone or developing red skin syndrome aka Topical Steroid Addiction.
Let’s just say it’s possible that anything can be absorbed into your skin, if your skin is broken and irritated, as is the case with those suffering from eczema. And since we can become allergic to just about anything, what are we to do?
Rotate Skin Care Products
We all know to be careful about what we apply to our eczema and now it seems we must be even more cautious if our weakened skin barrier is truly a direct portal to our blood stream. This means the chemicals in our skincare could potentially be absorbed into our bodies – potentially leading to chemical allergies or sensitivities, or maybe even other health issues. This is why if you do opt to go with cortisone, which can be essential in some cases, or other pharmaceutical skincare products, share your concerns with your physician and try to limit exposure to them or rotate your skincare products (a good idea with natural products as well) so you’re not using the same products daily. Most dermatologists will tell you it’s not safe to use cortisone for long periods of time anyway.
Take Precautions When Feeding Baby
Its not just chemicals and toxic products we need to watch out for either – we certainly need to be cautious of rubbing any of the top 8 food allergens directly on our skin, either just the food itself (dairy products, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, shell fish, fish, soy, and wheat) or via a natural skin care product. Now, babies are messy. When they start trying these highly allergenic foods, they will spill some on themselves. That’s unavoidable. As parents, freaking out as soon as some peanut butter touches an open eczema wound won’t help anyone. You’ll probably scare your baby into tears and we don’t want them to become scared of trying new foods. If you’re worried about your baby dropping some food on their skin, try dressing them in long sleeves and pants or you could purchase a long sleeve bib to avoid food-skin contact.
Natural Ingredients to Avoid
It may be wise to watch out for skincare products containing soy oil or protein (or any “vegetable” ingredient), peanut oil, dairy products (goat milk products are quite the rage), even almond oil and other tree nuts oils. Shea butter, cocoa butter, and coconut oil are popular and effective natural skincare options for eczema, but some believe they are considered tree nuts. For more on this topic, take a look at this post. While these tropical “nut” butters may be in the same family as tree nuts according to some sources and not according to others, there is a very small chance of developing an allergy to shea, cocoa butter or coconut oil. Although it’s important to remember anyone can develop an allergy to literally just about anything.
True, this is just one study, so it’s not the be all end all, but it should open our eyes to what we’re applying to our skin.
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Stay on top of your allergy with the latest news, lifestyle tips and recipes. | <urn:uuid:c070afc4-36eb-46d6-8a81-4e7ca50a11a3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.peanutallergy.com/blogs/s/careful-what-you-apply-to-your-skin-study-proves-food-can-be-absorbed-through-weakened-skin- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396949.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947262 | 976 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Solar Electric, commonly known as solar photovoltaic or PV, is capturing the Sun’s energy to produce electricity for onsite consumption or to send back to the utility company for a credit.
As a home owner you know how frustrating it is to keep seeing your electric bills go up. Wouldn’t it be satisfying to produce your own electricity and stop paying that ever increasing bill? An Allura Solar solar electric system can do just that.
How does a solar electric system work?
The technology and process for installation is relatively simple. As long as your house has enough open roof space (pitched or flat roof) or open ground space, and minimal shading a solar electric system is a smart choice. A series of panels are installed on the roof or ground. This series of panels, called an array, is then tied into your current electric service. A meter, called a net-meter, is then installed. This net-meter spins both forwards when using more power than the solar electric system is generating and backwards when producing more power than the home is calling for. If enough power is sent back to the grid because the home has not used it, this power is then deemed a credit. The credits are then drawn on at night, say when the solar is off.
How much does a solar PV system cost?
Costs vary based on system size. System sizes vary either on allowable usable space and/or current or projected needs. Typical out of pocket costs for a conservative family runs approximately $8,000* and has a payback period of about 6 years (including inflation).
*Based on a standard roof mount with asphalt shingles.
But does solar PV work in upstate NY?
Yes, in fact solar electric systems are actually more efficient at colder temperatures. When Allura Solar designs a solar electric system we use 30 years of weather data. Our report will show very close to actual production so there is no question as to if it works.
How long will the solar hot water system last?
Panels are warranted for 25 years but the life expectancy on a solar electric system is 30+ years and has no maintenance. | <urn:uuid:5c45f793-17bc-480d-8771-16b421dc8b5e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://allurasolar.com/?page_id=345 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00120-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942266 | 442 | 2.890625 | 3 |
November 26, 2013 > History Column: Cows
History Column: Cows
By Phil Holmes
Cows became an important part of the East Bay when the first herd of 600 arrived at Mission San Jose in 1797. They were driven here by Christian Indians from Santa Clara Mission 15 miles away. Four teams of oxen, three mules, four tame horses, two bulls and 28 steers came with them. Mission Dolores sent 60 cows, eight steers, two bulls and eight teams of oxen.
Padre Augustin Merino supervised the cattle business, but the herding, working and butchering were done by trained Indian vaqueros (cowboys). Dr. Georg Langsdorff noted the great herds of cattle in 1806, especially the bulls, running wild and making the country unsafe for people on foot. Vast quantities of hides and tallow were traded for goods, and hundreds of cattle were butchered for food. The pastures were good, and the original cattle herd increased to over 7,000 by 1810.
The Mission herd grew to some 12,000 cattle by 1833 and remained this size until about 1842 in spite of some ÓloansÓ to start herds on the nearby ranchos. Some of these cattle were driven to Oregon by Philip Edwards and Ewing Young in 1837. Mission San Jose was sold in 1846, and the herds ÒdisappearedÓ into private ownership. Very few went to the Indians.
The Mexican rancheros became the owners of most of these cattle. Raising cattle was the main industry on California Ranchos. The branding mark of the ranchero became his sign of ownership, his crest and a source of pride to the family. Every rancho had herds of wild cattle that roamed from the bay to the hills. They were loosely tended by ranch hands and Indian servants. Cattle from adjacent ranchos intermingled but were separated and marked at annual rodeos. Beef, served in a variety of ways, was the main food eaten by everyone.
The Matanzas or butchering seasons were a highlight of rancho life because they provided hides and tallow to trade for tools, shoes, clothing, jewelry and household furnishings. Fat cattle were rounded up, herded into corrals and butchered. Some of the best meat was saved for drying. Hides were stripped and dried and the fat rendered into tallow. Hides and tallow were hauled to landings on the bay and traded for products that made life more pleasant.
James Clyman camped at the Sunol ranch in 1845 while the rancheros and Indians were slaughtering cattle for hides and tallow. Fat cattle were worth $2 in trade for the hide and $6 for the tallow. The carcasses of 200 to 300 cattle had been hauled a few rods from the slaughter grounds and left for the vultures, bears and coyotes.
The gold rush provided a ready market for California cattle, but thousands were also shot or stolen. Jose Vallejo tried to hide some of his cattle in the hills for a while, but most of the local herds were driven to mining camps and butchered to feed the miners.
John HornerÕs 1847 potato crop was destroyed by cows. He fenced his next crop but had to sleep by the fence and scare hundreds of hungry cattle away with gun shots.
Early Californians had a unique method of milking a wild cow. A vaquero would lasso the cow by the horns and tie up a foot so it couldnÕt kick. The cow would be too mad to let down her milk, so a helper would hold the cowÕs calf on the other side and let it suck a little. The cow would then let down her milk for the calf, and the milker would take most of it.
Americans imported breeding stock and worked to improve the quality of the animals. Robert Blacow was one of the best-known stock-breeders in California. Stock raising was still the areaÕs third largest industry in 1876. John Hall of Alvarado was the outstanding stockman. The 1878 Atlas listed Henry Curtner, John Emart, John Hall, John Lowrie, Howard Overacker, A. Rankin, David Reynolds, Michael Rogan, and T. Walker as stock raisers. Five thorough bred shorthorns of M. B. Sturgis were pictured and named.
Cows were capable of disturbing the routines of everyday life even in 1876:
It was wash-day and Mrs. H. had just hung up her ÒthingsÓ to dry. A stiff wind was blowing, and this fat cow wandered along contentedly chewing her cud. She was attracted by the linen on the line, waving in the breeze. Mrs. Cow observed the spectacle and concluded it was a hostile enemy. She bowed her head, charged the line and captured a calico dress on her horns. The dress struck tight to the horns and the frantic cow bellowed through the streets of Mission San Jose with tail erect and foam flying from her mouth. She was last seen somewhere headed for the hills.
Niles became a cow town for a few moments in 1936 when Carl ZwissingÕs men were driving 200 head of his cows through town. The cows behaved well until they reached MarbleÕs Service Station. Then they started to wander through the geraniums in front of the newspaper office, and Òsome even tried to get a permanent wave in Marjorie MooreÕs Beauty Salon,Ó The riders finally got the herd moving, and the town returned to normal.
Cows continued to be an important part of the local economy, and cattlemen continued to produce beef in spite of perplexing problems. A $60,000 Hereford bull named T. Triumphant was stationed at the Mission Hereford Ranch in 1947. Cattle are still being raised on the slopes and hills of Fremont and Union City, but have been almost banished from the flatlands. | <urn:uuid:6ded3386-5928-4285-81b3-07d0dabc71a4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.tricityvoice.com/articlefiledisplay.php?issue=2013-11-26&file=Cows+933TSP+++TCV.txt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00013-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983488 | 1,254 | 3.59375 | 4 |
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Pesticides should be used responsibly
Spring is approaching, buds are beginning to swell and insects and diseases will soon begin to flourish.
Many of us use pesticides to control various problems in our landscapes. Before we make final plans, let us get some important facts straight.
What is a pesticide?
Pesticides are products used by humans to kill anything they consider a pest – a weed, a bug, a germ, a virus, etc. The most common ones include insect (insecticides), disease (fungicides) and weed killers (herbicides). Pesticides also include many household products such as bleach products used to kill germs.
Who uses pesticides?
Did you know that homeowners use more pesticides than farmers do in the Puget Sound area?
While most homeowners are responsible, there are still too many that have the “if one glug works, two must be better” mentality. Consequently, some are used needlessly.
What about farmers? Let’s face it, folks. When shopping for groceries, most of us would not purchase a scab-covered apple, a wormy ear of corn or an aphid-covered head of lettuce.
Farmers view pesticides as “crop protection insurance” for two reasons: 1, to produce the blemish-free, high-quality products that we consumers demand; and 2, to help make their operations profitable enough to justify remaining in business.
Most farmers consider themselves environmental stewards of the land. They do not wish to poison themselves, their workers, their land or the ultimate consumers.
How safe are pesticides?
