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Simple Definition of era
: a period of time that is associated with a particular quality, event, person, etc.
Full Definition of era
1 a : a fixed point in time from which a series of years is reckoned b : a memorable or important date or event; especially : one that begins a new period in the history of a person or thing
2 : a system of chronological notation computed from a given date as basis
3 a : a period identified by some prominent figure or characteristic feature <the era of the horse and buggy> b : a stage in development (as of a person or thing) c : a large division of geologic time usually shorter than an eon <Paleozoic era>
Examples of era in a sentence
the era of the horse and buggy
We're just now entering an era of great prosperity.
His death marks the end of an era.
Origin and Etymology of era
Late Latin aera, from Latin, counters, plural of aer-, aes copper, money — more at ore
First Known Use: 1615
Synonym Discussion of era
Definition of ERA
1 earned run average
2 Equal Rights Amendment
ERA Defined for Kids
Definition of era for Students
1 : a period of time starting from some special date or event or known for a certain feature <the computer era>
2 : an important period of history <the colonial era>
Seen and Heard
What made you want to look up era? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible).
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| 0.893674 | 323 | 3.625 | 4 |
I must admit that I smiled when I saw the findings from a new study that suggested that 22-27% of breast cancers could actually go away by themselves—without treatment. I have been saying this for a long time, and it was nice to see it substantiated.This is another piece of evidence that “early detection†is not always the way to prevent breast cancer deaths. It depends on the kind of cancer (there are at least six different types) as much as the timing. In this case, it appears that some of the cancers identified on mammography were so good they did not need to be found.
The findings come from an intriguing analysis of breast cancer screening data collected before and after four Norwegian countries started biennial screening mammography programs for women in 1996.
To study the impact this national screening program had on breast cancer incidence, a U.S. research group compared the number of invasive cancers that occurred over two consecutive six-year periods in two groups of women ages 50 to 64. One group of 119,000 women were offered mammography screening three times between 1996 and 2001 as part of the new program. The second group of 110,000 women was followed from 1992-1996, the six years prior to the start of the national screening program. These women were offered mammograms in 1997.
The researchers found that the incidence, or number of breast cancers found, rose substantially when the screening program was implemented. This is what they expected to see, because whenever a screening program is introduced all the cancers that would have been detected over the past few years are suddenly found. But then the incidence starts to level off, giving you a good sense of the actual rate of breast cancer in that population.
The rate seen in this group should have been the same as that seen in the group of women who were not screened. But that wasn’t the case. Much to their surprise, the researchers found that the breast cancer rate was significantly lower in the group of women who had not been part of the screening program. In fact, the unscreened group had 22% fewer invasive cancers than the screened group. This led the researchers to conclude that the women in the unscreened group must have had cancers that had gone away by themselves or “disappeared†without any treatment at all.
This is the kind of study that I love because it challenges accepted truths and makes you really think about what we know about breast cancer. We used to believe that all cancers were the same: they slowly got bigger and then spread. Treatment was the same for everyone, too. Now we know that there are about six different types of breast cancer. One of these types is referred to as “almost normal†breast cancer. Could this be the type that will disappear on its own? Or does the tissue that surrounds the tumor change in a way that makes the cancer go away? Or could it be the immune system that is successfully fighting these cancers? We have no idea! But it gives us so much to think about! If we could figure out how to tell which cancers are the ones that might go away on their own, we could just watch them. And if we figure out what causes them to go away, that could help us to develop new breast cancer treatments. The ideas are swimming in my head!
What does it mean to you? Nothing right now. I will continue to get my mammogram every year—and you should, too—because we don’t know if the finding is true and, even if it is, we have no idea which cancers will regress and which won’t. But I am happy that we now have a new path to explore in our continuous search for the truth!
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| 0.983054 | 784 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Hyperlipoproteinemia Type IV risks
Hyperlipoproteinemia Type IV
back to top
Obesity is an epidemic in the U.S. This condition puts people at a higher risk for serious diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
High blood glucose, also known as hyperglycemia, can cause major health complications in people with diabetes.
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| 0.928095 | 81 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Myth: Welfare gives people an incentive to avoid work.
Fact: Over 100 studies have not found this alleged incentive.
Statistics show that average welfare benefits pay below the poverty line and less than a full-time job. Research overwhelmingly proves that welfare recipients prefer work to welfare. The General Accounting Office has reviewed over 100 studies on welfare and concluded that welfare does not significantly diminish the incentive to work.
Many conservatives argue that welfare provides people with an incentive to avoid work. However, the statistics do not bear out this accusation. Let's divide our answer into two parts: first, a look at how low the "incentives" really are; and second, how many individuals are responding to these incentives.
How much does welfare pay?
The two largest welfare programs -- by far -- are Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and food stamps. In 1992, the average yearly AFDC family payment was $4,572, and food stamps for a family of three averaged $2,469, for a total of $7,041. (1) In that year, the poverty level for a mother with two children was $11,186. (2) Thus, these two programs paid only 63 percent of the poverty level, and 74 percent of a minimum wage job.
There are other welfare programs available, of course, but they either pay a minuscule fraction of AFDC and food stamps, or, if larger, they are collected by only a small percentage of all welfare recipients. For example, housing assistance trails a distant third on the total welfare budget, but only one-fourth of all AFDC recipients collect housing assistance, and even then their food stamp benefits are reduced if they do. Studies show that combined AFDC, food stamps and housing assistance lift fewer than one welfare family in five above the poverty line. (3)
The low payments, low participation rates, and exclusionary policies of these other welfare programs hasn't stopped some welfare critics from adding them all up together and claiming that the average welfare recipient collects some ridiculously huge sum, like $20,687 a year in California. Indeed, the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, has done exactly that. It's regrettable to see such flawed methodology pushed by a national think tank, even more dismaying to see their figures cited by political leaders like California governor Pete Wilson. (At least before more serious academicians corrected him). But it's probably the only way that welfare critics can continue to maintain the fiction that welfare rewards nonwork more than work. (For a fuller deconstruction of the Cato study, click here.)
Who takes the welfare incentive?
Because typical welfare payments pay less than a full-time job, it should not be surprising to find that most welfare recipients do not see it as an incentive to avoid work. Indeed, studies reveal this in two different ways: that most welfare recipients do indeed want and seek work, and that in a dynamic economy, the welfare rolls are ever-changing.
Many studies show that welfare recipients find welfare degrading and demoralizing, and greatly prefer the chance to work. (4) In fact, in March 1987, the General Accounting Office released a report that summarized more than one hundred studies of welfare since 1975. It found that "research does not support the view" that welfare significantly reduces the incentive to work. (5) This may seem contrary to common sense, but, as Norman Goodman points out in Introduction to Sociology: "Many 'common sense' beliefs are simply untrue. For example, many believe… that most people on welfare really don't want to work. [This is] false." (6)
Again, the "incentive" accusation fails because of welfare's inability to let families make ends meet. One study of Chicago welfare mothers found that their family's rent and utilities cost $37 more than the welfare check. Even for those few who received housing assistance, that left only $160 to cover all other monthly expenses, such as transportation, clothing, hygiene and school supplies. The typical food stamp allowance was insufficient, and many recipients actually went hungry near the end of the month. To make ends meet, the mothers had to receive income from somewhere else. Some of this came from absent fathers, friends and relatives, but almost half came from work -- work that typically paid $3 to $5 an hour. The authors of the study concluded that "single mothers do not turn to welfare because they are pathologically dependent on handouts or unusually reluctant to work. They do so because they cannot get jobs that pay better than welfare." (7)
Furthermore, it is incorrect to assume that the welfare rolls are filled with a substantial population of sedentary freeloaders who stay on for ten years at a time. Most welfare recipients leave within the first two years:
Percent of Time on AFDC Recipients (8) ------------------------------- Less than 7 months 19.0% 7 to 12 months 15.2 One to two years 19.3 Two to five years 26.9 Over five years 19.6
Some may think that even two years is too much, but one should remember
that almost all welfare is for mothers with children. (There are no federal
welfare programs for adults without children.) In 1993, the average person
collecting state unemployment benefits did so for four months. (9) But
the search for work is greatly complicated when one also has a child. A
great deal of money, time and energy must go for the care of the child,
which significantly detracts from any job search. There is also the bias
of employers against women, especially single women with children. Therefore,
we should expect mothers with children to take longer getting back on their
feet. Society could make it easier for them by providing child care during
their job search -- and in fact, many conservative critics of welfare are
beginning to see the economic reasons for doing so.
But the above numbers do not tell the whole story. A 1984 University of Michigan study examined welfare from 1969 to 1978 and found that families rarely depend exclusively on welfare income; instead they use it to supplement their income, especially during lean times. (10) Data from the U.S. Census reveals that most women who collected welfare intermittently in a two-year period spent most of the time off welfare legitimately employed. They spent an average of four months unemployed and looking for work before applying for welfare. They held 1.7 jobs, and 47 percent held two or more jobs. Forty percent of the welfare mothers worked about the same number of hours as all working mothers: 1,800 hours. (11)
As you can see, it is irrational to accuse people of aspiring to a lifestyle that doesn't even allow them to make ends meet or purchase the basic necessities of life. The evidence suggests quite the opposite: most welfare recipients would like better paying jobs -- or just any job.
Return to Overview
1. AFDC figures from U.S. Social Security Administration. Food Stamp figures from U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Annual Historical Review of FNS Programs" and unpublished data.
2. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Poverty in the United States, Series P-60, No. 185, 1993.
3. Sharon Parrott, "How Much Do We Spend on 'Welfare'?" Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Washington, D.C., March 1995 (rev.), p. 10.
4. Joe Davidson, "Welfare Mothers Stress Importance of Building Self-Esteem If Aid System Is to Be Restructured," Wall Street Journal, May 12, 1995, p. A14.
5. The GOA report was summarized in Frances Piven and Richard Cloward, "The Historical Sources of the Contemporary Relief Debate," The Mean Season: The Attack on the Welfare State, Fred Block, Richard Cloward, Barbara Ehrenriech and France Piven, eds., (New York: Pantheon, 1987), pp. 58-62.
6. Norman Goodman, Introduction to Sociology (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 5.
7. Christopher Jencks, Rethinking Social Policy: Race, Poverty, and the Underclass (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 204.
8. Overview of Entitlement Programs, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1994).
9. U.S. Employment and Training Administration, Unemployment Insurance Data Summary, 1993.
10. Greg J. Duncan, Years of Poverty, Years of Plenty (University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, 1984).
11. Roberta Spalter-Roth, Making Work Pay: The Real Employment Opportunities for Single Mothers Participating in the AFDC Program (Institute for Women's Policy Research, 1994).
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| 0.948003 | 1,825 | 2.78125 | 3 |
The added radiation from mammograms and other types of tests with chest radiation might be especially harmful to them and an MRI is probably a safer method of screening women under 30 who are at high risk because of gene mutations, the authors conclude.
The study can't prove a link between the radiation and breast cancer, but is one of the biggest ever to look at the issue. The research was published Thursday in the journal BMJ.
"This will raise questions and caution flags about how we treat women with (gene) mutations," said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. He and the society had no role in the research.
Mammograms are most often used in women over 40, unless they are at high risk, like carrying a mutation of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene. Having such a mutation increases the risk of developing cancer five-fold. About one in 400 women has the gene abnormalities, which are more common in Eastern European Jewish populations. Unlike mammograms, an MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging scan, does not involve radiation.
The breast cancer screening tests have been proven to save lives and are clearly beneficial for women aged 50 and over who have an average risk of breast cancer. Experts are divided about their value in women younger than 50.
Some studies have suggested women with the genetic mutations could be more sensitive to radiation because the genes are involved in fixing DNA problems. If those genes are damaged by radiation, they may not be able to repair DNA properly, raising the cancer risk.
In several European countries including Britain, the Netherlands and Spain, doctors already advise women with BRCA mutations to get MRIs instead of mammograms before age 30. In the U.S., there is no specific advice from a leading task force of government advisers, but the American Cancer Society recommends yearly mammograms and MRIs from age 30 for women with BRCA gene mutations.
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| 0.966343 | 395 | 3.0625 | 3 |
|[This is a MPIWG MPDL language technology service]|
English (a.) Of or pertaining to England, or to its inhabitants, or to the present so-called Anglo-Saxon race.
English (a.) See 1st Bond, n., 8.
English (n.) Collectively, the people of England; English people or persons.
English (n.) The language of England or of the English nation, and of their descendants in America, India, and other countries.
English (n.) A kind of printing type, in size between Pica and Great Primer. See Type.
English (n.) A twist or spinning motion given to a ball in striking it that influences the direction it will take after touching a cushion or another ball.
English (v. t.) To translate into the English language; to Anglicize; hence, to interpret; to explain.
English (v. t.) To strike (the cue ball) in such a manner as to give it in addition to its forward motion a spinning motion, that influences its direction after impact on another ball or the cushion.
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KS2 Maths is an important core subject in the National Curriculum and this area of the website covers all the major aspects of the curriculum including numbers, calculations, problems and measures. Each subject area is designed to help children develop their knowledge, whether they are learning in a classroom or home schooling environment.
At Key Stage 2 children are encouraged to engage in mental and oral work for their mathematics so this KS2 Maths area includes a collection of interactive activities to help develop both mental and oral skills.
A key requirement of KS2 Maths is the understanding of the Number and the Number System which includes counting, estimating & rounding, fractions, decimals & percentages, number patterns & sequences and place value & ordering. Within the Number and the Number System section children are able to practice their calculations in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The interactive activities help children to practice using a variety of calculation methods by encouraging the use of written calculation methods, mental calculations and using a calculator.
The KS2 Maths section also has a problem solving area to help children further develop their problem solving skills using numbers, money, measures and shape and space. There are many activities to help children test their knowledge, including a variety of problems using money in real life´ situations.
The Measures area of the KS2 Maths section helps children to enhance their knowledge of length, mass & capacity, time, area and perimeter. The Shape and Space area includes useful information and activities relating to position and movement, 2D shapes, 3D shapes, symmetry, angles, co-ordinates and sorting.
Children are also able to learn about handling data through a number of activities based on interpreting and organising data as well as a section on probability.
The resources and activities in the KS2 Maths section are in an interactive, online, or printable format that brings a differing dynamic to the subject for children studying at Key Stage 2.
Adding and Subtracting - Year 3 - On line activity about completing various adding and subtracting sums.
Kids Maths - Interactive calculations for all the 4 operations.
Maths Generator - Create online sums either online or as a worksheet including addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Number Monster - Excellent online activities involving all the basic sums.
Reverse Addition - Interactive activity to use the relationship between addition and subtraction
Revision Bite Subtraction - Online fact sheet about problem solving from the BBC
Subtract 11 - Interactive activity to subtract 11
Subtract 9 - Interactive activity to subtract 9
Subtract a 2-Digit Number - Interactive activity to learn how to use partitioning to subtract 2-digit numbers.
Subtracting 3 Numbers - Excellent online activity.
Subtraction - Interactive activities about Subtraction from the BBC
Subtraction Year 3 - Twenty-two interactive or printable subtrction activities
Subtraction Year 4 - Eight ineteractive or printable activities for subtraction
Subtraction - Year 5 - Ten interactive or printable activities for subtraction
Subtraction Year 6 - Four interactive or printable activities for subtraction
Subtraction Facts - Fact sheet about subtraction.
Subtraction Info - Interactive information about subtraction.
Subtraction Quiz - Interactive revision quiz about Subtraction
Subtraction Sums - Hard - 1 - Interactive activity about hard subtraction sums.
Subtraction up to 20 - Interactive activity using number grid up to 20
Subtraction up to 40 - Interactive activity using number grid up to 40
Subtraction Using Negative Numbers - Interactive activity using number grid
Sum Sense - Subtraction - Interactive activity about subtraction
The Subtraction Machine - Interactive subtraction machine.
Written sums - Year 4 - Interactive activity about written sums.
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Young People's Concerts
Overview | Letters & Telegrams | Publications | Scripts
Young People's Concert: What Is American Music? [back to script index]
This script and many others are included in the Young People's Concert book, available here.
Hello again everybody. I'm awfully glad to see you all again, and I want to thank you all particularly for your wonderful letters and telegrams about our last show. They made us feel very happy and proud.
This time we're going to talk about what makes American music sound American, and just to start things off, here's some American music.
[ORCH: GERSHWIN: AN AMERICAN IN PARIS]
I don't think there's anybody in this hall, or anywhere in the country watching this program, for that matter, or anyone in the civilized world who wouldn't know right away that that music we just played is American music. It's got "America" written all over itnot just in the title, which is, you know, An American in Paris, and not just because the composer, Gershwin, was American, but it's in the music itself: it sounds American, smells Americanmakes you feel American when you hear it.
Now why is that? What makes certain music seems to belong to America, seem to belong to us? That's what we're going to try and find out today.
Almost every country, or nation, has some kind of music that belongs to it, and sounds right and natural for its own people. When a nation has its own kind of music, we call that music "nationalistic" music. Sometimes it's just folk music, very simple songsor sometimes not even songs; maybe just prayers for rain banged out on Congo drums,
or a sort of primitive chanting, in Arab style.
Or it can be dance music, like a Mazurka from Poland,
[PIANO: CHOPIN MAZURKA]
or could be a Tarantella from Italy.
This is a piece I learned when I was eleven. I still can't play it very well. There.
Or it might be a reel from Ireland.
[PIANO: IRISH WASHERWOMAN]
The minute you hear that reel, you know it's Irish, just as you know the Mazurka was Polish or the Tarantella was Italian. Now you tell me what country this music makes you think of?
[ORCH: RAVEL: SPANISH RHAPSODY]
What country's that?
Spain. My goodness. You're, as you would say, "hep". Right. Now it's Spanish. You couldn't mistake that rhythm in a million years,
or mistake those castanets,
or that tambourine.
That's Spanish. Now what country does this music make you think of?
[ORCH: BRAHMS HUNGARIAN #52ND STRAIN]
Hungary. Right again. Some of you said gypsy, some said Hungary. It's the same idea. It's as Hungarian as goulash. It's hard to miss that.
Now what about this?
[ORCH: TCHAIKOVSKY'S FOURTH]
Right. Right. You're all so smart today. That's Russian. You can't miss itit's got to be Russian, because it has a Russian folk song in itit has a tune that all Russians know and have sung since they were little kids. That tune, by the way, is called "The Little Birch Tree." And in Russian I don't sing Russian very well but it goes something like this:
[SING: "Vo poleh beriozinka stolyala
Vo poleh kudravaya stolyala
Luli, luli stolyala
Luli, luli stolyala"]
Well, Tchaikovsky used that tune in that symphony we just played, and that settles that symphony. It's Russian.
So you can understand that when this kind of music is played in the country it belongs to, all the people listening to it feel that it belongs to them, and that they belong to itit's their music. Because in most countries, the people who live there are descended for hundreds of years from their forefathers, and their forefathers' forefathers, who all sang the same little tunes and sort of own them; so when the Russians hear a Tchaikovsky symphony, they feel closer to it than say, a Frenchman does, or than we do.
Now, how about us, here in America? What's our folk music? What did our forefathers sing? That's the problem. We all have different kinds of forefathers. For example: Mr. Corigliano, there, has Italian forefathers. And Varga has, Hun ... Varga's forefathers were, what were they? Hungarian. And mine were Jewish. Mr. McGinnis's were Scotch-Irish, and Mr. Wummers were Dutch, I believe, Dutch. And what about your forefathers? What about yours?
[POINTS TO VARIOUS KIDS AND ASKS]
Tell me about your forefathers. Can you tell? What about yours? Hungarian someone just said. What were yours? Polish? What were yours? Well, you can see we could be here all day listing all the forefathers that you have. We could be here for ages. Sweden, Spain, Hungary, England, Germany. They come from everywhere. But we haven't got hours to be here and list them all.
So you see that is our problem: the problem is that with all those different forefathers we have, what is it that we all have in common, that we could call our folk music the folk music we've inherited? That's a tough question. You see, we haven't had a long time to develop a folk music. Don't forget, America is a very new country, compared to all those European ones we're not even two hundred years old yet! And that's not very old for a country. We're still a babya big, fine, strong babybut still a baby. And so our music is also still very young.
Actually, our real serious American music didn't even begin until about seventy-five years ago. At that time the few American composers we did have, were imitating European composers, like Brahms and Liszt and Wagner and all those. We might call that the kindergarten period of American music; our composers then were like happy, innocent little kids in kindergarten. For instance, we had a very fine composer named George W. Chadwick, who wrote expert music, and also deeply felt music, but you could almost not tell it apart from the music of Brahms, Wagner, or other Europeans. Like this overture of his. Listen.
[ORCH: CHADWICK: MELPOMENE]
You see, that's straight European stuff. But around the beginning of our twentieth century, American composers were beginning to feel funny about not writing American sounding music. And it took a foreigner to point this out to thema Czechoslovakian composer named Dvorak, who came here on a visit and was amazed to find all the American composers writing the same kind of music he wrote. So he said to the American composers: "Look, why don't you use your own folk stuff in your own music, when you write? You've got marvelous stuff hereIndian music, which is, who are, the Indians are the real native Americans, he said. After all, they were here before you were so, use their music. But he was forgetting the important thingthat Indian music has nothing to do with most of us; our forefathers were not Indians, and so their music is not our music. We didn't grow up ourselves banging on primitive drums and yelling war whoops. But Dvorak didn't worry about all that, and he got so excited that he decided to write an American symphony himself, and show us how it could be done. So he made up some Indian themes and some Negro themes (because he also decided that Negro folk music was part of American history) and he wrote a whole "New World Symphony" around those themes. But the trouble is that the Symphony doesn't sound American at all; it sounds Czech, which is what it should sound, and very pretty it is, too.
[ORCH: DVORAK: NEW WORLD SYMPHONY, 1ST MOVEMENT]
Beautiful, isn't it? But it doesn't sound American to me. Now, I'm sure you all know the second movement of the symphonythe most famous part of the symphony.
A very famous tune that everybody knows by the name of "Going Home." Most people think it's a Negro spiritual, and it's often sung that way. But it isn't a Negro spiritual at all; it's a nice Czech melody by Uncle Dvorak and there's nothing Negro or American about it. In fact, if I put words to it about Czechoslovakia, it could easily sound like the Czech national anthem. Supposing I sang:
[SING: "Czech-o-slo-va-ki-a, How I long for thee. It's perfectly Czech, there's nothing American about it at all.]
But in spite of this, Dvorak made a big impression on the American composers of his time; and they all got excited too, and began to write hundreds of so-called American pieces with Indian and Negro melodies in them. It became a disease, almost an epidemic; everyone was doing it. And most of those Montezuma Operas and Minnehaha Symphonies and Cotton-Pickin' Suites are all dead and forgotten, and gathering dust in second-hand book stores. Why? Because you can't just decide to be American; you can't just sit down and say, "I'm going to write American music, if it kills me." You can't be nationalistic on purpose. That was the mistake; but it was a natural mistake for our composers to be making at the beginning; those early men were just learning to be American; they were just graduating from that Kindergarten we talked about into grammar school. But even out of this grammar school period came some pretty fine music, a lot of it by Edward MacDowell.
MacDowell wrote a suite, among other things, that uses Indian folk-stuff in it, but I still can't say that it sounds very American to me. He thought it sounded American. It's more to me like our old friend Dvorak. Just listen.
[ORCH: MACDOWELL INDIAN SUITE]
Sort of like the New World Symphony, isn't it?
Then there was a composer called Henry Gilbert, who was also very talented, but who was more interested in Negro themes than Indian ones. Here's part of a piece he wrote using tunes and rhythms of Negroes in New Orleans, especially a Creole dance called the Bamboula.
[ORCH: GILBERT: DANCE IN PLACE CONGO]
Now, as you can see, MacDowell and Gilbert and all those people wrote very fine music, indeed; but it's hard for us Americans to feel that it's our music, the way a Russian feels about a Tchaikovsky symphony. In fact, those Indian and Negro themes even sound a little strange and exotic to us if we tell the truth. So we still didn't have a real American music, not yet.
But now our American composers were about to graduate from grammar school and enter high school. By this time the First World War was already over; and something new and very special had come into American music.
[PIANO: ST. LOUIS BLUES UNDER TALK]
What was it? Can you guess what it is?
Jazz. Right! Jazz had been born, and that changed everything. Because at last there was something like an American folk music that belonged to all Americans. Jazz was everybody's music. Everybody danced the fox trot back in the twenties, everybody knew how to sing Alexander's Rag Time Band, whether he came from North Dakota or West virginia or South Carolina. So any serious composer growing up in America couldn't keep jazz out of his ears or out of his music. It was part of him, it was in the air he breathed. A composer like Aaron Copland began to write pieces such as Music for the Theatre, which is filled with jazz ideas; like this:
[ORCH: COPLAND MUSIC FOR THE THEATRE]
Imagine that being played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the first time thirty years ago, as it was.
What a shock the Bostonians must have had hearing Copland's jazz in Symphony Hall. But certainly, the composer who used jazz most, and most consistently was Gershwin. When he wrote his Rhapsody in Blue in 1924, he really rocked this town of New York, and finally the whole country, and then the whole civilized world. Imagine how this must have sounded to the ears of those serious concert-goers way back then.
[ORCH: GERSHWIN: RHAPSODY IN BLUE]
You see at last there was something like an American folk music that everybody understood: a real natural folk influence, jazz, much more real and natural than any Indian love calls or Negro spirituals could ever be. But, our composers were still in high school and were still being American on purpose. Only instead of Indian and Negro stuff, now they began to use jazz to be American. And just to be able to say "Look, I'm writing American music!" That wasn't very natural. But by the time we got to the thirties, in the thirties, the jazz influence became a part of their living and breathing, became a habit, and the composers didn't even have to think twice about using jazz; they just wrote music, and it came out American, all by itself. That was much better. That was leaving high school and going to college. Let's see just how this change worked. For instance, take the rhythms of jazz. The thing that makes jazz rhythm so special is something called syncopation, which means getting an accent where you don't expect one, or getting a strong beat where you expect a weak beat should be. Let's try and see if we can all do a syncopation together. We're all going to clap together, regular, even beats: 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4.
Fine, but without getting faster and without getting slower and just keeping it steady. And while we're doing that, keeping it steady, not rushing or slowing down, the drummers up there are going to sock their drums in a syncopated Charleston rhythm, with accents in the wrong places, in between our beats, which are the right places. O.K.? Let's see how you're going to do it.
That's fine. All right. You ready? Here goes.
[ORCH & AUDIENCE]
Even and steady. Very good. No, no, no. You mustn't let them mix us up. We've got to keep steady no matter what they do so they have something to syncopate against. You understand? All right, let's try again.
[KIDS AND ORCHESTRA SYNCOPATE]
Steady, steady. Good. That's much better, much better. What we used to call the Charleston back in the twenties. Now let's turn this whole thing around and let them do the dull regular steady beat boom-boom-boom-boom, while we do the Charleston. Let's see how we're going to do it.
[KIDS SYNCOPATE AGAIN]
That's pretty good. Ready. Go! Wait a minute, wait a minute. Let them start. Now. Wonderful, wonderful. I can see you really feel those jazzy accents. And why shouldn't you? You're all American; you should feel them.
Now back in what we called the high school days, composers would use those syncopated beats just like jazz, as we heard before in the Copland piece and Gershwin piece. But in the thirties, those syncopations became a part of the musicso much so that the music doesn't even sound like jazz anymore; in other words, it was no longer using syncopation on purpose to be American, but just by accident, just by habit, so that we now get a brand new rhythm, which is an American rhythm, coming out of jazz, but that doesn't sound like jazz at all.
By now, it's become a natural part of our daily musical speech. For instance, a composer called Roger Sessions writes a piece for organ, a Chorale Prelude. Never mind what a Chorale Prelude is, but anyway just know it's a serious organ piece with a sort of religious atmosphere about it. Now that's the last place in the world where you'd expect to hear jazz and syncopated accents. But there they are, deep in the music, making it all sound very American, but without sounding anything like jazz, as you'll hear. Just listen.
[ORGAN: SESSIONS: CHORALE PRELUDE]
Now that doesn't sound like jazz at all, but it's full of jazz accents, or accents that come out of jazz, and that just couldn't be music by a European. So, it's like the English language spoken with an American accent. It's the accent that makes it almost like a whole other language. The accent, the rhythm of speaking, the speed that comes out of the way we live, the way we move in America. Just think what a difference there is between the English language spoken by a British poet like Keats, and the English language by an American poet! It's really the same language, after all; the words look the same on paper; but, boy, do they sound different! Just listen to this bit of Keats:
"Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art
And so on ... Now compare that English with this by an American poet named Kenneth Fearing:
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
"And wow he died as wow he lived,
It's almost like two different languages, isn't it? Well, something like that happened to American music; the jazz influence grew to be such a deep part of our musical language that it changed the whole sound of our music.
going whop to the office and blooie home to
biff got married and bam had children and
off got fired,
zowie did he live and zowie did he die."
Take a simple horn call, for example. Music has always been full of horn calls, and trumpet calls, and bugle calls. Now here's the way Beethoven used a horn call in his Third Symphony, a fine old European dignified way:
And here's the way an American composer called Morton Gould uses the same notesonly they come out more like a Louis Armstrong horn-call.
[ORCH: GOULD INTERPLAY]
See what I mean? Now I don't want to give you the idea that jazz is the whole story, not by a long shot. There are many other things about American music that make it sound American besides jazz - things that have nothing to do with jazz, but have to do with the different sides of the American personality. One of the main personality traits that we have in our music is one of youth. It's young music; it's loud, strong, wildly optimistic. William Schuman is a composer who is a perfect example of this quality. His American Festival Overture, for example, is filled with rip-roaring vitality, and reminds you of kids having a marvelous time in the park. In fact, this overture was based on a street call that Schuman used when he was a kid, when the fellows used to call each other to come out and play: It's a call that went: "Wee-aw-kee!" I don't know if any of you still use that now. But in Schuman's time he did, and he based his overture on it. Listen to how he uses it.
[ORCH: SCHUMAN: AMERICAN FESTIVAL OVERTURE]
Sure has vitality, hasn't it? Nothing depressed or gloomy about old Bill Schuman.
Then there's another kind of American vitality, which is not so much of the city, but belongs more to the rugged West, full of pioneer energy. The music of Roy Harris has lots of this quality. Listen to this little bit from his Third Symphony.
[ORCH: HARRIS: THIRD SYMPHONY]
Rugged, all right. And somehow that ruggedness is purely American in its feeling.
Then there's a kind of loneliness in American music that's different from other kinds of loneliness. You find it in the way the notes are spaced out very far apart from one another, like the great wide open spaces that our big country is so full of. Take this part of Copland's ballet, Billy the Kid, for instance; this section describes a quiet night scene on the prairie.
[ORCH: COPLAND: BILLY THE KID]
Did you feel that wide-open feeling? That's very American, too.
Then there's a kind of sweet, simple, sticky sentimental quality that gets into our music; I think it comes from hymn-singing, especially from southern Baptist hymn singing. We can find lots of this kind of very American naive, plain quality in the music of Virgil Thomson, for instance, who comes from Kansas City. Here's a bit from one of his operas called The Mother of Us All, and listen for that sweet homespun American simplicity.
[ORCH: THOMSON: MOTHER OF US ALL]
You see. Then we have another kind of sentimentality in our music that comes out of our popular songs, a sort of crooning pleasure, like taking a long, delicious warm bath. Here's a part of Randall Thompson's Second Symphonydon't mix him up with Virgil Thomson which is almost like a song Perry Como sings.
[ORCH: RANDALL THOMPSON: SECOND SYMPHONY]
In fact, there are so many different qualities in our music that it would take much too long to list them; there are as many sides to American music as there are to the American peopleour great, varied, many-sided democracy. Maybe that's the main quality of all our many-sidedness. Think of all the races and personalities from all over the globe that make up our country; and when we think of that we can understand why our own folk music is so complicated. We've taken it all in, French, Dutch, German, Scotch, Scandinavian, Italian, and all the rest, and learned it from one another, borrowed it, stolen it, cooked it all up in a melting pot. So what our composers are finally nourished on, is a folk music that is probably the richest in the world, and all of it is American, in spirit, whether its jazz, or square-dance tunes, or cowboy songs, or hillbilly music, or rock and roll, or Cuban mambas, or Mexican huapangos, or Missouri hymn-singing. It's like all those different accents we have in our speaking; there's a little Mexican accent in the Texas accents, and a little Swedish to be heard in our Minnesota accent, and there's a little Slavic in the Brooklyn, and a there's a little Irish in the Boston accent. But they're all American accents. They've been absorbed.
And now, as a final example of all this, I want you to hear part of the Third Symphony by Aaron Copland - which has a lot of these American qualities we've been talking aboutjazz rhythms, and wide open optimism, and the simplicity, and the sentimentality, and a mixture of things from all over the worlda noble fanfare, a hymneverything. But I have a special surprise for you. We've been lucky enough to get Mr. Copland himself in person to come and conduct it for you. And now you're going to meet a real American composer, who has been through this whole development we've been talking about high school, college, even grad school and we can say that by now he has become the dean of all American music. I am proud to turn the podium over to Aaron Copland.
[ORCH: COPLAND: THIRD SYMPHONY FINALE]
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The Return of the King Language and Communication Quotes
How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph).
They stood now; and Sam still holding his master's hand caressed it. He sighed. "What a tale we have been in, Mr. Frodo, haven't we?" he said. "I wish I could hear it told! Do you think they'll say: Now comes the story of Nine-fingered Frodo and the Ring of Doom? And then everyone will hush, like we did, when in Rivendell they told us the tale of Beren One-Hand and the Great Jewel. I wish I could hear it! And I wonder how it will go on after our part." (6.4.21)
There they are again—stories.When Sam says, "What a tale we have been in," this is literally true: he and Frodo are both characters in an amazing tale. As a fictional character wishing to hear his own fictional adventures told back to him in song form, Sam is blurring the distinction between the world in The Lord of the Rings and that of its readers. After all, we are listening to Sam's story just as Sam listened to Beren's tale in the Hall of Fire in Rivendell. But at the end of the day, it's all about the power of stories. The stories Sam heard in Rivendell have a big impact on him, just as the stories of "Nine-fingered Frodo" will make a splash with us.