Pesticide use is a very emotional and political topic. The anti-pesticide crowd is quite vocal and sometimes controversial. Unfortunately, because of the rhetoric and fear mongering that often occurs, it can be difficult to sort out the facts and truly appreciate the contribution that pesticides have made to our standard of living.
When used with care and according to labeled instructions, pesticides are quite safe. It is the rate of exposure, not the mere presence of pesticides, that should be of concern.
Many public agencies continuously monitor various sites to determine the presence of elements that might be of concern. The amounts found in local waters are nearly always far below toxic levels.
Three Simple Rules for Responsible Use
1. Determine the identity of the pest. This is often easier said than done. Master gardener clinics, extension services or consultants are good sources for assistance.
2. Know which pesticides are legal and effective for the identified pest. This requires careful reading of pesticide labels at stores or pest information often accessible on the Internet.
3. Apply the pesticides at the proper time and in a safe manner. In other words, if a spray will kill only adult insects, do not apply it before the adults have hatched.
If you miss on any of these rules, time, money and chemicals will have been wasted.
Two Approaches for Proper Control
Pesticides are used to either prevent problems before they occur or to control an outbreak after it has become a problem.
For example, fungicides generally are sprayed to prevent various diseases. Insecticides are most often used after an insect attack has become serious enough to warrant control.
Weed killers can be used either before or after an offending plant has started growing – depending upon the weed and type of chemical.
Are Spray Services Necessary?
Many homeowners use services that apply pesticides on a programmed schedule. Such programs commonly require three to four applications per year.
These services have a real challenge because their success is dependent upon weather conditions. Some pests have a narrow window of opportunity for effective control. If foul weather prevents applications within these windows or if rain occurs shortly following an application, the treatments may not work.
Homeowners place great trust in such services. However, families should be aware of the chemicals used, their environmental impact and pests that are targeted. A greater understanding of a spray program will help a homeowner decide if it is truly appropriate for his individual circumstances.
Dennis Tompkins, a Bonney Lake resident, is a certified arborist and certified tree risk assessor. He provides small tree pruning, pest diagnosis, hazard tree evaluations, tree appraisals and other services for homeowners. Contact him at 253 863-7469 or email at [email protected]. Web site: evergreenarborist.com. | <urn:uuid:576ca26d-01df-4d39-8e9a-42d3ca214ddf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.courierherald.com/community/40999144.html | 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 | 0.937348 | 937 | 3.03125 | 3 |
So far in terms of rainfall, this winter’s El Niño weather pattern has been more of a gecko than a Godzilla.
Southern California, which usually sees the bulk of the state's El Niño-related storms, only experienced a few wet days in the first half of January. Overall, precipitation in Los Angeles and the rest of California is several inches behind where it was at this time during the last big El Niño in 1998.
(Recent rainfall totals for California as of January 15th (in black) compared with rainfall from the five strongest El Niño systems on record. Image: California-Nevada Climate Applications Program / NOAA.)
Still, scientists are telling us this El Niño is one of the strongest ever recorded. So what gives?
Well, first off, it’s still early in the game, said Anthony Barnston, Chief Forecaster for Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society.
"California typically shows its greatest responses to El Niño during January-March, rather than the earlier part of the winter," he noted.
In short, there is still plenty of time for a good soaking.
That's welcome news since much of the state is still below where it typically would be for an average water year.
Nate Mantua with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said there may be another factor worth considering.
Sure, this El Niño is strong when it comes to some key indicators like record warm surface temperatures in a swath of the Pacific associated with the weather pattern.
But Mantua noted that it is weaker in other climate signals, like the strength of the trade winds or the temperature of the ocean below the surface.
"It has a lot of the same characteristics as big El Niños of the past, but it also has some differences that may end up leading to different outcomes for what it does to weather in California and along the whole pacific coast," he explained.
For example, he says the Pacific Northwest is getting a lot of heavy rain this winter, which isn’t typical for strong El Niño years.
So, expect surprises from this climate pattern.
(This map shows the amount of rain in CA for this water year which starts on October 1st and ends on September 30th. Yellow and orange areas are below average precipitation and blues and purples are above average. Image via NOAA.)
Recent observations of the El Niño signal have noted that it seems to be weakening, as is often the case by this point in the winter.
That shouldn't stop it from sending storms our way through the spring, though, Mantua said.
By summer, it's likely the El Niño pattern will have completely disappeared, and scientists will start watching the signals again to see if it will return or if the world will see a neutral or La Niña pattern instead. | <urn:uuid:8f11763c-902a-4813-a3a2-1202dad2db0e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.scpr.org/news/2016/01/18/56887/el-nino-is-here-so-where-s-socal-s-non-stop-rain/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404826.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00093-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957034 | 578 | 2.609375 | 3 |
The environmental degradation in North Korean has become so severe, North Korea invited a group of five Americans to Pyongyang last month to talk about restoration and food security. It was an unprecedented trip, but when thousands of your own people have to eat grass and tree bark to survive, it kind of makes sense to bring in the experts. And for the American scientists, it was a rare opportunity to instruct North Koreans about ecological basics.
"It was really amazing," said Norman Neureiter, a director at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, who recruited the Americans who went on the trip, including Margaret Palmer, a specialist in waterway restoration at the University of Maryland. On Friday, Palmer spoke with the The New York Times about the type of environmental degradation in the country, but we wanted to know who set up this rare trip in the first place.
"The idea came from North Korea," said Neureiter, who told The Atlantic Wire that he was first contacted by an official at the Pyongyang International Information Center on New Technology and Economy, which took the lead in organizing the seminar that hosted about 10 scientists from other countries including Canada and China. "The benefit for them was interacting with serious Western scientists in a big forum."
Of course, we're talking about North Korea, so the entire seminar was meticulously regulated with restrictions on casual banter and free exchange. "One would like to have had more individual interaction, one-on-one or two-on-two, but that wasn't possible," Neureiter said.
The story of North Korea's environmental crisis begins in the 1950s when the Korean War resulted in rampant forest fires and deforestation. According to Science magazine, the country took another hit in the 1990s when droughts and floods destroyed crops and left thousands dead in a major famine. At the time, "desperate villagers scoured forests for food and fuel" and forest cover was reduced from 8.2 million to 7.6 million hectares.
In recent years, the regime has implemented tree-planting campaigns that have helped but Dennis Ojima, an ecologist at Colorado State University who went on the trip, tells us intense land-use practices have caused continued destruction of the soil matter. "They really mined it out," he said.
Ojima said that while some interactions he had with North Korean scientists were rewarding, the regime restricted the team's movements and limited one-on-one discussions. "They definitely shepherded us around pretty heavily," he said. "I wanted to take a picture of a building and one of the minders ran after me."
One of the stranger things he saw was how prepared average citizens were for a war with South Korea. "Everyone was in camouflage," he said, describing an outing to the countryside on a Saturday in March. "I started noticing a pickup truck covered with hay and a truck with fish-netting and a motorcycle with camouflage. Farmers were dressed in camouflage." He suspected that it had to do with a coinciding military exercise carried out by the U.S. and South Korea near the border.
Neureiter also described a tense environment in the country in response to the drills. "The English-language press inside North Korea was absolutely vicious about these maneuvers," he said. "Almost every day, organizers would tell us how tensions were rising on the peninsular because of these maneuvers."
Regardless, both Neureiter and Ojima said the exchange of ecological and environmental expertise was productive. "They were really grateful that we were sharing the information we had with them," Ojima said. | <urn:uuid:97b5f0a8-40d4-47a4-ac79-84b95b304a82> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/04/environment-so-bad-north-korea-theyll-even-let-americans-help/50653/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396147.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00003-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985221 | 733 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Most candidates were unable to:
- state the function of the surface planer;
- name the parts labelled;
- sketch and name a suitable device used on the surface planer
The expected response to question 1 is as given below:
(a) Functions of the Surface Plane
- end shooting
(b) Naming of Parts of the Surface Plane
A - Outfeed table (or Rear Table)
B - Fence
C - Infeed table (Front table)
(c) Stating the correct function of Parts of Surface Plane
A - Outfeed table – It is used to set level with the top of the cutting circle of the cutter to support the planed surface.
B - Fence – It is adjusted to any required position across the table to enable different sizes of timber to be surfaced or edged.
C - Infeed table – It is adjusted to vary the cutting dept or to vary the amount of timber which is to be planed.
D - Bridge guard – used to guard the cutter block.
(d) (i) Sketch of Safety Device
(ii) Push block | <urn:uuid:3923db2d-a6a2-4b03-ba41-96fa75150ecc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://waeconline.org.ng/e-learning/Wood/wood317Nq1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00130-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.865611 | 233 | 2.90625 | 3 |
|Mahonia bealei is an upright, evergreen shrub. The foliage is dull green to blue-green, presenting a coarse texture. Lightly fragrant, yellow flowers bloom in midspring on 4 inch long, upright racemes. The fruit is a bluish berry, maturing in late summer. It is very widely used in the southeastern U.S. Birds love the fruit, disseminating the seeds to out of the way areas. Native to China, introduced in 1845. | <urn:uuid:e20e19d8-c5f5-4056-a712-0bf2b450ba5d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.backyardgardener.com/plantname/pd_d3af.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00180-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916229 | 103 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
for Fish Conservation
by Karl Blankenship
Nearly 35,000 years ago, Cro-Magnon hunters drew on cave walls pictures of the animals they sought. Along with the drawings, they drew track lines that appear to depict migration routes, as well as marks that seem to be tallies of animals using those routes.
This helped the "cave men" keep track of when and where they would have the best chance of finding the greatest number of animals. Today, scientists have combined that stone age idea with high tech computers and have come up with something they call the "geographic information system"--or GIS. Increasingly, scientists and others are turning to GIS programs to help keep tabs on a wide range of important resources--like fish.
Recently, scientists at Penn State fed more than 22,000 individual fish-survey records--each identifying a particular species and where it was found--into a GIS program. The idea was to judge the status of a species based on its abundance and distribution. The result of the analysis shows that 35 percent of the state's 159 fish species are in peril. Some were even worse off: The deepwater sculpin, silver lamprey and spoonhead sculpin were all extirpated from the state.
To reach their conclusions, the scientists did what Cro-Magnons did tens of thousands of years ago. They took databases of information and combined them with graphic files to present information in a mapped, or geographical, form. On their cave walls in what is now France, the hunters used information about the kinds and numbers of animals migrating--a database--and combined it with the migration route--the geographical element.
The main difference is that today's computers allow scientists to use huge amounts of information. Before, the notion of trying to locate 22,000 individual records on stacks of paper maps was unimaginable.
"When we were manually overlaying maps, it was really laborious," said Robert Carline, a Penn State professor of fisheries science. "A lot of things we didn't even think about doing. This technology has allowed us to organize and analyze data in ways that we were never able to do in the past."
"Obviously, objective data is what is most likely to stand up in court, and it is most likely to be persuasive or convincing to a third party who may not know much about a species," said Andrew Shiels, the Fish & Boat Commission's Nongame and Endangered Species Unit Leader. "If you can keep your data as unbiased and scientifically obtained as possible, that strengthens your argument."
A GIS can display any information as long as it can be organized geographically--or mapped. But a GIS can also display lots of mapped "layers" at once, sort of like a stack of transparencies. Instead of looking at distribution information for, say, the mountain madtom, scientists can look at many layers--or species--at once. When they do, they begin to see new insights: As they looked at the fish information, for instance, it became clear that some watersheds were home to multiple rare species.
That knowledge could be used to help target programs, such as stream restoration projects, toward "hot spots" with several threatened or endangered species.
"We're able to identify watersheds with high species diversity and rank them in terms of those that really merit protection," Carline said. "That would be a valuable piece of information for decision makers, in terms of allocating public funds."
That is just the beginning. Different types of information can be added as new layers. Scientists, as part of a project supported by the Wild Resource Conservation Fund and the Fish & Boat Commission, are now putting more information about land use and geology into the program, which they hope will allow them more precisely to identify the conditions in which particular fish are found. By looking at the GIS, they could quickly see if a species is found only in, say, streams with steep slopes in oak forests with limestone geology.
Taking that a step further, they should also be able to identify where rare fish should be found--based on habitat conditions--but are absent. New monitoring efforts could begin in those areas to see if the fish are present and have merely been overlooked. That type of information could be used someday to identify potential sites where rare species could be reintroduced to rebuild and expand the population, Carline said.
Cro-Magnon's form of GIS may have helped set him apart from many other prehistoric hominids in an important respect--he survived, while many others went the way of the Neanderthal. Scientists hope the blend of his stone age concept with high tech will help today's fish and other resources survive as well.
May/June 2000 Angler & Boater
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Web Privacy and Security Policies | <urn:uuid:3a578fe5-dbd6-4291-906e-3ec380c83c9f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.fish.state.pa.us/anglerboater/2000/maju00/gisconsv.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00008-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964311 | 1,000 | 3.5 | 4 |
The current city of Melfort was preceded by a small community known as the Stoney Creek Settlement, started by founding settler Reginald Beatty, a Hudson Bay Company employee who settled with his family in the new North West. After squatting for a period near what is presently known as Birch Hills, Mr. Beatty desired to relocate near running water and in a better hunting area. During the summer of 1884, on the advice of Indian friends, Beatty and his family homesteaded on the banks of Stoney Creek. The Stoney Creek site was within an area whose agricultural potential may have been discovered as early as 1753 by French explorer Chevalier de la Corne, who reportedly experimented successfully with grain crops during his time in the Carrot River Valley Region.
The new town developed rapidly and furrows were ploughed for Main Street by late October. Having secured one of the first plots available, Ed Crawford erected Melfort's first structure in 1902 - a general store. The Clift Brothers, who in 1907 built the landmark Pioneer General store, would later purchase the site. Others soon followed with similar entrepreneurial enthusiasm and spirit.
Melfort was officially incorporated as a village in 1903. The promised rail reached the community in 1904, facilitating steady population growth. According to a census taken July 21, 1906, Melfort at the time was home to 448 residents. By 1907, Melfort's population was of sufficient number to justify its official incorporation as a town, which occurred on July 1 of that year, and became Saskatchewan's 12th city on September 2nd, 1980. | <urn:uuid:951d9ed1-b65c-4437-b18b-47c45bb5b565> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.cityofmelfort.ca/Visitors/History_of_Melfort/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393093.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00047-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985668 | 324 | 2.9375 | 3 |
A broad coalition of stakeholders will gather next week to spotlight harmful invasive species that cause a multibillion-dollar annual drain on our nation’s economy. They will be participating in activities for National Invasive Species Awareness Week (NISAW), scheduled for Feb. 28-March 4 in Washington, D.C.
“The federal government manages around 650 million acres of land, and an estimated 50 million acres are infested by invaders,” says Lee Van Wychen, Ph.D., science policy director for the Weed Science Society of America (WSSA). “These nonnative species can destroy wildlife and aquatic habitats and cause major losses in agriculture, forestry and other segments of our nation’s economy. Coordinated, efficient and effective prevention and management is imperative.”
WSSA is among the many public and private stakeholders working with the National Invasive Species Council (NISC) to organize education and awareness events. WSSA will host a seminar on Capitol Hill featuring Dr. Richard Mack from Washington State University. Mack will present research on how invasive grass species contribute to rangeland fires in the Western U.S.
“Instead of continuing to spend public funds indefinitely to clean up after the last fire and brace ourselves for the next one, a concerted effort is needed to radically change much of our research and restoration efforts so that we can permanently reduce the role of these devastating invasive grasses,” Van Wychen said.
The weeklong program also will include state and regional workshops, briefings on regional invasive species outbreaks and an announcement of a new national agenda for invasive species control. Educational programs and events are scheduled at the Department of Interior, USDA, the U.S. Botanic Garden and the National Aquarium.
For more information and details on free registration, visit http://www.nisaw.org. | <urn:uuid:7e1d2700-ef7b-4604-9f6b-8d1490a8416e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://westernfarmpress.com/print/management/nisaw-focus-harmful-nonnative-species | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00107-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901792 | 376 | 2.90625 | 3 |
When and why did food became an addiction? And is fat consumption or sugar consumption the greater culprit? Jacques Peretti (pictured above) investigates.
"Genetically, human beings haven't changed, but our environment, our access to cheap food has," says Professor Jimmy Bell, obesity specialist at Imperial College, London.
"We're being bombarded every day by the food industry to consume more and more food."
One of the biggest changes in our modern diet stems back to the 1970s when US agriculture embarked on the mass-production of corn and of high-fructose corn syrup, commonly used as a sweetener in processed foods. . . . | <urn:uuid:6c51b864-1d2f-4902-b0ab-519c28d87131> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.scoop.it/t/sustain-our-earth?tag=low-fat+diet | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00131-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949938 | 133 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Don't Ignore Dry Eyes
You might feel a sand-like grittiness in your eyes that can range from mild to severe. People describe the feeling as a lack of lubrication. That’s exactly what it is. Your body isn't making enough tears, or the chemicals in your tears are out of balance. When this happens, you have dry eye.
Dry eye is a medical diagnosis that at times is not taken seriously, says the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) and the American Optometric Association (AOA).
According to the AAO and the AOA, over 3 million women and over 1 million men suffer from dry eye syndrome. This generally increases with age. Dry eye is not just an annoyance. It can cause inflammation, blurred vision, and even blindness in extreme cases.
Risk rises with age
Changes in your immune response and falling hormone production as you age can lead to dry eye.
Here are some of the medicines that can cause or worsen dry eye:
If you have dry eye symptoms and are on medicines, talk to your healthcare provider to see if changes might help.
Some autoimmune disorders, like rheumatoid arthritis, can cause dry eye.
The first line of defense against dry eye is to limit or avoid things that cause symptoms. That includes dry climates. Humidity levels of about 45% or more are best for your eyes. Other factors include forced air (like from a car vent), dusty settings, smoke, and computer screens set so high that they force your eyes to open wider.
Artificial tears that you can buy over the counter can help. Look for products that are just like your own tears, not eye drops sold for allergies or redness. Prescription eye drops, punctal plugs, hot compresses, and other medicines and treatments can help. Talk to your eye care provider about these choices. | <urn:uuid:8621e3d2-37ce-475b-8a2d-3d29b4b2b50a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sjo.org/Health-Library/Article.aspx?CT=1&C=3069&LargeFonts=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00188-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943379 | 386 | 2.609375 | 3 |
NEW YORK — Researchers studying people who are depressed in winter and manic in summer have found that the syndrome has a mirror image: Some become depressed in summer and excitable in winter.
Those with the newly identified seasonal syndrome report that their depression typically starts between March and June and ends in August or September, when the manic phase takes over.
Patients with winter depression can be helped by increased exposure to real or simulated sunlight; those with summer depression seem to improve when exposed to cold. One woman`s hot-weather depression lifted temporarily when the weather turned cold in June. Effective treatment was confinement to an air-conditioned house and taking cold showers many times a day.
In the current issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, Doctors Thomas A. Wehr, David A. Sack and Norman E. Rosenthal, of the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Md., suggest that summer depression may be more common than is generally realized and may account for the peak in suicides in late spring and summer. | <urn:uuid:133aa7eb-5d21-4444-b4d5-a6087c55fcad> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-01-25/features/8803250136_1_manic-depression-norman-e-rosenthal | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393146.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00031-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962078 | 203 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC
Widespread burning is underway in West and Central Africa as Africa’s continental-scale burning patterns shift from south of the equator to north. The burning season peaks in southern Africa in late summer or early fall, only to begin building in the areas between the southern edge of the Sahara and the equator. The peak of the burning season in this region occurs in late winter or early spring. These true-color images were captured by the Terra and Aqua satellites beginning in early November 2002 and extending into April of the new year.
An interesting difference in burning patterns can be seen between the Terra and Aqua images captured on the same day, for example, on November 25. Burning intensifies as the day progresses, and there are more active fires (red dots) in the Aqua image than the Terra image.
Note: Often times, due to the size, browsers have a difficult time opening and displaying images. If you experiece an error when clicking on an image link, please try directly downloading the image (using a right click, save as method) to view it locally. | <urn:uuid:e7094129-c127-46bc-a758-c5064bc910fd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=63210 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00139-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921844 | 236 | 3.703125 | 4 |
Anti Bias Curriculum
Rasmussen, © 2004, All rights reserved.
Children are aware at a young age that color, language, gender, and physical ability differences are connected with privilege and power. They learn by observing the differences and similarities among people and by absorbing the spoken and unspoken messages about those differences. Racism, sexism, and prejudice towards handicaps have a profound influence on their developing sense of self and others.
Anti-bias approach is a constructive methodology to reduce prejudice and endorse comprehensiveness. Because children live in a diverse and complex world, they interact daily with people different from themselves. By using anti-bias approach, children can develop and strengthen their self and group identities, while interacting respectfully with others in a multicultural environment. One of the goals of high quality child care programs is to help children become sensitive to issues of bias such as cultural or religious differences, society, race, physical or mental ability, etc., and to develop anti-bias skills.