"Nay, cousin! they are not boys," said Ioreth to her kinswoman from Imloth Melui, who stood beside her. "Those are Periain, out of the far country of the Halflings, where they are princes of great fame, it is said. I should know, for I had one to tend in the Houses. They are small, but they are valiant. Why, cousin, one of them went with only his esquire into the Black Country and fought with the Dark Lord all by himself, and set fire to his Tower, if you can believe it. At least that is the tale in the City. That will be the one that walks with our Elfstone. They are dear friends, I hear." (6.5.71)
Ah, the Gondorian rumor mill. It runs fast and strong. Even Frodo's genuinely heroic feats have become exaggerated. Nine-fingered Frodo certainly didn't set fire to any tower, although there's truth at the heart of Ioreth's version of the tale. We can imagine this story being passed down orally through the ages, with changes and embellishments added here and there. This scene reminds us that even in our world, the stories we hear about the past often have grains of truth.
They put [Butterbur] in a large chair by the wood-fire, […] and exchanged all such news as Mr. Butterbur wished to hear or give. Most of the things which they had to tell were a mere wonder and bewilderment to their host, and far beyond his vision; and they brought forth few comments other than: "You don't say," often repeated in defiance of the evidence of Mr. Butterbur's own ears. "You don't say, Mr. Baggins, or is it Mr. Underhill? I'm getting so mixed up. You don't say, Master Gandalf! Well I never! Who'd have thought it in our times!" (6.7.26)
Butterbur's a good guy, sure, but he is incapable of understanding the grand events of the Lord of the Rings series. He just doesn't have the language, experience, or even imagination for it, so the tales leave him speechless. Contrast him with a guy like Aragorn, who sings beautifully and speaks poetically from the start, and you'll see a subtle class system start to emerge—one based on education and experience, rather than money. Men like Aragorn are high and mighty, while folks like Butterbur are left to wonder at all the grandeur. We suppose it should come as no surprise that Tolkien, as a professor of languages, would give his own love of words and stories to his best characters—like Sam, and unlike Butterbur.
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Wear Organic is a project from Pesticide Action Network UK aiming to reduce the problems from pesticides used in cotton, particularly by promoting organic and fair alternatives
Not so long ago, in a village in Benin, West Africa a farmer named Issaka came home after a long day working in his cotton fields. He had been spraying his cotton that day with the highly toxic pesticide endosulfan, and when he got home he put his pesticide-soaked overalls on the roof of his home, out of the reach of his children. However, that night it rained hard and, as access to clean water is sometimes a challenge in the region, Issaka and his family for years had been in the habit of collecting rainwater run-off in buckets around the building. Early the next the morning, his four children – aged between six and eight – drank from the buckets when they got up early to play, as they usually did. They quickly began to feel ill and were rushed to the local health centre. Horrifically by the next day, all four of his children were dead.
PAN UK was an early pioneer of organic cotton and over the past two decades has trained and supported thousands of African farmers in organic techniques in order to enable them to move away from a reliance on dangerous and toxic chemicals. This has predominantly been in the form of active field projects directly supporting farmers in Benin and Ethiopia, but PAN-UK also works throughout the region providing access to non-chemical alternatives and advice on managing pesticide risks.
PAN UK’s cotton programme began in West Africa. Where the nations of Benin, Burkina Faso, and Mali rely heavily on cotton as an employer and export revenue source (In Benin, for example, cotton makes up 80% of its export income). Most of the cotton grown in these countries is produced by smallholder farmers and their families, each working a few acres.
However, cotton is a difficult crop to grow: yields can be decimated by severe weather (both droughts and flooding) and it is particularly vulnerable to pest attacks. Globally, cotton covers just 2.4% of the world’s cultivated land but uses 6% of the world’s pesticides, more than any other single major crop. These often combine to create disastrous economic, health and environmental consequences for the smallholder cotton growers of West Africa.
· Cotton farming is of marginal profitability. Many farmers earn less than a dollar a day from their crops. They receive little support or training and yields are low.
· Smallholder cotton farmers spend up to 60% of their annual income on pesticides. Farmers must buy agrochemical inputs on credit at the start of the season and often yields at the end of the season are too meager to pay off these costs – just one bad harvest can tip a farmer into debt.
· Farmer suicide is a major problem amongst cotton growers and, all too often, farmers end up killing themselves by drinking the very pesticides that pushed them into debt in the first place.
· Pesticides are a major global killer (some estimates suggest they cause almost as many deaths worldwide as road accidents). Nearly 1,000 people die every day from acute pesticide poisoning and many more suffer from chronic ill health like cancers and leukemia, neurological diseases and reproductive problems including infertility, miscarriage and birth defects.
· As well as the personal tragedies that these illnesses represent, pesticides are a huge drain on African economies and health services – the UN estimates that the health costs of pesticides across sub-Saharan Africa amount to an enormous US$4.4 billion a year which is about equal to the total international aid assistance given to the region for health. Meanwhile, a 2013 UNEP report concluded that the chronic loss of productivity caused by pesticide use diminishes Mali’s annual agricultural GDP per habitant by 50%.
Organic cotton is a viable solution to these problems. Yields may be slightly lower than conventional cotton, but, with appropriate support and training, the gap in yields between organic and conventional can be reduced. For example, farmers in Benin that have received support from PAN have achieved yields in excess of 950kg/ha (compared to 1100kg/ha for conventional growers). But, this is the important part, the reduction in input costs meant that these farmers made roughly twice as much income from their cotton crops as their conventional neighbors without endangering their own health or that of their families.
PAN UK has worked in W. Africa for more than 15 years directly supporting thousands of farmers to grow organic cotton. We work with local groups – like OBEPAB in Benin, ENDA in Senegal and PAN Mali – to provide funding, technical support and training. We have two active organic cotton projects at the moment – supporting almost 2,000 farmers in Benin and 2,000 in Ethiopia.
Our cotton projects are among the most successful in Africa. Our project in Benin came top in an independent review of cotton support programmes across Africa by the German aid agency GIZ. Our farmers achieved the highest gross margins of all their projects and the project achieved particularly high scores for resilience and poverty reduction. Why are our cotton projects so successful? They all include the following five elements.
· Direct training and support to farmers: we provide extension services to farmers teaching them how to grow healthy crops, and training them in non-chemical pest control, including ecology and entomology to recognize and manage pests. According to Simon Ferrigno, a specialist consultant on Sustainable & Organic Farm Systems, OBEPAB has the ‘best extension and farmer support services in Africa.’
· Establishing and supporting village co-operatives: we provide training and advice to help villages establish co-operatives. These give communities a structure through which they can effectively articulate their needs to local government and share learning and negotiate better deals with suppliers and traders.
· Providing alternative pest control techniques: we also conduct research into innovative pest control technologies that boost cotton yields and reduce reliance on pesticides. For example, we have developed a harmless spray (made from fermented local food ingredients) that farmers can make themselves, which attracts beneficial insects into cotton fields to control pests. This spray, combined with our farmer-training programme, has helped farmers to control pesticides, yet maintain yields comparable to their conventional neighbors. Not only has this reduced their exposure to pesticides, but also it has also improved the profitability of their cotton.
· Helping women and girls: a key feature of our projects is that they target support at women and girls. At 40%, our projects in Benin have one of the highest ratios of women farmers in Africa (and much higher than the 20% average in other organic cotton projects). But our support does not just extend to cotton growing. We also focus on crops that are important to women and their financial independence like Shea and other ground provisions. A big part of this support is to provide labour-saving infrastructure for activities traditionally conducted by women (eg water collection, Shea butter processing). This frees up women’s time to engage in other productive activities (or in the case of younger girls, to attend school). We also support micro-industries like weaving to enable women to earn their own incomes, giving them freedom over economic choices for themselves and their children.
Helping food security and reducing risk – Our organic cotton farmers typically grow more than 20 other food and cash crops as part of their organic system. This means that they are not entirely reliant on cotton to feed their families. This strategy is less risky than monocrop cotton production as it spreads the risk among different crops, with greater or lesser resilience to different problems. Further, as they can be harvested throughout the year this brings a more even distribution of income to the household.
Development requires long-term support and should be built around training and capacity building. Africa is littered with broken machinery that has not been maintained properly, and empty schools and health centres without the staff or medicines needed to run them. Infrastructure (equipment and machinery) is crucial, but it is also important to train farmers in how to use and maintain it, and to establish the social infrastructure (e.g. community groups) that will keep them going when the donors have moved on. PAN UK has a 15+ year relationship with our partners in the region and over this time, we have seen them take more and more responsibility and become more autonomous. In the long-term, we hope they won’t need our help, but we will be there for as long as they need us.
The main areas we are focussing on currently are:
· Accesses to markets – farmers are in a weak bargaining position and often have to go through intermediaries to sell their cotton. This means they do not get the best prices and rarely get the security of multi-year contracts. Only a fraction of the organic cotton grown in W. Africa is sold at an organic premium. One of the biggest things that would help cotton farmers would be a long-term commitment to buy their cotton at an organic premium (typically 20%). This needs to come from local and global business and industry and in Benin at least, this has been achieved.
· Financial support for farmer training – our current project in W. Africa supports nearly 4,000 farmers. Additional support would allow us to dramatically scale up this training and reach more farmers directly. It cots about £5 a month to train a farmer but the training teaches skills that last for years and are assimilated into the wider community.
· Financial support for infrastructure – in addition to training, farmers need machinery and equipment to help them produce cotton more efficiently and add value to other crops. In particular the women in [insert village/region name] would really benefit from a Shea nut processor, which would decrease their daily work considerably.
What can you do to help? Donate to PAN-UK to help us continue the work.
PAN UK on Facebook
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(Women in Leshemi village spinning yarn from nettle: Kalpana Sharma)
When you look down from the main road, the imposing Baptist church in Leshemi village, in Nagaland's Phek district, looks like a wedding cake.
But Leshemi's claim to fame is more than an impressive church. Leshemi is located on the hill opposite Khezakeno village, a place that the Nagas believe is the original village settled by them. From it, they believe, Nagas went off in different directions. The three main Naga tribes, Angami, Chakhesang and Sema, trace their origins to this settlement.
Leshemi is a small Chakhesang village, perched on a hillside with thick forests above and terraced rice fields below. What makes it unusual is that it is virtually a "village republic", a concept Mahatma Gandhi articulated. Its 800 or so inhabitants want little from the outside world, as the women tell you.
"Do you lack anything in your village?" I asked 65-year old Solhouii, part of a group of women who had just demonstrated how they spin yarn from stalks of stinging nettles found in the forest.
She thought for a while, then laughed and said: "No."
Though they do need a few things from outside, Solhouii said that they grow their own rice, millet, vegetables and fruit. They even make salt from brine found in a natural spring. There is plenty of water. They spin their own yarn from nettles and homegrown cotton. And they weave this into shawls and wraps, following the traditional patterns of their tribe.
Like neighbouring Khezakeno, people in Leshemi also believe that they live in one of the oldest villages in Nagaland. As proof they show you what they call their fetish stones (which, they believe, contain spirits and special powers), which were found by their elders. These stones are now being carbon dated to establish their real age.
A stone shrine of sorts has been built around one of the original fetish stones.
Two elderly men, who are hovering around the little structure, tell me that the stone "died" when the Indian army burnt Leshemi village in 1957.
That statement, said sotto voce, is a wrenching reminder of what ordinary people in Nagaland went through from late 1950s till the ceasefire in 1964, during what they call the Indo-Naga war. This was fought between the Nagas, who believed they were independent and not part of the Indian Union, and the Indian government and its army that saw them as insurgents to be forcibly brought into the Indian fold.
I asked these two men if they remember that time. Yes, they do, they told me. For an entire year, the villagers had to hide in the forests. Those who went to the higher reaches survived despite hunger. Those who went to the valley died of disease or could not tolerate the heat and humidity.
The village that stands today was rebuilt after that.
The women and men in Leshemi do not bring politics into the conversation. But you cannot escape the past, the sadness that hangs over such villages, and the memories that live on.
The old and the new
Just as the smiles, the jokes and the laughter hide deeper wounds, so does the talk of self-sufficiency.
For the reality in Leshemi, as in other villages in Nagaland, is that changes in the name of modernisation and development are undercutting the self-sufficient nature of their traditional societies.
A group of women farmers (and the majority of farmers are women) explained why today, what they grow is not enough to meet their needs.
A group of Chakhesang women in Chizami village, east of Leshemi village, spoke of the dilemma they face. We need cash, said one, to pay for school fees and medical expenses.
What they grow is enough to feed the family and sometimes there is a surplus that can be sold in the market. But the earnings from this cannot cover these other expenses necessitated by the introduction of education (Nagaland's literacy rate is now 80%) and modern medicine (in the past people relied on local cures).
As a result, the women look for work in the fields of others, where they get paid Rs 300 per day. The men find work as construction workers in the road repair projects that are perennially underway (despite which the roads are in a terrible state), and under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Boards in all these villages announce improved village roads, or structures like community centres, that have been built courtesy MGNREGA.
(To read the rest of the article, click HERE)
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There's a lot of talk about vegetation in this poem, and they end up being the central metaphor of the work. All the plants are images for poetry, and can all be traced back down to words, then syllables. Language is made out to be a living, organic thing, as natural as the dandelions growing out on your lawn. This is a move against the artificiality that can sometimes be related to poetry, with all of its strict syllable counts and rhyme schemes. Yeah, Paz is rebelling against traditional poetry by comparing it to a houseplant. Bet you didn't see that coming!
- Line 2: Poetry is compared to verbena, a plant that is considered by some to have some magical powers, growing under the sea, which doesn't happen in real life. So poetry can make things happen that don't normally happen in the real world. It has magical powers!
- Line 9: Pronouns are like flowers growing in the gardens of the philosophers and poets, and can be cut to be used whenever they're needed for decoration—or just making the place smell nice.
- Lines 11-12: Verbs and nouns are attributed with seeds and roots, and said to be planted in language. The parts of speech grow naturally, just like plants do.
- Line 14: Syllables, the basic building blocks of speech, are the seeds that poets can plant to make all kinds of images grow.
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| 0.976077 | 300 | 3.125 | 3 |
Q: I need your advice on a cherry tree that I planted three years ago. The tree trunk has been developing cracks and some branches are now dead. Can I save the tree?
A: It sure looks like it was planted too deep. All trees are susceptible but cherry and plum trees are VERY susceptible to this problem.
The layer of soil at the base of the tree above the flare root line makes a great environment for destructive fungi to invade the trunk. As the fungi grows it causes the bark to crack and allow even more bad things to invade.
Stress then causes sprouts to appear at the base.
There’s not much you can do….but try gently scraping away the soil at the base of the trunk to dry out the area.
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en
| 0.953561 | 156 | 2.65625 | 3 |
PUBLIC HEALTH ASSESSMENT
AUSTIN, CITY OF-HOLLY STREET POWER
(a/k/a HOLLY STREET POWER PLANT)
AUSTIN, TRAVIS COUNTY, TEXAS
Community health concerns were obtained from local citizens during a November 23, 1993 meeting at the Metz Community Center. These concerns are summarized below.
- Are rates of cancer, respiratory illness, or other health problems higher in the vicinity of the site?
- Are PCBs released from the site causing adverse health effects?
- Are PCBs in the water?
- Do the electromagnetic fields measured in the neighborhoods and on the playground by the plant represent a health hazard?
- Is it safe for children to play on the playground and on the basketball courts near the plant?
- Does the noise produced by the plant have a negative affect on the community?
- Can the respirable particulates produced by the plant result in adverse health effects?
- Are potential fires at the plant a health hazard?
- People still fish in Town Lake regularly. Is it dangerous to eat fish from Town Lake?
This section contains site-specific information about potential health hazards associated with the site; however, inclusion in this section does not imply that a particular hazard represents a threat to public health. Based on citizen input and known site activities, we have identified six main areas of concern: 1) air pollution; 2) noise; 3) electric and magnetic fields; 4) PCB contamination in Town Lake; 5) groundwater contamination; and 6) physical and other hazards. Subsequent sections of this report will evaluate these potential health hazards to determine if they have public health significance.
Under normal operating conditions, the Holly Street Power Plant burns natural gas. Under some conditions, such as when natural gas supplies become scarce or when special burns are required, the plant burns fuel oil. Table 1 lists the amount of fuel used by the plant over a 5-year period (1989-1993) and estimates of the number of hours that fuel oil was burned. We estimate that between 1989 and 1993, fuel oil was used less than 1% of the plant's total operating time.
|Year||Month||Gallons of |
Fuel Oil Used
|Estimated Number of Hours in Operation||Estimated Percent of |
| 306,600 |
| || |
|1990-1991||Not Applicable||0||0 hours||0.0|
| 394,800 |
| 63 hours |
|1993|| ||0||0 hours||0.0|
Assumed operation at 50% of maximum rate.
It is well known that the burning of fossil fuels can result in the generation of air pollutants such as particulate matter (PM10), total suspended particles (TSP), sulfur dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO), and nitrogen oxides (NOx). Although air monitoring data were not available for the area immediately around the Holly Street Power Plant, the TNRCC used an air dispersion model to estimate emissions from the plant during natural gas curtailment conditions. The pollutants that they modeled included benzene, formaldehyde, CO, PM10, TSP, SO2, NO2, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The model showed that predicted maximum short-term and average annual impacts for all contaminants, except SO2 would be below corresponding TNRCC Regulations, National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), and TNRCC Effects Screening Levels (ESLs). Although the predicted 3-hour and annual SO2 levels were below the NAAQS annual standard, the 1-hour and 24-hour predicted concentrations exceeded both the TNRCC and NAAQS standards (Table 2). The highest concentrations of SO2 were predicted to occur either along the shoreline or over Town Lake; lesser concentrations were predicted to occur in the adjacent community.
|Pollutants||Averaging Timea||Maximum Modeled Concentration (µg/m3)b||Background Concentrationd (µg/m3)||Total Ambient Concentration (µg/m3)||TNRCC Regulation (µg/m3)||NAAQS (µg/m3)|
|Carbon Monoxide (CO)||1 hour||441||6057||6498||--||40,000|
|Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2)||Annual||23||32||55||--||100|
|Total Suspended Particulate Matter (TSP)||1 hour||124||--||--||400||--|
|Particulate Matter (PM10)||24 hour||17||53||70||--||150|
|Sulfur Dioxide |
|1 hour||2352 (1787)c||--||--||1021||--|
|3 hour||1148 (872)c||26||1174 (898)c||--||1300|
|24 hour||540 (410)c||26||566 (436)c||--||365|
|Annual||9.64 (7.90)c||5.33||14.97 (13.23)c||--||80|
a Short-term and long-term concentrations based on short-term and long-term emission rates respectively.
b Micrograms per cubic meter of air.
c Concentrations inside and outside parenthesis related to emission rates corresponding to 0.227 and 0.3 % sulfur content of fuel oil
d Background concentrations are the highest monitored numbers in Austin available at time of modeling (1993 data were used for CO, NO2,
and PM10. 1991 data were used for SO2).
e Varies with different PAHs
Polychlorinated Biphenyl Contamination
In 1987, the City of Austin EUD discovered polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contamination at the Holly Street Power Plant. The PCBs appeared to have originated from oil leakage and overspray from rotating screens in the air screen system. The contamination extended to the ventilation system, sewer line sediments from Units 2, 3, and 4, and a storm water skimmer pit. No PCBs were found in unfiltered effluent water samples from the skimmer or in water samples taken from Town Lake (Table 3). In 1992, the drainage and air ventilation systems were cleaned to below EPA and TNRCC standards and the plant set up ongoing monthly analysis of plant discharges during storm events to detect PCBs. While PCBs were not found in the sediment and water samples from Town Lake, they were detected at trace levels in the effluent of the oil/water separator. The PCBs were detected at levels above the minimum analytical limit of 1.0 µg/L (micrograms per Liter) in eight of 30 quarterly sampling events (years 1992 through 1998). Currently, the City of Austin EUD is working to increase the capacity of the main oil/water separator to further minimize PCB levels.
|Operating Unit||Sample Type||Maximum Detected Value||Description of Sample Location||Source|
|1|| || || ||City of Austin |
City of Austin
|2|| Wipe Sample |
| 6.6 µg/cm 2 |
| ||Maxim |
|3|| || || ||Maxim |
| || || || ||Weston |
|Sewer Lines|| || || ||City of Austin|
|Town Lake|| || || ||Radian |
MDL = Minimum detection limit.
µg/cm2 = micrograms per square centimeter.
Reports of quarterly groundwater monitoring data (1992-1993) collected from 11 on-site monitor wells were provided by the City of Austin [1, 2]. See Figure 2 for well locations. During all sampling events available in these reports, BTEX compounds (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene) were reported below minimum detection limits (MDLs). The MDL for benzene, toluene, and ethylbenzene was 1.0 µg/L; the MDL for xylene was 3 µg/L. These MDLs are significantly below the drinking water standards for these contaminants.
Total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) also are generally reported below MDLs; however, the detection limits varied from 200 µg/L up to 800 µg/L. TPHs were detected at levels ranging from 300 µg/L to 600 µg/L in instances when the MDL was set at 200 µg/L. The highest reported TPH concentrations were 2,200 µg/L (MW-6; September 23, 1993) and 4,100 µg/L (MW-North; June 17, 1993).
Electric and Magnetic Fields
The City of Austin EUD has taken magnetic field readings throughout the neighborhood surrounding the Holly Street Power Plant. Readings were taken with milligauss meters. Figure 1 presents the readings taken by the city. Readings ranged from 0.2 to 32.0 milligauss. The highest readings were measured adjacent to power lines along Holly (15.8 to 32.0 milligauss), Garden (0.8 to 29.1 milligauss), Chicon (12.0 to 27.5 milligauss), and Perdernales (6.2 to 13.9) streets. Non-power line affected readings taken around the perimeter of the plant were generally low and ranged from 0.3 to 2.3 milligauss.
At the request of TDH, the City of Austin EUD calculated peak magnetic field strengths along power line corridors for various locations throughout Austin, Travis County. Table 4 lists the calculated maximum magnetic field strengths produced along various power line corridors.
|Circuit No.||Location|| Distance From Pole/Tower |
| 0 feet || 50 feet || 100 feet |
|Magnetic-Field Strength (Milligauss)|
|Maximum Calculated Magnetic Field Strengths for Holly Street Neighborhood|
|Pedernales Street |
River Crossing; S. Lakeshore
Between Holly and Garden Streets
Inside Holly Street Power Plant
|Maximum Calculated Magnetic Field Strengths for other Areas in Travis County|
|N. Mopac; Research Blvd. |
N. Lamar; N. Park Estates
S. Austin; N of Ben White Blvd.
Gracy Woods; Braker Ln.
Braker Ln. to N, Mopac
E. & S. of Motorola (Ed Bluestein)
E. Travis Co. to Bastrop Co.
Indian Hills; Creek Bend
University Hills; Springdale
Braker Ln. at Mopac
S.E. Travis Co.
First Street; Lake Austin Blvd.
Westlake Hills; Mt. Bonnell Shores
Allendale; Koenig Lane
Govalle; Del Valle; Hwy 183 @ Berg
Bluff Springs Estates; Beacon Ridge
Slaughter Ln; Brodie Ln; Oak Hill
Jollyville Rd.; Woodcrest
Hwy 183 S; Near Bergstrom
Hwy 183 S. Near Bergstrom
Oak Hill Motorola
| 30 |
| 16 |
| 7 |
Field strengths were calculated at a position one meter above the ground at zero, 50, and 100 feet from the pole. At zero feet (a position directly beneath the wires), calculated maximum magnetic field strengths range from 1 to 81 milligauss. The field strengths listed in this table are estimates based on system peak levels for the year 1990. Since magnetic field strengths are dependent upon many factors, actual field strengths may be different than those listed.
On June 15, 1993, Radian Corporation provided the City of Austin EUD with a "Screening Study of Noise Impacts from the Holly Street Power Plant." The purpose of the study was (1) to evaluate noise levels experienced by residents living closest to the plant, (2) to compare the levels experienced by these residents to background neighborhood noise levels, (3) to compare the background levels and the levels experienced by the residents living closest to the plant with noise experienced in a suburban Austin neighborhood, and (4) to correlate noise from the plant with changes in plant operation.
Radian determined average day/night noise (Ldn) values for three sites (A, B, & C) positioned near the plant at nearby residential street corners. Neighborhood background measurements were taken at a fourth site (D). Noise measurements (taken in October 1991) from a previous study were used for the suburban comparison (site E). Locations for the various sites are presented in Table 5.
Radian compared noise levels to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Noise Assessment Guidelines for determination of acceptability in residential areas. According to HUD, an Ldn of 75 or greater is "unacceptable" for residential areas and an Ldn between 65 and 75 is "normally unacceptable."
Since the measurements presented in Table 5 were taken while only one unit (Unit 4) was operating, additional measurements were taken while a second unit (Unit 3) was brought on line. Table 6 compares Ldn impacts for Unit 4 only, Unit 4 and Unit 3 startup, and Units 3 & 4 together (site locations as described in Table 5). Measurements were not taken during the simultaneous operation of all four units.
Between 1994 and mid-1996, the City of Austin EUD invested approximately $2 million on a variety of sound abatement measures at the Holly Street Power Plant to reduce sound levels generated by plant equipment. Sound abatement measures included enclosure of the forced draft fans on top of each of the units, enclosure and muffling of approximately 40 other sources, and the construction of a 100-foot by 62-foot sound absorbing wall on the west side of unit 4. Measurements taken before and after the abatement program indicate that in the1-block area immediately surrounding the facility, the abatement measures reduced sound levels by 12 to 14 dBA (plant operating at 220 MW). In areas two to three blocks from the facility, sound levels have been reduced by 5 to 10 dBA. Reductions of 10 dBA are generally perceived by the human ear as a reduction in loudness of one-half. After improvements, the number of acres of land subjected to normally unacceptable noise levels (65 Ldn) was reduced from 193 acres to 54 acres (plant operating at 400 MW). The number of homes and businesses subjected to normally unacceptable noise levels was reduced from approximately 700 to 107 (plant operating at 400 MW). Thus, there continues to be a small area immediately surrounding the facility where, when the plant is operating at a 400+MW output, noise from the facility could reach levels that are considered normally unacceptable.
|Site||Location|| Noise Level |
Qualitative Interpretation of
|A||In parking lot of athletic field west-southwest of the plant.||72.1||"normally unacceptable"|
|B||On the northeast corner of Mildred and Holly Streets northwest of plant boundary.|| |
|C||Northeast of the plant just south of a home on the northwest side of Metz Park.||66.8||"normally unacceptable"|
|D||Three-quarters of a mile northwest of the plant on the northeast corner of Navasota and Canterbury Streets.||55.2||"acceptable"|
|E||In Shady Hollow neighborhood in southwest Austin 50 feet from Brodie Lane.|| |
*Adapted from Screening Study of Noise Impacts from the Holly Street Power Plant Report, June 15, 1993, Radian Corporation .
|Site||Condition||Noise Level (Ldn)|| Qualitative Interpretation of HUD Guidelines for |
Residential Noise (Ldn)
|A||Unit 4 Only||72.1||Normally Unacceptable|
|Unit 4 with Unit 3 in Start-up||77.0||Unacceptable|
|Units 3 & 4 in Full Operation||77.0||Unacceptable|
|B||Unit 4 Only||75.9||Unacceptable|
|Unit 4 with Unit 3 in Start-up||79.1||Unacceptable|
|Units 3 & 4 in Full Operation||78.6||Unacceptable|
|C||Unit 4 Only||66.8||Normally Unacceptable|
|Unit 4 with Unit 3 in Start-up||76.5||Unacceptable|
|Units 3 & 4 in Full Operation||78.5||Unacceptable|
The EUD also funded a program to soundproof and weatherize homes surrounding Holly. The City of Austin soundproofed approximately 200 homes. This includes two-thirds of the 107 homes still exposed to sound levels above 65 Ldn. Areas with unacceptable sound levels (75 Ldn or greater) are now confined to the plants' boundaries.
After abatement, there were noticeable reductions (from 6 to 11 dBA) in sound levels during start-up. With Unit 4 active (55 MW) and Unit 3 inactive, sound levels were reduced from 68.9 dBA to 57.7 dBA. With Unit 4 active (55 MW) and activation of the Unit 3 forced draft fan, sound levels were reduced from 69.0 dBA pre-abatement to 62.6 dBA post-abatement. With both units operating (55 MW), sound levels went from 68.5 dBA pre-abatement to 60.4 dBA post-abatement.
Prior to the abatement, sound levels inside the portable classrooms were slightly above EPA's 45 dBA indoor guideline. After abatement, with the plant operating at a 94 MW power output, there was a 5.8 to 8.6 dBA reduction in noise levels inside the portable classrooms to levels below EPA's guideline.
In response to recommendations made in previous drafts of this document, the EUD took measurements inside the portable classroom 4 at Metz Elementary school with Holly operating at a power output of approximately 490 MW (Unit 1, 73 MW; Unit 2, 90 MW; Unit 3, 193 MW; and Unit 4, 140 MW). With the room air conditioning unit turned off, the measurements taken inside the classroom averaged 40.7 dB, below EPA's indoor guideline.
The Holly Street Power Plant stores fuel in aboveground storage tanks. As outlined in the background section of this report, since 1974 there have been several documented accidental releases of fuel oil. In 1993, the release of 200 gallons of #5 fuel oil resulted in a fire that burned for approximately 30 minutes.
In preparing this public health assessment, TDH relied on information provided by other agencies, contractors, and individuals. In most instances, quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) data were not available; we assumed that adequate QA/QC measures were followed with regard to chain-of-custody, laboratory procedures, and data reporting. The analysis and conclusions reached in this public health assessment are valid only if the referenced information is complete and valid.
To determine whether nearby residents are exposed to environmental contaminants originating from the site, we evaluated the environmental and human components that lead to human exposure. This evaluation or pathway analysis consists of looking at the five elements of an exposure pathway: a source of exposure, transport through an environmental medium, a point of exposure, a route of human exposure, and an exposed population.
Exposure pathways are categorized as completed, potential, or eliminated. For a person to be exposed to a contaminant, the exposure pathway must be completed. An exposure pathway is considered completed when all five of the pathway elements are present and exposure has occurred, is occurring, or will occur in the future. A pathway is considered to be a potential pathway when at least one of the five elements is missing and may or may not be present in the future. Table 7 identifies the exposure pathway(s) that we have identified for this site. Inclusion of a pathway in the table does not imply that the pathway presents a risk to public health. An evaluation of the pathways for public health significance will be presented in the following section. An exposure pathway is eliminated when one or more of the elements is missing and will never be present to complete the pathway. PCB exposure and groundwater contamination were eliminated as possible exposure pathways.
| Pathway |
|EXPOSURE PATHWAY ELEMENTS||Time|
|Point of |
|Route of Exposure||Exposed |
|Air||Holly Street Power Plant||Air||Neighborhood |
Holly Street Power Plant
We were not able to classify this pathway as completed or eliminated because ambient air monitoring data were not available. However, air modeling data suggest that in the past, under some meteorological conditions, ground level concentrations of SO2 could have exceeded the 1-hour and the 24-hour standards for this contaminant.
The following sections discuss the possible adverse health effects that have been associated with exposure to specific contaminants associated with the potential exposure pathway that was identified in the previous section. In addition, to address community concerns, we have included a discussion of electric and magnetic fields and noise. This section also evaluates state and local databases, and addresses community health concerns.
Air: Sulfur Dioxide (SO2)
Sulfur dioxide is a highly irritating, colorless gas with a pungent taste and odor that results from activities associated with the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil) such as at power plants or from copper smelting. In nature it can be released to the air from volcanic eruptions.
Sulfur dioxide is extremely irritating to the eyes and upper respiratory tract. Exposure to concentrations above 6.0 ppm (15,600 µg/m3) produces instantaneous mucous membrane irritation. Symptoms such as eye irritation, tearing, rhinorrhea, cough, shortness of breath, chest tightness or discomfort, and choking sensation are common.
In humans, numerous controlled exposure studies have shown that acute exposure to SO2 can result in lung function changes indicative of bronchoconstriction. In healthy, non-asthmatic individuals, exposure to SO2 at concentrations up to 1.0 ppm (2,600 µg/m3) for up to 40 minutes was associated with a slight increase in subjective mild upper-respiratory symptoms such as sore throat . Decreased tidal volume and increased respiratory flow rate were observed in healthy people at exposures of 1 to 8 ppm (2,600 to 20,800 µg/m3) SO2 for 10 minutes and specific airway resistance was increased in healthy individuals at exposures of 0.6 to 0.8 ppm (1,500 to 2,080 µg/m3) SO2 for five minutes .
Controlled laboratory studies in humans have established that people with asthma are particularly sensitive to the respiratory effects of SO2. Increases in airway resistance were observed in asthmatics exposed to 1, 3, and 5 ppm (260, 780, and 1,300 µg/m3) SO2 for 10 minutes by mouthpiece while at rest . Exercise has been found to exacerbate the effects of SO2 on asthmatics; significant increases in airway resistance were observed in moderately exercising asthmatics exposed to 0.4 to 1.0 ppm (1,040 to 2,600 µg/m3) SO2 for 3 to 10 minutes [4, 8, 9, 10, 11]. Significant changes in airway resistance were observed in young adult mild asthmatics exposed through a mouthpiece to SO2 concentrations as low as 0.25 ppm (650 µg/m3) while exercising . In this study, the two most sensitive individuals exhibited some degree of bronchoconstriction (slight increase in specific airway resistance) following inhalation of 0.1 ppm (260 µg/m3) SO2 through a mouthpiece for 10 minutes. Others have observed increases in specific airway resistance in exercising asthmatics exposed to 0.25 ppm (650 µg/m3)SO2 for 5 minutes . During some controlled acute studies, asthmatics exposed to SO2 concentrations as low as 0.5 ppm (1,300 µg/m3) exhibited pulmonary responses severe enough to warrant termination of the experiment and/or medical attention [13, 14]. Severe asthmatics may be more responsive to the effects of sulfur dioxide than the mild asthmatics examined in the controlled human experiments because of their lower lung reserve capacity.
Other factors such as exposure to cold dry air can exacerbate the respiratory effects of sulfur dioxide. Recent evidence suggests a potential interaction with other pollutants commonly found in urban environments; preexposure to a low concentration of ozone (0.12 ppm) for 45 minutes potentiates the bronchoconstrictive effects of an otherwise subthreshold dose of SO2 in adolescent asthmatics .
Acute studies in animals have supported the human data on the pulmonary effects of sulfur dioxide. Exposure to high concentrations of sulfur dioxide has been shown to result in increased airway resistance and decrease compliance in guinea pigs (2.6 ppm [6,760 µg/m3]), degenerative changes in the olfactory epithelium in mice (20 ppm [52,000 µg/m3]), cellular necrosis in the trachea and bronchus of rats (800 ppm [2,080,000 µg/m3]), and bronchitic lesions in hamsters (650 ppm [1,690,000 µg/m3]).