Diversity represents the richness and uniqueness of human life. There are many reasons to include consideration of diversity as a central theme in early childhood programs. When you value diversity, you maximize the positive impact of your program for all your children. You will also prepare children to fight bias and discrimination directed toward themselves or other members of society.
Young children are aware of diversity; hence, you need to be prepared to address it in your work with them. Treat their questions and comments seriously and respectfully, just as you would if they were expressing curiosity about nature or other facts. Young children also acquire attitudes and values from their families and society about which differences are positive and which are not. How you respond to the ideas they express will influence the feelings and judgments they will form. Help the children develop self esteem and positive self image about themselves.
Educationalists who seek to confront stereotypes and biases can provide students with realistic, solid information and encouraging interpersonal experiences. Teachers can also learn how to efficiently tackle biased behavior when it occurs. An all-inclusive program of staff development, curricular materials and school assessment tools can help teachers, students, parents and other community members build and nourish a unified society where positive and just relationships are recognized across cultural barriers.
The following qualities are imbibed in a child who thrives in a community where anti-bias approach is practiced:
- A sense of justice and equality.
- Belief and trust in others.
- Respect and regard for different cultures, religions, races and communities.
- Children can be proud of their own cultures and heritages.
- A belief that all children can be curious about and learn to accept human similarities and differences.
Copyright 2001, 2004. All rights reserved. Any reproduction of this article in whole or in part without written or verbal permission is strictly prohibited. For information about reprinting this article, contact the copyright owner: Vanessa Rasmussen, Ph.D, Starting a Day Care Center, http://www.startingadaycarecenter.com. | <urn:uuid:5b64deee-dccd-4133-b56f-606b4fcd37cd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.startingadaycarecenter.com/Anti-Bias-Curriculum.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00096-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939493 | 614 | 4.25 | 4 |
A NEW species of earless dragons has been discovered on the Darling Downs.
A research team led by the Museum of Victoria formally described two species of the creature in grassland across the region.
The newly named T.wilsoni and T.condaminensis are found in diminishing numbers and are difficult to tell apart.
"Our study demonstrates the importance of bringing together taxonomic research with the conservation management of such species," Museum Victoria senior curator Jane Melville said.
"These species, as with many earless dragons, are very difficult to tell apart, despite being very different genetically."
The tiny creatures have garnered much support from the local community, with the Pittsworth Landcare Association raising funding for research and conservation efforts.
One of these new species, T.condaminensis, is already listed as an endangered species of conservation priority in Queensland, but the second is also at risk from dwindling habitats.
"The grasslands around the Darling Downs are subject to both mining and land clearing encroachments," Ms Melville said. That loss of habitat is pushing the dragons into smaller and smaller areas - we found some along roadside verges, trapped on that very narrow strip of land."
Ms Melville said the discovery of an additional species on the Darling Downs highlights how little is known about fauna in these grasslands and the fundamental need for further ecological and genetic research on both species.
"We need to establish broad baseline data, which can be used to develop conservation management strategies," she said.
"There is a real risk of these species becoming extinct before we know anything about them."
Ten of the world's most endangered lizards
- Tarzans Chameleon
- Jamaican Iguana
- Koula Striped Gecko
- Koumac Litter skink
- Spineless Forrest Lizard
- Barbados Racer
- Monito Gecko
- Sulu Sphenmorphus
- Crab Clay Anole
- Lilly White Whiptail
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Sociology: Types of Sociologists
The American Sociological Association (ASA) provides a useful summary of the different types of sociologists. Each of the types listed below is considered a sub-field within the larger field of sociology. Though the faculty at the of knows a good deal about many different sub-disciplines, we specialize in urban sociology (Dr. Duff), sex, gender, and social psychology (Dr. Monto), and criminology (Dr. McRee).
The ASA explains as follows:
Sociological Specialties: Many Paths to Understanding Society
Sociologists develop their interests in different ways. They pursue diverse specialty subjects within the field as a whole. Thus, sociologists may specialize in families, adolescence, or children; the urban community; education; health and medicine; aging and the life course; work and occupations; the environment, science, and technology; economics, social inequality, and social class; race relations, ethnicity, and minorities; sex and gender; sports; culture and the arts; politics, the military, peace, and war; crime, delinquency, law, and justice; social change and social movements; and any other area of human organization. College and university courses reflect these interests, as well as research methods and theory building. Some of the most fascinating subjects explored by sociologists include:
- Sex and gender: Do men and women have different hiring, employment, and promotion experiences? This would be a research question for a sociologist specializing in how sex and gender affect the workplace.
- Medical sociology: How is AIDS transmitted (and thus prevented) in different subgroups of the population? How has public opinion about AIDS shifted? These are the concerns of medical sociologists.
- Organizations and occupations: Which management styles increase productivity and worker satisfaction would engage the attention of an organizational sociologist.
- Racial and ethnic minorities: Do minority children get "tracked" within the public schools? Do minority parents get "cooled out" from participating in and knowing about the informal power structure within schools? Someone specializing in minority relations would explore these questions.
- Family: Are children of divorced parents more likely to divorce, or to reject marriage themselves? What factors predict whether abused children would fare better in foster care or reunited with their birth family? These would be possible subjects for a family sociologist. Any social phenomenon can be examined through the lens of different sociological standpoints. Indeed, a hallmark of sociological analysis is that it utilizes a variety of interconnected perspectives. Most sociological research and theory seeks to explain prevailing social behavior patterns and how they change over time.
ASA Sections: An for Involvement and Networking
ASA has 39 Sections, or special interest groups, within the Association, formed of people who share a common interest in a particular area of sociology.
These sections are: Aging and the Life Course; Alcohol, Drugs, and Tobacco; Animals and Society; Asia and Asian America; Children and Youth; Collective Behavior and Social Movements; Communication and Information Technologies; Community and Urban Sociology; Comparative and Historical Sociology; Crime, Law, and Deviance; Culture; Economic Sociology; Education; Emotions; Environment and Technology; Ethnomethodology and Conversational Analysis; Family; History of Sociology; International Migration; Labor and Labor Movements; Latino/a Sociology; Law; Marxist Sociology; Mathematical Sociology; Medical Sociology; Mental Health; Methodology; Organizations, Occupations, and Work; Peace, War, and Social Conflict; Political Economy of the World-System; Political Sociology; Population; Race, Gender, and Class; Racial and Ethnic Minorities; Rationality and Society; Religion; Science, Knowledge, and Technology; Sex and Gender; Sexualities; Social Psychology; Sociological Practice; Teaching and Learning; Theory
The above information is excerpted from the American Sociological Association, retrieved August 2006 from the ASA website.
Monument photographed during field research in Thailand, courtesy of Prof. Duff | <urn:uuid:7d8f184b-037f-4439-9342-b84528139230> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://college.up.edu/sbs/sociology/default.aspx?cid=6078&pid=2187 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00078-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906668 | 956 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Historically, only large companies could afford secure networks, which they created from expensive leased lines. Smaller folks had to make do with the relatively untrusted Internet. Nowadays, even large companies have to go outside their private nets, because so many people telecommute or log in while they're on the road. How do you provide a low-cost, secure electronic network for your organization?The solution is a Virtual Private Network (VPN): a collection of technologies that creates secure connections or "tunnels" over regular Internet lines -- connections that can be easily used by anyone logging in from anywhere. A number of products now exist to help you develop that solution.This book tells you how to plan and build a VPN. It starts with general concerns like costs, configuration, and how a VPN fits in with other networking technologies like firewalls. It continues with detailed descriptions of how to install and use VPN technologies that are available for Windows NT and UNIX.Topics include:
How the VPN compares to other available networking technologies
Encryption, firewalls, and other technologies that let VPNs work
VPN configuration (sample included)
Point to Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) and Level 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP)
Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The animals featured on the cover of Virtual Private Networks are puffins. Puffins are small, unusual-looking birds with large triangular bills, short necks, and stocky bodies. They live in colonies, sometimes tens of thousands of birds together, along the icy shores of the northern regions of the globe. Though rarely seen outside of the northern regions, there are approximately 15 million puffins in the world today. Despite their short wings, puffins can fly, although they spend most of their time swimming or walking erect on land. While flying, they make a purring sound.Here's some more puffin stuff: puffins' primary food sources are small fish and marine animals. They dive for fish and use their wings to swim underwater to catch them. They can carry as many as 30 fish in their mouth at one time, to bring back to shore for their young. Puffin pairs often mate for life. Usually one egg is laid per pair, and both mother and father incubate the egg and feed the young hatchling. Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced with Quark XPress 3.3, using the ITC Garamond font. Whenever possible, our books use Rep KoverTM, a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. If the page count exceeds RepKover's limit, perfect binding is used.The inside layout was designed by Nancy Priest and implemented in FrameMaker by Mike Sierra. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Gara mond Book. The illustrations that appear in the book were created in Macromedia Freehand 7.0, and screen shots were created in Adobe Photoshop 4.0 by Robert Romano. This colophon was written by Clairemarie Fisher O'Leary. | <urn:uuid:b3d54c3b-4b9e-403c-b9b4-685d112f36a7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781565923195.do | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396945.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00170-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954366 | 675 | 2.796875 | 3 |
THE EXCHEQUER (click for pictures)
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This, the latest comer of the Leghorn family, was introduced by Mr. Robert Miller of Scotland. The first Exchequers were sports. In the year 1904, four or five appeared amongst Mr. Miller Leghorns. He was attracted by them, and in 1905-6-7 sought to perfect and establish them as he had found them to be great in egg producing properties. In 1907 he introduced them to the Fancy under the name of Exchequer, the name being suggested by their black and white chequering in colour, and by the manner in which they contributed to the farm exchequer. They were quickly taken up by customers of Mr. Miller us utility birds, and very soon made a name amongst Scottish breeders for their early maturity, high productivity and hardiness. Flock averages "of well over 200 being reported for pullets, and the hens proved themselves long distance layers, some: even "going strong " when eight years old.. They also proved good starters, as some laid at three and a-half months.