In summary, the available information indicate that 0.25 ppm (650 µg/m3) may be close to the threshold for significant changes in lung function in most healthy asthmatics; however, there is evidence that some sensitive individuals may develop slight bronchoconstriction after inhaling 0.1 ppm (260 µg/m3).
The predicted 1-hour (1,787 µg/m3) and 24-hour (410 µg/m3) concentrations of SO2 for the Holly Street Power Plant using 0.227% sulfur content fuel oil, which are of sufficient magnitude to potentially endanger sensitive individuals, were predicted to occur southeast of the site over Town Lake. In the surrounding community, the maximum predicted 1-hour and 24-hour concentrations were predicted to be approximately 1,212 µg/m3 and 337 µg/m3, respectively. Although the average SO2 concentrations to which local area residents would be exposed would be much lower, mixed fuel combustion using 0.227% or 0.3 % sulfur content fuel oil could pose a potential public health hazard.
Assuming a reduction in SO2 emissions proportional to the reduction in the SO2 content of the fuel, we estimate that using fuel containing 0.05% sulfur by weight would result in predicted 1-hour and 24-hour SO2 concentrations in the community of approximately 200 µg/m3 and 56 µg/m3, respectively. These levels are below their respective regulatory limits and below the levels normally associated with adverse health effects in humans. Based on available information, the levels of sulfur dioxide produced by the Holly Street Power Plant currently poses no apparent public health hazard
Air: Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2)
Nitrogen dioxide is one of many poisonous, highly reactive gases called nitrogen oxides. These gases are produced when fuel is burned at high temperatures. The principal source of these gases include motor vehicle exhaust and stationary sources such as electric utility and industrial boilers. Nitrogen dioxide is a suffocating, brownish gas that reacts in the atmosphere to form nitric acid. It also is a major participant in the photochemical generation of ground-level ozone, the primary constituent of smog.
Nitrogen dioxide can irritate the lungs and lower resistence to respiratory infections such as influenza. The principle site of acute toxicity is the lower respiratory tract with the severity of symptoms depending more on the concentration of nitrogen oxides inhaled than on the duration of exposure. The effects of short-term exposure are not clear; however, animal studies suggest that exposure to NO2 (at concentrations usually greater than 5ppm) could increase susceptibility to infection. Some epidemiologic studies have suggested that NO2 may increase the susceptibility of children and adults to respiratory illnesses.
Mild exposure may result in transient nonspecific symptoms such as dyspnea, cough, headache, fatigue, nausea, vertigo, and somnolence which disappear in hours to days but could persist up to two weeks without clinically detectable pulmonary findings. Moderate exposure may result in a multi phasic course of disease that could be fatal if left untreated. Symptoms could include dyspnea, cough, wheeze, chest pain, palpitations, weakness, diaphoresis, nausea, vomiting, and headache. Extreme exposure may result in sudden death from laryngospasm, bronchospasm, or asphyxiation.
Several studies investigating the effects of gas cooking on the lung function of children found a weak association between indoor levels of nitrogen dioxide and respiratory illness. A loss in forced vital capacity was observed in adult male volunteers exposed to 1.0 ppm (1,887 µg/m3) NO2 for two hours with intermittent exercise. Asthmatics also may be more sensitive to the effects of NO2 exposure. Exposure to 0.30 ppm (530 µg/m3) during 60 minutes of intermittent exercise caused decreased forced vital capacity in asthmatic subjects and short-term exposure to 500 µg/m3 NO2 was found to have effects on airway resistence and bronchial responsiveness in subjects with mild asthma .
The highest concentrations of NO2 predicted to be emitted by the Holly Street Power Plant are significantly lower than the levels that have been associated with adverse human health effects. Based on available information, the levels of nitrogen dioxide produced by the Holly Street Power Plant poses no apparent public health hazard.
Air: Particulate Air Pollution
Exposure to air pollution has been implicated as a causative factor for increased morbidity and mortality. Elevated levels of air pollution have been associated with declines in pulmonary function [17, 18, 19], increased respiratory symptoms [20, 21, 22], asthma attacks , increased respiratory hospital admissions [24,25, 26], and mortality [27, 28, 29, 30, 31].
Although there are many components of air pollution, inhalable particulate matter (particulate matter smaller than 10 microns or PM10) has been implicated as a factor causally related to adverse health effects. However, since monitoring of PM10 was not adopted as the reference method in the United States until 1987, few existing studies have actually measured PM10. In most instances, alternative measures of air pollution have been used including total suspended particulates (TSP), fine particulates (< 2.5 microns), British smoke (BS), sulfates, coefficient of haze (COH), and KM (a measure of light transmittance sensitive to smaller particles). These different units of measure make comparisons with current monitored particulate levels difficult.
One of the earliest reports of an association between particulate matter and mortality was based on a study of the 1958-1959 "London Fog" episode . A statistically significant relationship was reported between daily levels (24-hour average) of British Smoke and daily mortality. The association was reported primarily among those with preexisting cardiovascular or respiratory illness. In 1990, the relation between air pollution and mortality in London was examined for the winters from 1958 through 1972 . Mean levels of particulate matter (BS method) ranged from a low of 59 µg/m3 to a high of 536 µg/m3. The mean level of BS for the first four winters was 336 µg/m3, while the mean level for the last four winters was 68 µg/m3 (comparable to levels commonly found in the United States). The authors reported a highly significant relation between daily mortality and levels of particulate matter after controlling for other factors. The relationship was non-linear with no apparent threshold and the exposure-response curve was steeper at lower air pollution levels.
In 1992, Schwartz and Dockery examined the association between daily measurements of TSP and daily mortality in Stubenville, Ohio for the eleven-year period from 1974 to 1984. They reported a mean TSP concentration of 111 µg/m3 for the eleven year period. After controlling for effects of weather and seasonality they found a statistically significant relationship between daily levels of TSP and daily mortality (Relative Risk = 1.04, 95% CI = 1.02-1.06). An increase in particulates of 100 µg/m3 was associated with a 4% increase in mortality on the succeeding day. The relationship appeared to continue at levels well below the current National Ambient Air Quality Standard for TSP. In a similar study using eight years of data from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, TSP (mean concentration = 77 µg/m3) was significantly associated with all-cause mortality . The association was strongest for people over age 65. Mortality from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia, and cardiovascular disease were each separately associated with TSP.
Several studies that used actual PM10 measurements have recently been published. Using data from Birmingham, Alabama for August 1985 through 1988 and controlling for various factors, a significant association was found between inhalable particles and daily mortality . A relative risk of 1.11 (95% CI 1.02-1.20) was estimated for a 100 µg/m3 increase in inhalable particles. There was no evidence of a threshold down to concentrations as low as 20 µg/m3. A recent prospective cohort study, using data from a 14-to-16-year mortality follow-up of 8,111 adults in six U.S. cities, estimated the effects of air pollution on mortality . A statistically significant association between air pollution and death from lung cancer and cardiopulmonary disease was observed after adjusting for smoking and other risk factors. Mortality was associated with fine particles (rate ratio, 1.26; CI 1.08-1.47), inhalable particles (rate ratio, 1.27; CI 1.08-1.48), and sulfate particles (rate ratio, 1.26; CI 1.08-1.47). The mean air pollution levels for these variables in the least- and most-polluted cities during the study period were: 11.0 and 29.8 µg/m3 for fine particles; 18.2 and 46.5 µg/m3 for inhalable particles; and 4.8 and 12.8 µg/m3 for sulfate particles.
Using general estimates of the relationships between alternative measurements of particulate matter, Ostro converted the results from several studies into a common metric (PM10). He found a striking consistency in the results. The estimated mean effect based on several studies [28, 29, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37] was a 1.0% increase in mortality for each 10 µg/m3 increase in PM10.
Daily fluctuations in respirable particulates consistently have been associated with increased morbidity and mortality. The consistency of association between particulate air pollution mortality has been observed across a broad range of pollution levels. Some investigators observed the associations at extremely high concentrations of pollution and others have reported associations at concentrations commonly experienced in metropolitan areas throughout the United States. Data also suggest a dose-response relationship across the entire range of particle concentrations studied with no evidence of a threshold.
The biological mechanism for the particulate/mortality association is not known. Potential biological mechanisms are difficult to evaluate because particulate matter consists of a heterogenous mix of chemicals. Some evidence suggests that small particles may penetrate deeply into the lung resulting in bronchoconstriction and possible alteration in respiratory mechanics, causing pulmonary and cardiorespiratory disease. In addition, some constituents of particulate matter may irritate the upper airway and deep lung, reduce bronchial clearance, and modify the lung's resistance to infection. In this manner, exposure to particulates may exacerbate the conditions of individuals already compromised by respiratory infections.
The TNRCC modeling results suggest that particulate matter emissions from the Holly Street Power Plant when both natural gas and fuel oil are burned should be low. Predicted maximum 24-hour and annual average concentrations were 17.0 µg/m3 and 0.88 µg/m3, respectively. The maximum total ambient air 24-hour and annual average concentrations (background plus contribution from Holly) were estimated to be 70 µg/m3 and 19.88 µg/m3, respectively. These maximum predicted levels are significantly below the current ambient air quality standards and below levels normally associated with measurable health outcomes. Additionally, although there are uncertainties associated with these maximum predicted values, the actual concentrations to which people would regularly be exposed are likely much lower. Based on available information, we conclude that, although the Holly Street Power Plant may contribute to PM10 in the surrounding community, total PM10 levels, including maximum predicted emissions from Holly Street Power Plant, pose no apparent public health hazard.
Electric and Magnetic Fields
Electric and magnetic fields are associated with power lines, building wiring, lighting, and all electric appliances. An electric field represents the electric force that an object is capable of exerting on other charged particles; magnetic fields are produced when charges are in motion. The combination of electric and magnetic effects is known as an electromagnetic field (EMF). The 60 Hertz (Hz) fields associated with the 60 cycle alternating currents (AC) used in power distribution systems in the U.S. are often described as extremely low frequency fields (ELF). Initially, when power companies began utilizing extra high voltage (EHV) transmission lines, a variety of issues were raised: 1) aesthetics, 2) right-of-way, 3) TV/radio interference, and 4) noise. More recently, as a result of numerous laboratory and epidemiologic studies, public concern has focused on potential adverse health effects from EMF exposures.
Although some laboratory studies have reported potentially significant biological effects, the results must be evaluated cautiously. In many experimental studies using isolated test systems, the overwhelming majority of the effects were associated with exposure to field strengths many times higher than those seen in ambient residential settings. Calcium release from chick brain tissue [38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43], inhibition of nocturnal melatonin synthesis by the pineal gland [44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51], and the blocking of melatonin's oncostatic action on the proliferation of cultured human breast cancer cells were the only effects observed under conditions analogous to ambient residential settings. Additionally, extrapolation from isolated test systems or animals to human exposure may be fraught with methodological difficulties since coupling of ELF fields to the whole body is complicated by factors such as body orientation, field polarization, grounding conditions, contact with other conductors, and body geometry. For instance, the internal fields and current densities in a rat and a human exposed to the same external field can differ significantly.
In general, the laboratory data are quite diverse and rather confusing. Few observations provide links directly to health endpoints. Biologic plausibility is difficult to establish because there is no significant transfer of energy from electric and magnetic fields at extremely low frequencies (60 Hz and less) to biologic systems. One hypothesis suggests that pineal function and melatonin synthesis may have hormonal consequences directly relevant to cancer. This hypothesis may be plausible since suppression of melatonin production has been linked experimentally with increased susceptibility to cancer in rodents and with the blocking of melatonin's oncostatic action on human breast cancer cell proliferation in tissue culture .
Human Epidemiologic Studies
The results from human epidemiologic studies often are expressed in terms of single relative risk (RR) or odds ratio (OR) figure with a 95% confidence interval (95% CI). A relative risk greater than 1.0 represents a positive relationship between the exposure and the disease outcome, and a relative risk figure that is less than 1.0 represents a negative relationship between the exposure and the disease outcome. The 95% CI indicates the range in which we would expect the RR or OR to fall 95% of the time. A study result is considered statistically significant only if the confidence interval does not include the value 1.0. If both values of the confidence interval are greater than 1.0 the results is interpreted as a statistically significant positive relationship. For example, if the RR for a particular exposure and disease outcome is 2.3 and the 95% CI is (1.45-3.32), we interpret this to mean that the best estimate of the risk for the disease is 2.3 times higher than expected, and that we are 95% confident that the true RR is no less than 1.45 and no greater than 3.32.
Much of the current EMF controversy dates back to 1979, when Nancy Wertheimer and Ed Leeper published a study which examined the electrical wiring configurations near the former homes of 344 Denver children who had died of cancer between 1950 and 1973. They reported a higher proportion of presumably "high current wiring configurations" near the homes of cases when compared to the homes of controls. Specific cancer sites which seemed to show higher relative risks included central nervous system (CNS) and/or brain cancer, leukemia, and lymphoma. In a second study published in 1982, the same authors reported a slightly increased total cancer mortality among adults who resided at several locations in Colorado; this increase also appeared to be associated with high current wiring configurations. These two studies were the first to suggest possible human cancer risks associated with residential exposure to power-frequency EMFs.
Subsequently, over 100 epidemiologic studies have been published which investigate the potential adverse health effects of residential and occupational EMF exposures. A number of these epidemiologic studies have reported positive associations of varying degrees between childhood or adult cancers such as leukemia and/or CNS/brain cancer and surrogate measures of residential or occupational exposure to power-frequency electric and magnetic fields [54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59]. However, a number of other studies, utilizing similar methodologies, have reported no increased rates for these same cancers [60, 61, 62, 63, 64]. There is considerable inconsistency and disagreement, even among those studies that have reported "positive" results. Furthermore, both the positive and negative studies have a number of methodological flaws that make the results difficult to interpret. For example, in the initial Wertheimer and Leeper study, EMF exposures were presumed rather than measured, multivariate analysis was not performed, and in many cases, birth and death addresses were summed, resulting in double counting . The authors also knew the status of the household (case or control) when they evaluated and ranked the power line configurations near the home. Few, if any, studies have examined other potential confounding factors such as heredity, parental occupation, hobbies, dietary factors, smoking habits, and other environmental exposures.
Like the Wertheimer study, many of the subsequent studies failed to make actual environmental measurements to confirm that homes situated near "high current configurations" actually had higher electric or magnetic field exposure than those situated near "low current configuration." The few that did perform actual environmental measurements often reported unexpected results. Savitz analyzed 356 cases of childhood cancer in the Denver area from 1976 to 1983. When the wiring configuration for power distribution lines was used as a surrogate measure of exposure, there was a weak but significant association with CNS/brain cancer (odds ratio, 2.04; 95% confidence interval, 1.11-3.76). However, when the data were analyzed with respect to measured magnetic fields, the apparent correlation with CNS/brain cancer disappeared (odds ratio, 1.04; 95% confidence interval, 0.22-4.82). The odds ratios for leukemia were slightly increased, but the results were not statistically significant for either measured magnetic fields or for wiring configurations. While the Savitz study was a well-executed case-control study, interpreting the results is complicated by a number of confounding variables. When these data were reanalyzed for other common factors, there was a weak, but statistically significant, association between leukemia and traffic density near the residences of cases . Since gasoline contains benzene (which is known to cause leukemia in humans), it is at least equally plausible to hypothesize that the slight excess in leukemia may have resulted from long-term exposure to motor vehicle emissions. Socioeconomic status may also be an important potential confounding variable. Childhood cancer rates, in particular leukemia rates, may be associated with socioeconomic status. Thus, modestly elevated odds ratios could be explained by this source of study bias.
In 1991, London conducted a case-control study based on 232 cases of childhood leukemia diagnosed from 1980 to 1987 in Los Angeles County. Controls and cases were matched for geographic area, gender, age, and race. Wire code configuration assessments were made according to the system of Wertheimer and Leeper and actual magnetic fields were measured for 24 hours or longer in the child's sleeping area. The authors found no association between measured field exposure and leukemia risk with a reported odds ratio of 1.50 (95% CI 0.66-3.29) for the highest exposure group (> 2.68 milligauss). However, when wiring configuration was used as a surrogate measure of exposure, they reported an odds ratio of 2.15 (95% CI 1.08-4.26).
Recently, Feychting and Ahlbom , used a nested case-control study to test the hypothesis that exposure to magnetic fields from high voltage power lines (transmission lines) increased cancer incidence in children. The study base consisted of everyone under age 16 who lived on a property at least partially located within 300 meters of any of the 220 and 400 KV power lines in Sweden during the period from 1960 to 1985. Exposure was assessed by spot measurements and by computer estimates of the historic magnetic fields generated by the power lines, taking distance, line configuration, and load into account. When historical calculations were used as a surrogate measure of exposure, there was a weak but significant association with leukemia for 2 milligauss or more (relative risk, 2.7; 95% confidence interval 1.0-6.3). For 3 milligauss or higher, the relative risk was estimated at 3.8 (95% confidence interval 1.4-9.3). When adjustments were made for demographic variables, socioeconomic status, and levels of nitrogen dioxide, the results were virtually unchanged. These associations were based on seven observed cases of leukemia. For all cancers combined and for CNS system tumors or lymphoma, there was no relation with historical estimates of magnetic fields. When the data were analyzed with respect to measured magnetic fields (i.e., spot measurements), there was no excess risk for total cancer or for leukemia. For CNS tumors, the relative risk was estimated at 2.5 (95% confidence interval 0.9-6.6) for the intermediate exposure level, but at 1.5 (95% confidence interval 0.4-4.9) for the highest level.
It is difficult to come to firm conclusions regarding the potential health risks associated with EMF exposure from available studies. The numerous epidemiologic studies of EMF exposure and cancer have shown inconsistent and even contradictory results. Most non-occupational studies of EMF exposure and cancer have considered the wiring configuration at the person's place of residence at the time of death as a surrogate measure of EMF exposure, but most studies have not considered the duration of residence. Of all the conditions studied, leukemia and EMF exposure remains the most suggestive of a possible association. Although there is a persistent unexplained association between surrogate measures of exposure and leukemia risk, the risk does not correlate with actual measured electric and magnetic fields. Associations with CNS/brain cancer also remain suggestive but inconclusive.
In 1995, TDH, as part of the State of Texas Environmental Priorities Project (STEPP) review of the EMF issue, plotted power consumption trends (per capita U.S. electric power consumption) together with cancer mortality trends. The age-adjusted leukemia (Figure 3) and CNS/brain cancer (Figure 4) mortality rates among children have shown nearly a 3-fold decrease since approximately 1955, while the U.S. per-capita power consumption has continued a nearly exponential growth rate which began around the turn of the century (producing nearly a 4-fold increase in power consumption over the same period ). If EMF exposure were contributing significantly to either of these diseases, we might expect a strong correlation between those mortality rates and power consumption trends in the U.S. While this type of analysis cannot disprove an association between EMF exposure and cancer, it would tend to indicate that if such an association does exist, the effect must be relatively minor. This inconsistency, between the hypothesis and the observations, would suggest that the epidemiologic evidence should be considerably more substantial before a causal association can reasonably be assumed.
For most studies examining adverse health conditions and EMF exposure, the reported relative risks are generally in the range of 1.2 to 3.8. In most cases, the higher relative risks are produced by a very few cases occurring when one or less than one case would be expected. Thus, the lower 95% confidence limits are usually only slightly greater than 1.0. EMF studies also have rarely shown a significant dose-response effect. For most contaminants a dose-response relationship often is considered a prerequisite for inferring a cause and effect relationship.
The energy produced by 60 Hz electric and/or magnetic fields from power lines generally is considered far too low to cause any breakage of molecular bonds or other disruption of DNA molecules. Presently, evidence for other plausible biologic mechanisms to explain how EMF exposure might result in the development of cancer is weak and needs further study. The most plausible hypothesis involves the suppression of melatonin production. The results of experimental animal studies have led some scientists to conclude that EMFs do not act as a cancer initiator. Although some argue that EMF may be a cancer promoter, the experimental data is lacking to confirm this hypothesis.
Although available information suggests that further studies of EMF exposure are warranted, the evidence for adverse health effects is currently inconclusive. Because of numerous inconsistencies, methodological deficiencies, and contradictory findings, current evidence is insufficient for establishing a cause-and-effect relationship between EMF exposure and adverse health effects from which to quantify the risk (if any) which may result from exposure to EMF.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) recent report to Congress, "Health Effects from Exposure to Power-Line Frequency Electric and Magnetic Fields , concluded:
"The scientific evidence suggesting that [power-frequency electromagnetic field] exposures pose any health risk is weak. The strongest evidence for health effects comes from associations observed in human populations with two forms of cancer: childhood leukemia and chronic lymphocytic leukemia in occupationally exposed adults. While the support from individual studies is weak, the epidemiological studies demonstrate, for some methods of measuring exposure, a fairly consistent pattern of a small, increased risk with increasing exposure that is somewhat weaker for chronic lymphocytic leukemia than for childhood leukemia. In contrast, the mechanistic studies and animal toxicology literature fail to demonstrate any consistent pattern across studies although sporadic findings of biological effects (including increased cancers in animals) have been reported. No indication of increased leukemias in experimental animals has been observed.
Epidemiological studies have serious limitations in their ability to demonstrate a cause and effect relationship whereas laboratory studies, by design, can clearly show that cause and effect are possible. Virtually all of the laboratory evidence in animals and humans and most of the mechanistic work done in cells fail to support a causal relationship between exposure to [power-frequency electromagnetic fields] at environmental levels and changes in biological function or disease status. The lack of consistent, positive findings in animal or mechanistic studies weakens the belief that this [epidemiological] association is actually due to [power-frequency electromagnetic fields], but it cannot completely discount the epidemiological findings...
The National Toxicology Program routinely examines environmental exposures to determine the degree to which they constitute a human cancer risk and produces the "Report on Carcinogens" listing agents that are "known human carcinogens" or "reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogens." It is our opinion that based on evidence to date, [power-frequency electromagnetic field] exposure would not be listed in the "Report on Carcinogens" as an agent "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen." This is based on the limited epidemiological evidence and the findings from the EMF-RAPID Program that did not indicate an effect of [power-frequency electromagnetic field] exposure in experimental animals or a mechanistic basis for carcinogenicity."
Regardless of the controversies surrounding the potential adverse health effects associated with exposure to electric and magnetic fields, the Holly Street Power Plant is not the source of the electric and magnetic fields observed in the community. Electric and magnetic fields are associated with power lines, building wiring, lighting, and all electric appliances; these sources would not be eliminated with the cessation of operations at Holly Street Power Plant. The EMF measurements taken in the neighborhood near the facility were associated primarily with the transmission and distribution lines in the neighborhood. Since the time that the measurements reported in this document were taken, the city has moved one of the major power lines from Holly Street Power Plant to the Town Lake shoreline. Although the data were not available, moving this power line should have reduced the EMF readings along the south side of Holly Street Power Plant.
NoiseExposure to noise
can result in both auditory and non-auditory adverse health outcomes with the types of outcomes dependent upon the frequency, intensity and duration of the exposure. The role of noise in causing sensorineural hearing loss has long been recognized, and research has progressed to the point where the relationship between the level of noise, the duration of exposure, and degree of expected damage can be determined. There is much less agreement on the relationship between noise and non-auditory adverse health outcomes.
Exposure to intense levels of noise (140 to 160 dB) can cause acute acoustic trauma (AAT) or permanent damage to the middle and inner ear. The most common symptoms of AAT are hearing loss and tinnitus . Exposure to noise can result in temporary or permanent hearing losses . Losses generally occur in the higher frequencies (4,000 to 6,000 Hz) and have been described as a 4,000 Hz shift. Temporary losses of hearing or "temporary threshold shifts" or "auditory fatigue" (at these higher frequencies) may be caused by loud industrial noises typically at sound pressure levels > 80 dB. Temporary threshold shifts occur within the first two hours of exposure. However, full recovery may take two to 48 hours after leaving the noisy environment. Permanent hearing loss or a permanent 4,000 Hz shift can occur from long-term (generally 10 years or more) exposure to industrial noise. With continued exposure, the loss extends to frequencies above and below 4,000 Hz. Since noise-induced hearing losses occur at frequencies outside normal conversational frequencies, the losses generally occur without the person knowing it.
Most of the information concerning the auditory effects of noise have come from studies conducted on adults. Conclusions pertaining to children are often based on extrapolations from adult data. Although the data are limited and often contradictory, it has been suggested that children may be more susceptible to the effects of noise .
Exposure to noise can produce a number of acute physiological responses in both animals and humans. The basis for these acute effects appears to be grounded in the stress response governed by sympathetic activation of the autonomic nervous system. The best-documented non-auditory physiological effects of noise have been demonstrated in several studies which have found an association between high noise levels and elevated blood pressure [73, 74, 75, 76]. Studies of human volunteers have supported such a relationship in both normotensive and hypertensive individuals . Wang reported an increased prevalence of hypertension in a group of retired textile workers exposed to noise above 100 dBA compared with age-matched controls from the same population exposed to low noise levels. A recent study of noise and hypertension in 1,101 female textile workers was the first to provide evidence for an association and a dose-response relationship between exposure to noise and hypertension . The workers were grouped according to exposure level (75-80 dBA, 86-90 dBA, 96 dBA, and 104 dBA) and the study controlled for independent risk factors such as salt intake, family history, and age. The study estimates that a 30 dBA increase in sound pressure level roughly doubles the risk of hypertension, independent of other risk factors. The authors reported that the prevalence of hypertension predicted using a logistic model fitted to the data at 70 dBA were comparable with the general population.
Exposure to noise has resulted in reduced fertility and enlargement of the ovaries in laboratory rats [78, 79]. However, data on the effects of prenatal noise exposure in humans are limited. Available studies lack information on individual exposure levels, have inadequate sample populations, and do not have appropriate control populations . One case-control study of 1,200 women found no relationship between occupational exposure to noise (greater than 80 dB) and the risk of premature birth or low birth weight babies .
Children may be more susceptible to certain non-auditory effects of noise because they have less precise speech, limited vocabulary, and less developed familiarity with language rules . Chronic exposure to high levels of noise during the periods in which children are acquiring speech, language, and listening skills may contribute to poor performance in reading and other academic areas . One study involving children in grades 3 and 4 reported that noise-exposed students (school located under the flight path of the Los Angeles International Airport) more often failed to solve or gave up on a puzzle-solving task. The performance on a distraction task was initially better but became worse as the duration of the exposure increased . A similar study in New York City reported that the percentage of children reading below grade level increased as noise increased . A study of freeway noise in 100 classrooms in 15 schools in California also found that reading scores decreased as noise levels increased . The authors noted that when the community was quiet, relatively more noise could be tolerated in the classroom without negatively affecting reading achievement. Although the specific mechanisms have not been clearly identified, the above studies suggest that noise may interfere with cognitive development and academic performance.
From analysis of reading achievement results, Lucas et al. derived a tentative criterion for noise inside classrooms equivalent to about 46 dBA, a level similar to the indoor level of avoidance of interference and annoyance established by the EPA of 45 dBA. A noise limit approximately equivalent to a day/night average sound (Ldn) of 60 dBA was recommended for the community around the school because of the interactive nature of school and community noise levels found in the study. This level is lower than the 65 dBA threshold that HUD has set for "normally unacceptable" residential noise.
The day/night average noise levels measured near the Holly Street Power Plant in the preliminary assessment by Radian exceed the levels normally considered acceptable by HUD. Although these levels are well below those reported to result in hearing loss or other physiologic changes, the levels could have been considered to be a nuisance by nearby residents. These levels also were well within the range of levels reported to interfere with cognitive development in children. Pre-abatement measurements made by Radian suggested that Metz Elementary School was within the 65 to 70 Ldn contours and the indoor sound levels in the portable buildings were slightly higher than EPA's 45 dBA indoor guideline. Outdoor levels were above the 60 Ldn recommended for communities around schools and above the 65 dBA threshold that HUD has set for "normally unacceptable" residential noise.
Between 1994 and mid-1996, the EUD took significant measures to abate the effects of the noise from the facility on the surrounding community. These measures resulted in reductions in noise levels equivalent to a reduction in loudness of one-half. Except for an area immediately adjacent to the facility, these measures resulted in reductions in sound levels to those normally deemed to be acceptable. The EUD also has provided soundproofing to approximately 200 homes in the Holly Street neighborhood. This includes approximately two-thirds of the 107 homes in an area with sound level measurements above 65 Ldn. The potential sound levels in the area immediately adjacent to the facility do not pose a public health hazard.
The post-abatement measurements taken inside the portable classrooms showed reductions in indoor sound levels well below EPA's 45 dBA indoor guideline; however, all measurements at Metz were made with the plant operating at a 94 MW power output. In Austin, children begin school during the month of August, one of the peak demand months for electricity. Higher power output levels at Holly Street Power Plant (such as those that may occur during peak demand months) could result in higher noise levels at Metz. Since we could not predict with any degree of certainty the magnitude of this response we asked the EUD to take measurements in the classroom during a peak demand month. On August 9, 1999, the EUD took measurements inside one of the portable classrooms at the school with the plant operating at a power output of approximately 496 MW. The measurements averaged 40.7 dB, well below EPA's indoor guideline. Based on these measurements we would not expect noise from Holly to pose a public health hazard to children in the school.
To address the community concern with air pollution and the possible carcinogenic effects of EMFs, we conducted an evaluation of cancer incidence for the zip code area in which the Holly Street Power Plant is located. We limited the evaluation to those types of cancers that are either known or suspected to have associations with the contaminants of concern--lung cancer, brain cancer, and leukemia.
To determine if there is an excess in these specific cancers in this area, we compared the number of cancer cases in the neighborhood for each selected type of cancer to the expected number of cancer cases for the area (based on the age, sex, and race-specific cancer incidence of a control population). Due to incomplete reporting in the State of Texas, the number of expected cases for African Americans and Whites is based on U.S. Surveillance, Epidemiology, End Results (SEER) Program cancer incidence rates for the period of 1986 through 1990. For Hispanics, the number of expected cases is based on cancer incidence rates for California during the period of 1988 through 1990. The ratio of observed to expected cancer cases is called a standardized incidence ratio (SIR). When the SIR for a selected type of cancer is equal to 1.00, then the number of observed cases is equal to the number of expected cases. Confidence intervals were also calculated for each SIR. The 95% confidence interval indicates the range within which we would expect the SIR to fall 95% of the time. The confidence interval is a statistical reflection of the precision of the risk estimate. If the confidence interval includes 1.00, no statistically significant excess of cancer is indicated.
It should be noted that limitations and uncertainties are associated with the incidence rates presented in this report. While the incidence of cancer was reported by zip code, reliable population data were available only by census tract. The Holly Street zip code includes parts of ten census tracts, but the boundaries do not match exactly. Therefore, calculated incidence rates are imprecise. In addition, the area encompassed by the Holly Street zip code includes people who live up to 1 1/2 miles from the site and are unlikely to be affected by most contaminants that could be associated with the site.
Table 8 summarizes the cancer incidence data for three selected cancer sites (lung, brain, and leukemia) based on available data for the 78702 zip code. This table lists the number of observed cancers, the number of expected cancers, the SIRs, and the 95% confidence intervals. Data are presented by sex. For the years 1989 to 1992, the lung cancer experience for males living in this zip code area is significantly greater than the expected rate. This excess lung cancer experience can be attributed primarily to a significant excess lung cancer for African American males (observed number = 39, expected number = 21.97, SIR = 1.78, CI = 1.26 - 2.43). The lung cancer experience for White and Hispanic males is not significantly different than the expected rate. However, the lung cancer experience for White females is significantly different than would be expected (observed number = 8, expected number = 3.25, SIR = 2.46, CI = 1.06 - 4.85). This excess lung cancer cannot necessarily be attributed to the Holly Street Power Plant for a number of reasons: 1) if elevated cancer rates were associated with an environmental exposure, we would expect elevated levels across both sexes and all races within the exposed population; 2) although actual air monitoring data have not been collected, available information does not indicate that the Holly Street Power Plant contributes significantly to air pollution within the zip code area; and 3) the major risk factors for lung cancer such as cigarette smoking and occupational exposures have not been evaluated for this population.
The cancer incidence data show that the cancer experience of these residents, for the cancers most often associated with exposure to EMFs (brain and leukemia), is not significantly different than would be expected. Since EMF exposure has been associated most often with childhood cancer, an age distribution for the selected cancers is presented in Table 9. There were only two cases of leukemia and one case of brain cancer in individuals under the age of 65. Of the 79 cases of lung cancer observed, 78 were reported for people 40 years old or older.
|LUNG||56||32.78||1.71*||1.29 - 2.22|
|BRAIN||1||2.07||.48||.01 - 2.69|
|LEUKEMIA||3||4.48||.67||.14 - 1.96|
|LUNG||23||18.69||1.23||.78 - 1.85|
|BRAIN||2||1.88||1.06||.13 - 3.84|
|LEUKEMIA||3||4.24||.71||.15 - 2.07|
Note: The SIR (Standardized Incidence Ratio) is defined as the number of observed cases divided by the number of expected cases. The number of expected cases is based on White/Black cancer incidence rates, U.S. SEER during the period 1986-1990, and Hispanic cancer incidence rates, California during the period 1988-1990.
* Significantly higher (at the 5% level) than expected.
| AGE |
We have addressed each of the community concerns about health as follows:
- Are rates of cancer, respiratory illness, or other health problems higher in the vicinity of the site?
- Are PCBs released from the site causing adverse health effects?
- Are there PCBs in water from Town Lake?
- Do the electric and magnetic fields from the plant measured in the neighborhoods and on the playground represent a health hazard?
- Is it safe for children to play on the playground and on the basketball courts near the plant?
- Does the noise produced by the plant have a negative effect on the community?
- Can the respirable particulates produced by the plant result in adverse health effects?
- Are potential fires at the plant a health hazard?
- People still fish in Town Lake regularly. Is it dangerous to eat fish from Town Lake?
For the years 1989 to 1992 the lung cancer experience for African American males and White females living in this zip code area is significantly greater than would be expected. The observed rates for brain cancer and leukemia, the cancers most often associated with EMF exposure, were not different than expected rates for this population. Smoking and occupational exposures, by far the greatest contributor to excess lung cancer, have not been evaluated for this population.
Data are not available to determine if rates of respiratory illnesses or other health problems are higher in the neighborhood around the Holly Street Power Plant. According to available data, the only time that the plant would be likely to produce contaminants associated with respiratory illness would be on the occasions when it burned high sulfur content fuel oil. Based on the air modeling results, it is possible that when high sulfur content fuel was burned in the past, sulfur dioxide levels could have been high enough to temporarily affect sensitive individuals. The voluntary conversion to a low sulfur content fuel oil should ensure that sulfur dioxide emissions remain below the levels potentially able to cause adverse reactions in sensitive individuals. Under current operating conditions, it is not likely that the plant would be responsible for increased rate of respiratory illnesses or other health problems.
We were able to identify four spills in which PCBs were implicated. However, except for one event where plant personnel detected PCBs in water discharged from the plant, all other events were confined to the site. Subsequent testing of water and sediment from Town Lake by an independent consulting firm has shown no detectable levels of PCBs. We were not able to find any evidence that people have come into contact with PCBs from the Holly Street Power Plant. Without contact adverse health effects would not occur.
Available sampling data does not indicate that water from Town Lake has been contaminated with PCBs from the Holly Street Power Plant.
Although the Holly Street Power Plant is a source of electricity, the plant itself is not the source of the electric and magnetic fields observed in the neighborhood. Electric and magnetic fields are associated with power lines, building wiring, lighting, and all electric appliances. The EMF measurements reported by the City were associated primarily with transmission and distribution lines in the neighborhood. Sources of EMFs in the home include, microwave ovens, hair dryers, electric shavers, electric dial clocks, and electric blankets.
Because of numerous inconsistencies, methodological deficiencies, and contradictory findings, evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship between EMF exposure and adverse health effects is insufficient for deriving a health-based standard for EMF exposure. Although further studies of EMF exposure are warranted, the current evidence for adverse health effects is inconclusive.
Since the main sources of EMFs are power lines, building wiring, and electric appliances, the fields measured in the surrounding neighborhood should not be different from those measured in other neighborhoods with power lines. Magnetic-field strengths calculated near other power lines support this conclusion. Although we cannot state definitively whether EMF exposure does or does not represent a hazard, we can state with reasonable certainty that removing or closing the plant would not reduce the EMFs in the neighborhood unless the power lines were de-energized or removed and home sources also were removed.
Childhood leukemia and brain cancer, the primary adverse health outcomes that are thought to be associated with exposure to EMFs, were not elevated in this neighborhood.
With respect to EMFs and noise levels, we believe that playing on the playground or basketball courts near the plant does not pose a significant health risk. In the past, sulfur dioxide emissions from the plant could have affected the most sensitive individuals on the rare occasions when fuel oil was burned. The plant has agreed to use fuel oil only in emergency situations. The EUD also has agreed only to use low sulfur fuel oil. Air pollution resulting from the burning of the low sulfur fuel oil should be minimal and should not be associated with any significant adverse health effects. Although the probability of a catastrophic event occurring is low, there have been non-catastrophic events (such as fire) at facilities in Austin. We have recommended proactive actions that the City of Austin EUD can take to further minimize risk to the surrounding community.
The day/night average noise levels (Ldn) measured near the Holly Street plant, taken during Radian's preliminary assessment, exceeded levels normally deemed acceptable by HUD. Although these levels were below those normally reported to result in physiologic changes or hearing loss, they were well within the range of values that have been reported to interfere with cognitive development. Abatement efforts undertaken by the City of Austin have, for the most part, reduced noise levels in the community to levels normally deemed acceptable. There continues to be a small area close to the facility where noise levels during high power output intervals could be marginally unacceptable. While these sound levels would not pose a health hazard, sensitive individuals could consider them annoying.
Children may be more susceptible to certain non-auditory effects of noise since they have less precise speech, limited vocabulary, and less developed familiarity with language rules. Chronic exposure to high levels of noise during the periods in which children are acquiring speech, language, and listening skills may contribute to poor performance in reading and other academic areas. Pre-abatement sound measurements suggested that sound levels at some areas of Metz Elementary School were slightly higher than recommended guidelines. Post-abatement measurements taken at Metz showed reductions in indoor sound levels well below the recommended indoor guideline. Although all measurements at Metz were made with the plant only operating at a 94 MW power output, the measurements were taken with Unit 4 operating with both forced draft fans operational. These forced draft fans were the largest contributor to the elevated noise levels at Metz School prior to the initiation of the abatement project. At our request, the City of Austin EUD took additional measurements inside the Metz portable classrooms with Holly operating at a high power output (496 MW). The measurements taken inside the classroom were lower than EPA's recommended guidelines.
The Holly Street Power Plant operates with clean burning natural gas greater than 99 percent of the time. Under some conditions, such as when natural gas supplies become scarce or when special burns are required, the plant burns fuel oil. Air modeling data obtained from the TNRCC indicate that respirable particulates emitted by Holly Street Power Plant do not pose a threat to public health.
Any fire can present a health hazard either from the fire itself or from the smoke and other contaminants generated by the fire. On March 13, 1993, 200 gallons of #5 fuel oil were released, ignited, and continued to burn until it was extinguished by the City of Austin Fire Department. The fire was put out in less than 30 minutes. However, a great quantity of smoke was produced according to witnesses. Increased PM10 and other pollutants produced during a fire could present an increased risk to sensitive individuals. On June 14, 1999, an accident caused a fire requiring the evacuation of approximately 60 employees. The City of Austin EUD has taken proactive measures to further reduce the risk of such events.
Since the consumption advisory is based on the presence of chlordane in the fish tissue, this issue is not related to the Holly Street Power Plant. People are allowed to fish in Town Lake, but are advised to limit or refrain from eating the fish that they catch. TDH is in the process of reevaluating the fish consumption advisory for Town Lake.
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JACKSONVILLE -- Nathan Bedford Forrest was a millionaire slave trader, a ruthless Confederate general, an early Ku Klux Klan leader -- and the namesake of what is now a majority African-American high school.
After almost a two-year delay, the Duval County School Board next week will consider whether to change the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School to Firestone High, after the street it sits on. The board joins other Southern districts that have hotly debated whether to strip Confederate leaders' names from schools and other buildings.
The squabble is part of the modern South's soul searching over the Civil War and its legacy, a discussion that often finds Forrest at the center.
"This guy was a brutal monster," said Steven Stoll, an adjunct sociology instructor at Florida Community College who is white and supports changing the name of the high school. "Why would you want to keep honoring a person like this? It is an insult to black people."
Forrest is hardly the lone Confederate hero whose name adorns streets, buildings and other public projects, or used to. For instance, Robert E. Lee High School in Birmingham, Ala., became Martin Luther King High School.
Still, efforts to strip Confederates' names and take down memorials to them have mostly been thwarted throughout the South, often after being denounced as part of an effort to remove all references to the Confederacy. In Hampton, Va., for example, attempts to rename Robert E. Lee Elementary School and Jefferson Davis Middle School failed.
Some say Forrest's deeds have been exaggerated and have to be considered in the context of the Civil War.
"Forrest was revered all over the world and his tactics are still studied today," said Lee Millar, president of the General N.B. Forrest Historical Society in Memphis, Tenn. "He became a hero to all."
Born poor in Chapel Hill, Tenn., in 1821, Forrest amassed a fortune as a plantation owner and slave trader, importing Africans long after the practice had been made illegal. At 40, he enlisted as a private in the Confederate army at the outset of the Civil War, rising to a cavalry general in a year.
Some accounts accuse Forrest of ordering black prisoners to be massacred after a victory at Tennessee's Fort Pillow in 1864, though historians question the validity of the claims.
"He did not order a massacre. He did order wholesale killing, but I do believe he lost control of the battle and there were people killed who should not have been killed," said Brian Steel Wills, a professor at the University of Virginia's College at Wise, who wrote a biography of Forrest.
In 1867, the newly formed Klan elected Forrest its honorary Grand Wizard or national leader, but publicly denied being involved. In 1869, he ordered the Klan to disband because of the members' increasing violence. Two years later, a congressional investigation concluded his involvement had been limited to his attempt to disband it.
After his death in 1877, memorials to him sprung up throughout the South, particularly in Tennessee.
Forrest High School in Jacksonville opened as an all-white school in the 1950s, getting its name at the suggestion of the Daughters of the Confederacy. They saw it as a protest of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that eventually integrated the nation's public schools.
Now, blacks make up more than half of the student body.
Two 17-year-old seniors at the school say the consensus among students is to leave the name alone.
"As students, (the name is) not a big deal to us," said Jamal Freeman, a black student, who noted it would cost a lot to change uniforms for the band and sports teams, nicknamed the Rebels.
Sabrina Lampp, a white student, said a change "takes all the memories away."
Jacksonville has three other schools named after Confederate generals, none as sensitive as Forrest.
"He got a bad rap," said L.A. Hardee, a member of the board at Jacksonville's Museum of Southern History. "He was an honorable man. People don't take into consideration the times. It's a Southern thing. They ought to keep the name."
© 2016. All Rights Reserved. Contact Us
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What is included with this book?
Key Terms in Philosophy of Art offers a clear, concise and accessible introduction to a vital sub-field of philosophy. The book offers a comprehensive overview of the key terms, concepts, thinkers and major works in the history of this key area of philosophical thought. Ideal for first-year students coming to the subject for the first time, Key Terms in Philosophy of Art will serve as the ideal companion to the study of this fascinating subject.
Tiger C. Roholt provides detailed summaries of core concepts in the philosophy of art. An introductory chapter provides context and background, while the following chapters offer detailed definitions of key terms and concepts, introductions to the work of key thinkers, summaries of key texts, introductions to philosophy's approach to the major art forms, and advice on further reading. Designed specifically to meet the needs of students and assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, this is the ideal reference tool for those coming to philosophy of art for the first time.
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All About Us:
State of Poverty
State of Hunger
Feast Day of Saint Vincent de Paul:
St. Vincent was born of poor parents in the village of Pouy in Gascony, France, about 1580. He enjoyed his first schooling under the Franciscan Fathers at Acqs. Such had been his progress in four years that a gentleman chose him as subpreceptor to his children, and he was thus enabled to continue his studies without being a burden to his parents. In 1596, he went to the University of Toulouse for theological studies, and there he was ordained priest in 1600.
Feast Day of Blessed Frederick Ozanam
It would be impossible to enumerate all the works of this servant of God. CHARITY was his predominant virtue. It extended to all classes of persons, from forsaken childhood to old age. The Sisters of Charity also owe the foundation of their congregation to St. Vincent. In the midst of the most distracting occupations his soul was always intimately united with God. Though honored by the great ones of the world, he remained deeply rooted in humility. The Apostle of Charity, the immortal Vincent de Paul, breathed his last in Paris at the age of eighty.
Frederick Ozanam was born in 1813 and grew up in Lyon, France. While still very young he went to study law at the University of Paris. He found that some of his professors were hostile to Catholic teaching and Frederick took them on defending the Church at every opportunity. His faith meant everything to him and it held top priority in his life!
At the age of 20 he longed to affirm his faith in other ways than with the spoken and written word. With a few friends Frederick decided to put his faith into practice and help the poor and underprivileged.
They decided to start "Conference of Charity" to assist the poor. In a short time, they changed their name to The Society of St. Vincent de Paul after their patron. Frederic chose St. Vincent de Paul as the patron saint of his new Society for he said, "Even the revolutionaries admired St. Vincent, they forgave him the crime of having loved God." Frederic also had a true devotion to the Blessed Mother and regarded her as the Patroness of the Society. These young people also made the acquaintance of Sister Rosalie Rendu, D.C., a Daughter of Charity living in Paris, who led them to visit the poor of the visiting neighborhood.
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It's pretty common knowledge that the U.S. isn't producing enough mathematicians, scientists and engineers to support demand in "STEM" fields. And reports come and go that other countries are facing similar shortages. But like all things that are definitely true, it's actually pretty complicated to prove that the trend really exists. Robert N. Charette of IEEE Spectrum got suspicious and began combing data from the last six decades. His conclusion is that we actually have plenty of STEM workers, and the hype about a shortage may be doing more harm than good.
Charette writes that, "The problem with proclaiming a STEM shortage when one doesn’t exist is that such claims can actually create a shortage down the road." He argues that if too many students pursue STEM careers thinking they will be guaranteed a job and then hit an unexpectedly difficult market, students coming after them will be discouraged from pursuing similar careers and too many may steer clear. Furthermore, creating urgency around STEM may make students less likely to prioritize educational balance. They will be well trained in STEM fields but won't be flexible in terms of bringing humanities skills to STEM jobs or having the ability to move careers if they desire.
In terms of the myth's origins, Charette cites vast discrepancies in how STEM grads and careers are counted and understood:
Who exactly is a STEM worker: somebody with a bachelor’s degree or higher in a STEM discipline? Somebody whose job requires use of a STEM subject? What about someone who manages STEM workers? And which disciplines and industries fall under the STEM umbrella?
The piece points out that when so many conflicting reports are available, it's easy to cherry pick data. You can make it seem like there are too many STEM workers or not enough. You can make graduation rates in STEM majors look like they're on the rise or decline. And even when he controlled for as many factors as possible, the "real" deal about STEM careers is just as confusing as all the smoke and mirrors. "At least in the United States, you don’t need a STEM degree to get a STEM job, and if you do get a degree, you won’t necessarily work in that field after you graduate."
Charette notes a lot of caveats, and his analysis is nuanced so take a look at the full story. It serves as a good reminder that it's especially important to question things we take for granted. [IEEE Spectrum]
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A Guide to Kids’ Games
What Makes a Game Specifically for Children?
The primary goal of a game is to provide the player with a fun and entertaining experience. Children know more about fun than any other group of people, so what makes a kids game different from games for everyone else?
Games for children differ from games created for adults in a few separate areas. One notable difference is in the difficulty level of games made specifically for kids. Children typically enjoy all of the same genres as adults do but their motor skill levels will be considerably lower depending on their age. Games made specifically for preschoolers and elementary school children will be a lot easier to play than games marketed towards preteens, teens and adults. There are some exceptionally skilled preschoolers who play adult level games such as Tetris or Bejeweled with more skill and finesse than most adults do, but these gaming prodigies are in the minority.
The second area where games for children vary from games for adults is in the thematic elements such as storyline, artwork and game mechanics. A game created specifically for children typically has a storyline that kids can relate to, characters that appeal to a younger mindset and features actions that kids will find engaging such as returning a lost kitten to its mother or finding the portal into the magical otherworld. Games for kids are essentially childish in the best of ways, and this paired with the diminished difficultly level makes games for children typically less than appealing for adults.
The History of Children’s Games
The state of children’s gaming was pretty abysmal up until the 1970’s and consisted primarily of computer assisted rote drill memorization of school curriculum topics. The success of the educational television program Sesame Street is likely responsible for ushering in the era of ‘edutainment’ by proving that children could learn while having fun and that educational material could be understood and retained passively by kids outside of a classroom setting.
One of the earliest educational learning games was Oregon Trail, an engaging and immersive game that had players take on the role of leading a band of pioneers out to face the hazards of the frontier. Players faced starvation and death and this served to make the perils of frontier life more understandable for elementary school children. Educational games snowballed from there to include iconic titles such as Reader Rabbit, Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? KidPix and the Math Blaster series. Many of these titles have iterations even today.
Edutainment gave kids an excuse to enjoy games but children’s gaming for the sake of fun and fun alone took a little longer to take hold. Children who grew up in households with one or more gaming parents were some of the first to play games with little or no implicit educational value. These children were especially analytical or particularly driven in order to work their way through titles that were not optimized for younger players. As these children began playing with their parents, the concept of children’s leisure gaming became more and more acceptable.
When the internet became a household staple in homes all over the world, children’s gaming received another vital boost from the websites of children’s television networks such as Nickelodeon and Disney. The networks created fun, enjoyable games for children based on their television and movie characters. The focus of these games was to promote the show, not necessarily to educate the children about anything in particular.
Recent studies have shown that video games impact the developing brains of children in a positive and beneficial manner, boosting not just hand eye coordination but also vision, cognition, attention to detail and the ability to successfully multitask.
Who Would Like Children’s Games?
This genre of games is broad and diverse, truly offering something for everyone. A game for kids can be of any genre, though some genres are more popular with the younger crowd than others. The personality of the individual child will be the deciding factor in regards to a game’s appeal. Most children shy away from overly complicated cerebral games in favor of more approachable ones such as platformers or hidden object games. Hidden object games as a genre actually owe their creation to children; hidden object puzzles such as Where’s Waldo? or I Spy were first marketed to children who enthusiastically responded.
Thoughtful and creative children will be drawn to games that incorporate opportunities for creative expression such as artwork or character customization. Children who love a good storyline and have a keen eye for details would thoroughly enjoy a hidden object type game. Goal oriented and driven children will find adventure games an appealing challenge for them to conquer and will likely enjoy sim games as well.
Unexpected genres such as strategy and war games also have the potential to be very gripping and enjoyable for children provided that they involve interesting characters, an appealing storyline and visually pleasing graphics.
Word games such as Scrabble and Boggle will likely not appeal much to children until they develop a large vocabulary to work with. Puzzle games such as Sudoku and Kenken are also examples of games that children will fail to enjoy until their mathematical and reasoning skills reach a certain level.
The gender of the child will also have some bearing on the type of game they want to play; little girls tend to favor sim games that involve a nurturing factor while little boys are typically delighted by dinosaurs, slime and flatulence. No matter the gender, children expect their games to be colorful, engaging and fun.
The age appropriateness of a game is another deciding factor when it comes to games for kids. Some games are made for the youngest of players and use only the most basic of mouse skills while others require a fair amount of problem solving and motor skill in order to successfully play through. When selecting a game for children, the age and skill level of the child should always be kept in mind.
Above all else, children’s games need to run well and have visual appeal; children are more critical of graphics and glitches than adults who have the patience to work through such things.
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| 0.970631 | 1,218 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Determines whether one string is lexically greater than another string, where the two strings are interpreted as containing ASCII character codes. If the String A and String B are not the same length, the shorter is compared as if spaces were appended to it to form a value that has the same length as the longer.
In general, the lexical comparison intrinsics
llt differ from the corresponding intrinsic operators
.lt., in that the latter use the processor’s character ordering (which is not ASCII on some targets), whereas the former always use the ASCII ordering.
FORTRAN 77 and later
result = lgt(string_a, string_b)
string_a- Shall be of default
string_b- Shall be of default
string_a > string_b, and
.false. otherwise, based on the ASCII ordering.
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| 0.832108 | 178 | 3.53125 | 4 |
definition 1: a thing consisting of a number of elements joined together in a certain way.
example: A human cell is a complicated structure.
definition 2: the way in which such a thing is joined together.
example: We’re studying the structure of atoms in chemistry class.
definition 3: the relationship between and among the parts of a relatively complex process or entity.
example: On our first day at the job, we learned about the structure of the organization.
See full entry
Collocations: Words often used in combination with the noun “structure”
ADJECTIVE + structure: complex ~, rigid ~, flexible ~, basic ~, concrete ~, intact ~, characteristic ~ , hierarchical ~ , organizational ~, institutional ~, political ~, social ~, modular ~, overall ~, internal ~, narrative ~
VERB + structure: build ~, create ~, design ~, establish ~, simplify ~, alter ~, reinforce ~, revise ~, impose ~ (e.g., impose a structure on unconnected ideas), analyze ~, study ~, understand ~, examine ~, describe ~
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Twelve-year-old Andre Johnson entered the state science fair for the first time this year and walked away with first place in the junior division. Now his eye is on an international competition this fall in Washington, D.C.
“It took practice, and it was hard work,” Andre said. “I had to believe in myself.”
Andre won the Greater New Orleans Science and Engineering Fair’s junior division before taking top honors in the mathematics category at the recent state Science and Engineering Fair at Louisiana State University. His win marks the 100th science competition award by an Abramson Science and Technology student since the Pelican Foundation Charter School opened four years ago.
The sixth-grader’s victory earns him a chance at an all-expense-paid trip to the Broadcom Math, Applied Science, Technology and Engineering for Rising Stars, or MASTERS, Competition in October. Thirty middle school students from across the nation will be chosen to compete for a $25,000 grand prize for education.
Andre’s experiment involved trial runs of a yellow toy car down an incline. He varied the height of the incline and measured the distance the car traveled off the ramp. In a second set of experiments he added weight by adding pennies, then made a comparison.
“I found out Isaac Newton was right,” he said.
Andre observed that the higher the incline, the greater the distance the car traveled off the ramp. He graphed his results, and in mathematical language, determined “the slope of the line.” The variance in height affected the outcome more than the change in weight, he concluded.
“Science fair is either the best, or one of the best ways, to teach the scientific method,” said Elkhan Akhundov, the school’s science research coordinator.
The scientific method, the organized testing of an idea through experimentation and observation, is the basic method in any research, Akhundov said.
“This introduces students to a simple method for carrying out research,” Akhundov said. “It gives them the blueprint for a path that takes them to a new invention.”
The Pelican Educational Foundation was formed in 2005 with educators from Louisiana State University, Southern University of New Orleans, Southeastern Louisiana University and the LSU Science Center in New Orleans. The foundation operates Abramson Science and Tech, its first school, and Kenilworth Science and Tech in Baton Rouge.
Pelican Foundation schools emphasize the integration of technology and digital arts in education, web-based training and monitoring, and collaboration with university professors and researchers for national and international science competitions. Orhan Kizilkaya, LSU professor with the center for advanced microstructures and devices and the department of physics, is president.
Cuneyt Dokmen, principal, said the science fair is valuable because it connects students to educators and resources at the university level. Partners include the University of New Orleans, LSU, Southern University at New Orleans and Tulane.
“Science fair is a tool,” Dokmen said. “It is additional support in making students aware of college opportunity. It is a tool to keep them academically challenged.”
Abramson graduates its first senior class in May with 27 students. The kindergarten through 12th grade has an enrollment of 550. Saturday school, after school tutoring and additional help on core subjects are standard. Teachers visit with parents in the home.
“We want to challenge students according to their level,” Dokmen said. “These children are smart. If they are already at mastery level, we want them to go for advanced.”
Abramson students took home 19 awards in this year’s city-wide science fair, and earned five of the nine awards offered at a competition this year sponsored by SUNO.
The school is located on the site of the former Marion Abramson Senior High School, 5552 Read Blvd. It is a Type 5 charter school and has open enrollment. Testing is not required for admission.
Andre’s win at the state science fair is another “first” for the school. Abramson came close two years ago when his brother, Michael Barnes, won fourth place in a computer science entry.
“He told me when I won, ‘Good job, little bro,’ ” Andre said. With a grin, he added, “Sometimes, I tease him that I passed him up.”
By Marilyn Stewart
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DNA test slashes wait times for tuberculosis diagnosis in Iqaluit
March 23, 2015
Study results prompt Government of Nunavut to fund TB test's continued use
Tuberculosis continues to be a significant public health concern in Canada's North, where testing for TB takes far longer than in the country's major centres. A paper just published by Iqaluit, Ottawa and Montreal researchers, in CHEST Journal, shows that the time it takes to diagnose and begin treating this infectious disease in Nunavut can be dramatically reduced by using a new technology — right in Iqaluit — that quickly provides accurate results.
The study showed that operating a DNA testing unit, called GeneXpert (Cepheid Inc.), in Iqaluit's hospital significantly sped up diagnosis of TB, especially for those with low levels of the bacteria in their sputum. As a result, the average time to start treatment was reduced to 1.8 days, as opposed to 7.7 days for patients with high levels of TB bacteria and 37 days for those with low levels of the bacteria.
Based on the study's results, the Government of Nunavut has just announced funding in its 2015–2016 budget that will keep the GeneXpert operating in the territory's capital.
"These findings represent a significant improvement in the quality of care clinicians can provide in managing this persistent and devastating disease in Canada's North — for individual patients and for the community," said Dr. Gonzalo Alvarez, a scientist and respirologist at The Ottawa Hospital and an associate professor at the University of Ottawa. "We are very pleased to see that the Government of Nunavut has made GeneXpert a part of its program to fight TB."
The incidence of active tuberculosis in Nunavut remains the highest in Canada. In 2014, there were 83 residents of Nunavut treated for active TB, an infection rate 49 times the Canadian average. Despite the high rate, there is no TB laboratory capacity in Nunavut. Samples are sent to Ottawa for testing.
The quick test results from GeneXpert also mean that people can be quickly cleared of the disease in order to travel on a commercial airline, be released from hospital, return to work, or go to work at a camp or on a ship.
Working in partnership with the Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., and with funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Drs. Gonzalo Alvarez and Madhukar Pai, an associate professor at McGill University and researcher at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, implemented the GeneXpert TB testing unit in Iqaluit, Nunavut, as part of a pragmatic research study that started in 2012.
GeneXpert is a desktop lab-in-a-box that identifies the presence of the TB bacteria's genetic code. The technology has been successfully used in countries with a high burden of the disease and minimal resources. Drs. Alvarez and Pai wanted to see whether GeneXpert could provide accurate results in the real-world situation of Canada's North as a way to reduce the wait times before starting treatment and, importantly, to minimize continued spread of the disease.
To do this, they designed a study that would test the technology in action, in which the GeneXpert unit was operated as part of the community's hospital laboratory. In cases of suspected TB, they used the GeneXpert test and also sent sputum samples to an Ottawa lab for testing — the current practice. The lab in Ottawa performed two tests: a smear test and a culture test. When there is a lot of tuberculosis in the sample, the smear test generally catches the disease. If there isn't, then it is diagnosed by culturing the sample, which takes longer but is the gold standard.
To look at it from the patient perspective, it would mean going to the clinic suffering from a chronic cough, fever and some mild weight loss. If TB was suspected, the patient gives a sample and the next day the GeneXpert result shows the presence of active TB. After giving the sample, the patient starts intensive TB treatment 1.8 days later. Then, 7.7 days after that first visit, the smear test results come back negative from Ottawa – no active TB found. At around day 21, the patient's cough subsides; the person is gaining weight and no longer has a fever. More than two weeks later (day 37), the culture test comes back positive from Ottawa. Without the GeneXpert test, this is when treatment would have started.
"It's cases like this, and in remote settings with no on-site TB testing capacity, where GeneXpert can make the greatest difference," said Dr. Pai, an associate director at the McGill International TB Centre. " Our study findings validate recommendations in the Canadian TB Standards that support using this technology, in this way, where routine smear and culture tests can't be done locally.”
According to public health officials in Nunavut, two-thirds of all TB cases between 1999 and 2011 were only confirmed by the culture test, like the person in the example above.
The paper titled "The feasibility, accuracy and impact of Xpert MTB.RIF testing in a remote Aboriginal community in Canada" was published early online on March 19, 2015, by CHEST Journal. It was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The Government of Nunavut purchased the GeneXpert unit and provided in-kind support to house and operate it. Co-authors: Deborah D. Van Dyk, Marc Desjardins, Abdool S. Yasseen, Shawn D. Aaron, D. William Cameron, Natan Obed, Maureen Baikie, Smita Pakhale, Claudia M .Denkinger, Hojoon Sohn.
“The research findings confirm that this new technology can provide a significantly earlier confirmation of active tuberculosis in our territory. Earlier diagnosis and treatment decreases the spread of TB and is an important step toward our ultimate goal of eliminating TB in Nunavut. I commend and give my thanks to the cooperative efforts of Dr. Alvarez, the research partners, and our health professionals in pioneering the use of the GeneXpert technology in Iqaluit.”
—Hon. Paul Okalik, Minister of Health, Government of Nunavut
"The shortened period for diagnosis means patients can access treatment more quickly and return to their normal routines. This is a critical development for Inuit who have felt the impacts of TB in our families and communities for decades. With advancements such as this, we know that our painful history with TB has ended, and that we now can readily access better diagnosis and treatment. I hope to see this new technology become more widely available to Inuit in all Nunavut communities affected by TB.”
—Cathy Towtongie, President, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.
For further information, please contact
Communications and Public Relations
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
(o) 613-737-8899 x73325 or (c) 613-614-5253
Media Relations Office
Public Affairs & Strategic Planning
McGill University Health Centre
(o) 514-934-1934, ext. 71440
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute is the research arm of The Ottawa Hospital and is an affiliated institute of the University of Ottawa, closely associated with its faculties of Medicine and Health Sciences. The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute includes more than 1,700 scientists, clinical investigators, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staff conducting research to improve the understanding, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human disease. Support our research. Give to the Tender Loving Research campaign.
University of Ottawa: A crossroads of cultures and ideas
The University of Ottawa is home to almost 50,000 students, faculty and staff, who live, work and study in both French and English. Our campus is a crossroads of cultures and disciplines, where bold minds come together to inspire game-changing ideas. We are one of Canada’s top 10 research universities — our professors and researchers explore new approaches to today’s challenges. One of a handful of Canadian universities ranked among the top 200 in the world, we attract exceptional thinkers and welcome diverse perspectives from across the globe.
McGill University Faculty of Medicine
McGill University was founded in 1821 thanks to a generous bequest by James McGill, and since then has grown from a small college to a bustling university with two campuses, 11 faculties, some 300 programs of study, and 39,500 students. Founded in 1829, McGill’s Faculty of Medicine was the first faculty established at the University and the first medical faculty in Canada. Today, it comprises the Schools of Medicine, Physical and Occupational Therapy, and Communication Sciences and Disorders, and the Ingram School of Nursing, offering excellence in post-secondary education and research. Through the Réseau universitaire intégré de santé McGill, the Faculty of Medicine, together with its network of affiliated teaching hospitals and partners, is also responsible for coordinating access to training, research and health care for close to 1.8 million Quebecers across 63 per cent of the province’s landmass. www.mcgill.ca/medicine
Research Institute of the MUHC
The Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) is a world-renowned biomedical and healthcare research centre. Located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the Institute is the research arm of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), which is affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University. The Research Institute supports over 550 researchers, over 1,200 graduate students, post-docs and clinical fellows devoted to a broad spectrum of fundamental clinical, and health outcomes research. Over 1,900 clinical research studies are conducted within our hospitals each year. The Research Institute of the MUHC is supported in part by the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Santé (FRQS). www.muhc.ca/research/
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Sam's Home || Chameleon Home || Chameleon Graphing Java Applet || Ask Dr. Math
Here is a picture of two axes in a plane:
A man named René Descartes invented the system that we use to graph points in the plane. (You can see some pictures of René Descartes at the MacTutor Math History Archive.) The word Cartesian means "from Descartes," so people often talk about the Cartesian plane when they are using this system.
A chameleon is a kind of lizard. Chameleons have long, sticky tongues for catching bugs. They can change color to warm up or cool off. Chameleons also change color when they are angry or scared.
A coordinate is a number that tells you where to find a point. Sometimes you need several coordinates to find exactly where a point is. You can think of a point's coordinates as its address.
Some people talk about "the coordinate plane" to show that you can use coordinates to find every point in the plane.
An object's dimension tells you how many directions a creature living inside it could move. Forward and backward count as the same direction.
The word "dimensional" is an adjective that explains how many dimensions something has. For example, a line is one-dimensional, because a creature that lived on a line could only move forward or backward. A plane is two-dimensional, because a creature living in a plane could move forward or backward and up or down.
Our universe is three-dimensional, because we can move forward or backward, up or down, and side to side. Of course, we can move diagonally or follow a curved path, too. However, these are really combinations of the three basic directions. You can reach any point just moving front or back, up or down, and side to side. Try it!
Estimate means "make a smart guess." For example, if you saw a bunch of kids in a playground, you might estimate that there were fifteen children playing. You wouldn't guess 500 children, unless it was a huge playground, and you wouldn't guess 0 children, because you know there are some kids there. Whenever you estimate, you should check to see that your answer makes sense.
In math, a line is always straight. Lines go on forever in both directions.
Here is a picture of a line. A real line is only one-dimensional, but the picture is bigger, so you can see it more easily.
A negative number is a number less than 0. We use this symbol for negative numbers: "-". For example, -10 means negative ten. You can imagine this as a temperature ten degrees below zero.
An ordered pair is a list of two numbers, where the order of the numbers is important. We write the coordinates of a point as an ordered pair, inside parentheses. Some examples of ordered pairs are (1, 2) and (6, 77).
In this picture of a plane, the origin has been marked with a red dot:
A plane is two-dimensional. It seems flat, like a thin piece of paper. However, unlike pieces of paper, planes have no edges. A bug could crawl along a plane forever without falling off.
Here is a picture of part of a plane. It has been colored green to make it easier to see.
A point is one place in space. Points are really zero-dimensional. Of course, we can't draw something that has no dimensions. When we want to show where a point is, we usually draw a dot, like this: . You can imagine that the real point is in the exact center of the dot.
The distance between marked points on a graph or numberline is called its scale. These two numberlines use different scales:
A chameleon's skin is covered with flat, hard objects. These are also called scales. The word scale has several other meanings. How many can you find?
Please send questions, comments, and suggestions
to Ursula Whitcher
Home || The Math Library || Quick Reference || Search || Help
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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.
2002 August 8
Explanation: Findings of ancient martian microbial fossils in meteorites and liquid water related features on Mars' surface are currently controversial issues. But one thing long established by space-based observations of the Red Planet is the presence of volcanos, as Mars supports some of the largest volcanos in the solar system. This synthetic color picture recorded in March by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft shows two of them, Ceraunius Tholus (leftmost) and Uranius Tholus. Found north of the Tharsis region of truly large martian volcanos, these are actually two relatively small volcanos, Ceraunius Tholus being only about the size of the Big Island of Hawaii on planet Earth. Impact craters which overlay the volcanic martian terrain indicate that these volcanos are themselves ancient and inactive. North is to the right and the scene is illuminated by sunlight from the top left. A light region of dust deposited by recent global dust storms lies on the lower left flank of Ceraunius Tholus, whose summit crater is about 25 kilometers across.
Authors & editors:
Jerry Bonnell (USRA)
NASA Technical Rep.: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA/ GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
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Pierrot lunaire (1912) is one of the most important music theater works ever written. This is the first guide in English to a work that continues to be performed, broadcast, and recorded worldwide. The book describes the artistic environment around the turn of the century from which Pierrot emerged, and discusses Schoenberg's working methods and intentions in composition. In a clear and imaginative description of the work itself, the author takes each of the twenty-one melodramas in turn, considering both the music and the narrative. The text of all twenty-one poems is provided in German and in a new English translation by Andrew Porter.
Back to top
Rent Schoenberg 1st edition today, or search our site for other textbooks by Jonathan Dunsby. Every textbook comes with a 21-day "Any Reason" guarantee. Published by Cambridge University Press.
Need help ASAP? We have you covered with 24/7 instant online tutoring. Connect with one of our Classics tutors now.