After the war the Exchequer began to be known in England and for some reason met with much opposition, many going so fat as to say they were not Leghorns at all, but Ancona culls. Mr. Miller, and a number of breeders who had tested them for years controverted this idea, and the Exchequer began to make its way in England both as a show bird, and a splendid utility fowl. One breeder, Mr. Sam Outhwaite, who is now the secretary of the Exchequer Leghorn Club having birds which reached a flock average of 291. The Exchequer has forged ahead and made a great reputation as a prolific layer of large eggs, and in the opinion of many is quite the best utility member of the Leghorn family. Its hardiness is unquestioned because its greatest work has been done in Scotland and the North of England. Its merits have been recognised everywhere and from Land's End to John o' Groats the Exchequer is now held in high repute. In backyards, on ordinary farms, and commercial egg farms the Exchequer has proved its worth, and its adaptability to all climes, and conditions of soil.
The ideal which Mr. Miller and those other breeders who put the Exchequer forward as a Standard fowl had was a black and white fowl chequered evenly all over, and as evenly as possible. The under-colour was to be white, and there was to be no approach to the Ancona either in breed characteristics, or in marking, and the best way to assure this was to fix the under-colour opposite to that of the Ancona. The white under-colour takes the Exchequer Leghorn right away out of the Ancona category, as in that breed the under-colour is black.
During the few years the Exchequer has been recognised as an exhibition variety it has made great advance. Many breeders have taken up its culture, and shows which have provided classes for the breed have generally been well supported. Progress has been made in breed character, and to-day we have Exchequers which are quite equal in general Leghorn breed characteristics to some of the older established varieties.
At the time when the Exchequer Leghorn Club was formed
and a standard drawn up it was decided that the white marking of the plumage
should take the form of a circular patch at the end of each feather. This was
done to keep away the possibility of Ancona crossing, and the V-tipped feather which is
characteristic of the Ancona.
In selecting birds for breeding one has to be very careful to avoid mating them so that there is preponderance of either black or white in the colour of the progeny.
Two evils have to be avoided, or rather two difficulties have to be overcome. If you think too much about leg colour and so try to avoid producing birds that have sooty or dark legs you will possibly get too much white in the plumage especially in the wings and tail. If you are obsessed with the idea that you must keep up the density and richness of the black you will possibly hired birds that, whilst they have plenty of black on the body, have too much on the legs.
The general breed characteristics of the Leghorn family must be considered when mating up the stock for breeding, and then the colour. The bird to head the breeding pen should be a first class exhibition cock or cockerel, or one as near to the Standard as possible. This bird will have plenty of pure white under-colour and will be well broken in black and white on the top. In selecting the mates for such a bird one can use hens or pullets that are up to exhibition form and so have the appearance of being standard birds, and some that are on the dark side both in under-colour and on the top may also be used. But one should avoid the use of hens or pullets that carry too much white, especially on the wings and tail, because the tendency is for the birds to throw progeny lighter than themselves.
One point must never be lost sight of and that is the yellow leg ; therefore select birds as good in leg colour as possible on both sides.
Another point to remember is that cocks and hens are always lighter in their second year than they were in the first. Thus sometimes a bird that is too dark as a cockerel or pullet may be "What's Wanted " as an adult. On the other hand cockerels and pullets fit for exhibition may be too light in their second year. These things must be borne in mind and carefully considered when the birds are being mated up. | <urn:uuid:328689f7-8eb5-442d-838b-3b8cb5017844> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.theleghornclub.com/TextExch.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396222.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00034-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979622 | 1,217 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Asoka and the Missions Home Page[More Missions]
[XII. Faith in Various Districts]
[Majjhantika in Kasmīra-Gandhāra]
10-32 ≠ Mhv 9-28
Then in Kasmīra-Gandhāra, the Nāga King Āravāla, the one of great power, destroyed the ripe crops by making hail fall into the lake, Samudda normally means ocean or sea, but Kasmīra-Gandhāra was a long way away from the ocean, and the word can cover any large body of water, which is what is meant here.01 and all was violently upset.
The Elder Majjhantika went quickly through the air and walked up and down on the top of Āravāla’s lake, then he stopped and having sat down, he instantly lay down.
Seeing that, the angry young Nāgas informed the Nāga King, saying: “God-King! This solitary shaveling wearing his patchwork cloth Cf. 14.11 below.02 has lain down on this lake of water, and is walking up and down on it.”
Hearing their statement the Nāga King, of great power, came out from his dwelling and did various fearful things: great winds did blow, a cloud thundered and rained, thunderbolts crashed, lightning struck here and there, trees and the tops of the mountains all fell down, and deformed Nāgas caused fright on all sides.
He himself angrily fumed and burned in many ways, and he sent all the Nāgas, saying: “Go, seize and kill them.”
The Elder having repelled all those fearful things with his psychic power said this to the Nāga King, showing his supreme strength:
“If the world together with its gods were to try to frighten me they would not be able to give rise to fear and fright in me here. Even if you took up the whole earth with its oceans and mountains, Great Nāga, and were to throw them at me from on high, there is no possibility of giving rise to fear and fright in me. Assuredly, doing so is only for your own distress, Ruler of Snakes.”
Hearing that he was crushed, and the Elder taught the Dhamma, and the Nāga King was established in the Refuges and Precepts, and right there and then eighty-four thousand Serpents Another term for Nāgas.03 were also established in the Refuges and Precepts.
In the Himālaya many Gandhabbas, Yakkhas and Kumbhaṇḍakas were very quickly established in the Refuges and Precepts, but the Yakkha named Bhaṇḍaka, together with the Yakkhinī Hāritā, and their five-hundred children attained Path and Fruit.
Then the Elder Majjhantika said this to all the Nāgas: “Now do not get angry in the future as in the past, and do not destroy the crops, for breathing beings desire happiness. Develop loving-kindness towards people, and let humans live happily.”
Like this they were admonished and they followed the path. The Ruler of Snakes made the Elder sit down on a jewelled couch and stood near by fanning him. Then the humans residing in Kasmīra-Gandhāra who had come in order to worship the Nāga King, after discussing and worshipping the Elder of great power, sat down on one side.
The Elder taught them the Dhamma about the Simile of the Poisonous Snake. Probably SN 35. Sut. 238, although there are others that include a relevant simile. An appropriate simile for Nāgas to learn, there four poisonous snakes represent the four elements, which are subject to disintegration.04 For eighty thousand of them there was a penetration I.e. they attained Path and Fruit. Abhisamaya is the noun regularly used in this connection. Cf. passim.05 of the Dhamma, and one-hundred thousand men went forth I.e. ordained as monks. Technically pabbajjā is the lower ordination, which is normally followed by upasampadā. But here and elsewhere in this text it appears to be used as a shorthand to indicate both. It appears from this again, that Majjhantika must have been the leader, and was probably accompanied by at least four other monks, to make up the number required to give the higher ordination.06 in the presence of the Elder.
Since that time until now those in Kasmīra-Gandhāra are light up with the monastic robe, finding support in the three objects. The three objects of reverence, i.e. the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha.07
Asoka and the Missions Home Page[Mahādeva in Mahisamaṇḍala]
last updated: August 2012 | <urn:uuid:5f98843e-bdb4-45f6-956d-16e4f8381d52> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/English-Texts/Asokan-Missions/12-02.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396147.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00122-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968387 | 1,088 | 2.515625 | 3 |
A recent study published in the journal of sleep called Sleep, suggests that regardless of your daytime habits, you will gain weight if you go to bed late.
Main researcher Andrea Spaeth’s study is different from others that have investigated the link between sleep habits and weight gain–this particular initiative involved more participants and more weight gain. Spaeth and the gang’s study contained 225 subjects who were all encouraged to be as sedentary as possible during the duration of the experiment. They were also given unlimited access to food.
The controlled study split groups into two: people who slept from 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. and people who slept from 10:00 pm to 8:00 a.m. The former group, the night owls, ate “more calorie-dense and fat laden” foods than the latter group. Non-scientifically speaking, the sleep deprived desire comfort food.
Though it is clear that this phenomenon exists, the cause is unclear. The researchers offer no scientific-explanation, but speculative causes are pretty obvious. Perhaps night owls choose fattier foods because people who stay up late get hungrier, perhaps it is the range of foods available late at night, or the activities that cause the sleeplessness or something even more sinister–in any case, the jury is out on why midnight oil burners are more likely to cram fatty foods into their mouths than sleepy-heads.
Story via The Guardian Express | <urn:uuid:98edd1e0-06f9-487c-aa1d-f0dac79c9068> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.blisstree.com/2013/07/01/food/nutrition/going-to-bed-late-is-making-you-fat/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408828.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00143-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965827 | 307 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Dreams give you messages in a variety of ways, some are precognitive giving you insight into your future either near or far. Others are symbolic, some dreams help you to unlock what is buried within your subconscious so that in your waking state you can apply the learning. Whatever your dream state reveals to you, dreams can only enhance your waking life. Throughout cultures dreams have had enormous importance attached to them, dreams are mysterious and significant. Dreams serve a purpose in our lives, they can help us resolve problems or alert us to problems, dreams help us to relieve tension, give prophetic guidance, and they inspire the artist and writer. Sigmund Freud believed that dreams were an emotional safety valve as they helped the individual to resolve inner conflicts.
The ancient Egyptians practiced dream interpretation as they believed that the basis of dreams was reality and the conscious mind was the controller. The Egyptians wrote down their dreams in 2000 BC, they were documented on papyrus. There is an Egyptian papyrus dating from 1250 BC, it is the oldest written record of the meaning of dreams, the dreams are interpreted by the priests of Horus, Horus is the Egyptian god of light.
The Egyptian records reveal that there are three main types of dreams:
(1) Dreams where the gods demanded a pious act.
(2) Warning dreams such as illness or revelations.
(3) Dreams that came about through ritual.
It was believed by the Egyptians that dreams were also oracles, bringing specific messages from the gods. To induce incubate dreams they visited a shrine where they slept overnight on a ‘dream bed,’ there they waited to receive divine advice, comfort or healing from their dreams. Travellers who were sick took potions or fasted in order to induce dreams.
Distinction between good and bad dreams:
Votive inscriptions, revealing help had been given in improving health, can be found at the Shrine of Apollo at Delphi, also at the Temple Epidaurus which was dedicated to the cult of Aesculapius, Aesculapius was a highly regarded healer.
Rituals before sleeping:
The Greeks practiced pre-sleep rituals, they purified and dedicated themselves. They did this by preparing themselves for two days before entering the shrine, they abstained from sex, did not eat fish, meat or fowl and they only drank water. They made an animal sacrifice to the god they wished to invoke in their dreams. Some subjects stood before a statue of the god in order to be imbued with feelings of awe before they slept and entered a dream state. After preparations the subject would then lay down, they slept upon the skin of an animal that had been sacrificed.