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The regional historical museum in Stara Zagora is situated in the center of the town. Thousands of important exponents are stored in its fund. The museum windows trace the historical epochs. The Stara Zagora region has been inhabited since antiquity. Evidences of this can be seen in the first exposition hall of the museum. The earliest evidences of settlement are from the Late Stone Age – 6 thousand years BC. A special map shows the location of more than 120 pre-historic settlement mounds, found up to the present moment in the town region, as five of the mounds are situated within the borders of the contemporary town. Tools made of antler, bone and flint, ceramic pots with interesting shapes and decorations are presented. The Roman period of the historical development of the Stara Zagora region began in the 46th year AD when the region was conquered by the Romans. In 107, after the victory upon the Dacians, Emperor Trayan passed through this area and decided to build here a town according to a Roman model, which he called Augusta Trayana. The town was semi-autonomous; it had its own town council and public assembly. The museum keeps impressive exponents from this period, found during excavations – glass, bronze lamps, statues, jewels, coins. During the construction of the new museum building, workers stumbled upon an interesting find – they found in the very bases of the building a part of the main street of the Roman town – cardo maximus – which was connecting the South and the North town gate. The part, found under the museum, was situated 30 meters from the South Gate in the fortified wall, surrounding Augusta Trayana. Specialists restored and preserved it, and nowadays it can be seen in the underground level of the museum – exposed “in situ” – where it had been found. The street was about 6 meters wide, and there were stone pavements, by which the width reaches 11 meters. The exposed street is decorated as it was in the past – by columns, statues and stone relieves, and a wall pane pictures its continuation to the presently missing South Gate of the town. The other exposition halls in the museum trace the town history and its destiny during the late antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Revival to the moment of the great fire, which destroyed it almost entirely in 1877. In the summer of 1877 one of the greatest battles during the war between Russia and Turkey (1877-1878) was conducted by Stara Zagora. Despite the braveness and the heroism of the Russian and Bulgarian warriors, the Ottoman armies, led by Syuleyman Pasha, conquered the town and set it on fire. After the liberation on 5 October 1879 the first stone was laid for the restoration of Stara Zagora. This date turned into an official day of the town, which was born from ashes for a new life.
Various information materials are sold in the museum.
Tuesday – Sunday:
10.00 am – 6.00 pm;
day off: Monday
adults – BGN 5.00;
students and seniors: BGN 1.00
Guided tour in Bulgarian language – BGN 10.00;
Guided tour in a foreign language – BGN 20.00
|Recommended to see||All|
|Architectural and Ethnographic Complex Etar
The Architectural And Ethnographic Complex Etar is situated on the ...
|Antique Forum Augusta Trayana – town of Stara Zagora
The forum of the antique Roman town Augusta Trayana is an archaeolo...
|Museum House of Peyo Yavorov – town of Chirpan
The Museum House of Peyo Yavorov is situated in the central part of...
|Neolithic Dwellings Museum, Stara Zagora
The Neolithic Dwellings Museum is situated in Stara Zagora and cont...
|Museum House “Hadzhi Dimitar”, town of Sliven
One of the most famous tourist sites in the town of Sliven is the h...
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Women and Equality
Michael O'Malley, Associate Professor of History and Art History, George Mason University
In this exercise, you will search the "Making of America" database of antebellum journals at the University of Michigan, to discover how Americans thought about sexual equality in the period between 1830 and 1860.
Go to The Making of America. Click on "Other Searches in MoA". Then click on "Proximity" to choose Proximity Search. This allows you to search for three words which appear near each other in the texts in the database. Enter "women" in the first field and "equality" in the second, choose "<120" in the popup and limit date range to 1830-1860. Your page should look like this:
Click "Search." You should come up with 12 records. Repeat the search entering "marriage" and "equality" in the two fields--you'll come up with 4 more records.
If you still don't have enough information, enter your own search terms related to women's equality (suffrage or divorce for example) to find more records.
After you have read the relevant documents that the search turns up, write one page answering two or more of the following questions:
- What were the objections to women's legal equality in marriage?
- What arguments were made for equality in marriage?
- Did Americans in this period want women fully involved in the marketplace, or did they want to shield women from the market?
- How were the arguments made? How was "the home" described? How was religion used to justify various positions?
- Do any of the arguments look "modern"? Or are they distinctly different from how we might frame such discussions? If so, what is the difference?
Updated | April 2004
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|What does it mean when they say that a new air conditioner must have a SEER of 13?|
|Again, I'll ask my husband |
|An air conditioner's SEER number refers to its energy efficiency rating (higher being more efficient). As of January 2006 the government (Canada and US?) ruled that any new air conditioners being manufactured must have a SEER rating of at least 13.
You could still buy an air conditioner in a store with a SEER rating less than 13 because it could be manufactured before January '06. As a consumer you have no obligation to purchase a SEER 13 air conditioner (although the retailers would love it if you did!). The law applies to manufacturers only. So, if you do find an air conditioner with SEER <13 you are still free to buy it and use it.
|Steph is right on!
In 2006 all air conditioners and heat pumps have to be 30 percent more efficient. The Alliance to Save Energy says this will save consumers $3.4 billion in energy costs and avoid the construction of 150 power plants by 2020.
Increased efficiency is not free. This means today's new air conditioner may be as much as $1200 more expensive than last year's.
Carrier, one of the leading manufacturers of air conditioners, says that for every $100 you pay running an 8 SEER air conditioner, you would pay $80 with a 10 SEER; $73 with an 11 SEER; $67 with a 12 SEER; $62 with a 13 SEER; $57 with a 14 SEER; $53 with a 15 SEER; $50 with a 16 SEER;and $44 with 17 SEER. The more you use air conditioning, the bigger your savings potential.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the 30-year average annual cooling-degree days for Metro Detroit is 727. The number for Miami is 4383.
The farther South you are, the more cooling-degree days you have, and the more sense it makes to have a higher SEER air conditioner.
Larry Kaufman, the Energy Expert at DTE Energy, says that it will take Metro Detroiters about seven years to make back the additional cost of a 13 SEER air conditioner.
The lower SEER air conditioners can still be sold, but when they are gone, they are gone.
(from Glenn Hage's columns)
|We upgraded to a 15 SEER last summer after our A/C died.
We have saved over $100 a month by upgrading to a a newer and more energy efficient model.
Our old A/C was also undersized for the size of the house.
So we went from a 3 ton to a 4 ton and 11 SEER to 15 SEER.
It also cools the house quicker.
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NEW: Harvey Milk Day – May 22nd
“On a rainy day in January, on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall, Harvey Milk was sworn into office, the first openly gay elected city official in the United States of America. Harvey Milk had made history.”
The Harvey Milk Story is an excellent resource, aimed mainly at Primary level, not just for the teaching of LGBT history and LGBT rights, but as a study in nonviolent civil rights leaders and activism.
It covers several themes – bullying/abandonment, belonging, discrimination, prejudice and hope.
For more information on this book and the life of Harvey Milk, go to the website below. the cover is also attached.
“The Harvey Milk Story” by Kari Krakow (Two Lives Publishing, 2002 ISBN 0-9674468-3-X)
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Exposure and Response Prevention for Pediatric Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Exposure and response prevention (E/RP) is a behavioral therapy that helps those with OCD by gradually and systematically confronting feared situations and decreasing the anxiety response.
E/RP conducted with a trained therapist has been shown to be one of the most successful approaches for tackling OCD fears, and regaining functioning. It may be used effectively as a stand-alone treatment, or in combination with medication.
At the Pediatric OCD Program, we gear E/RP therapy toward each child's specific symptoms.
Elements of Exposure and Response Prevention
During E/RP therapy, your child:
- Identifies fears and rank them from mildest to most severe.
- Gradually confronts the situation, object, or person that triggers obsessive thoughts = exposure.
- Is encouraged to refrain from, or delay, the compulsion/ritual = response prevention.
- Repeats the exposure, decreasing his or her anxiety over time = habituation.
- Gradually works toward his or her most severe fears.
Make an Appointment with the Pediatric OCD Program
Call 412-235-5354 to schedule an evaluation or to discuss pediatric OCD treatment options at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC.
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There have been discoveries of Palaeolithic stone tools in caves in southern and central Oman, and in the United Arab Emirates close to the Straits of Hormuz at the outlet of the Persian Gulf. These stone tools, some up to 125,000 years old, resemble those made by humans in Africa around the same period. This is the southern route ‘out of Africa’.
Sumerians traded with Oman, and the Persian Achaemenid dynasty, controlled and/or influenced the Omani peninsula. This influential control was most likely exerted from a coastal center such as Sohar. From the 3rd century B.C. to the arrival of Islam in the 7th century A.D, Oman was controlled by two other Iranian dynasties, the Parthians (Whites) and the Sassanids. During this period Oman's administrative name was Mazun. By about 250 B.C, the Parthian dynasty brought the Persian Gulf under their control and extended their influence as far as Oman. Because they needed to control the Persian Gulf trade route, the Parthians established garrisons in Oman. In the 3rd century A.D, the Sassanids succeeded the Parthians and held the area until the rise of Islam four centuries later. This agricultural and military contact gave people exposure to Persian culture, as reflected in certain irrigation techniques still used in Oman.
Oman adopted Islam in the 7th century, during the lifetime of the prophet Muhammad. Ibadism became the dominant religious sect in Oman by the 8th century; Ibadhism is known for its "moderate conservatism". One distinguishing feature of Ibadism is the choice of ruler by communal consensus and consent. Oman is currently the only country in the Islamic world with a majority Ibadi population.
Arab tribes migrated eastward to Oman, coinciding with the increasing presence in the region of peoples from present-day Iran. In the 6th century, Arabs succeeded in repelling encroachments of these ethnic groups; the conversion of Arab tribes to Islam in the 7th century resulted in the displacement of the settlers from Iran.
But Oman was nonetheless conquered by several foreign powers, having been controlled by the Qarmatians between 931–932 and then again between 933–934. The Qarmatians ("Those Who Wrote in Small Letters" also transliterated "Carmathians", "Qarmathians", "Karmathians" etc.) were a Shi'a Ismaili group centered in eastern Arabia, where they attempted to established a utopian republic in 899 A.D. They are most famed for their revolt against the Abbasid Caliphate.
Between 967 and 1053, Oman was part of the domain of the Iranian Buyyids: The Buyyids/Deylamites/Dailamites were a possibly Persian people, inhabiting the mountainous regions of northern Persia on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. The earliest Zoroastrian and Christian sources indicate that the Dailamites originally came from Anatolia near the Tigris River. They spoke the Deilami language, a northwestern Persia dialect similar to that of the neighbouring Gilites.
Between 1053 and 1154, Oman was part of the Great Seljuk Turk Empire.
In 1154, the indigenous Nabhani dynasty took control of Oman, and the Nabhani kings ruled Oman until 1470, with an interruption of 37 years between 1406 and 1443.
The capital Muscat was taken by the Portuguese on 1 April 1515, and was held until 26 January 1650, although the Ottomans controlled Muscat between 1550–1551 and 1581–1588. In about the year 1600, Nabhani rule was temporarily restored to Oman, although that lasted only to 1624, when fifth imamate, which is also known as the Yarubid Imamate. The Yarubid recaptured Muscat from the Portuguese in 1650 after a colonial presence on the northeastern coast of Oman dating to 1508.
The Yarubid dynasty expanded, acquiring former Portuguese colonies in East Africa - including Zanzibar - and engaging in the slave trade. By 1719 dynastic succession led to the nomination of Saif ibn Sultan II. His candidacy prompted a rivalry among the ulama and a civil war between the two major tribes, the Hinawi and the Ghafiri, with the Ghafiri supporting Saif ibn Sultan II. He assumed power in 1748 after the leaders of both factions had been killed in battle, but the rivalry continued, with the factionalization working in favor of the Iranians, who occupied Muscat and Sohar in 1743.
The Iranians had occupied the coast before—indeed the coast was often the possession of various empires. These empires brought order to the religious and ethnic diversity of the population of this cosmopolitan region. Yet the intervention on behalf of an unpopular dynasty brought about a revolt. The leader of the revolt, Ahmad ibn Said al Said, was elected sultan of Muscat upon the expulsion of the Iranians.
Like its predecessors, Al Said dynastic rule has been characterized by a history of internecine family struggle, fratricide, and usurpation. Apart from threats within the ruling family, there was the omnipresent challenge from the independent tribes of the interior who rejected the authority of the sultan, recognizing the imam as the sole legitimate leader and pressing, by resort to arms, for the restoration of the imamate.
Schisms within the ruling family were apparent before Ahmad ibn Said's death in 1783 and were later manifest with the division of the family into two main lines, the Sultan ibn Ahmad Al Said (r. 1792–1806) line controlling the maritime state, with nominal control over the entire country; and the Qais branch, with authority over the Al Batinah and Ar Rustaq areas.
During the period of Sultan Said ibn Sultan Al Said's rule (1806–1856), Oman cultivated its East African colonies, profiting from the slave trade. As a regional commercial power in the 19th century, Oman held territories on the island of Zanzibar off the coast of East Africa, the area along the coast of East Africa known as Zanj including Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, and until 1958 in Gwadar (in present-day Pakistan) on the coast of the Arabian Sea. But when the British declared slavery illegal in the mid-19th century, the sultanate's fortunes reversed. The economy collapsed, and many Omani families migrated to Zanzibar. The population of Muscat fell from 55,000 to 8,000 between the 1850s and 1870s. Most of the overseas possessions were seized by the United Kingdom and by 1850 Oman was an isolated and poor area of the world.
When Sultan Sa'id bin Sultan Al-Busaid died in 1856, his sons quarreled over the succession. As a result of this struggle, the empire—through the mediation of the British Government under the Canning Award—was divided in 1861 into two separate principalities: Zanzibar (with its East African dependencies), and Muscat and Oman.
The death of Sa'id bin Sultan in 1856 prompted a further division: the descendants of the late sultan ruled Muscat and Oman (Thuwaini ibn Said Al-Busaid, r. 1856–1866) and Zanzibar (Mayid ibn Said Al-Busaid, r. 1856–1870); the Qais branch intermittently allied itself with the ulama to restore imamate legitimacy. In 1868 Azzam ibn Qais Al-Busaid (r. 1868–1871) emerged as self-declared imam. Although a significant number of Hinawi tribes recognized him as imam, the public neither elected him nor acclaimed him as such.
Imam Azzan understood that to unify the country a strong, central authority had to be established with control over the interior tribes of Oman. His rule was jeopardized by the British, who interpreted his policy of bringing the interior tribes under the central government as a move against their established order. In resorting to military means to unify Muscat and Oman, Imam Azzam alienated members of the Ghafiri tribes, who revolted in the 1870–1871 period. The British gave Imam Azzam's rival, Turki ibn Said Al-Busaid, financial and political support. Turki ibn Said succeeded in defeating the forces of Imam Azzam, who was killed in battle outside Matrah in January 1871.
Muscat and Oman was the object of Franco-British rivalry throughout the 18th century. During the 19th century, Muscat and Oman and the United Kingdom concluded several treaties of friendship and commerce. In 1908 the British entered into an agreement of friendship. Their traditional association was confirmed in 1951 through a new treaty of friendship, commerce, and navigation by which the United Kingdom recognized the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman as a fully independent state.
During the late 19th century and early 20th century, the sultan in Muscat faced rebellion by members of the Ibadi sect residing in the interior of Oman, centered around the town of Nizwa, who wanted to be ruled exclusively by their religious leader, the Imam of Oman. This conflict was resolved temporarily by the Treaty of Seeb, which granted the imam autonomous rule in the interior Imamate of Oman, while recognising the nominal sovereignty of the sultan elsewhere.
The conflict flared up again in 1954, when the new imam led a sporadic 5-year rebellion against the sultan's efforts to extend government control into the interior. The insurgents were defeated in 1959 with British help. The sultan then terminated the Treaty of Seeb and eliminated the office of the imam. In the early 1960s, the imam, exiled to Saudi Arabia, obtained support from his hosts and other Arab governments, but this support ended in the 1980s. Zanzibar paid an annual subsidy to Muscat and Oman until its independence in early 1964.
In 1964, a separatist revolt began in Dhofar province. Aided by Communist and leftist governments such as the former South Yemen (People's Democratic Republic of Yemen), the rebels formed the Dhofar Liberation Front, which later merged with the Marxist-dominated Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arab Gulf (PFLOAG). The PFLOAG's declared intention was to overthrow all traditional Persian Gulf régimes. In mid-1974, the Bahrain branch of the PFLOAG was established as a separate organisation and the Omani branch changed its name to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman (PFLO), while continuing the Dhofar Rebellion.
In 1970, Qaboos bin Said Al Said ousted his father, Sa'id bin Taymur, who later died in exile in London. Al Said has ruled as sultan ever since. The new sultan confronted insurgency in a country plagued by endemic disease, illiteracy, and poverty. One of the new sultan's first measures was to abolish many of his father's harsh restrictions, which had caused thousands of Omanis to leave the country, and to offer amnesty to opponents of the previous régime, many of whom returned to Oman. He also established a modern government structure and launched a major development programme to upgrade educational and health facilities, build a modern infrastructure, and develop the country's natural resources.
In an effort to curb the Dhofar insurgency, Sultan Qaboos expanded and re-equipped the armed forces and granted amnesty to all surrendering rebels while vigorously prosecuting the war in Dhofar. He obtained direct military support from the UK, Iran, and Jordan. By early 1975, the guerrillas were confined to a 50-square-kilometer (20-square-mile) area near the Yemeni border and shortly thereafter were defeated. As the war drew to a close, civil action programs were given priority throughout Dhofar and helped win the allegiance of the people. The PFLO threat diminished further with the establishment of diplomatic relations in October 1983 between South Yemen and Oman, and South Yemen subsequently lessened propaganda and subversive activities against Oman. In late 1987 Oman opened an embassy in Aden, South Yemen, and appointed its first resident ambassador to the country.
Since his accession in 1970, Sultan Qaboos has balanced tribal, regional, and ethnic interests in composing the national administration. The Council of Ministers, which functions as a cabinet, consists of 26 ministers, all directly appointed by Qaboos. The Majlis Al-Shura (Consultative Council) has the mandate of reviewing legislation pertaining to economic development and social services prior to its becoming law. The Majlis Al-Shura may request ministers to appear before it.In November 1996, Sultan Qaboos presented his people with the "Basic Statutes of the State", Oman's first written "constitution". It guarantees various rights within the framework of Qur'anic and customary law. It partially resuscitated long dormant conflict-of-interest measures by banning cabinet ministers from being officers of public shareholding firms. Perhaps most importantly, the Basic Statutes provide rules for setting Sultan Qaboos' succession.
Oman occupies a strategic location on the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, 35 miles (56 km) directly opposite Iran. Oman has concerns with regional stability and security, given tensions in the region, the proximity of Iran and Iraq, and the potential threat of political Islam. Oman maintained its diplomatic relations with Iraq throughout the Gulf War while supporting the United Nations allies by sending a contingent of troops to join coalition forces and by opening up to pre-positioning of weapons and supplies.In September 2000, about 100,000 Omani men and women elected 83 candidates, including two women, to seats in the Majlis Al-Shura. In December 2000, Sultan Qaboos appointed the 48-member Majlis Al Dowla, or State Council, including five women, which acts as the upper chamber in Oman's bicameral representative body.
Al Said's extensive modernization program has opened the country to the outside world and has preserved a long-standing political and military relationship with the United Kingdom, the United States, and others. Oman's moderate, independent foreign policy has sought to maintain good relations with all Middle Eastern countries.
Turki bin Said
Faisal bin Turki
Taimur bin Feisal
Said III bin Taimur
Qaboos bin Said
Sultans of Oman
Salim I bin Sultan and Said II bin Sultan (first reign) 20 November 1804 14 September 1806 Co-Rulers
Said II bin Sultan (second reign) 14 September 1806 19 October 1856 Sole Ruler
Thuwaini bin Said 19 October 1856 11 February 1866 Killed
Salim II bin Thuwaini 11 February 1866 3 October 1868 Killed
Azzan bin Qais 3 October 1868 30 January 1871 Killed
Turki bin Said 30 January 1871 4 June 1888
Faisal bin Turki 4 June 1888 9 October 1913 British protectorate imposed on 20 March 1891
Taimur bin Feisal 9 October 1913 10 February 1932 Abdicated
Said III bin Taimur 10 February 1932 23 July 1970 Deposed
Qaboos bin Said - present sultan
Vasco da Gama's visit in 1499 marks the beginning of European influence, and the Portuguese established control over the island four years later. In August 1505, it became part of the Portuguese Empire when Captain John (João) Homere, part of Francisco de Almeida's fleet, captured the island. It was to remain a possession of Portugal for almost two centuries.
In 1698, Zanzibar became part of the overseas holdings of Oman, falling under the control of the Sultan of Oman. The Portuguese were expelled and a lucrative trade in slaves and ivory thrived, along with an expanding plantation economy centring on cloves. The Arabs established garrisons at Zanzibar, Pemba, and Kilwa. The height of Arab rule came during the reign of Seyyid Said (more fully, Sayyid Said bin Sultan al-Busaid), who in 1840 moved his capital from Muscat in Oman to Stone Town. He established a ruling Arab elite and encouraged the development of clove plantations, using the island's slave labour.
Zanzibar's commerce fell increasingly into the hands of traders from the Indian subcontinent, whom Said encouraged to settle on the island. After his death in 1856, his sons struggled over the succession. On April 6, 1861, Zanzibar and Oman were divided into two separate principalities. Sayyid Majid bin Said Al-Busaid (1834/5–1870), his sixth son, became the Sultan of Zanzibar, while the third son, Sayyid Thuwaini bin Said al-Said, became the Sultan of Oman.
The Sultan of Zanzibar controlled a substantial portion of the east African coast, known as Zanj, and trading routes extending much further across the continent, as far as Kindu on the Congo River. In November 1886, a German-British border commission established the Zanj as a ten-nautical mile (19 km) wide strip along most of the coast of East Africa, stretching from Cape Delgado (now in Mozambique) to Kipini (now in Kenya), including Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, all offshore islands, and several towns in what is now Somalia. However, from 1887 to 1892, all of these mainland possessions were lost to the colonial powers of the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy, although some were not formally sold or ceded until the 20th century (Mogadishu to Italy in 1905 and Mombasa to Britain in 1963).
Zanzibar was famous worldwide for its spices and its slaves. It was East Africa's main slave-trading port, and in the 19th century as many as 50,000 slaves were passing through the slave markets of Zanzibar each year. (David Livingstone estimated that 80,000 Africans died each year before ever reaching the island.) Tippu Tip was the most notorious slaver, under several sultans, and also a trader, plantation owner and governor. Zanzibar's spices attracted ships from as far away as the United States, which established a consulate in 1837. The United Kingdom's early interest in Zanzibar was motivated by both commerce and the determination to end the slave trade. In 1822, the British signed the first of a series of treaties with Sultan Said to curb this trade, but not until 1876 was the sale of slaves finally prohibited.
Tippu Tip or Tib (1837 - June 14, 1905), real name Hamad bin Muhammad bin Jumah bin Rajab bin Muhammad bin Sa‘īd al-Murghabī, was a Swahili-Zanzibari trader of mixed descent. He was famously known as Tippu Tib after an eye disease which made him blind. A notorious slave trader, plantation owner and governor, who worked for a succession of sultans of Zanzibar, he led many trading expeditions into east-central Africa, involving the slave trade and ivory trade. He constructed profitable trading posts that reached deep into Central Africa.
Sometimes gradually and sometimes by fits and starts, control of Zanzibar came into the hands of the British Empire; part of the political impetus for this was the 19th century movement for the abolition of the slave trade. The relationship between Britain and the nearest relevant colonial power, Germany, was formalized by the 1890 Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty, in which Germany pledged not to interfere with British interests in insular Zanzibar. That year, Zanzibar became a protectorate (not a colony) of Britain. From 1890 to 1913, traditional viziers were appointed to govern as puppets, switching to a system of British residents (effectively governors) from 1913 to 1963.
Hamoud bin Mohammed Al-Said became sultan with the support of the British consul, Sir Basil Cave, upon the death of Hamad bin Thuwaini. Before he could enter the palace, another potential contender for the throne, Khalid bin Barghash, seized the palace and declared himself sultan. The British responded the next day, August 26, 1896, by issuing an ultimatum to Khalid and his entourage to evacuate the palace by 9:00 a.m. on August 27. When he refused, British warships fired on the palace and other strategic locations in the city, destroying them and causing Khalid and his group to flee.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records the resultant Anglo-Zanzibar War was the shortest war in history, and the same day Hamoud was able to assume the title of sultan, more indebted to the British than ever. Later Hamoud complied with British demands that slavery be banned in Zanzibar and that all the slaves be freed. For this he was decorated by Queen Victoria and his son and heir, Ali bin Hamud, was brought to England to be educated.
From 1913 until independence in 1963, the British appointed their own residents (essentially governors).
On 10 December 1963, Zanzibar received its independence from the United Kingdom as a constitutional monarchy under the Sultan. This state of affairs was short-lived, as the Sultan and the democratically elected government were overthrown on 12 January 1964 in the Zanzibar Revolution led by John Okello, a Ugandan citizen. Sheikh Abeid Amani Karume was named President of the newly created People's Republic of Zanzibar and Pemba. Several thousand Arabs (5,000-12,000 Zanzibaris of Arabic descent) and Indians were killed, thousands more detained or expelled, their property either confiscated or destroyed. The film Africa Addio documents the revolution, including a massacre of Arabs. (Ethnic difference, and the expulsion of those who had anywhere else to go, were repeated themes in East Africa, the most prominent example being the Expulsion of Indians in Uganda in 1972 by Idi Amin.)
The revolutionary government nationalized the local operations of the two foreign banks in Zanzibar, Standard Bank and National and Grindlays Bank. These nationalized operations may have provided the foundation for the newly-created Peoples Bank of Zanzibar. Jetha Lila, the one locally-owned bank in Zanzibar, or for that matter in all of East Africa, closed. It was owned by Indians and though the revolutionary government of Zanzibar urged it to continue functioning, the loss of its customer base as Indians left the island made it impossible to continue.On 26 April 1964, the mainland colony of Tanganyika united with Zanzibar to form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar; this lengthy name was compressed into a portmanteau, the United Republic of Tanzania, on 29 October 1964. After unification, local affairs were controlled by President Abeid Amani Karume, while foreign affairs were handled by the United Republic in Dar es Salaam. Zanzibar remains a semi-autonomous region of Tanzania.
Sultans of Zanzibar
Majid bin Said Al-Busaid 19 October 1856 7 October 1870 Bargash ibn Sa'id attempted to usurp the throne from his brother in 1859, but failed. He was exiled to Bombay for two years.
2 Sayyid Sir Barghash bin Said Al-Busaid 7 October 1870 26 March 1888 Responsible for developing much of the infrastructure in Zanzibar (especially Stone Town), like piped water, telegraph cables, buildings, roads, etc. Helped abolish the slave trade in Zanzibar by signing an agreement with Britain in 1870, prohibiting slave trade in his kingdom, and closing the slave market in Mkunazini.
3 Sayyid Sir Khalifa I bin Said Al-Busaid 26 March 1888 13 February 1890 Supported abolitionism, like his predecessor.
4 Sayyid Sir Ali bin Said Al-Busaid 13 February 1890 5 March 1893 The British and German Empires signed the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty in July 1890. This treaty turned Zanzibar into a British protectorate.
5 Sayyid Sir Hamad bin Thuwaini Al-Busaid 5 March 1893 25 August 1896
6 Sayyid Khalid bin Barghash Al-Busaid 25 August 1896 27 August 1896 Was a belligerent in the Anglo-Zanzibar War, the shortest war in recorded history.
7 Sayyid Sir Hamoud bin Mohammed Al-Said 27 August 1896 18 July 1902 Issued the final decree abolishing slavery from Zanzibar on 6 April 1897. For this, he was knighted by Queen Victoria.
8 Sayyid Ali bin Hamud Al-Busaid 20 July 1902 9 December 1911 The British First Minister, Mr A. Rogers, served as regent until Ali reached the age of 21 on 7 June 1905.
9 Sayyid Sir Khalifa II bin Harub Al-Said 9 December 1911 9 October 1960 Brother-in-law of Ali ibn Hamud. Oversaw the construction of harbor in Stone Town and tar roads in Pemba.
10 Sayyid Sir Abdullah bin Khalifa Al-Said 9 October 1960 1 July 1963
11 Sayyid Sir Jamshid bin Abdullah Al Said 1 July 1963 12 January 1964 On 10 December 1963, Zanzibar received its independence from the United Kingdom as a constitutional monarchy under Jamshid.
The first sultan of Zanzibar - Majid bin Said Al-Busaid
Sayyid Barghash bin Said Al-Busaid
Sayyid Khalifa I bin Said Al-Busaid
Sayyid Ali bin Said Al-Busaid
Sayyid Hamad bin Thuwaini Al-Busaid
Sayyid Khalid bin Barghash Al-Busaid
Sayyid Hamoud bin Mohammed Al-Said
Sayyid Ali bin Hamud Al-Busaid
Sayyid Khalifa II bin Harub Al-Said
Sayyid Abdullah bin Khalifa Al-Said
Sayyid Jamshid bin Abdullah Al Said
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Paper Reports that Amino Acids Used by Life Are Finely Tuned to Explore "Chemistry Space"
A recent paper in Nature's journal Scientific Reports, "Extraordinarily Adaptive Properties of the Genetically Encoded Amino Acids," has found that the twenty amino acids used by life are finely tuned to explore "chemistry space" and allow for maximal chemical reactions. Considering that this is a technical paper, they give an uncommonly lucid and concise explanation of what they did:
[W]e drew 108 random sets of 20 amino acids from our library of 1913 structures and compared their coverage of three chemical properties: size, charge, and hydrophobicity, to the standard amino acid alphabet. We measured how often the random sets demonstrated better coverage of chemistry space in one or more, two or more, or all three properties. In doing so, we found that better sets were extremely rare. In fact, when examining all three properties simultaneously, we detected only six sets with better coverage out of the 108 possibilities tested.That's quite striking: out of 100 million different sets of twenty amino acids that they measured, only six are better able to explore "chemistry space" than the twenty amino acids that life uses. That suggests that life's set of amino acids is finely tuned to one part in 16 million.
Of course they only looked at three factors -- size, charge, and hydrophobicity. When we consider other properties of amino acids, perhaps our set will turn out to be the best:
While these three dimensions of property space are sufficient to demonstrate the adaptive advantage of the encoded amino acids, they are necessarily reductive and cannot capture all of the structural and energetic information contained in the 'better coverage' sets.They attribute this fine-tuning to natural selection, as their approach is to compare chance and selection as possible explanations of life's set of amino acids:
This is consistent with the hypothesis that natural selection influenced the composition of the encoded amino acid alphabet, contributing one more clue to the much deeper and wider debate regarding the roles of chance versus predictability in the evolution of life.But selection just means it is optimized and not random. They are only comparing two possible models -- selection and chance. They don't consider the fact that intelligent design is another cause that's capable of optimizing features. The question is: Which cause -- natural selection or intelligent design -- optimized this trait? Their paper doesn't address that question.
To do so, you'd have to consider the complexity required to incorporate a new amino acid into life's genetic code. That in turn would require lots of steps: a new codon to encode that amino acid, and new enzymes and RNAs to help process that amino acid during translation. In other words, incorporating a new amino acid into life's genetic code is a multimutation feature. As we explain in Appendix D of Discovering Intelligent Design:
The biochemical language of the genetic code uses short strings of three nucleotides (called codons) to symbolize commands -- including start commands, stop commands, and codons that signify each of the 20 amino acids used in life.Darwinian mechanisms, it's clear, aren't up to the task of generating many of the complex features we see in life.
After the information in DNA is transcribed into mRNA, a series of codons in the mRNA molecule instructs the ribosome which amino acids are to be strung in which order to build a protein. Translation works by using another type of RNA molecule called transfer RNA (tRNA). During translation, tRNA molecules ferry needed amino acids to the ribosome so the protein chain can be assembled.
Each tRNA molecule is linked to a single amino acid on one end, and at the other end exposes three nucleotides (called an anti-codon). At the ribosome, small free-floating pieces of tRNA bind to the mRNA. When the anti-codon on a tRNA molecule binds to matching codons on the mRNA molecule at the ribosome, the amino acids are broken off the tRNA and linked up to build a protein.
For the genetic code to be translated properly, each tRNA molecule must be attached to the proper amino acid that corresponds to its anticodon as specified by the genetic code. If this critical step does not occur, then the language of the genetic code breaks down, and there is no way to convert the information in DNA into properly ordered proteins. So how do tRNA molecules become attached to the right amino acid?
Cells use special proteins called aminoacyl tRNA synthetase (aaRS) enzymes to attach tRNA molecules to the "proper" amino acid under thelanguage of the genetic code. Most cells use 20 different aaRS enzymes, one for each amino acid used in life. These aaRS enzymes are key to ensuring that the genetic code is correctly interpreted in the cell.
Yet these aaRS enzymes themselves are encoded by the genes in the DNA. This forms the essence of a "chicken-egg problem": aaRS enzymes themselves are necessary to perform the very task that constructs them.
How could such an integrated, language-based system arise in a step-by-step fashion? If any component is missing, the genetic information cannot be converted into proteins, and the message is lost. The RNA world is unsatisfactory because it provides no explanation for how the key step of the genetic code -- linking amino acids to the correct tRNA -- could have arisen.
If you're interested in learning more about why that is so, check out Discovering Intelligent Design. Our curriculum is now supplemented with a free online component that makes the material even more easily accessible.
Image: � fotoliaxrender / Dollar Photo Club.
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Jaundice in Newborns
Jaundice is a yellow tint to a newborn's skin and the white part of the eyes. It is a sign that there's too much bilirubin in the baby's blood. This is called hyperbilirubinemia. Most babies with jaundice will get better without treatment, but they should be monitored carefully. If severe jaundice isn't treated, it can lead to serious lifelong problems.
Most babies have physiologic jaundice, which happens because a baby's organs aren't yet able to get rid of excess bilirubin very well. Some babies have breast milk jaundice, which starts from 10 to 14 days after birth. It's harmless and may last throughout breast-feeding. In rare cases, jaundice may be a sign of another condition, such as an infection, a digestive system problem, or blood-type incompatibility with the mother.
eMedicineHealth Medical Reference from Healthwise
To learn more visit Healthwise.org
© 1995-2014 Healthwise, Incorporated. Healthwise, Healthwise for every health decision, and the Healthwise logo are trademarks of Healthwise, Incorporated.
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Science Café Cleveland presents
"Ice Crystal Icing in Turbofan Engines May Explain Loss of Power Events"
NOVEMBER 11, 2013
Turbofan engines powering commercial aircraft have been found to sometimes experience temporary loss of power. While this phenomenon is still not fully understood, one important clue is that these events seem to occur while operating at high altitudes in the vicinity of convective storms, and this suggests that icing may be a factor.
It is suspected that the aircraft are flying through nearly invisible clouds of ice crystals outpouring from the convective storm cells. The theory is that ice crystals are ingested by the engines which causes ice to build up on hardware that is normally significantly warmer than freezing temperature. The ice buildup leads to an inflight, uncommanded loss of power event. This phenomenon is termed ‘ice crystal icing' and is suspected as the cause of over 250 loss of power revenue service events worldwide.
NASA Glenn is the only facility in the world to have successfully tested a full scale engine at simulated high altitude ice crystal icing conditions and in this talk I will discuss how we are doing this and what we have learned so far.
ARTICLES/LINKS OF INFORMATION:
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FEMA and the International Association of Emergency Managers define Emergency Management as; “…the managerial function charged with creating the framework within which communities reduce vulnerability to hazards and cope with disasters.” Butte County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is committed to providing a comprehensive Emergency Management Program supporting all functions of emergency management to build disaster resistant communities.
Emergency Management Functions
Actions taken to stop or avoid an incident.
Measures to reduce the likelihood of occurrence, or reduce the damaging effects of the hazard. These activities should be done prior to an incident.
Preparedness activities increase a community’s ability to respond when a disaster occurs. Emergency response plans, evacuation plans, family communications plan and assembling a family disaster kit are just a few examples of preparedness.
Actions taken immediately before, during and after a disaster to protect human lives and property from damaging effects. For individuals, it is being able to act responsibly and safely to protect yourself and your family from the impacts of a disaster event.
Actions taken to return community to normalcy. For catastrophic events this may take years.
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Cobb earned his Ph.D. degree at the University of Jena in Germany in 1889 and was hired by the USDA in 1907. He was a leader in nematology research and trained the first generation of nematologists in the United States, making him the Father of Nematology in North America. His contributions included advances in understanding nematode anatomy and the description of more than 1,000 species. He developed sampling/extraction techniques and microscopic methods and in 1913 started the publication Contributions to a Science of Nematology. Cobb also was among the authors of the Plant Quarantine Act passed in 1912, stemming from the discovery of a root-knot nematode in a shipment of cherry trees gifted to the United States by the Japanese government in 1910.
(Submitted for publication in July 2008.)
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Also called the “master gland”, the pituitary gland is an important part of the endocrine system. Its purpose is to make sure the body produces the correct type and amount of hormones at all times. This is essential for the body to stay healthy.
1. Endocrine System
The endocrine system works with the nerves to transfer information throughout the body. This information comes in the form of chemicals called hormones that are released in the blood. The blood carrying hormones travels to various organs in the body telling it what to do.
The pituitary gland is the size of a pea and is located at the base of the brain. It is directly connected to the hypothalamus by a small tube called the pituitary stalk.
3. Why We Need Hormones
Every hormone is produced in specific amounts to cause a reaction in the body. An example is the growth hormone. This important hormone tells the body to grow, which effects things such as height and weight. Our body’s organs have to receive direction in the form of hormones to tell it how to grow and keep us healthy. All of the directions come from the tiny pea sized pituitary gland.
4. Inside the Pituitary Gland
The pituitary gland sends out hormones that cause a variety of organs to work properly. The main ones are; adrenocorticotopic hormone, anti-diuretic hormone, growth hormone, follice-stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, prolactin, and thyroid-stimulating hormone. Each of these hormones has its own purpose to keep the body growing and healthy.
The endocrine system also includes other glands and organs that work with the pituitary. These include; thyroid, parathyroids, adrenal glands, pineal body, pancreas, reproductive glands, and the hypothalamus. Each of these is in charge of delivering hormones to different parts of the body and works with the pituitary gland’s role as the “boss” gland.
6. Anterior and Posterior
The anterior (front) of the pituitary gland is also called the adenophyophysis. It sends out hormones to other parts of the endocrine system. The posterior (back) is also called the neurohypophysis. It is less like an organ and works more like a part of the hypothalamus. It is connected directly to the pituitary stalk that leads to the hypothalamus.
7. The Intermediate Lobe
Between the anterior and posterior parts of the pituitary gland is the intermediate lobe. This very small area is responsible for producing the hormone that causes our skin color to darken before we are born.
8. Diseases of the Pituitary
The most common problem with the pituitary gland is when a tumor forms there. This can cause the gland to not work properly. If the pituitary is not working, the rest of the body does not receive the directions it needs to stay healthy. This can affect all areas of the body but may be hard to diagnose at first.
9. The Hypothalamus: Pituitary Gland’s Partner
The hypothalamus is a portion of the brain that is located right above the pituitary gland. This close neighbor works in a partnership with the pituitary by connecting it to the bodies nervous system. Signals from the hypothalamus are what tells the pituitary gland to release hormones. It transfers information to the gland using both hormones and electrical messages.
10. Puberty: The Pituitary Gland’s Role
One of the most important roles that the pituitary gland plays is regulating the reproductive hormones. These start becoming noticeable when a person enters puberty. When a person becomes a certain age, it is the pituitary gland that releases hormones to make the changes that come along with puberty. This makes it possible for the body to reproduce and is the reason that a baby can be created.
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Connect with us:
|February 16 Webinar|
We held a webinar on ‘Climate Vulnerability Reduction Credits – Measuring Results of Adaptation’ on February 16, 2016.
A recording of the webinar can be found here
To access the slides, go here
Assuring Climate Adaptation Happens in Vulnerable Communities
How will the poorest adapt to climate change? Climate change will impact infrastructure, agricultural production, water resources, human health, and ecosystems with potentially devastating consequences to all these systems. Developing countries, while only responsible for a small fraction of historical greenhouse gas emissions, will be hurt the worst.We believe that reducing greenhouse emissions is no longer sufficient; we also need to help communities adapt to climate change by reducing their vulnerability to its harmful effects such as flooding, drought, or extreme weather.
To encourage investment in climate adaptation projects, we’ve created the Vulnerability Reduction Credit, or VRCTM, an economic measure of the effects of such projects in reducing vulnerability. The VRC is a tradeable certificate that a project has met and is meeting its adaptation targets. VRCs are a means to quantifiably assess a project, based on sustained attention to maintaining climate resilience. As such they may be used for monitoring and evaluating projects, prioritizing investments, and could be purchased by parties interested in securing verifiable reductions in human vulnerability.
Depending on how much the climate changes, adaptation needs will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually and will continue to rise. To help get the adaptation process rolling, we are seeking partners for developing VRC projects; in particular, we are seeking to work with organizations whose bottom lines and enterprise models are most immediately and apparently affected by climate change.
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I teach an introductory ninth grade English for Speakers of Other Languages 1 (ESOL 1) class at a Texas high school. For more information about this teaching context, click here.
PRINCIPLE 1: The teacher must create an environment in which students feel proud of their background culture and language and empowered to learn and express themselves in English.
Students who feel ashamed or defensive about their home cultures tend to clash with a teacher who they may see as attacking them or their cultural heritage. Schuman’s Social Distance theory proposes a framework by which the perceived superiority or inferiority of a culture will put up obstacles to language learning and acculturation (as cited by Horwitz, 2008, p. 34). I want to foster healthy student-centered cultural exchange among peers, which may reduce social distance.
Students’ beliefs about language learning also pose a challenge to their acquisition of English. I will assess students’ language learning beliefs and maintain awareness of them, encouraging helpful ideas about language learning and discouraging unhelpful mis-conceptions (Horwitz, 2008).
Also, in accordance with Constructivist theory (Bruner, 1973 as cited by Sardegna, class notes), I intend to allow students to incorporate prior experiences and cultural knowledge into classroom tasks and conversations. Activities with home heritage projects, peer culture interviews, and home mythology PowerPoint presentations can provide opportunities for these sorts of exchanges.
Concerted effort towards including parents in the educational process and parent training in how to look at portfolios and student progress will help to engender family buy-in and increased motivation on the part of the student. I will work with teachers and administrators at the school to provide regular parent involvement nights in which parents can participate in discussions and listen to presentations, panel discussions, and question-and-answer sessions about school policies, assessment procedures, college readiness, and other appropriate topics. Moreover, I invite all parents to meet me in individual parent-teacher meetings in which we can discuss issues that specifically relate to their family’s relationship with the student and their role in the students’ education.
In addition to cultural content, I will create units and lessons around interests and abilities of students when possible. Some texts are determined by the state and local instructional curricula, scope, and sequence; however, I will frame and present those texts in ways that will maximize student interest. I will incorporate those into thematic units with high-interest topics that are relevant to students, such as how to think about debt, the effects of immigration, reasons behind violence, and passion for sports.
PRINCIPLE 2: The teacher must provide opportunities to read, listen to, watch, converse in, and write within a range of contexts that students will encounter inside and outside of school, while trying to instill a love of academic learning in all students (adapted from Strasheim, 1976 as cited in Hadley 2000, p 91).
In the high school classroom, it is easy for students and teachers to forget how practical and helpful language learning can and should be to every part of students’ lives. If a teacher focuses purely on the academic setting, he is doing a huge disservice to students who need to shop, work, do paperwork, translate for family members, communicate with on-line media, read newspapers, read technical documents, and communicate with adults and young people in and outside of school. As Strasheim suggests, a responsible teacher must help students function in all of these settings and others. On the other hand, if a teacher ignores the academic language (CALPS) and academic uses for language, he is condemning students to failure in all areas of education.
I intend to select one or several examples of practical and academic scenarios in which students can practice a variety of language skills in each of the units that I teach. I will utilize classroom computers with Internet access to allow students’ opportunities to learn and/or practice their technological literacy. Included in the diversity of academic background is a huge variation of exposure to computers. Blogging, wikis, PowerPoint presentations, Mind Maps, on-line chat, e-mail, and on-line Web Quests are all examples of opportunities to incorporate text literacy with language literacy. I will include these to varying degrees in each unit of instruction.
Frequent opportunities to engage in pair-work and group work to complete academic tasks will also give students the opportunity to use their emerging conversational skills to experiment and learn from one another. Students may spend five minutes on a brief Think, Pair, Share activity, or they may have a partner or several partners for a multi-week summative project, such as a theatrical performance or a class lesson on a topic such as the effects of immigration. Proficient English-speaking volunteers can assist with these projects at different stages as resources and audience members.
I also intend to require extracurricular involvement of all students. Some students may exempt this requirement based on extenuating family, transportation, or work circumstances, but others should utilize the plentiful opportunities to involve themselves with members of the target culture.
My personal experience while teaching was that students made enormous language gains and improved their perception of the target language culture as they forged relationships with English speakers and practiced authentic communication toward competitive goals (in the case of sports) and common interests.
PRINCIPLE 3: The teacher must promote accuracy in production and understanding through mini-lessons and error correction that target predetermined aspects of language form in the context of high-interest activities, themes, and content.
In accordance with Stesheim’s (1976) third hypothesis, as well as an array of scholars cited by Hadley (2000, p 99), I believe that form-focused instruction and intentional error correction have a valuable place in the classroom. I will design grammar objectives so that they correspond with student needs and with activities and content objectives and themes within lessons and units. Plentiful authentic listening and reading opportunities will build familiarity with the grammar point that we are focusing on, and the context will help to build familiarity with the meaning, purpose, and structure of the grammar point (BridgeTEFL, Youtube video, 2007).
Within communicative lessons, TPRS lessons, and journal responses, I will implement intentional, focused scaffolding, to aid students at using more accurate usage of specific grammatical structures and vocabulary. Detailed notes of my observations of students’ strengths and weaknesses will contribute integrally to the design of these form-focused lessons. These observations will include check lists and anecdotal notes, which will serve as non-graded, formative assessments, and will help in tailoring lessons to the needs of students and capitalizing on their strengths.
PRINCIPLE 4: Provide differentiated instruction that challenges all levels content while not alienating any student, utilizing resources and motivations inherent in the Texas high school setting.
I must always prepare variations within tasks so that beginners and advanced students can achieve success and experience meaningful practice. I must maintain cognizance of school, state, and national standards, objectives, and expectations. Even as the class incorporates a variety of texts, songs, and other stimuli, I will integrate proficiency standards and the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) into my teaching units and lessons. I am very familiar with the ways in which the state and district test my students, and I must help them acquire the skills that they need to succeed on those assessments.
Task based group work, TPRS, song activities, and graphic response options (for students whose writing skills are less developed) can include my lowest-level students without alienating my highest-level students.
PRINCIPLE 5: The class must instill accountability and responsibility in students through interactive alternative assessment, collaborative unit organization, and the teacher’s own modeled behavior.
The students’ role will include responsibility for defining some aspects of the syllabus through silent surveys, in-class voting, and class discussion. As the teacher, I will set boundaries and expectations (with student input). I will be proactive and intentional with lesson plans and quick to give comments and grades on class-work, journals, homework, and portfolios.
Portfolios and group conferencing will give students an opportunity to track their own progress and collaborate with others to recognize the growth and improvement of their peers as well. Regular silent reading and journal writing will put responsibility on students for their practice in informal text-based language use. Regular homework (written and real-world practice) will also encourage student accountability, but students can pass without completing it. Elected/ nominated positions for different roles in the class: new student orientation, date-writer, time-keeper, journal organizer, library checker. Students will be self reporting on book check-out.
The interactive use of portfolios and group conferences will be a major organizing element of the class, as well as providing an opportunity for peer- and self-assessment (Genessee and Upshur, 1996). To ensure that the process is as interactive as possible, students will choose half of the work that goes into the portfolio based on criteria that we compile through a consensus process as a class. As the teacher, I will also select examples of written and recordings of student speech to ensure that the prioritized skills and objectives are demonstrated in the portfolios. The portfolio assessments will be both formative and summative; we will meet regularly in groups of four; during these conferences I will explicitly teach and model ways to react positively and supportively to others’ work.
Moreover, teacher-peer group conferences to analyze and discuss portfolios, independent reading, and other work will be central to the class and be another opportunity for authentic, meaningful communication with a real academic context and purpose. Involve students in a creating consensus on and implementing the policies on behavior, late work, L1 speech, rewards, and special projects in class.
My modeled example through will also be an important element to maintaining a class that takes their tasks and deadlines seriously. Display unit objectives and lesson objectives prominently, and display specific activities and expectations. Clearly mark them to differentiate general goals and objectives from individual activities and expectations.
By implementing these five principles and their corollaries, I expect that students will make significant progress in learning their target language, and their attitudes toward academic learning and the target language culture will remain positive.
Bridge TEFL training video on Youtube. (2007) BridgeLinguatec Inc. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnw3l21pWIc
Hadley, A. O. (2001). Teaching Language in Context (3rd ed.) Boston: Heinle and Heinle.
Horwitz, Elaine. (2008). Becoming a Language Teacher. A practical guide to language learning and teaching.Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
Genesee, F. & Upshur, J.A. (1996) Classroom-based Evaluation in Second Language Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sardegna, Veronica. (2009) Classnotes: EDC 382S, Methods of Foreign Language Education. University of Texas at Austin.
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The Englishman Sir Thomas Browne lived in an era rich in destruction, including constant European wars, plagues, fires and the regicide of Charles the First, as Browne himself witnessed. It is no wonder death and the processes of burial should be the subject of his most celebrated work, Urn Burial—a sometimes archeological, sometimes metaphysical treatise on not only burial customs but what the human race hopes to gain from living regardless of what it leaves behind when dying. Now in our era of natural and financial disaster, where death is often exploited but also hidden more and more, Urn Burial has been reissued as part of the New Directions Pearl Series, which celebrates favorite authors in affordable, easy to carry pocket editions. Their minimalist covers progressively show a rhombus expanding in shape and growing in color—perhaps a nod to the company’s rich catalogue.
His life spanning three-quarters of the 17th Century, Browne, a physician, but also a scientist of sorts with his fingers in philosophy and spirituality, filled his writings with rigorous erudition, footnotes in many languages and references to classical literature and the historical leanings of such peoples as the Chaldeans, the Persians and the Scythians. These referents are sprinkled in the sentences of a stylist whose ornamental language and prose rhythms have caused such literary titans as Emerson, Melville, Woolf, Joyce, Borges, Gass and Sebald to praise him enthusiastically. Of the contents of the Roman urns found in Norfolk, England, Browne says:
In sundry Graves and Sepulchres, we meet with Rings, Coynes, and Chalices; Ancient frugality was so severe, that they allowed no gold to attend the Corps, but only that which served to fasten their teeth. Whether the Opaline stone in this Urne were burnt upon the finger of the dead, or cast into the fire by some affectionate friend, it will consist with either custome. But other incinerable substances were found so fresh, that they could feel no sindge from fire.
The consonance of the c- and f-sounds in the last two sentences sends the stirring suppositions of how the ancients might have acted in light of what was left in the urns careening into the reader’s mind. No archeologist ever took such care to construct such luxurious lines for his readership. Browne, on the level of language as well as inquiry, is not that strict, exacting, stereotypically staunch fusspot of science. With wonderment at the last resting place of the Opaline before its reappearance eons later, this excerpt is a poetic pull at assembling history, not a scientific one. Whether his poetic language rubbed his thought less astringent or not, Browne presents himself as more an interlocutor, a foil reflecting the given light of the sun so others many feel a little less dark in their darkness.
Browne’s inquiries at first range around the text without hope of answer, as his reports on the findings are often terminated with the knowledge of no certain knowledge: “…we hold but a wavering conjecture” and “we hold no authentick account.” Yet from this uncertainty Browne is able to later anchor his treatise with an extravagant philosophy of carpe diem:
It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no further state to come, unto which this seems progressionall, and otherwise made in vaine; Without this accomplishment the naturall expectation and desire of such a state, were but a fallacy in nature.
As Browne details the expedition and the history of our forebears he also steams his looking glass with his own breath. As he curiously contemplates death, more thoughts on death are produced. And yet after asking is there “no further state to come?” Browne finds there is something for the living. His charting of a feeling deep and rich in himself reaches full flavor in the infamous fifth chapter, where the prose bounds and jostles with rhythms, inversions and alliteration. The seer fuels his thought with a faintly Buddhist fatefulness:
Darknesse and light divide the course of time, and oblivion snares with memory, a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest stroaks of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities, miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetfull of evils past, is a mercifull provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting rememberances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions.
We can’t know what is coming but if we can forget what misery may have accompanied our past we can fly into our future a little lighter with only a slight sorrow at time weighing us down. In contrast to the earlier questioning, Browne is very sure-voiced, speaking as the god who might have created the whole enterprise called “existence” that so troubles and entertains indiscriminately. No matter the custom, no matter the “Coynes” stowed in the urns for the ferryman Charon to give them safe passage across the rivers separating living from the dead, the “precious pyres” for the recently departed bodies—Browne seems to say it is what comes before the last breath that holds the most meaning as the words, “Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us. A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death,” seem to subscribe to.
As the sentences accumulate in the fifth chapter, (George Saintsbury in A History of English Prose Rhythm called it “the longest piece, perhaps, of absolutely sublime rhetoric to be found in the prose literature of the world” and W.G. Sebald in his introduction from his own notable novel The Rings of Saturn, described the sentences as “resembl[ing] processions or a funeral cortege in their sheer ceremonial lavishness”) one can feel how Browne himself lived or burned “always with this hard gem-like flame,” as Walter Pater, in his book The Renaissance, would write as an echo of Browne’s fiery phrase above two hundred years later.
The unearthing of the Roman urns fanned those flames for Browne and sent him to construct a response to his bloody era in a style later called “baroque.” If life ends with death and that is all we know and all we can ever know, Browne knew to breathe in life fully and in the breathing to make it beautiful.
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Warning: To complete electrical works you must comply with Electrical Regulations - Click here for more information.
Why Have Wire Colours Changed?
28 years ago the United Kingdom agreed to adopt the colour blue for neutral conductors in flexible cables and flexible cords usually used for non fixed installations. At that time no move was made to harmonize the colours for fixed installations. The rest of Europe however was changing over very quickly. In 1999 it became apparent that a new European standard for wiring and cable colours meant that the UK would have to catch up pretty quickly and change fixed cable colours to suit.
Obviously millions of existing cables had the existing red, black and yellow/green colours installed and to limit the number of installations where new circuit additions would mean mixing the colours, it was agreed that (even though the new regulations did not become compulsory until 31st March 2006) from 31st May 2004 the new cable colours could be used. On this date the Institute of Electrical Engineers published Amendment 2 to British Standard 7671:2001 (The wiring regulations). The amendment specifies the use of new cable colours for all new fixed wiring electrical installations in the UK. These new colours are sometimes referred to as Harmonized colours. They bring the UK more closely in line with practices in mainland Europe.
Complete details on the changes can be found on the IEE web site.
What Have Wire Colours Changed to?
Very simply the changes mean that fixed cables in your home will (if any new circuits are introduced) carry the same colour wires as any flexible cables you have:
- The live Red becomes Brown
- The Neutral Black becomes Blue
- The Earth wires continue to be Green and yellow
Additions to the old cables mean that some installations will have mixed colours within them. A mixed installation is shown below.
You can clearly see that red is connected to the new brown (live), black is connected to the new blue (neutral) and the green and yellow earth stays the same.
All installations where circuits and/or fixed cables have been added and the colours are mixed within the house must carry a warning of such at the fuseboard or consumer unit. The warning must be as similar as possible to the one shown below. Please go to the IEE website using the link above for information regarding the new wiring regulations to 3 phase installations or Extensions or alterations to 3 phase installations.
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May 17, 2008 – 12 Iyar 5768
Annual: Leviticus 25:1 – 26:2 (Etz Hayim, p. 738; Hertz p. 531)
Triennial: Leviticus 25:1 – 25:38 (Etz Hayim, p. 738; Hertz p. 531)
Haftarah: Jeremiah 32:6 – 27 (Etz Hayim, p. 759; Hertz p. 539)
Prepared by Rabbi Joyce Newmark
Teaneck, New Jersey
Torah Portion Summary
God tells Moses to instruct the people about the shemittah, the sabbatical year. Once they had settled in their land, the Israelites were to plant, harvest, and store the produce of their fields for six years. During the seventh year of the cycle, the shemittah, they were not to plant or harvest or to store produce that grew on its own. However, everyone was free to take and eat whatever did grow on its own.
After seven of these seven-year cycles, the 50th year was designated the yoveil. Not only was farming prohibited, but all Israelite slaves were to be freed and any land sold during the previous 49 years was to revert to its original owners – that is, land was never actually sold, but only leased until the next yoveil.
When a person had to sell all or part of his land due to financial need, his relatives were to redeem what he had sold. Houses in walled cities could be redeemed for a year from the date of sale and then passed permanently to the buyer. Houses outside these walled cities and houses in the cities of the Levites could not be sold permanently – they remained subject to redemption and reverted to the original owners at the yoveil.
If a person became poor, he was to be loaned money at no interest. If this was not sufficient to allow him to recover financially, he could become an indentured servant who would be set free at the yoveil. Non-Israelite slaves were to be considered permanent possessions.
The parashah concludes with the repetition of the commandments not to make or worship idols and to keep Shabbat.
1. Wronging With Money
When you sell property to your neighbor or buy any from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. (Vayikra 25:14)
- This refers to wronging in matters of money. (Rashi [Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, 1040-1105, France])
- One may not mix produce with produce, even new with new. And one need not say: new into old. In truth, for wine they permitted mixing hard (strong) with soft (weak) because this improves it. The sediment of one wine may not be mixed with another wine, but one may give another the sediment [from that vintage]. If water becomes mixed in one’s wine, one may not sell it in a store unless one gives notice (that this has occurred); nor may one sell it to a merchant – even though one gives notice – as this is a set-up for deception. In a place where it is customary to put water in wine, it may be put in the wine. (Mishnah Baba Metzia 4:11)
- One may not paint [and thus improve the appearance of] a person, an animal, or a utensil. For example, one does not dye the hair of an old slave who is for sale in order to make him look younger; add bran to an animal’s drink in order to raise its hair and thus make it look fatter; . . . or paint old utensils in order to make them look new. One may not inflate [an animal’s] intestines in order to make it look fatter and broader. One may not soak meat in water in order to make it look pale and fat. (Shulhan Arukh, Hoshen Mishpat 228:9)
- Rabbi Yehuda says: a shopkeeper may not distribute parched corn or nuts to children, because he accustoms them to come to him; but the sages permit this. The merchant shall not sell at less than the market price; but the sages say: May the merchant be remembered for good! (Mishnah Baba Metzia 4:12)
- It is very easy for a person to fall prey to sin in regard to deceiving a customer. A person might consider it proper to attempt to make his merchandise attractive and to use sales talk on his customers to make them more receptive. But if a person is not careful, he will violate the prohibition against wronging others. . . . If you ask: “How is it possible not to try to influence a prospective customer to buy my merchandise?” You should know that there is a big distinction in the methods you might use. When you try to show a customer the true value and beauty of an article, it is good and proper. But whatever is done to conceal the defects of an item is deceitful and forbidden. This is a basic principle in business integrity. (Mesilat Yesharim [Rabbi Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, 1707-1746, Italy])
Sparks for Discussion
As Rashi points out, the rabbis expand this verse, which applies to the transfer of property between Jews, to all business dealings (including those between Jews and non-Jews). A grocer arranges boxes of strawberries with the plump, ripe berries on top and misshapen, unripe ones underneath. Is this wrong? A used car dealer has the cars on his lot detailed (completely cleaned inside and out) and puts new, inexpensive tires on them, but he doesn’t turn back the odometer. Is this wrong? A fast food chain offers a toy based on a current move with its kids’ meals and advertises the promotion on cartoon shows. Is this wrong? What common business practices can you think of that fit the Torah’s definition of wronging? Is it possible to operate a business today without violating these laws?
2. Wronging With Words
Do not wrong one another, but fear your God; for I the Lord am your God. (Vayikra 25:17)
- Here it warns against wronging by words, i.e. that you should not provoke your fellow or give him advice that is not appropriate for him... And if you should ask, “Who knows if I intended evil?” Therefore it is said, but fear your God; He who knows the thoughts [of human beings], He knows... (Rashi [Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, 1040-1105, France])
- For example: If a person is a penitent, you should not say to him, “Remember the way you used to act.” If he is the son of proselytes, he should not be taunted with “Remember the way your fathers acted.” If he is a proselyte and comes to study Torah, you should not say to him, “Shall the mouth that ate unclean and forbidden food, abominable and creeping things, come to study the Torah, which was uttered by the mouth of the Almighty?” If a person is visited by suffering, afflicted with disease, or has just now had to bury his children, you should not speak to him as Job’s companions spoke: “Is not your piety your confidence, your integrity your hope? Think now, what innocent man ever perished? When have the upright been destroyed?” (Job 4:6-7) If ass drivers ask to buy grain from him, he should not say to them, “Go to So-and-so, who sells grain,” knowing full well that So-and-so has never done any such thing. Rabbi Judah said: He should also not feign interest in a purchase when he has no money, since this is a matter turned over to the heart, and of everything turned over to the heart, it is written, but fear your God.
Rabbi Yohanan said on the authority of Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai: Wronging through speech is more heinous than wronging in money matters. For of the first, it is written, but fear your God, whereas of the second, but fear your God is not written. Rabbi Eleazar said: The first affects a victim’s very person; the second only his money. Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahmani said: For the second restoration is possible; but not for the first. (Talmud Baba Metzia 58b)
- Any words that will distress someone or hurt his feelings are forbidden. Whatever you would not want someone to say to you, do not say to someone else. This rule should be remembered constantly; careless words cause much pain and suffering. (Pele Yoetz [Rabbi Eliezer Papo, 1785-1826, Bulgaria])
Sparks for Discussion
Rabbi Yohanan says that wronging with words is worse than wronging with money. Do you agree? How far should a person go to avoid hurting another’s feelings?
The rabbis prohibit a person who has no intention of buying from asking a merchant the price of his goods. Why do you think they did this? It is not uncommon today for a person planning to make a major purchase to visit local retailers to test drive cars or compare different big-screen TVs or even to try on many pairs of expensive shoes. Once the person knows exactly what he wants, he searches the internet to find the lowest price. Is this “wronging with words?” Do you think it is wrong?
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| 0.968982 | 2,065 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Block the Sun, Not the Fun
|Program Title||Block the Sun, Not the Fun|
|Purpose||Designed to enhance and promote sun protective behaviors at child care centers. (1999)|
|Program Focus||Awareness building and Behavior Modification|
|Population Focus||Sun-exposed individuals|
|Age||Children (0-10 years)|
|Race/Ethnicity||White, not of Hispanic or Latino origin|
|Setting||Day care / Preschool|
|Funded by||NCI (Grant number(s): CA59202)|
The program aims to improve sun protection of children through day care staff while at child care centers. Other goals include improving the sun protection of children by their parents and educating children about sun protection. The intervention consisted of two components:
1) Workshops with day care and preschool staff members which include the following:
- A dermatologist's presentation on the relationship between sun exposure and skin cancer
- A presentation and question-and-answer period with a Department of Social Services licensing administrator
- A session for developing a skin cancer prevention plan
- Participation in children's activities promoting sun protection
2) Parent packets that include brochures and learning activities to do with children
Community Preventive Services Task Force Finding
About the Study
The intervention was evaluated in a randomized control trial of 27 preschools and day care centers. Thirteen centers participated in the intervention, while 14 were assigned to a wait-list control group.
- At pre-test, 23% of the directors in the intervention group reported they applied sunscreen year round while 50% of them reported doing so at post-test (p<0.004).
- At post-test, 100% of school directors in the intervention group vs. 57% in the control group (p<.05) reported sending sun protection materials home with parents.
- At post-test, 100% of school directors in the intervention group vs. 64% in the control group (p<0.05) reported they intended to apply sunscreen to children's exposed skin on sunny days when snow was on the ground.
- At post-test, school directors in the intervention group scored significantly (p<0.01) better on an assessment of sun protection knowledge and attitudes.
- At post-test, parents in the intervention and control groups did not differ in sun protective practices for their children or on sun protection knowledge and attitudes.
School Directors Reporting Year-Round Sunscreen Application
Directors Reporting Sending Sun Protection Materials Home With Parents
Crane, L.A., Schneider, L.S., Yohn, J.J., Morelli, J.G., & Plomer, K.D. (1999). Block the sun, not the fun: Evaluation of a skin cancer prevention program for child care centers. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 17, 31-37.
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://rtips.cancer.gov/rtips/programDetails.do?programId=281421
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| 0.887647 | 599 | 2.5625 | 3 |
PETRA, Jordan (May. 24)
Here’s some good news from the Middle East: Iran and Israel, bitter enemies, need no “Open Sesame” magic to be able to cooperate on an advanced scientific project. In Alaan, a town just north of Amman — and at a comfortable remove from the spotlight thrown by political conflicts — representatives of the two countries are involved in developing SESAME, an acronym for Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East.
It’s a rare and possibly unique example of scientific cooperation between Israel, Iran and other countries with which Israel has no ties, such as Pakistan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
Other members are Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and Turkey. Libya is expected to join soon as an observer.
“The political importance of the project cannot be underestimated,” professor Khaled Toukan, Jordan’s minister of education and the project’s acting director, told JTA.
“Scientists in the region work together in a spirit of cooperation for the sake of developing the Middle East,” Toukan said. He was in Petra for the Conference of Nobel Laureates, which convened in that ancient Nabatean town last week.
SESAME, the Middle East’s first major international research center, is a synchrotron accelerator. It uses magnets to create a circular path for electrons traveling at nearly the speed of light, producing a beam of bright ultraviolet and X-ray light, about the diameter of a human hair, that is directed down beam lines to end stations.
“These beam lines are so much stronger than the known X-rays that they open up new options for scientific research,” professor Moshe Deutsch, chairman of Israel’s national council for synchrotron radiation and one of two Israeli participants in SESAME, told JTA.
SESAME is exepcted to contribute to a wide range of scientific research, including structural molecular biology, molecular environmental science, X-ray imaging, archeological microanalysis, materials characterization and clinical medical applications.
Synchrotron radiation is widely used in materials science and biomedical applications, including lithography for computer chips, absorption and scattering measurements and high-pressure applications to create artificial diamonds and other substances.
An international synchrotron-light source in the Middle East was first proposed in 1997, when peace seemed to be on the way. European and Middle Eastern scientists worked together, and with the contribution of an old German synchrotron, SESAME got underway.
The annual budget is anticipated to be between $4 million and $8 million.
The model for SESAME was the CERN Laboratory, near Geneva. It was founded as a multinational consortium after World War II in an effort to bring former enemy countries in Europe closer, and now functions under the auspices of UNESCO.
“It succeeded beyond any expectation, and is now the world’s leading high-energy physics laboratory,” Deutsch said.
One Israeli newspaper recently came out with a headline that Israeli scientists were helping with Iran’s and Egypt’s nuclear programs.
“This is absolutely false,” Deutsch said. “The synchrotron can have no military use.”
But it can have immense political implications. All scientists — including the Iranians — were empowered by their governments; in fact, they are their governments’ official representatives on the council, which meets in the region every few months. In other words, it’s not merely an occasional collaboration between scientists, but rather official cooperation between the countries concerned, regardless of political animosities.
How is that possible?
“All participants deal only with common scientific ground and nothing else,” Deutsch said.
Israel’s other representative to the council, Eliezer Rabinovici of Hebrew University, is a theoretical physicist in a field that doesn’t overlap with synchrotrons, so his own research won’t derive any direct benefit from SESAME. Nevertheless, Rabinovici is an enthusiastic partner.
“I have been with SESAME because I believe we should contribute to our environment to advance peace and create a dialogue designed to break stereotypes,” he said.
Rabinovici said that as a physicist he believed in the “parallel universe: theory, which posits a hypothetical universe that exists separately from our own. Some theories of physics postulate the existence of many parallel
universes, possibly an infinite number.
” Meeting the other scientists was a way of satisfying curiosity about the ‘parallel universe,’ ” he said. But, he noted, “we leave the political discussions for coffee breaks.”
Why did Iran chose to participate in the project along with Israel?
“Iran used to be considered a villain in the world scientific community,” Deutsch said. “For Iran, this is a way of getting out of isolation, but the scientific benefits of the project per se are a good enough reason.”
Deutsch’s comments were affirmed by his Iranian colleague, Reza Mansouri, vice minister for research at Iran’s Ministry of Science, Research and Technology.
Contacted via e-mail, Mansouri told JTA that “international and regional scientific collaboration is one of the recommendations of science policy in Iran. It is then too natural to collaborate in this project.”
Asked if Iran’s participation together with Israel had any political significance, Mansouri replied with a brief but decisive “No!”
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://www.jta.org/2005/05/25/archive/open-sesame-israel-and-its-foes-work-together-on-science-project
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| 0.945424 | 1,186 | 2.96875 | 3 |
The outcomes of our social behavior are clear and present just about every minute of every day — in fact, many of us publish them online rather obsessively (thanks, Facebook; thanks, Twitter). But the biological sources guiding these interactions remain hidden from plain view. An interdisciplinary theme program at the 25th APS Annual Convention burrowed into the brain for a look at these underlying social roots.