Dreams that heal:
During the night, priests stood by the bedside of a sick dreamer dressed as gods, this was done to give the patient medical treatment. The following morning the subject’s dreams were interpreted by the priest, and the priest would then tell the subject the best way to care for their health.
Beings of light dream couriers:
The Greeks believed the god Hypnos brought sleep to mortals, he did this by fanning them with his wings or by touching them with his magic wand. The god of dreams Hypnos’s son and the messenger Hermes, sent his dreams to the sleepers below. Morpheus the ancient Greek god of dreams, also sent warnings and prophecies to those who slept at shrines and temples.
The dream people:
It was believed by the Greeks that the people within their dreams lived near the Underworld. Homer said that these phantoms entered the dream world by way of two gates. Those entering true dreams (dreams that came to pass), enter by the gate of Horn. Those entering false dreams, (dreams that delude), come through the Gate of Ivory.
Precognitive or Prophetic dreams:
Aristotle belief was that premonitory dreams of sickness could be caused by the dreamer’s unconsciousness recognition of the symptoms. The ancient Greek philosopher thought the dreamer acted unconsciously to bring about the dreamed event.
It was ruled by the Emperor Augustus that anyone who had a dream about the state must proclaim it in the marketplace. The Romans believed that it was imperative to find out the wishes of the gods.
Interpretation of dreams:
Artemidorus wrote down in the second century AD, all he knew of dream interpretation from the records of the Greeks, Assyrians and Egyptians, the book was called Oneirocritica (dream interpreter). The book was used as a reference by authors up to the 18th century.
The Hebrews dream beliefs:
The Hebrews believed that dreams were messages from one god alone. The Hebrews differentiated between good and bad dreams, the bad they believed were brought by evil spirits. Dreams were an integral part of the religious structure of the ancient Hebrews.
Within the temple at Shiloh the Hebrews would lay down to sleep, first they would offer a sacrifice to god. Through incubating dreams they would receive divine revelations.
Dream interpretation within different cultures:
Assyrian – If someone saw an empty pot in a dream it prophesied poverty. A goblet filled to the brim promised fame and children. If a date palm was seen being cut down, the dreamer was going to find a solution to their problems. Seizing a snake meant the dreamer was to be protected by angels. Seizing a snake in a dream was a very good sign, it meant the angels would protect the dreamer. Meeting a bird during the dream state meant that something lost would be returned.
Hebrew – Seeing a cooking pot in a dream denoted peace and domestic calm. If a palm tree appeared in a dream, the dreamer was about to be punished for past sins. If a cooking pot was seen in a dream it denoted peace and calm within the home. A snake meant a secure and profitable livelihood and a snake bite promised a double income. Birds were good omens, however owls were not, they meant bad luck.
Egyptian – To see a pot being filled in a dream meant pain. If beer was being poured from a pot it meant there was to be a robbery. Within the Egyptian culture, a dream showing the dreamer sitting in a tree meant that troubles would be overcome. Filling a pot in a dream was a bad omen promising pain. If beer was being poured from a pot there was to be a robbery. If the dreamer saw a snake in their dream a dispute would soon be settled. If a bird was caught in a dream, there was to be a loss of some sort.
Greek – Within the Greek culture if wine was being poured from pots in a dream, serenity was indicated. If a cup was drunk dry this was very lucky. Dreaming about trees for making ships was unlucky, unless the dreamer was a carpenter or a seaman. If wine was poured from pots serenity was indicated. Drinking a full cup until it was empty was very lucky. Snakes were bringers of illness and enemies. If the snake was powerful then that was even worse. Eagles signified rulers, wild pigeons signified immoral women.
Dating back from 1000 BC in ancient India dreams were greatly valued, a prophetic dream indicated that the events were to take place. If a dream takes place near dawn the event would happen sooner than one that was an early night dream.
The Japanese had shrines for incubating dreams. Japanese emperors who were searching for solutions to political problems, incubated their dreams at a Shinto temple at Usa, on the island of Kyushu. Within the emperor’s palace there was a dream-hall, it had an incubation bed that was made from polished stone.
Rituals were conducted in order to create good dreams and defend against the effects of bad ones. Later the Muslim dreams were associated with astrology.
Australian Aborigine beliefs:
Dreamtime is the basis for these beliefs. In ancient times spirits sleeping underground rose and wondered across the earth, as they walked they sang the names of everything they passed. As they walked and sang they shaped the landscape, they made humans and taught them the art of survival.
North American Indian beliefs:
Within the belief system of the North American Indians is the premise that the hidden wishes of the soul are revealed. The most vivid dreamer was chosen as a medicine man. The Iroquois tried to make desires come true by acting them out. The Huron believed the soul would be satisfied by expressing its desire in a dream.
Consciousness and Unconsciousness:
Consciousness has many layers, when we are wide awake we are not aware of all that is going on around us or of our own actions. As we sleep our brains are extremely active, and material from the unconscious surfaces in the form of dreams, in waking life unconscious thoughts can be a burst of inspiration.
During the sleep process the body repairs itself while the brain processes the days events and works to sort them out. Each night during four or five sleep cycles, we go through various stages of sleep. Within each stage there are unique characteristics, each designed to maintain health and to prepare us for our day to day lives. When we sleep the levels of consciousness are Excited – Relaxed – Drowsy – Asleep – Deep sleep – Coma. The amount of sleep an individual requires varies, a newborn spends 80% of its time sleeping, by five months they need less sleep, sleep requirement decreases through life. In middle age a person requires eight hours, in old age it is reduced to seven or less. An adult spends around one third of their sleep cycle in REM sleep, 14 – 18 year olds have the lowest proportion of REM to non REM sleep. The average person in the course of their life will spend around 20 years sleeping and experience at least 300,000 dreams. The nervous system needs to sleep and dream for health and wellbeing
People will die more quickly from lack of sleep than from lack of food. If a person is kept awake for long periods of time they will hallucinate and become disorientated, for health and vitality sleeping and dreaming is essential.
Each person has a natural rhythm of sleeping and waking, it is based on individual circadian rhythms throughout 24 hours. Sleep involves four stages that form the sleep cycle, in the first stage the individual drifts between sleeping and waking. During the second stage the body can be woken by even the slightest disturbances and the eyes roll from side to side. The body is very relaxed during stage three and only an extremely loud disturbance will awaken them. It takes twenty minutes to go through the three stages. After stage four the cycle reverses, when the person reaches stage one the body goes into REM sleep and begins to dream. From stage one to four takes between 90 and 100 minutes. This cycle repeats itself between four and five times during the course of a night’s sleep. Most dreams take place during REM sleep, at this time the major muscles of the body are paralysed.
Reality in dreams:
Within dreams timing is of no account, decades can go by while you are sleeping. The dream world is fluid and can seem distorted. Things are not always as they seem as incongruous images present themselves to the dreamer. Events are exaggerated and emotions heightened, things take place in dreams that do not take place in your normal day to day life, such as flying high in the sky, or swimming under water and being able to breathe. Sometimes dreams are beautiful and placid, other times dramatic and frightening. Dreaming is necessary to our wellbeing, all dreams are not remembered, it has also been suggested that dreams help us to learn and at times find answers.
Types of dreams:
The most common dreams are those about snakes, houses, water, travel, flying, royalty, the dentist or teeth. Other dreams are of sex, aggression/anger, eating, family, friends, lovers and relatives who have passed over. Some believe that those who dream of extraterrestrials are actually tuning in to a force beyond the earth plane. People tend to have dream themes and particular people who appear in their dreams throughout their lives. The more frightening dreams/nightmares we have occur during REM sleep, women seem to have nightmares more frequently than men. Sigmund Freud believed that all dreams are sexual or aggressive in nature.
Dreams can help the individual tap and apply their creativity in any particular form. Many artists, writers, scientists, designers and musicians use their dreams as a source of inspiration. As everything in dreams is exaggerated those who are creative will often awaken feeling inspired after dreaming. Well-known composers have cited their dreams as being their greatest inspiration. Poetry and novels are written after creative dreaming, films are produced, spectacular art is created. Charles Dickens derived inspiration for many of his characters from his dreams. The fictional writer Robert Louis Stevenson created his fictional character Mr. Hyde, after he had a particularly vivid and detailed dream. The French artist Paul Gauguin was inspired to paint one of his most famous works after he awoke from a dream
These dreams help us to pay attention to issues and conflicts that are repressed at a conscious level, when we sleep our emotional barriers are down and we are more receptive.
Often things that we procrastinate about, deny or try to ignore will be presented to us again and again in our dreams, until we finally pay attention and resolve whatever it is we are meant to deal with. This type of dream is to help us recognis/e and pay attention to problems that are hidden or buried, often within the dream there is an idea for a solution.
In precognitive dreams the dreamer is given insight into their future and offered guidance, relatives who have passed over often reveal themselves in these dreams.
These dreams are often frightening in their reality, but are not necessarily actual, such as dreaming of death is usually to do with major change in our lives. It can also mean a new beginning or the start of a new cycle in life. If someone you care about has died, dreams of your own death or someone close to you often occur, this has more to do with the psychological processing of what has taken place and your adjustment to change.
During our waking hours the mind absorbs copious amounts of information and during the dream state what has been absorbed is then analysed. Health issues that are being suppressed due to fear will surface while the individual is dreaming.
Factual and problem solving dreams:
These dreams place an emphasis on actual day to day activities and events, offering guidance and at times answers to problems we are unable to resolve in our waking state. Many people think of their problems before they go to sleep and ask for guidance, often upon waking the next morning they have the answers they were looking for, or at the very least greater understanding. Thomas Edison believed that napping helped him with his inventions, he often saw images in his dreams of what he was going to create.
Lucid dreaming occurs more frequently in the early morning. You can learn how to incubate lucid dreaming:
(1) Make sure your sleeping environment is peaceful, calm and comfortable.
(2) On your bedside table have a pen/pencil and paper.
(3) Before you go to sleep think about the subject of your dream, be clear.
(4) During the day think about the theme of the dream you want to have, this prepares the mind for lucid dreaming.
(5) Describe the dream you want to have out loud, including as much detail as possible
(6) Write down the dream you want to have.
(7) Prepare your body for sleep. Make sure there are no noises, turn off the phone, television, radio. A comfortable mattress, bedding that is pleasant to the touch in a colour that appeals, an oil essence with a scent you love, or the scent of flowers, a comfortable pillow. Reduce tension, relax for several minutes before you climb into bed. Reading before you go to sleep will also relax you, poetry is especially relaxing.
(8) Read what you have written and be sure it makes sense, if not, revise.
(9) Immediately you have decided on the theme of your dream, spoken about it, thought about it and written it down, go to bed.
(10) Make sure your mind doesn’t wonder, only the source of your dream should be in your mind.
Lucid dreaming may take time to learn, but if you practice it will become second nature, lucid dreaming can help you reveal unresolved anxieties helping to create balance in your life. On the morning following your incubation dreaming, write down everything you saw felt and heard in your dream, then take your time and allow the answers to come to you.
Dreaming is a language all its own, each dream is unique to the individual, even though many people seem to have similar dreams, such as flying or falling, a dream is personal and each dream carries its individual message to the dreamer. By writing your dreams down each morning you will tune in to the language of dreams and bring more understanding into your waking life. You will be able to solve problems more easily and understand yourself in a deeper and more meaningful way. | <urn:uuid:423f91cd-6139-48c4-aa24-3aa5f669e39e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://witcheslore.com/bookofshadows/dreams/dreamstates/4173/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00017-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97283 | 3,554 | 2.90625 | 3 |
- freely available
Nutrients 2012, 4(6), 506-516; doi:10.3390/nu4060506
Abstract: Eleven female participants from a NCAA Division I volleyball team were evaluated for adequate energy and macronutrient intake during two off-seasons. Total energy and macronutrient intake were assessed by food records and results were compared against estimated needs using the Nelson equation. Dietary intervention was employed regarding the individual dietary needs of each athlete as well as a pre- and post-sports nutrition knowledge survey. Post dietary intervention, total energy, and macronutrient intake improved, as well as a significant improvement in sports nutrition knowledge (p < 0.001). Nutrition education is useful in improving dietary intake and nutrition knowledge of female athletes.
Female participation in sports dramatically increased following the passage of the Education Amendment of 1972, also known as “Title IX,” and its reinforcement in the 1988 Civil Rights Restoration Act . Since Title IX, the number of female athletes has risen from nearly 32,000 in 1971 to more than 150,000 in 2000 . This rise in female athletes has contributed to an extreme amount of support for volleyball, and it is evidenced by the 603 NCAA Division I, II, and III women’s volleyball teams in 1981 that nearly doubled to 1015 teams in 2008 . As a result of this increase in support, a considerable amount of research has been attributed to understanding the female physiology and major nutritional concerns of female athletes.
Currently, a vast amount of research is available on nutrient intake among female athletes [3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. However, there is little research addressing sport-specific nutritional needs, especially those of volleyball players. Volleyball is a high intensity game requiring speed and large muscle groups for actions such as jumping, spiking, blocking, and retrieving the ball. Moreover, if a player were to spend an equal amount of time between the front and back courts, these high intensity actions can occur in shorts bouts every 30 s of play over a total period of 30 min to 180 min . Consequently, during the off season female volleyball players have been reported to have total energy expenditures as high as 2815 ± 306 . It is essential for an athlete expending energy at these high levels to consume adequate calories, yet a number of studies indicate that female athletes fail to meet these energy demands while training and competing [5,7,8,11,12,13]. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, adequate calorie intake is needed to maintain lean tissue mass, immune and reproductive function, and optimal athletic performance . When calorie intake is inadequate, the body will use fat and lean tissue mass as fuel, and as a result, muscle mass will be lost and strength and endurance will be compromised .
Achieving energy balance is a critical component to meeting adequate energy requirements. Energy balance occurs when energy intake equals energy expended. Energy expenditure is influenced by a number of factors including the type of exercise, duration and intensity of exercise, age, gender, body size, fat-free mass (FFM), and nutritional status prior to exercise . The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for normally active people states that individuals should consume energy at a rate of 37 to 41 kcal/kg of body weight . For female athletes who engage primarily in resistance training, the energy requirements may be as high as 39 to 44 kcal/kg of body weight to support high levels of fat free mass and thus to maintain body weight .
In addition to meeting energy requirements, macronutrients must be consumed in adequate amounts to sufficiently replenish glycogen stores. An important factor impacting muscle glycogen storage is carbohydrate consumption . Many female athletes restrict their carbohydrate intake and, as a result, do not meet the RDA to maintain muscle glycogen stores [6,17]. Athletes are generally recommended to consume 60% of energy from carbohydrates assuming that energy intake is adequate to meet needs. Moreover, a range of 6 to 10 g of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight per day is recommended to meet optimal muscle glycogen storage .
All of the foregoing research explains why adequate energy intake is necessary to achieve optimal performance. However, despite this readily available research, it is a well known fact that low energy availability is a prevailing issue among female athletes across many sports. In addition, female athletes have demonstrated a limited working knowledge of sports nutrition [18,19]. Many researchers have suggested that athletes as well as coaches will benefit from nutrition education and counseling regarding performance and prevention of health concerns [4,6,8,18,19,20]. Therefore, to gain a better understanding of the foregoing issues, a preliminary investigation of a 2009 NCAA Division I women’s volleyball team was conducted. The study was performed during the 2009 off-season, and throughout the study, no nutritional intervention was employed. This investigation revealed participants’ diets were inadequate to meet their daily caloric needs . Thus, the purpose of this paper is to conduct an evaluation of dietary intake, nutrition knowledge, and whether education improves dietary intake of collegiate female volleyball players.
2. Experimental Section
2.1. Experimental Approach to the Problem
The present study was designed to conduct an evaluation of dietary intake, nutrition knowledge, and whether education improves dietary intake of collegiate female volleyball players over the course of two off-seasons. The first off season (non-intervention), baseline measures of dietary intake was assessed using 3-day food records that were obtained at the beginning and end of the off-season, with participants receiving no education regarding their diet. During the second off season (intervention), 3-day food records were obtained once a month for a total of four months. Participants received individualized dietary education with the intent to increase each student-athlete’s individual knowledge of the types and amounts of foods specific to their individual dietary needs and activity level. Participants were also required to complete a sports nutrition knowledge survey at the beginning and end of the intervention season.
After obtaining approval by the Institutional Review Board for Research with Human Subjects (IRB), 13 participants were recruited, but only 11 completed the study. Two participants were excluded from the study due to separation from the team. The 11 participants were between 19 and 22 years old and were recruited from a NCAA Division I women’s volleyball team (Table 1). The average years of playing competitive volleyball was 6.9 years with a range of 4–11 years. Player positions include outside hitter (n = 4), defensive specialist (n = 3), middle hitter (n = 2) and setter (n = 2) with 7 of the 11 being starting players. Each participant was fully informed of the scope and risks of the study prior to signing an IRB approved consent form.
|Age (year)||19.5 ± 1.0||19.8 ± 1.0|
|Height (cm)||176.3 ± 6.0||176.3 ± 6.0|
|Weight (kg)||75.4 ± 13.4||76 ± 13.6|
|Fat Mass (%)||24.5 ± 5.9||22.7 ± 5.6 *|
|Fat-Free Mass (%)||75.5 ± 13.1||77.3 ± 18.5 *|
Values are expressed as mean ± standard deviation. * Significant difference (p ≤ 0.05).
Participants were instructed to keep a food diary and record all food and beverage ingested for three days in January and April in the 2009 off-season (non-intervention), and each month during the 2010 off-season (intervention). To reflect typical intake and valid results, the three-day food diary consisted of two weekdays and one weekend day. Each participant met with the researcher and was interviewed about food records for accuracy in recording. A computerized nutrient analysis program, Nutrition Data Systems for Research (NDSR, 2009), was used to analyze each of the diet records. This analysis program includes standardized questions to be asked during the interview session to improve accuracy of the food record. Three-day averages for total energy, carbohydrate, protein, and fat were determined for each participant. Body composition was assessed using air displacement plesthysmography using the BOD POD Body Composition System (Concord, CA, USA) following the manufacturer’s recommended procedures. Results from the NDSR were compared to the energy needs estimated using the Nelson Equation:
RMR (kcal/day) = 25.80 × Fat Free Mass (kg) + 4.04 × Fat Mass (kg)
which includes lean body mass as a variable and thus may reflect an active individual’s resting energy needs .
An individualized nutrition intervention was conducted for each participant based on their NDSR results. The principle investigator, also a Registered Dietitian, met with each participant one week after food diaries were received for a total of four visits during the intervention season.
At the beginning and end of the intervention season, participants were required to complete the Reilly and Maughan sports nutrition questionnaire to assess each participant’s individual knowledge of sports nutrition . The questionnaire was divided into 10 sections as follows: demographics, eating patterns and dietary behaviors, hydration, weight control, dietary supplements, general nutrition, sports nutrition, protein, strategies for training and food choices, and a swimmers section. Participants were required to complete sections 1 through 9 of the questionnaire with the 10th section being omitted due to its application applying only to swimmers. Question order was changed for the second administration of the questionnaire. The Cronbach α reliability estimate was 0.68 for the population in this investigation.
2.4. Statistical Analysis
Paired t-tests were performed comparing non-intervention to intervention season as well as pre and post values in the intervention season for energy intake and energy needs; protein intake and protein needs; carbohydrate intake and carbohydrate needs; dietary fat intake and dietary fat needs as well as correct answers on the nutrition knowledge test. All data were analyzed using SPSS version 17.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA, 2007) with significance set at p ≤ 0.05.
Dietary collection from the non-intervention season and the intervention season revealed that participants did not meet the recommended energy requirement of 37–41 kcal/kg of body weight. For the intervention season, the average percent of energy intake for the team at the beginning of the season was 56% of estimated needs with a range of 25% to 88%. The average percent of energy intake for the team at the end of the intervention season was 70% of estimated needs with a range of 44% to 95%, representing a significant improvement (p = 0.002) (Table 2).
|Energy Expenditure (kcal)||3162 ± 421.3||3162 ± 421.3|
|Energy Intake (kcal)||1756.0 ± 557.5||2178.4 ± 491.8 *|
|kcal/kg||24.0 ± 8.6||29.4 ± 7.5||(37–41 kcal/kg)||0.002|
|% total kcal needs||56.3 ± 18.5||70.0 ± 17.7|
|Carbohydrate Total (g)||224.3 ± 64.4||304.0 ± 79.9 *|
|g/kg||3.08 ± 1.1||4.15 ± 1.3||(6–10 g/kg)||0.01|
|% total kcal||52.3 ± 8.9||56.0 ± 9.2|
|% total kcal needs||48.2 ± 16.2||66.0 ± 21.7||(474.4 ± 63.2 g/day)|
|Protein Total (g)||69.3 ± 26.8||84.0 ± 20.5 *|
|g/kg||0.9 ± 0.3||1.14 ± 0.3||(1.2–1.7 g/kg)||0.01|
|% total kcal||15.5 ± 3.4||15.6 ± 2.9|
|% total kcal needs||59.0 ± 22.2||72 ± 19.8||(118.5 ± 15.8 g/day)|
|Fat Total (g)||67.4 ± 27.8||69.0 ± 24.8|
|% total kcal||33.7 ± 6.4||27.9 ± 5.2|
|% total kcal needs||77.0 ± 30.5||79.0 ± 26.6||(87.7 ± 11.7 g/day)||0.63|
Values are expressed as mean ± standard deviation. * Significant difference (p ≤ 0.05).