Shinobu Kitayama of the University of Michigan has documented signs of cultural differences embedded in the brain. Years ago, in a monster 1991 paper published in Psychological Review, he observed that Westerners tend to have a stronger sense of independence and personal self while Easterners tend to view society from a more holistic perspective. As in other fields of psychology, this research has tested brain responses.
“Now it’s very clear that cultural differences can be demonstrated at the level of the brain — and sometimes even more clear than you can show with behaviors,” he said.
One exciting new development in this work concerns interactions between culture and genes. Lately, Kitayama tested the role of genetics in these differences. Focusing on a dopamine receptor gene called DRD4, he found that people with high-dopamine variants showed significantly stronger cultural differences than low-dopamine types. In other words, culture might be carried by a genetic minority.
Social cognition researcher and APS Past President Susan T. Fiske of Princeton University has made her own transition into the biological bases of behavior. In older work, Fiske, an APS past president, found time and again that people all over the world quickly deduce a person’s level of warmth (i.e., friend or enemy) and competence (i.e., ability to act on intentions). Recently Fiske has sought support for these universal responses in neuroimaging studies.
“Part of what propelled us into the neuro dimension was thinking that, if this is so basic — who’s with me, who’s against me, who’s more competent and less competent than me — there have to be neural signatures of this,” she said.
In work published in a 2006 paper in Psychological Science, Fiske gathered functional imaging data from participants viewing photographs of faces. She found activation in the medial prefrontal cortex — considered necessary for social cognition — for all photographs except those representing the low-warmth, low-competence group that includes the homeless or addicts. The work gives neural evidence that extreme out-groups might be dehumanized in our perception of them. Her lab’s more recent work shows that cooperative goals can re-humanize out-groups.
Eddie Harmon-Jones of the University of New South Wales in Australia also studies the brain to better understand social emotions — particularly anger.
In a number of studies, Harmon-Jones and collaborators have found that activity in the left prefrontal cortex increases during anger. This result goes against traditional notions of affective asymmetry, which ties positive emotions to the left hemisphere and unpleasant ones to the right. However, it fits with motivational asymmetry, which links the left side of the brain with approach and the right side with withdrawal.
Harmon-Jones has used a technique called transcranial direct current stimulation to draw this insight. In these lab experiments, participants are insulted while various parts of the brain are stimulated. When the stimulation increases activity in the left prefrontal region, the anger produces the most aggression (or approach motivation).
Jennifer Bartz of McGill University in Canada discussed the role of the neurohormone oxytocin in helping people form social attachments. Oxytocin has been called the “love hormone” for its documented role in facilitating such behaviors as trust, altruism, and generosity.
But, Bartz cautioned, nuance is important when it comes to understanding the social effects of oxytocin. In a 2010 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, for instance, she and others reported that the effect of oxytocin on memories of maternal care and closeness in childhood depended on a person’s attachment style, with oxytocin administration positively biasing such memories in securely attached individauls, but negatively biasing such memories in anxiously attached individuals. In another study, published in Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, she and her colleagues found that oxytocin actually decreased trust in highly anxiously attached participants. In her recent review, she and her colleagues found that roughly 60 percent of the reported social effects of oxytocin are moderated by features of the person or social context, with a small minority of those studies showing “anti-social” effects. These findings raise the question of whether oxytocin is really a love hormone.
“If we expand our definition of love and think about all the intricacies and the complexities of love, and that it’s not always so pretty, in fact oxytocin may be the hormone of love,” she said. “But it certainly is not a love potion.”
The outskirts of the social spectrum was discussed by University of Chicago’s John T. Cacioppo, APS past president and a leading voice on loneliness. His recent work has shown the biological foundation of social isolation. In recent twin studies, done in conjunction with Dutch researcher Dorret Boomsma, Cacioppo and collaborators have pegged the heritability of loneliness at about 50 percent.
Cacioppo and colleagues have also found that the social environment seems to have a direct impact on immune systems. Since people in socially isolated circumstances are more likely to be exposed to germs than viruses, genes that bias the immune system to protect against bacterial rather than viral invasions are more likely to be turned on.
“The genes are like the keyboard on which the song of life is played, but the pianist is the social environment,” he said. “It helps determine which genes are turned on or off.”
Bartels, M., Cacioppo, J. T., Hudziak, J. J., & Boomsma, D. I. (2008). Genetic and environmental contributions to stability in loneliness throughout childhood. American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics, 3, 385–391.
Bartz, J. A., Zaki, J., Ochsner, K. N., Bolger, N., Kolevzon, A., Ludwig, N., & Lydon, J. E. (2010). Effects of oxytocin on recollections of maternal care and closeness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 21371–21375.
Harmon-Jones, E., Gable, P. A., & Peterson, C. K. (2010). The role of asymmetric frontal cortical activity in emotion-related phenomena: A review and update. Biological Psychology, 84, 451–462. DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2009.08.010
Hortensius, R., Schutter, D. J. L. G., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2012). When anger leads to aggression: Induction of relative left frontal cortical activity with transcranial direct current stimulation increases the anger-aggression relationship. Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience, 7, 342–347. DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsr012
Harris, L. T., & Fiske, S. T. (2006). Dehumanizing the lowest of the low neuroimaging responses to extreme out-groups. Psychological Science,10, 847–853.
Kitayama, S., & Uskul, A. K. (2011). Culture, mind, and the brain: Current evidence and future. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 419–449.
Leave a comment below and continue the conversation.
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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| 0.912804 | 1,633 | 2.8125 | 3 |
When the PS3 was launched Sony included support for what was called The Open Platform. The Open Platform supported the ability to launch a Linux bootloader via what was called the Other Os from the XMB. Although the Hypervisor (GameOS) prevented full access to the system components when the Linux OS made a hardware call (i.e. such as the Reality Synthesizer) , it did allow access to the Cell Broadband Engine and 7 of the 9 processing elements being made available for use (1 reserved for system use, 1 is disabled) which for the technology involved was unheard of at the price point.
Over a relatively short period of time, the PS3 Linux side of things went from being a utilized as a secondary computer with various distributions being available, (such as YDL by Fixstars formerly Terra Soft Solutions being available at launch) to being used as a supercomputer to utilize the amazing processing power of the other elements in Cell Broadband engine known as the Synergistic Processing Elements (SPE’s). UMass Dartmouth Physics Professor Gaurav Khanna and UMass Dartmouth Principal Investigator Chris Poulin created a step by step guide on how to use the PS3 for supercomputing, and advanced their research on Binary Black Hole Coalescence using Perturbation Theory by building a 16 node PS3 cluster.
Researchers who were renting supercomputer time by the hour now had a viable option to build their own supercomputer and advance their projects. NC State’s Dr. Frank Mueller created an 8 cluster PS3 supercomputer, the first in academia for students to use in research.
And even recently a real-time H.264 encoding solution such as Fixstars CodecSys Personal emerged and the power of the Cell Broadband Engine via the PS3 entered the commercial arena. All of these examples generated amazing publicity for Sony and served to distance itself in a niche way from it’s other console competition. PS3’s were now ending up in places that they would not normally have been before.
With the announcement of the PS3 slim, it was mentioned that the ability to boot to an Other OS had been removed. This caused concern and questions as to why this was done: Was it cost, a security hole being removed, what would happen to current PS3’s or was it just a corporate decision?
The earliest answers we were given came from an interview with John Koller, Sony’s Director of Hardware Marketing. In a conversation with ars technica, he was asked about why the ability to install Linux was removed. His answer was:
There are a couple of reasons. We felt we wanted to move forward with the OS we have now. If anyone wants to use previous models and change the OS, they can do so. We wanted to standardize our OS.
Sometime later, an article surfaced on Games I like about a posting made on the Offical Playstation 2 Linux Community forum by a Sony representative that has since mysteriously disappeared. Thankfully the details of the conversation were captured. In response to an unhappy forum poster, a representative stated the following:
I’m sorry that you are frustrated by the lack of comment specifically regarding the withdrawal of support for Other OS on the new PS3 slim. The reasons are simple: The PS3 Slim is a major cost reduction involving many changes to hardware components in the PS3 design. In order to offer the OtherOS install, SCE would need to continue to maintain the OtherOS hypervisor drivers for any significant hardware changes – this costs SCE. One of our key objectives with the new model is to pass on cost savings to the consumer with a lower retail price. Unfortunately in this case the cost of OtherOS install did not fit with the wider objective to offer a lower cost PS3.
This was further substantiated by an article on Av Watch, by Akira Takase. When asked about the lack of the Other OS on the PS3 Slim, how it compared to the 80gb PS3 and how it affected Linux and companies like Fixstars, Takase-san stated that (rough translation):
There would be no time in the future when the Other Os would be moved from those models (CECHL00)
He also commented on security being an issue by saying (rough translation)
That with respect to the Other OS security becomes the hole, but with the PS3 very firm security measures are being done, presently there is no such problem. If anything, support power is lightened
On the Fixstars message board forums, Kai Staats (Fixstars) explained this in even greater detail in one of his many and very informative posts. I would definitely suggest you read them if you have time but here is one important quote:
Sony was quite diligent about testing, and with each new rev of the GameOS
(which acts as the hypervisor for Linux) there was a battery of tests. Often
the GameOS had to be modified to support things which otherwise broke in
Linux, so it is not a one-way street. GameOS affects Linux, and Linux affects
So it would appear that the decision was 100% cost based. This is certainly understandable from a fiscal perspective. Drive down the cost, in essence starts the console wars all over again, placing Sony in an excellent position. It is sad though that access to the Cell Broadband Engine had to be removed as it was truly pushing the limits of what could be done with the SPE’s both commercially and academically. With the price drop affecting all PS3 product lines, acquiring one of the older units is going to be a challenge (if anyone needs assistance in locating one for research, please email me)
So will the Other OS will return? Maybe. Sony recently unveiled the Academic PS3 Dev Kit. Could this lead to the return of the Other OS on a one to one basis? It’s certainly possible that drivers could be written for the change in hardware and then submitted to Sony. If feedback is strong enough they could allow the needed change to the hypervisor code. Time will tell…
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| 0.968679 | 1,248 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Did You Know?
Facts, Figures & Folklore
About Ramadan &
the Islamic Faith
July 24 : 08 days to Ramadan*
Did you know that health experts estimate food consumption actually increases 50 percent during the month of Ramadan?
Did you know that according to a government-run survey in Tunisia, 59 percent of women and 35 percent of men gained weight during Ramadan, despite fasting for some 14 hours a day?
Observed by more than one billion Muslims around the world, the month of Ramadan is a time for spiritual purification achieved through fasting, self-sacrifice and prayers. We’ll be presenting a new “Did You Know?” fact each day as we countdown to Ramadan!*
*Please Note: According to Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) the first day of fasting in North America would be Monday, August 1, 2011. Elsewhere depends where you live.
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| 0.937958 | 190 | 2.640625 | 3 |
When the door behind which the Smithsonian’s dermestids go about their daily business is opened, the first thing you do is recoil—not at the sight, because you haven’t had time to take in what you’re seeing, but at the stink...odor...stench. You need a word for the sweet, foul aroma, and ordinary English lets you down. Metaphors aren’t much better. The smell, which emanates primarily from the beetles’ dung, is an invisible fog that seeps into the soul (and worse, into your clothes). It’s a wall that stops you in your tracks. It’s a linebacker who tackles you and won’t let go. Won’t let go for hours, in fact. Much later on and miles away, people may sniff discreetly in your presence, but no one will dare ask where you’ve been.
Your eyes adjust, even if your nose doesn’t. In one of two environmentally controlled tanks fashioned from converted walk-in freezers, pieces of dried animal flesh—reddish, brownish, grayish—are set out in tubs on shelves, and the swarming, single-minded dermestids are guests at a round-the-clock feast.
The dermestids are eating in the service of science. Their function is to reduce new animal specimens to skeletons, and at this they are specialists. They can clean a tiny shrew, for example, without damaging the delicate bones the way chemicals and enzymes can. The dermestids in this lab help prepare thousands of specimens a year for the research work of scientists at institutions around the world and of Smithsonian zoologists. (When some of the beetles escape their quarters along the floor and scoot past your shoes, you resist the impulse to stomp only because they’re family.) Zoology (vertebrate and invertebrate), entomology and botany are all research disciplines within the Smithsonian’s Department of Systematic Biology, the branch of biology that explores the diversity of living things by identifying and classifying them and by working out the relationships between them.
Systematics has traditionally flourished at the Smithsonian, thanks to the immense collections of organisms the Institution has built up throughout its history. There are, for example, 35 million insect specimens belonging to the National Museum of Natural History. That’s the largest (and still growing) collection in the United States, and rivals the collection of the British Museum for being the largest in the world. The specimens range from microscopic size through insects too tiny to be pierced by a pin to beetles weighing several ounces, moths with the wingspans of small birds and stick insects more than a foot in length.
Our collections—not just of insects, but of birds and fish and mammals—are like great databases, capable of continuous growth and extension, to be visited and revisited and understood anew as research adds to our knowledge. Smithsonian scientists do research not just for immediate practical use, such as containing an agricultural infestation or an outbreak of disease, but to gather data that can be stored like seeds against some future day when they will yield a harvest of understanding.
The number of species in the world may exceed 10 million (humbling thought: there are many hundreds of thousands of species of beetles alone!), but fewer than two million of them have scientific names. So if we are ever to understand fully the world’s biodiversity, a staggering project of description and classification—of systematics—lies ahead. That work builds on a tradition far older than the Smithsonian. You can trace it back fancifully to the morning in Eden when God brought the anonymous animals to Adam and had him assign them names. Adam’s task then is humanity’s task still—to comprehend the living diversity of the world, and to take responsibility for it.
By Lawrence M. Small, Secretary
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http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/they-eat-to-serve-49644306/
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| 0.934455 | 809 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Manipulating Lines in a Word 2007 Table
You can use the Table Tools Design tab in Word 2007 to change the appearance of lines, or borders, in your tables. After you add lines, you can format their styles, weights, and colors.
You can also remove unnecessary lines. For example, you could create a one-column, two-row table to put a picture and its caption in your text.
Setting line styles in a Word 2007 table
Select the lines you want to change in your table.
The Table Tools Design tab appears.
Click the Borders command button.
This button is located on the right side of the Table Styles group in the Design tab. A drop-down menu appears, from which you can choose where the lines go.
Click the Style button to set the line style.
This is the top button on the left side of the Draw Borders group.
Click the Weight button to set the line width.
This is the middle button on the left side of the Draw Borders group.
Click the Color button to set the line color.
This is the bottom button on the left side of the Draw Borders group.
The border changes that you make apply to whichever part of the table is selected.
Removing lines from a Word 2007 table
Select the table.
The Table Tools Design tab appears on the Ribbon.
Click the Borders command button to display the Borders menu.
This button is located in the Table Styles group.
Choose No Border.
Word removes the table’s borders.
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| 0.827988 | 318 | 2.640625 | 3 |
First-Aid for Poisoning
Most poisonings are preventable, and every effort should be made to poison-proof your home. However, if someone in your home is exposed to a poison the following information is intended to help you do the right thing as quickly as possible.
Act quickly. Action is the most important factor in first aid if you suspect poisoning.
Before You Call for Help:
Poisonous Fumes or Gases
Immediately carry or drag the person to fresh air. Minimize your exposure to the fumes. If the victim is not breathing, start artificial respiration immediately and continue it until the victim is breathing or help arrives. Send someone for help as quickly as possible.
Poisons on the skin
Brush off any dry poisons and flood the involved parts with large amounts of plain water. Then wash the skin with bar soap and water and rinse. Remove and discard all affected clothing.
Poisons in the Eye
Pour water from a glass on the bridge of the patient's eye and allow water to flood the eye gently for 15 minutes. Use plain lukewarm water. Do not allow the victim to rub his/her eyes.
Look into the victim's mouth and remove all tablets, powder or any material that is present. Examine the mouth for cuts, burns, swelling, unusual coloring or odor. Rinse and wipe out the mouth with a cloth.
Calling for Help
Call the Louisiana Poison Control Center or your doctor.
Louisiana Poison Control Center
(If you live outside Louisiana, find the number for your local poison control center and keep it in the front of your phonebook or another easy-to-access location.
When calling the Poison Control Center:
Identify yourself and give your relationship to the patient. Give your phone number in case your call is disconnected.
Describe the patient by name, age and weight.
If Possible, have the container or poison in your hand and identify as best you can:
What was taken?
When was it taken?
How much was taken?
How is the patient acting?
Be prepared to answer any questions asked.
Follow the advice given by the Poison Control Center or doctor.
How to Produce Vomiting
The most important item to have in your home when poisoning occurs is Ipecac syrup. Ipecac is a plant extract that when swallowed causes vomiting. Vomiting will remove the poison from the stomach. Your doctor or Poison Control Center may not always recommend using Ipecac syrup. Do not use Ipecac without the advice of a doctor or the Poison Control Center.
Remember: Never produce vomiting unless instructed to do so! This is especially important if the patient has swallowed petroleum products such as gasoline, cleaning fluids and lighter fluids.
Never produce vomiting if the patient:
Is drowsy or unconscious.
Is having convulsions (fits).
Has swallowed a strong corrosive such as Drano, Liquid Plumber or acids. If this occurs, give liquids only.
If you are instructed to use Ipecac syrup to produce vomiting:
Give one tablespoonful (15cc) to young children 1 to 12 years of age, and two tablespoonfuls (30cc) to older children and adults. Always consult with your doctor or the Poison Control Center before giving Ipecac syrup to a child under the age of 1.
Follow the dose with a 4 to 8 ounce glass of water or juice. Encourage the patient to drink more fluids, if possible.
Do not allow the patient to lie down. Keep him/her active.
If the patient hasn't vomited within 15 to 20 minutes, give a second dose and another glass of liquid.
If you come to the hospital, bring the poison and the container with you. Bring any stomach contents you collect from vomiting.
Antidotes that are recommended on many product labels might be outdated or incorrect. In addition, salt water, mustard and water and many other home remedies are ineffective and may be dangerous. DON'T USE THEM.
Don't give the patient coffee, alcohol, stimulants or other drugs.
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| 0.905946 | 848 | 3.125 | 3 |
For athletes, plantar fasciitis is one of the most common sources of heel pain. The plantar fascia is a ligament that connects your heel bone to your toes. Strain to the fascia weakens it, causing pain and swelling in the heel. It is a problem that plagues regular exercisers as well as football players, tennis players, soccer players and basketball players every day.
- High arches or flat feet
- Working, running or standing on hard surfaces
- Being overweight
- Tight Achilles tendons
- Tight calves
- Weak inside edge of foot, causing roll-in (pronation)
Aside from rest and ice, you can take anti-inflammatories, such as ibuprofen, naproxen or aspirin (consult your doctor first) to help with an acute case. I take a standpoint of prevention. There are several defensive approaches.
First, it is important to do several stretches every day.
- Hero’s Pose, toes tucked: Kneel with your toes tucked under and sit back on your heels. If you have tight knees or injuries to the knees, roll up a towel behind the knees to keep from stretching the knee joint too much. This will open the plantar fascia under the toes and deep into the Achilles tendon, as well as the calf. Hold the pose for two minutes.
- Hero’s Pose, toes untucked: Kneel with your toes untucked this time, the same as above. Doing this variation of the pose will help to stretch the top of the foot creating balance in flexibility, as well as opening the muscles of the shin. Make sure your heels point straight up to the sky to protect the knees. Hold for two minutes.
- Downward-Facing Dog: Put your body in the shape of an upside down “V,” hands shoulder-width apart, fingers spread, hands flat, feet hip-width apart and parallel. Once you get a flat back, focus on sinking into each calf and holding the stretch for several breaths.
- Perfect lunge forward shift: In a lunge position with right knee forward in a 90-degree angle and left leg shooting back straight, make sure your left heel points straight up to the sky so you are on all five toes and are not putting strain on the knee. Keep your arms out to the side like you are walking a tightrope to help your balance. Push off the back toe, shifting your body forward (keep your front knee in a 90-degree angle) 20 times to stretch and strengthen the toes, foot, ankle, Achilles tendon and calf. Don’t give up. You will LOVE IT! Repeat on the other side.
A secret yoga technique I recommend to many of my professional players is Healthy Toes. It is a gel-like piece of equipment that you put between each of your toes to stretch the toes apart. It does not hurt and makes a huge difference. Sleep with these every night. Trust me, it works, and you have nothing to lose by trying. Shh! It’s a yogi secret.
These easy yoga moves and tips will help you prevent plantar fasciitis and keep you strong, flexible and powerful.
Watch Gwen Lawrence’s Fit Body Yoga workout online at GaiamTV.com.
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| 0.917954 | 692 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Basic Business Cents: Improve your decison-making process
I have a friend who used to become so stressed when faced with a decision at work that he became physically ill. His doctor finally advised him to resign from his position and he retired early. That is an unusual case and most of us are much luckier when faced with decisions.
You make many decisions every day. Some are easy, some are challenging, and some are difficult. Some are of little consequence, and some are very important. Some of you find making decisions easy and some find it very stressful. No matter the conditions, higher quality, more timely, and easier decisions can be made with a standard process that you follow on a regular basis. Acronyms are sometimes useful in aiding our memory of the steps of a process, such as the CADET Decision-Making Process.
C. Classify the Type of Decision. Some decisions must be made instantly because time demands an immediate decision. In this case, you must rely on your experience, intuition, and training and make the best decision that you can. When you have more time, you can categorize your decision into one of three types. If it is of little consequence, you can again use your experience, intuition, and training and make the decision and go on to more important work. If it is more important or challenging, then walk through the CADET Process in your mind and make the decision. It is useful to make a chart of the pros and cons of the decision, either on a flip chart or white board if in a group, or simply on a plain sheet of paper if by yourself. If the decision is critically important, then research the problem necessitating the decision and analyze the data collected on the consequences of various decisions.
A. Identify and evaluate Alternative Solutions. You might go to the people directly involved with or affected by the decision and brainstorm all possible alternatives. Two to ten heads are usually better than one. More than ten begins to diminish the effectiveness of the time used and quality of input. Collect data on the problem requiring the decision. Good data always simplifies decision-making. Again, talk to the people involved and evaluate alternatives and their consequences. It is possible to do research on what others have done, both inside and outside your organization, when faced with a similar decision.
D. Make the Decision. After you are satisfied that you have sufficient data and input from the people involved, don’t procrastinate. You are probably being paid to make such decisions and not for waffling. Waffles get eaten. Remember the maxim attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, “In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
E. Execute the decision. It is wise to communicate the reasons for the decision to the people involved and to management. Remember, don’t just tell them, discuss it with them to make sure they understand and agree.
T. Test the impact of the decision. If possible, implement on a test sample and support your theory used in making the decision. If the results are positive, roll it out across the organization. If not, reenter your decision-making process armed with what you have learned. Whether or not you implement on a test case first, monitor the results to ensure you are achieving what you desire.
Learn all you can from your experience with the CADET process to improve your decision-making ability for the future. As with any process, regular use will improve your comfort and ability to get results, improve your skills, and increase your usefulness to your organization.
Louis Schultz, managing director of Process Management LLC, has assisted organizations worldwide with performance improvement. He currently works with area business owners as a SCORE counselor. Email him with questions or comments at [email protected].
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| 0.952361 | 803 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) chose today, International Women's Day, to introduce legislation to speed ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution.
"The ERA is intended to ensure equality for women and men in all areas of society," saidBaldwin. "It is an immediate and decisive remedy to end sex discrimination in federal and state laws and provides a clear benchmark for judicial interpretation. Achieving equality and justice for all in the United States is fundamental to our democratic principles, economic recovery, and continued leadership around the world. The intent of my resolution is simple: a path to equality for all Americans," Baldwin said.
When Congress passed the ERA in 1972, it provided that the measure be ratified by the necessary number of states (38) within 7 years. This deadline was later extended to 10 years, and, by 1982, 35 states had ratified the ERA. That left the ERA just three states shy of full ratification when the deadline passed in 1982.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently stated his belief that the Constitution does not prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. Baldwin's legislation removes the deadline for ratification and clarifies that upon ratification by three additional states, the Equal Rights Amendment will be added to the United States Constitution.
The Madison Amendment, ratified in 1992, 203 years after its initial submission, suggests that the ERA remains legally viable and properly before the remaining states for ratification. Furthermore, the 1978 ERA deadline extension demonstrates that Congress can amend previously established deadlines.
"With women comprising more than 50% of the workforce and serving this country on the fronts of two wars, it is time to end the discrimination based on sex that women still face in the United States," said Jean Landweber, Wisconsin ERA Chair, United 4Equality. "I am proud of my Representative, Tammy Baldwin, for introducing this legislation to remove the arbitrary time limit that was imposed in1972 for ratification of the ERA. The time is right to achieve equality of rights by finishing what the brave women of the '70s started," Landweber said.
Baldwin's bill is endorsed by United 4 Equality, LLC; National Council of Women's Organizations; National Organization for Women; American Association of University Women; Women's Research and Education Institute (WREI); National Women's Political Caucus; Equal Rights Alliance, Inc.; ERA Education Fund, Inc.; Federally Employed Women (FEW); National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund; Katrina's Dream; Clearinghouse on Women's Issues; JWPOLICY Associates; Progressive Democrats of America (PDA); One Struggle One Fight; Louisiana Coalition for the Equal Rights Amendment; Louisiana Federation of Business and Professional Women (BPW/LA); American Association of University Women of Louisiana (AAUW Louisiana); Louisiana League of Women Voters (LLWV); The Louisiana Movement; Louisiana NOW; Planned Parenthood of Louisiana & Mississippi Delta; The Louisiana Network; Equal Rights Amendment North Carolina Citizens Task Force; Montgomery County chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW); Pacific Shore NOW; ERA Once and For All
States whose legislatures have not yet ratified the ERA are:
Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia.
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| 0.915774 | 672 | 2.75 | 3 |
Campaigners welcome new EU standards for corded blinds
- 12 October 2011
- From the section Stoke & Staffordshire
In February last year, two toddlers in Staffordshire died within five days of each other after becoming entangled in looped blind cords.
At the time of the inquests into the deaths of 16-month-old Lillian Bagnall-Lambe, from Stafford, and three-year-old Harrison Joyce, from Lichfield, the coroner for south Staffordshire called for urgent changes to make corded blinds safer.
The current European standard, known as EN13120, states that safety devices must be supplied for looped blind cords. At the moment, the minimum requirement is a separate hook, which can be used to tie the loose cord, and a safety warning.
But this standard is now being strengthened so that new blinds come with built-in safety devices such as chain-break connectors, which allow the cord to break apart when pressure is applied, and wall anchors, which firmly secure the operating cord.
It is hoped that this standard, being decided by the EU Commission, will come into force in 2012 and will affect everyone involved in designing, manufacturing, selling or installing internal blinds where children live or may visit.
Scott Joyce set up a website, Harrison's Law, after the death of his son to make parents aware of the potential danger of blinds with looped cords.
He said: "It's an inanimate object in the house that you wouldn't believe would ever take a child's life; and it does take a child's life - within four or five seconds."
"Thousands of people have been on my little boy's website and said that if we hadn't done the campaign, they wouldn't have even known about the problem."
Mr Joyce hopes that all manufacturers of blinds will follow the new standard when it comes into force.
"It is a step in the right direction," he said.
"But what I'm not happy about now is that it's not mandatory."
'Phasing out cords'
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (Rospa) has been running a campaign since 2004 to raise awareness of the possible dangers of corded blinds.
The charity's Make It Safe initiative gives advice to parents about the installation and placement of blinds.
Michael Corley, from Rospa, said: "Our own research shows that at least 18 children have died across the UK since 1999, seven of which have happened since the beginning of 2010.
"It's really important that we work with the industry, the government, and the people who make the standards in Europe, to make sure that everyone's singing from the same hymn sheet.
"EN13120 is basically being beefed up, and also the scope of the standard is being broadened to include things like internal cords on products like Roman blinds.
"It's currently being drafted... passed on from committee to committee in Brussels, but we're hoping it'll come into effect within the next 12 months.
"And that in the future, it's hoped we can gradually move towards phasing out all cords from blinds."
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| 0.967439 | 658 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Hi I would like to simply calculate areas of a area-shape file in square meters or in acres (ha).
I didn't find that functionality in the vector tools.
Could anyone here help me with that?
Make the layer editable, then use the field calculator (Layer>Open attribute table>Field Calculator/Ctrl+I or right click shapefile>Open attribute table>Field Calculator/Ctrl+I). There is an operator "$area" that will calculate the area of each row in the table. All units will be calculated in the units of the projection, so you probably want to project it to a projection that uses feet or metres before doing that, rather than lat/lon.
This can also be done with Vector|Geometry Tools|Add/export geometry columns, which creates a new shapefile with area and perimeter (or length) columns added.
Edit: (using the tool above, you can also unselect "save as new shape-file" in V1.8, the shapefile is now only updated!)
Using the field calculator is probably a better idea, though, as it doesn't require the creation of a new shapefile.
I wrote a script specifically for this. If you don't want to reproject your data, you can compute the area using ellipsoidal math.
You will find the script installed in
The tool should be self explanatory and will allow you to calculate area in units of your choice regardless of projection.
Thank you for your interest in this question.
Because it has attracted low-quality or spam answers that had to be removed, posting an answer now requires 10 reputation on this site (the association bonus does not count).
Would you like to answer one of these unanswered questions instead?
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| 0.929023 | 361 | 2.703125 | 3 |
The History of Columbia Law School
From its inception, the Law School encouraged its students and faculty to mold the law, not merely convey it.
Today, more than 150 years after Columbia Law School was founded, this philosophy is reflected in the contributions our graduates have made—not only to the legal profession, but also to government and politics, business, education, philanthropy, and the arts—shaping culture and human progress throughout the world.
1754: Columbia University, formerly known as King's College, was founded near the present site of New York's City Hall. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher education in the state of New York and the sixth-oldest such institution in the United States. Its early students included such statesman as Alexander Hamilton, an author of The Federalist Papers, and John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
1793: James Kent was named the first professor of law at Columbia, and he lectured until he was appointed to the Supreme Court of New York five years later. His lectures were eventually published as the classic Commentaries on American Law.
1858: Columbia Law School was founded as one of the first law schools in the United States and a charter member of the American Association of Law Schools. The Law School's first dean, Theodore Dwight, did much to establish the superiority of academic training over office instruction (the norm at the time) to a skeptical legal profession.
1860: The Law School's first commencement took place at the Hall of the New York Historical Society. The class had 28 graduates.
1891: William A. Keener succeeded Theodore Dwight, becoming the second dean of Columbia Law School. Keener spread the use of the case teaching method, revamped the entire curriculum, extended the period of study to three years, enlarged the faculty, and elevated admission standards.
1896: Columbia University moved to its present location in Morningside Heights, a historical, neoclassical campus designed to function as an urban, intellectual enclave for students, faculty, and staff alike. By this time, the campus housed an undergraduate engineering school and graduate faculties in engineering, science, medicine, law, teaching, political science and philosophy in addition to the undergraduate College.
Early 20th Century
1901: The Columbia Law Review was established to reflect the growing sophistication in legal scholarship and legal thought. Today, the Review is the third most widely distributed and cited law review in the country.
1910: Harlan Fiske Stone, who would later be Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, became dean of the Law School. He strove to help students recognize that the law is adaptable to changing conditions in society.
1911: Legislative Drafting Research Fund was established to improve federal, state, and municipal lawmaking.
1927: First women enrolled in Columbia Law School. Our early alumnae went on to become law firm partners, professors, judges, congresswomen, deans, and heads of non-profit organizations such as museums and civil rights groups.
1928: The Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law was formed, strengthening Columbia's leading role in international law.
Mid 20th Century
1944: Bella Abzug, a founding mother of feminism, a staunch supporter of gay and civil rights, and an international icon for human rights and world peace graduated from Columbia Law School.
1945: Elreta Alexander became the first black woman to graduate from Columbia Law School; she is followed by Constance Baker Motley '46, who was the first black woman to become a Manhattan borough president, New York state senator, and a federal judge.
1954: Jack Greenberg '48, in his capacity as counsel for the NAACP, successfully argued Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court of the United States. Professor Greenberg joined the Columbia Faculty in 1984, where he continues to teach such courses in civil procedure and civil rights.
1971: Lee Bollinger, current President of Columbia University and lead defendant in the affirmative action Supreme Court case, Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), graduated from Columbia Law School.
1975: The Center for Law and Economic Studies was founded, reflecting a growing interest in this area of legal scholarship.
Late 20th Century
1980: Columbia Law School, the first American law school to offer courses in Japanese law, founded the Center for Japanese Legal Studies.
1984: Columbia Law School established the Human Rights Internship Program, offering law students the opportunity to work as summer interns with human rights organizations in the United States and throughout the world. Since its inception, the more than 1,200 Human Rights Interns have been instrumental in a variety of roles, including drafting the South African Constitution, documenting human-rights abuses of gay and lesbian youth in America's prisons, and establishing the International Criminal Tribunals in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, just to name a few.
1986: Professor Barbara Aronstein Black '55 became dean of Columbia Law School. She was the first woman appointed as dean of an Ivy League law school.
1992: The Toshiba Library for Legal Research, the largest collection of Japanese legal materials outside Japan, was founded at Columbia Law School.
1993: Developed out of a student-led initiative, Columbia was the first law school to institute a pro-bono requirement of all of its law students. Since then, every Columbia law student performs at least 40 hours of pro-bono work during their law school tenure and continues to be shaped by student interests and needs as well as requests by public interest lawyers and organizations. Current pro-bono projects send students into New York City, and the rest of the world, in an effort to make a meaningful contribution for people seeking access to justice, the rule of law, and affordable solutions to critical community issues.
1993: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg '59 (pictured right) became the second woman, and first Jewish woman, to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Ginsburg is also a former member of the Columbia Law School Faculty.
1996: Columbia Law School underwent an extensive $140 million expansion and renewal project, including a three-story skylit lobby in Jerome L. Greene Hall, where the main staircase leads to an upper-level students commons, lounge areas, and a cafe.
1998: With the oldest comprehensive human rights program in American legal education, Columbia built on decades of research and education to found the Human Rights Institute (HRI), spearheading the training of the next generation of lawyers, educators, and human rights professionals.
2003: Lenfest Hall, a luxury student residence building with 209 fully-furnished studio and one-bedroom apartments, opened through the generosity of H.F. (Gerry) Lenfest '58 and his wife, Marguerite. With Lenfest Hall as one of many options, all Columbia law students are guaranteed subsidized, on-campus housing for all three years of their J.D. program.