Based on the dietary collection for the non-intervention and intervention seasons, the team’s average percent of carbohydrate intake did not meet the recommended intake of 6 to 10 g of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight . It is generally recommended to eat a diet high in carbohydrates at 60% of total energy intake; however, adequate energy intake must be consumed for this recommendation to be appropriate. At the beginning of the intervention season, the team’s average percent of carbohydrate intake was 48% of estimated needs with a range of 29% to 76%. At the end of the intervention season, the team’s average percent of carbohydrate intake was 66% of estimated needs with a range of 33% to 101% representing a statistically significant increase (p = 0.01).
The team’s average percent of protein intake at the beginning of the intervention season was 59% of estimated needs with a range of 16% to 88%. At the end of the intervention season, the average percent of protein intake increased significantly (p = 0.01) to 72% of estimated needs with a range of 37% to 102%. At the beginning of the intervention season, the teams’ average percent of fat intake was at 77% of estimated needs with a range of 23% to 124%. At the end of the intervention season, the team’s average percent of fat intake increased slightly to 79% of estimated needs with a range of 52% to 118% (p = 0.63) (Figure 1).
A significant improvement (p = 0.001) was seen in the team’s nutrition knowledge after the intervention. Every participant answered more questions accurately after the intervention than prior to the intervention on the sports nutrition knowledge survey. The mean pre-test and post-test scores for all female volleyball players were 24.7 (±5.9) and 31.5 (±6.1), respectively, out of a possible 55 points. Scores ranged from 16 to 37 on the pre-test and 22 to 43 on the post-test.
The present study revealed that many participants failed to meet current energy, carbohydrate, protein, and fat recommendations for physically active females during two off-seasons. However, from the non-intervention season to the intervention season, there were significant differences seen in energy, carbohydrate, and protein intake (Table 3). The mean energy intake for the team at the beginning of the intervention season was 1756 kcal/day (about 24 kcal/kg of body weight) with 0% of participants in energy balance. At the end of the intervention season, the team’s mean energy intake increased to 2178 kcal/day (about 29 kcal/kg of body weight) with 18% of participants on energy balance (meeting 93%–95% of estimated needs). While this change in mean energy intake is a significant improvement, it is still less than the recommended 37 to 41 kcal/kg of body weight. Similar findings were reported in a study of female volleyball players in Greece, with participants baseline mean energy intake during the off-season was estimated at 1541 kcal/day (about 23.8 kcal/kg of body weight per day) . Moreover, these findings are also supported by other studies showing female athletes with low energy intake compared to energy expenditure [5,7,8,11,12].
|Variable||Intervention End Increase||Intervention End Decrease|
Values are expressed as mean percentages. Total expressed as mean percentage.
These findings of low energy availability are a major nutritional concern, especially considering the high energy demands of off-season training which was evidenced by participants mean predicted energy expenditure at 3162 kcal/day. According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, female athletes with persistent low energy intake below 2000 kcal/day can lead to weight loss and disruption of endocrine function . Moreover, it has been reported that female athletes with low energy intake also have poor micronutrient intakes and are at risk for a diet deficient in the micronutrients calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc, and B-complex vitamins .
In addition to low energy intake, the team’s mean energy intake from carbohydrates was inadequate for sufficient glycogen repletion both prior to dietary intervention and after dietary intervention. The team’s carbohydrate intake at the beginning of the intervention season averaged at 224 g/day (3.08 g/kg) with 0% of participants meeting estimated needs. At the end of the intervention season, mean carbohydrate intake increased to 304 g/day (4.15 g/kg), with 9% (n = 1) of participants meeting estimated carbohydrate needs.
In addition to an increase in the team’s mean energy and carbohydrate intake, fat intake increased as well although not statistically significant. At the beginning of the intervention, the team’s average fat intake was at 77% of estimated needs (67 g/day) while at the end of the intervention, fat intake increased to 79% of estimated needs (69 g/day);27% of the team’s fat intake exceeded estimated needs by greater than 105% with a range of 108% to 181%. Moreover, most of these players failed to meet adequate carbohydrate intake, which indicates the consumption of high fat foods in place of carbohydrate rich foods. This finding is consistent with other female volleyball players and female soccer, track and swimming athletes [6,7,8]. Generally, fat intake should range from 20% to 35% of total energy intake . Although fat is a valuable source of energy, high fat diets have not been shown to be beneficial for athletic performance especially in the presence of inadequate carbohydrate ingestion . Participants need to reduce their fat intake and increase their carbohydrate intake to meet the foregoing recommendation of 6 to 10 g of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight.
The team’s average protein intake prior to intervention was at 69 g/day (0.9 g/kg of body weight) while protein intake post intervention was at 84 g/day (1.14 g/kg of body weight). Although these values meet the current DRI for all healthy individuals at 0.8 g/kg, some experts advocate that female athletes should consume protein in levels as high as 1.2–1.7 g/kg for optimal performance [6,15]. Furthermore, none of the participants met their estimated protein needs at the beginning of the study. However, 18% (n = 2) of participants were within estimated protein needs (meeting 94%–102% of estimated needs) at the end of the study.
The sports nutrition knowledge survey revealed participants were least knowledgeable in the areas of weight control, dietary supplements, and general nutrition with greater than 50% of participants answering questions incorrectly most often from these sections. Some of the common questions missed by athletes in this study included those on caffeine and sports performance, functions of vitamins, fat burning foods and supplements as well as supplement regulation and safety which are consistent with the findings of Reilly and Maughan .
The majority of participants (72.7%) had a positive response towards the importance of good nutrition and sports performance. Moreover, 54.5% of participants described their eating habits as fair with nearly 50% reporting a diet based on a wide variety of different foods. The pre-test survey revealed the Media/Internet/Coach/Trainer (83%) as the number one source of nutrition information, whereas the post-test survey revealed a sports dietitian/nutritionist (62.5%) as the number one source of nutrition information.
According to both the pre-test and post-test survey, 50% of participants reported trying to lose weight. In the pre-test survey, a majority of the participants (63.6%) accurately reported that when long term weight loss is desired, athletes should lose at most one to two pounds of body fat per week. However, 50% of participants were unsure of the daily amount of calories that should be reduced to lead to a weekly weight loss of just one pound. In addition, 72.7% of participants report skipping either breakfast (54.5%) or lunch (18.2%) with only 27.3% of participants report not skipping meals or snacks at all. These responses were also evident in the food diaries with the majority of participants not consuming any food or beverage until early afternoon however, reported waking from sleep between 7:00 and 9:00 a.m.
Generally, large discrepancies of energy intake seen in dietary records of female athletes of a stable weight have mostly been attributed to under-reporting . However, responses generated from the sports nutrition questionnaire might explain some of the inadequacies seen in the food records of this study. For example, the high amount of participants (50%) trying to lose weight, in addition to the high amount (50%) unsure about the appropriate amount of calories to restrict for weight loss, might explain the low calorie intake demonstrated in this study. While this is only an assumption, other reasons female athletes restrict their energy intake have been identified and include disordered eating behaviors, body image issues, and social influences to stay lean [15,20,28]. According to Hinton et al. , 62% of female collegiate athletes report a desire to lose weight and will resort to decreasing energy and macronutrient intake. Moreover, Rosen, McKeag, Hugh and Curley , found that 32% of female collegiate athletes reported using pathogenic weight control behaviors through laxatives, vomiting, and diet pills, and many of these same women felt these risky behaviors were harmless. This study did not assess weight control behaviors; however, it did indicate that no participants reported using “fat burners” such as Trim Spa, Lipodreme, and Ephedrine.
As previously mentioned, meal skipping evidently played a role in the inadequacies seen in the food records. According to the questionnaire, the most common reason for skipping meals was lack of time (54.5%). Many athletes face barriers that preclude them from maintaining a steady diet schedule. These barriers include class schedules, work, practice, studying, and making time for family and friends. Future studies should address these barriers and propose solutions to accommodate athletes and their busy schedules.
In conclusion, the three day food records used in this study appeared to accurately represent intake among this population. Moreover, the individualized nutrition counseling used in the study proved to be beneficial in producing positive changes in dietary intake and nutrition knowledge. While these changes did not result in the athletes reaching their individual goals, the results demonstrated a positive trend toward achieving these goals. The small sample size and omission of male athletes limits the findings; however, these results do provide a pilot investigation to utilize on a larger, more diverse population. More studies should explore whether an individualized or a group approach is more beneficial in producing positive dietary results when providing nutrition education among athletic teams.
Although the mean dietary intakes reported in the study did not meet current recommendations for total energy and macronutrients, significant changes were seen from the beginning to the end of the intervention season. The effectiveness of the dietary education employed in this study is evidenced by the significant increase in total energy (p = 0.002), carbohydrate (0.01), and protein (0.01) intake among participants in addition to the increase in sports nutrition knowledge (p = 0.001). Moreover, the changes in dietary intake were maintained by 66% of participants upon completion of the study (Table 3). These changes indicate that dietary education is useful in improving dietary intake and nutrition knowledge among female athletes. Future education needs to focus on counseling female athletes about meeting appropriate energy requirements according to their activity level as well as consuming adequate carbohydrates for sufficient glycogen storage. Strategies for improving dietary intake might include encouraging athletes to select high carbohydrate foods such as whole grain bread, pasta, rice, and cereal and to choose quality protein sources such as lean meats, poultry, eggs, legumes, and low-fat dairy products. An athlete cannot sustain optimal athletic performance with a low energy intake. Thus, athletes should be advised against skipping meals and should be encouraged to keep healthy snacks available. Athletes might also benefit from traveling tips such as packing healthy snacks and selecting appropriate menu items while dining at restaurants. Furthermore, Registered Dietitians with an expertise in sport nutrition are qualified professionals who should be the primary source for athletes and coaches regarding diet information for their respective programs.
The authors wish to thank the Jami Clinton and the volleyball Strength and Conditioning staff at The University of Mississippi for their assistance with this project.
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