2003: As one of the largest producers of law professors in the United Students, Columbia formally established the Program on Careers in Law Teaching for current students and alumni/ae.
2003: Columbia Law School's Social Justice Initiatives launched to further augment the global nature of Columbia's public interest and human rights programs, including its curricular offerings.
2004: The Law School hosted a year-long series of panels and conferences marking the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, in which many Columbia faculty and alumni/ae played pivotal roles.
2004: Columbia University celebrated its 250th anniversary.
2005: Columbia earned the top spot in the National Law Journal's first-ever ranking of law schools from which the 50 largest American law firms hired first-year associates.
2006: The Law School created the first-ever ABA-approved student study abroad programs with both Fudan University (Shanghai) and Peking University (Beijing), two of the leading law schools in mainland China.
2006: Columbia announced the nation's first Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic intended to provide its students with cutting-edge training in impact litigation, legislative work, and community advocacy. This innovative clinic will help produce lawyers with the necessary interest and expertise, while it makes a direct and immediate contribution to litigation and advocacy on LGBT and women's rights issues.
2006: Columbia law students won the School's third international Jessup Moot Court competition, placing first out of 550 international teams. The 2006 Columbia team is the first American team to win the international Jessup competition since 1990. Columbia most recently won the national championship in 2003.
2008: The Law School celebrated its sesquicentennial by hosting events around the globe.
2008: Columbia Law School announced a global alliance with preeminent law schools to create one-year integrated programs focusing on international criminal law, international security law, and global business law and governance.
2009: Columbia Law School launched the Center for Climate Change Law.
2009: Columbia redefined the Center for Public Interest Law, combining it with a host of dynamic extracurricular resources under the auspices of Social Justice Initiatives.
2010: Columbia launches the Federal Government Externship Program in D.C., giving students hands-on experience in government law offices.
2010: Columbia Law School Launched a 3-year joint degree with the Business School in addition to the 4-year program already in place.
2011: Columbia inaugurated the Center for Public Research and Leadership, playing an important role in preparing leaders to promote public-sector change.
2012: Columbia reinforced teaching, scholarship, and resources in the field of international arbitration with the Center for International Commercial and Investment Arbitration Law.
2013: Film screening series started to give students and faculty an opportunity to discuss important legal and cultural issues in an informal setting.
2014: Columbia Law School introduced the Immigrants' Rights Clinic, connecting students with clients who need legal assistance.
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USS Essex (CV-9) was a highly decorated aircraft carrier used in World War II and the Korean War. She was built in 1942 and was a key player in many victorious battles. She was the first carrier in her class, the Essex class.
World War II Highlights:
- Carrier operations and attacks against Marcus Island, Wake Island, the Gilbert Islands, Kwajalein, the Marshall Islands, Truk, Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. These successful operations took place in less than one year, from August 1943 to February 1944.
- She and her force were attacked from above by Japanese airplanes without sustaining notable damage during their operations in February 1944.
- During the rest of that year, she was active in attacks against/occupation of: the Marianas, Palau Islands, Mindanao, and struggles with Japanese over strategic locations such as the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Formosa (Taiwan), and various points in the Philippine Islands.
- November 25, 1944: Essex received a kamikaze hit to her port side flight deck; 15 were killed and 44 injured.
- Withstood several typhoons.
- Essex played a major role in the fall of Okinawa and missions against Iwo Jima.
Korean War Highlights:
Essex was modernized and readied to support US and UN troops in the Korean War. She toured the West Pacific and supported missions as far as the Yalu River on the border of China and Korea.
Essex received an extraordinary 17 battle stars, Presidential Unit Citation, and Navy Unit Commendation.
USS ESSEX (CV-9)
The fourth Essex (CV-9) was launched 31 July 1942 by Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co. sponsored by Mrs. Artemus L. Gates
wife of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air; and commissioned 31 December 1942
Captain D. B. Duncan command
ing. She was reclassified (CVA-9) on 1 October 1952
and (CVS-9) on 8 March 1960.
Following her shakedown cruise Essex sailed to the Pacific in May 1943 to begin a succession of victories which would bring her to Tokyo Bay. Departing Pearl Harbor
she participated with TF 16 in carrier operations against Marcus Island (31 Aug
ust 1943); was designated flagship of TF 14 and struck Wake Island (5-6 October); launched an attack with TG 50.3 against the Gilbert Islands where she also took part in her first amphibious assault
the landing on Tarawa (18-23 November). Refueling at se
she cruised as flagship of TG 50.3 to attack Kwajalein (4 December). Her second amphibious assault delivered in company with TG 58.2 was against the Marshalls (29 January-2 February 1944).
Essex in TG 68.2 now joined with TG 58.1 and 58.3
to constitute the most formidable carrier striking force to date
in launching an attack against Truk (17-18 February) during which eight Japanese ships weresunk. En route to the Marianas to sev
er Japanese supply lines
the carrier force was detected and received a prolonged aerial attack which it repelled in a businesslike manner and then continued with the scheduled attack upon Saipan
Tinian and Guam (23 February).
After this operation Essex proceeded to San Francisco for her single wartime overhaul. She then joined carriers Wasp (CV-18) and San Jacinto (CVL-30) in TG 12.1 to strike Marcus Island (19-20 May) and Wake(23 May). She deployed wit
h TF 58 to support the occupation of the Marianas (12 June-10 August); sortied with TG 38.3 to lead an attack against the Palau Islands (6-8 September)
and Mindanao (9-10 September) with enemy shipping as the main target
and remained in the area to supp
ort landings on Peleliu. On 2 October she weathered a typhoon and 4 days later departed with TF 38 for the Ryukyus.
For the remainder of 1944 she continued her frontline action
participating in strikes against Okinawa (10 October)
and Formosa (12-14 October)
covering the Leyte landings
taking part in the battle for Leyte Gulf (24-25 October)
and continuing the
search for enemy fleet units until 30 October when she returned to Ulithi
for replenishment. She resumed the offensive and delivered attacks on Manila and the northern Philippine Islands during November. On 25 November
for the first ti
me in her far-ranging operations and destruction to the enemy
Essex received injury. A kamikaze hit the port edge of her flight deck landing among planes gassed for takeoff
causing extensive damage
and wounding 44.
This "cramped her style" very little. Following quick repairs we find her with 3d Fleet off Luzon supporting the occupation of Mindoro (14-16 December). She rode out the typhoon of 18 December and made special search for survivors afterwards. With TG 3
8.3 she participated in the Lingayen Gulf operations
launched strikes against Formosa
and Luzon. Entering the South China Sea in search of enemy surface forces
the task force pounded shipping and conducted strikes on Formosa
and Hong Kong. Essex withstood the onslaught of the third typhoon in 4 months (20-21 January 1945) before striking again at Formosa
Miyako Shima and Okinawa (26-27 January).
During the remainder of the war she operated with TF 58
conducting attacks against the Tokyo area (16-17
and 25 February) both to neutralize the enemy's airpower before the landings on Iwo Jima and to cripple the aircraft manufacturing industry. She
sent support missions against Iwo Jima and neighboring islands
but from 23 March to 28 May was employed primarily to support the conquest of Okinawa.
In the closing days of the war
Essex took part in the final telling raids against the Japanese home islands (10 July-15 August). Following the surrender
she continued defensive combat air patrols until 3 September when she was ordered to Breme
for inactivation. On 9 January 1947 she was placed out of commission in reserve.
Modernization endowed Essex with a new flight deck
and a streamlined island superstructure
on 16 January 1951 when recommissioned
Captain A. W. Wheelock commanding.
After a brief cruise in Hawaiian waters she began the first of three tours in Far Eastern waters during the Korean war. She served as flagship for Carrier Division 1 and TF 77. She was the first carrier to launch F2H "Banshee" twinjet fighters on comba
t missions; on 16 September 1951 one of these planes
damaged in combat
crashed into aircraft parked on the forward flight deck causing an explosion and fire which killed seven. After repairs at Yokosuka she returned to frontline action on 3 October to l
aunch strikes up to the Yalu River and provide close air support for U.N. troops.
On 1 December 1953 she started her final tour of the war
sailing the China Sea with the Peace Patrol. From November 1954 to June 1955 she engaged in training exercises
operated for 3 months with the 7th Fleet
assisted in the Tachen Islands evacuatio
and engaged in air operations and fleet manuevers off Okinawa.
In July 1955 Essex entered Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for repairs and extensive alterations
including installation of an angled flight deck. Modernization completed
she rejoined the Pacific Fleet in March 1956. For the next 14 months the carri
er operated off the west coast
except for a 6-month cruise with the 7th Fleet in the Far East. Ordered to join the Atlantic Fleet for the first time in her long career
she sailed from San Diego on 21 June 1957
rounded Cape Horn
and arrived in Mayport
on 1 August.
In the fall of 1957 Essex participated as an anti-submarine
carrier in the NATO exercises
" and in February 1968 deployed with the 6th Fleet until May when she shifted to the eastern Mediterranean. Alerted to the Middle East crisis
on 14 July 1958 she sped to support the U.S. Peace Force landing in
launching reconnaissance and patrol missions until 20 August. Once again she was ordered to proceed to Asian waters
and transmitted the Suez Canal to arrive in the Taiw
an operational area where she joined TF 77 in conducting flight operations before rounding the Horn and proceeding back to Mayport.
Essex joined with the 2d Fleet and British ships in Atlantic
exercises and with NATO forces in the eastern Mediterranean during the fall of 1959. In December she aided victims of a disastrous flood at Frejus
In the spring of 1960 she was converted into an ASW Support Carrier
and was thereafter homeported at Quonset Point
R.I. Since that time she has operated as flagship of Carrier Division 18 and Antisubmarine Carrier Group Three. She conducted rescue and
salvage operations off the New Jersey coast for a downed blimp; cruised with midshipmen
and was deployed on NATO and CENTO exercises. In November she joined the French navy in Operation "Jet Stream" and since that time has continued her widespread activ
ities in protection of freedom and peace.
Essex received the Presidential Unit Citation
and 13 battle stars for World War II service; 4 battle stars and the Navy Unit Commendation for Korean war service.
[Note: The above USS ESSEX (CV-9) history may or may not contain text provided by crew members of the USS ESSEX (CV-9) or by other non-crew members and text from the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships]
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Graphic designers use computer technology to produce art work for product packaging, marketing material, websites, newspapers and magazines. If you have strong artistic abilities, good communication skills and have no problems getting to grips with new software systems, the only thing standing between you and a career as a graphic designer will be a few qualifications and some examples of your creativity.
As aspiring graphic designers typically need a bachelor's degree to break into their career of choice, graduating from high school is a prerequisite if you want to enter the industry. While in high school, take as many art and design-related courses as you can. If you have the resources, sign up for a pre-college graphic design course. Attending one of these will prepare you for an undergraduate degree program and could make you a more attractive prospect to the colleges you apply to.
Degrees in graphic design and fine art are offered widely at colleges, universities and design schools around the country. Some colleges offer Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design programs. These typically include modules on typography, book design, drawing, advanced graphic design and computer-assisted design, according to Education-Portal.com. If you have a degree in another field and want to become a graphic designer, you can still break into the profession by earning an associate’s degree or a certificate in graphic design.
As well as qualifications, graphic designers need a strong portfolio of work that showcases their abilities. You should start collecting examples of your work as soon as you decide you want to embark on a career as a graphic designer. Use designs you create from classroom projects, internships, work you've completed in your spare time or other experiences. The Bureau of Labor Statistics advises that a good portfolio can mean the difference between getting a job and being rejected.
Pay and Outlook
As of May 2011, qulified graphic designers earned $48,690, only marginally higher than the $45,230 average wage earned across all occupations. Demand for all graphic designers is expected to increase by 13 percent between 2010 and 2020, according to the BLS. Employment of graphic designers working on computer systems design and related services is forecast to grow by 61 percent over the same period, suggesting that it could be a wise move to focus your studies in this area.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics: Graphic Designers
- Miller White School of Design: Pre-College Graphic Design Program
- Education-Portal.com: Educational Requirements for a Career in Graphic Design
- ArtBistro: 5 Steps to Becoming a Graphic Designer
- Bureau of Labor Statistics: Graphic Designers, Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2011
- Bureau of Labor Statistics: May 2011 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates
- Creatas Images/Creatas/Getty Images
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The Real Story Of The Edsel
It has been over fifty years since the debut of the Edsel. The grand unveiling was September 4, 1957, designated as "E-Day" by Ford Motor Company.
In commemoration of this event, Peter Carlson of the Washington Post penned a hit job titled: 'Edsel: The flop heard 'round the world'.
The article regurgitates the conventional wisdom that the Edsel was the Mother Of All Failures: the design was silly, the public hated it, Ford's management was a gang of hapless fools, etc.
I beg to differ.
The Edsel was launched by Ford Motor Company as a 1958 model in the medium- or mid-priced field. Ford invested $350 million in the car and pulled it from the market in late 1959, citing poor sales. That's equivalent to about $2 billion in today's currency.
Many experts have claimed the problem with the Edsel was the name. It's certainly not a great name for an automobile but it's certainly no worse as an abstract name than, say, Oldsmobile (a car for Old People?), Pontiac (an Indian Chief), Honda, or Nissan. People said, "Edsel sounds like pretzel." So what. Honda rhymes with Rhonda. Ironically, Ford Motor Company even hired a poet, Marianne Moore, as a consultant to help pick a name for their new car brand. Her suggestions included Intelligent Bullet, Mongoose Civique, and Utopian Turtletop. Exasperated Ford executives finally named the car after Henry Ford's only son, Edsel, who died in 1943. Edsel certainly sounds a lot better than Utopian Turtletop. The problem with the Edsel wasn't the name.
Others in the automotive industry have said that Edsels had very poor quality, which drove customers away. To be sure Edsels had quality problems, as did most of the cars coming off the assembly lines at Ford, General Motors and Chrysler in 1958. No one ever named the 1950s "The Quality Decade." Edsels were made on the same assembly lines as Fords and Mercurys; their quality was about the same.
People have said the timing was bad for introducing the Edsel. That's certainly true. Henry Ford II himself said so in an interview shortly before his death. The so-called 'Eisenhower Recession' began in 1957 and extended through 1958. It was not a good time to introduce a new product. Car sales in general were in a tailspin, but cars introduced in bad economic times will survive as long as the parent company has the capital, cash flow and moxie necessary to stay the course. Plymouth was launched just before the beginning of the Great Depression. Saturn was introduced just in time for the recession of 1990-91. Ford Motor Company certainly had the resources to stay the course with the Edsel, but they lacked the commitment to do so, and that's the rub.
Let's look at why the Edsel was developed. In the mid-’50s, Ford Motor Company had only one medium-priced car, Mercury. General Motors had three Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick. Chrysler had three - Dodge, DeSoto and Chrysler. Ford wanted another brand to be less expensive than Mercury and compete directly with Dodge and Pontiac, which represented the lower end of the mid-priced spectrum. And so the Edsel was born.
The 1958 Edsel featured dramatic styling, a high performance V-8 engine, and distinctive technical innovations such as push button transmission controls on the steering wheel hub. The Edsel was a hot performer on the road and did respectably in the showroom, too. During the 1958 model year, 63,110 Edsels were produced. Edsel outsold DeSoto, Chrysler, and Studebaker. For every two Mercurys sold, one Edsel was sold. Not bad for a car in its first year of life, especially when you consider that Mercury was a well-established brand that had almost 20 years of brand loyalty and product history behind it.
In 1959, Edsel sales nose-dived. Here's why: First, the distinctive styling was made blander. Second, the car was now offered with an economy six-cylinder engine as an option - hardly the way to bolster the car's performance image. The model line-up was substantially reduced. So were the number of dealers. The innovative push-button transmission controls were gone, replaced with the conventional column lever used in Fords. No wonder the car bombed.
All of these changes were made at the behest of Ford Group Vice-President, Robert McNamara, later U.S. Secretary of Defense during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. McNamara didn't like the Edsel. It looked too flashy, he thought, and it offended his sense of what an automobile should be - a no-nonsense, practical car. McNamara was a big fan of the bland and compact Ford Falcon, introduced about the same time the Edsel died.
At an August 28, 1957 press preview dinner, before the Edsel had even been introduced to the public, McNamara told an associate, "I've got plans for phasing it out." One automotive historian wrote that the Edsel would have survived if McNamara hadn't "axed it to bolster his ego."
In January 1958 (only four months after introduction), McNamara disbanded the independent Edsel Division, folding it into the Lincoln-Mercury Division. Edsel dealers were soon told to get other franchises to represent, killing dealer enthusiasm and support. In November of 1959, a few weeks after the introduction of the 1960 Edsel, production ended for good.
So .... while the Edsel was a mere infant, McNamara stabbed it in the back - multiple times. No wonder the brand didn't survive.
McNamara moved on, overseeing the Vietnam War and, later, the World Bank. (Hmmm. Look how those things turned out. Spot a trend here?)
Then there are the inevitable accusations about "FoMoCo's middle-management morons." The reality is Edsel was part of Ford Motor Company's plan to expand their car line into the mid-priced automotive field.
The same management group that developed the Edsel also developed the 1958 four-seater Ford Thunderbird. While automotive purists bemoaned the demise of the cute little two-seater T-Bird, the larger four-seat model quadrupled sales. It defined the emerging market for the mid-priced personal luxury coupe and it was a success for almost 40 years. It also gave Ford increased market share in the medium-priced field. By introducing the Thunderbird and the Edsel simultaneously, Ford hedged their bets. (McNamara couldn't kill the 'Bird, even if he wanted to; it was already a proven success.)
Sadly, the uniquely-styled Edsel didn't survive but, in fairly short order, the success of the four-seater T-Bird more than made up for Edsel's financial losses. (posted 9/7/2007)
PS: On my O-gauge train layout, there is Edsel-Town Motors, with a 1:43 scale blue '58 Edsel Pacer two-door hardtop coupe parked in front. This resin-bodied model was made by Swiss manufacturer Zaugg in 1984 or so.
The dealership is loosely based on Roth Edsel, once located on Pratt Street in Northeast Philadelphia, PA.
Inside the showroom are two 1:43 scale Yat-Ming '58 diecast convertibles - one turquoise (with white side panels) and one black (with red side panels). The pink Edsel Citation (partly visible at the side of the building) is a Brooklin model in the original-issue color from 1986.
The pink and white Edsel convertible is a 1:43 Franklin Mint model. The Villager station wagons are diecast Minichamps. (permalink)
Remember When: 1958
|In 1958, the U.S. experienced the worst recession since World War II. Jimmy Hoffa took over the Teamsters Union; Nikita Kruschev took over the USSR.
At Arlington Cemetery, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was completed. In March, Elvis Presley was inducted into the U.S. Army and became a Very Well-Known Soldier. First-class letter postage increased from 3¢ to 4¢. Explorer I, the first U.S. satellite, was launched.
Starting in 1958, automobile manufacturers were required to post factory sticker prices in the windows of all cars sold in the U.S.
New products included Sweet 'n Low and Bic pens. The hula hoop was introduced; 25 million were sold in the first four months. The first Pizza Hut opened in Wichita, Kansas.
New TV shows included 'Peter Gunn', 'The Rifleman' and '77 Sunset Strip'.
'Volare' was awarded record of the year at the Grammys. Other hits included 'At The Hop' by Danny and the Juniors, Frank Sinatra's 'Witchcraft', Chuck Berry's 'Johnny B. Goode', Jerry Lee Lewis' 'Great Balls of Fire', Get A Job' by The Silhouettes and 'Tom Dooley' by The Kingston Trio. Rock and roller Little Richard quit the music biz and went to preacher school at an Alabama Negro college run by Seventh Day Adventists.
Famous people born in 1958 Include Michael Jackson, Ellen DeGeneres, Madonna, Prince, Kevin Bacon, rapper Ice-T, Drew Carey, rocker Joan Jett, Jeff Foxworthy, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sharon Stone and Andrea Bocelli.
New movies included 'Gigi', 'South Pacific' and 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'. Lana Turner's daughter, Cheryl Crane, fatally stabbed her mother's mobbed-up boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, in Lana's Beverly Hills mansion.
Other deaths included Pope Pius XII, songwriters Lew Brown and Harry Revel, blues composer and musician W. C. Handy, actor Tyrone Power, radio and television actor Tim Moore (he played The Kingfish on 'Amos 'n' Andy'), rocker Chuck Willis who performed 'C.C. Rider' (a #1 R&B hit as well as a #12 pop hit in 1957. Willis' version of the old blues song gave birth to the dance craze The Stroll), Elvis' mom, Gladys Presley, and movie producer Mike Todd, killed in an New Mexico air crash (he was married to Elizabeth Taylor).
The NY Yankees won the World Series, beating the Milwaukee Braves 4 to 3.
copyright 1996, 2007, 2009-16 - Joseph M. Sherlock - All applicable rights reserved
The facts presented in this blog are based on my best guesses and my substantially faulty geezer memory. The opinions expressed herein are strictly those of the author and are protected by the U.S. Constitution. Probably.
Spelling, punctuation and syntax errors are cheerfully repaired when I find them; grudgingly fixed when you do.
If I have slandered any brands of automobiles, either expressly or inadvertently, they're most likely crap cars and deserve it. Automobile manufacturers should be aware that they always have the option of giving me free cars to try and change my mind.
If I have slandered any people or corporations in this blog, either expressly or inadvertently, they should buy me strong drinks (and an expensive meal) and try to prove to me that they're not the jerks I've portrayed them to be. If you're buying, I'm willing to listen.
Don't be shy - try a bribe. It might help.
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Explaining Antechinus: Stove's Law in Action
David Stove in his Darwinian Fairytales calls evolutionary biology a fairytale and gives examples of how evolution "explains" every possible bizarre biological behavior. Wired has an article about the mouse-sized Australian marsupial antechinus where the male dies after mating furiously for two weeks, leaving the female to raise the litter that sees half the pups die.
Such "mass suicide" all makes sense evolutionarily, we are told, because it provides more food for the mother.
"It's all geared toward the young being born when spring starts," said [ecologist Andrew Baker of Australia's Queensland University of Technology], "so there will be a big flush of insects in spring. The female will give birth to the young and then she'll have plenty of food available because the population has been halved, because all the males are dead."
If Stove were alive, I know he would get a kick out of it, especially coming from his native Australia.
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Most of Canada and parts of the United States has been gripped in a cold snap that has seen temperatures dip below -40ºC in some places and given the city of Ottawa the dubious distinction of being the coldest capital in the world.
While this snap may appear to be an aberration of a normal winter, there are suggestions that this could be a trend over the coming years. It's an unfortunate part of living in a changing world where warmer air over Greenland is causing a shift in the jet stream plunging cold Arctic air our way. We may hope that this might not happen again for years but there is a sense that this is something that could be recurrent well into the future.
While we may have little enjoyment from this forecast, in terms of germs and pests, this may actually be good news. Much like humans, bacteria, several viruses, insects such as mosquitoes, and mites all hate the cold. But while for us the freezing temperatures may mean a host of inconveniences, for these creatures, the cold is a matter of life and death.
The key to survival of any organism on earth is water; we all need it. When the temperature drops below zero, the tendency of that water to freeze makes living much harder. While many microorganisms and pests have means to survive temperatures just below that mark if the temperature drops to below -15ºC, the consequences are dire.
The process of death by the cold is actually pretty simple. Initially, the water that is not held in cells freezes, forming a nucleus of ice. As that nucleus grows, it both pushes against the cells causing damage as well as making the water inside the cells flush out in the hopes of preventing further ice crystal formation. This dehydrates the cells and eventually, they die.
For bacteria and viruses, that's the end, but for larger pests, such as insects, the ice formation causes a cascade of tissue damage and eventually a lack of blood flow. Soon, the entire body is nothing more than a large crystal of ice. It's not a pleasant way to die by any means. In the case of mosquitoes, if the cold snap is long enough, the population will be significantly reduced and the following summer will be far less problematic. Considering the troubles encountered last year with the West Nile Virus in the US and Canada, this cold is exactly what the public health officials ordered.
There are a few ways to take advantage of the cold weather to make life a little better. Putting those hard to wash bed covers out in this cold for a few hours will help to remove any dust mites and/or stinky bacteria but for something a little more resilient like a bedbug, a few days to a week may be needed.
Clothes can also be effectively cleaned by putting them out into the cold. In one dramatic example, a University of Alberta student had worn the same pair of jeans for months using only his freezer and a Ziploc bag to keep them from becoming overgrown with bacteria and their malodorous byproducts. There is one side effect, however, in that the clothes will be fairly stiff and may need a few minutes in the dryer to warm them up and loosen the fibres. Yet, this means of "cleaning" using cold weather is a nice way to take advantage of the temperatures and save on energy as well.
There is one final advantage to the cold weather: a better immune system. During the winter, the amount of sun seen is significantly lower than the summer and this could lead to reduced levels of Vitamin D, which is known to play an important role in keeping the immune system functioning normally. While supplementation is a key part of keeping Vitamin D levels up during the winter, there is nothing like the benefit of exposure to the sun when it's around to keep those levels high.
There's little doubt that these minor advantages will replace the rather antagonistic thoughts many have towards the cold. Yet with the potential for more freezing temperatures looming not only in the weeks but also the years ahead, there are really only two ways to look at what is to come. We can either get used to it or, we can find the positives and make it a little less unbearable.
You may have heard of "brown fat," a type of fat found naturally in parts of the body that, when triggered, can burn off other "white" fat. In a 2012 study, researchers found that cold weather seemed to set the brown fat into motion, and that simply being cold could cause significant calorie burn. (Exercise may have a similar effect, as demonstrated in a study from around the same time, the New York Times reported.) The study, admittedly, was small -- it only included six healthy men, to be exact. And experts caution that the obesity epidemic is not likely to be solved by the creation of a brown-fat triggering pill. But at least the idea might offer a little comfort when you find yourself chilled to the bone.
It can be tempting to spend the coldest mornings safely tucked under the covers; it's only natural to want to avoid the most brutal temps. But during periods of such weather-induced isolation, we tend to reach out to contact our closest friends and family on the phone, and end up chatting with them for longer than usual, according to a 2012 study.
During the summer of 2012 -- when West Nile cases were climbing -- much was made of the milder 2011-2012 winter and its effect on the disease-spreading mosquito population. The pests thrive in milder climates, meaning they were able to survive -- and breed -- all winter, just waiting to feast come spring. Freezing or below-freezing temps might kill off some skeeters (and ticks), thereby protecting you from the illnesses they are known to spread.
Week after week of balmy weather sounds pretty lovely right about now, but there's evidence to suggest that it doesn't necessarily make you happy. In fact, some research suggests that if the weather never changes, you start taking that sunshine for granted. Shivering through the cold makes those warm spring days seem even better when they finally come along, according to Psychology Today.
There's a reason putting ice on an injury works. That drop in temperature reduces inflammation in, say, a sprained ankle or stubbed toe. But the theory works on a much grander scale, too -- cold temperatures can reduce inflammation and pain all over. In fact, athletes and spa-goers even have a remedy of sorts available for muscle recovery. A 2011 study found that, at extremely low temperatures, such treatments, called cryotherapy, did more for athletes to recover from physical activity than simply resting. Runners who were exposed to temperatures as low as -166 degrees F recovered from exercise faster than those who given other therapies or told to rest, The Atlantic reported. At spas, cryotherapy chambers appear much like steam rooms -- with, of course, the opposite effect. And while the majority of us probably won't be taking a trip to the cold room, it certainly beats summer swelling!
While we certainly don't advise going all-out on the wintertime comfort foods, we do appreciate the escape from the pressure to get a "bikini body." It's a great time to focus on fitness -- hello, New Year's resolutions -- without the pressure to do so for your looks alone.
Follow Jason Tetro on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JATetro
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British colonial style of decorating reiterates elegance and refinement at its best. This style of decoration hails from 17th century English architecture. The period it belongs to was the era between 1600 and 1800. Thus, it means applying a 300-hundred year old decorating style to your interiors. English architecture was highly classy and sophisticated. For achieving a British colonial décor, you will have to do a little research on the kind of lifestyle that existed during that time. However, for your convenience, some of the basic attributes of British colonial style decorating are given below. Read on and get some tips and ideas for British colonial décor.
British Colonial Style Decorating
- For British colonial style of decoration, you can use a variety of textures, ranging from wicker and rattan furniture to leather suitcases & sisal rugs.
- In case of colors, go for a muted palette of browns, beiges, barn red, golden and creams.
- The furniture should be dark wood in color and heavy in structure.
- For accessories, you can use large, hardwood candlesticks as decoration.
- For art and upholstery, use bold botanical prints.
- Animal prints are yet another essential property, which symbolizes royalty.
- British culture is also quite closely associated with sports, so you can display sports equipment in your décor to give it that look.
- Large plants also add up to the grand feeling of the British colonial style.
- Newspaper prints on the walls work good.
- Decorative pillows and covers should be placed on the furniture, to give it a regal appearance.
- A travel globe is one of the not to be missed accessories, which can be very well used as a corner focal point.
- Delicate embroidery like crewel and Jacobean needlework, needlepoint samplers, family portraits and pewter are some other accessory options.
- Silver work is also a hallmark of colonial style decorating.
- Oriental ginger jars, ivory, and other accessories brought from the Orient by clipper ships were also considered important decorative assets.
- The eagle, which is also considered as the new symbol of the Federal government, was used extensively as a decorative accent.
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People living with synaesthesia (known as synaesthetes) experience abnormal interactions between the senses. Digit-color synaesthetes, for instance, will experience certain numbers in specific colors (for example, they might experience the number seven as red). A possible reason put forward for this phenomenon is the existence of extra connections between brain areas in synaesthetes, but the new study, published in the journal Psychological Science, suggests otherwise.
Hypnosis can induce synaesthetic experiences – where one sense triggers the involuntary use of another – according to a new study by UCL (University College London) researchers. The findings suggests that people with synaesthesia, contrary to popular belief, do not necessarily have extra connections in their brain; rather, their brains may simply do more 'cross talking' and this can be induced by changing inhibitory processes in the average brain.
To explore the alternative theory of more cross talk (disinhibition) between brain areas in synaesthetes, Dr Roi Cohen Kadosh and colleagues used posthypnotic suggestion to show that people who are not synaesthetes can be induced to have synaesthetic experiences.
After inducing digit-color synaesthesia, the volunteers reported similar experiences to those undergone by real synaesthetes in their everyday life. For example, one participant described seeing the numbers on car number plates in specific colors, while walking around under posthypnotic suggestion. Moreover, hypnotized participants failed trick tests which were also failed by real synaesthetes: in one test, when subjects were hypnotized to experience seven as red, they could not detect the number when a black seven was presented on a red background.
Dr Roi Cohen Kadosh, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, says: "Our study shows that posthypnotic suggestion can induce synaesthetic experiences in people, suggesting that extra brain connections are not needed to experience cross-sensory interactions and that it is more cross talk within the brain that causes these experiences. This takes us one step closer to understanding the causes of synaesthesia and abnormal cross-brain interactions."
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- Report: A host of common chemicals endanger child brain development
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The Mad Cows Finally Come Home
December 23, 2003, the first official U.S. case of Bovine Spongiform
Encephalopathy (BSE)—better known as mad cow disease—was
reported by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) at the Sunny Dene
Ranch near Mabton, Washington. While Wall Street investors scrambled
to monitor their McDonald’s stocks, White House spokesperson
Scott McClellan hastened to assure everyone that President Bush
was still enjoying beef. USDA secretary Ann Veneman also publicly
pledged to serve beef to her family as part of their yuletide feast.
The world’s response to the arrival of mad cow in the U.S.
was basically a replay of what happened earlier in Canada when BSE
was reported there in May. A total of 43 countries have now imposed
bans on U.S. beef imports, including Japan, which purchased $854
million worth in 2002. Of the top four beef buyers (Japan, Mexico,
South Korea, and Canada account for 92 percent of U.S. exports)
only Canada does not have a full ban (Canada will accept boneless
beef from U.S. cattle under 30 months old). The final economic impact
on the $40 billion U.S. beef industry won’t be known for a
while. Wisconsin alone exported live animals and meat worth $194
million last year, much of it to Japan and South Korea. Meanwhile,
those U.S. farmers who had already switched to low-input, organic,
grass-fed systems reported unprecedented demand for their BSE-free
meat. Similar booms in natural grass-fed beef prices are being reported
in Brazil and Australia.
cow is but one member of an extended disease family known as Transmissible
Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs). These TSEs are caused by eating
bits of renegade protein known as prions. Since these abnormal prions
cannot be digested, they accumulate in toxic clumps eventually producing
holes in brain tissue. In deer and elk, this lethal neurological
condition is known as Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), in sheep it
is called Scrappie, while in humans it is known as Kuru (endemic
among certain human societies that practice ritualistic cannibalism),
though there is growing medical evidence that pathogenic prions
also trigger variant Creuzveldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), as well as
some forms of Alzheimers. Being smaller and more resilient than
viruses or bacteria, prions are not destroyed by freezing, cooking,
sterilization, or irradiation. Worse yet, pathogenic prions can
jump the species barrier.
Sinclair was one of the first to describe “downer” dairy
cows—too sick to walk—being dragged to slaughter in his
1906 novel about the Chicago stockyards,
Many would argue that the situation in the factory farm/slaughterhouse
meat industry complex is worse today than when Sinclair lived. Reading
books such as Gail Eisnitz’s
Fast Food Nation
, it is tempting to look
at the calendar to remind oneself of the century. Today, over 200,000
known “downers” are sent to U.S. meatpackers each year
(though many others go undetected) and they remain primary mad cow
suspects. Some of the first scientific evidence of the deadly presence
of TSEs in the U.S. came from mink studies by Professor Richard
Marsh of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Veterinarian Department
in the 1980s. His finding that deadly factory mink farm epidemics
were likely caused by high protein feed derived from “downer”
dairy cows was downplayed by academic superiors, government officials,
and industry spokespeople. Marsh was hounded and eventually ostracized
for daring to expose the dirty laundry of the meat industry. Like
Rachel Carson, his groundbreaking investigation is only now being
vindicated after his death.
the Atlantic the existence of mad cow was confirmed in the UK in
1985, and the outbreak soon spread across the rest of Europe, ultimately
leading to the slaughter of 3.7 million animals. In one of the more
bizarre public relations attempts to boost consumer morale, British
agriculture secretary, John Gummer, fed a hamburger to his four-year-old
daughter before television cameras in 1990. Three months later British
health minister, Stephen Dorrell, was before Parliament telling
the world that mad cow could also sicken humans. Six years later,
the first victims emerged. Over 140 people have now died in Europe—mostly
in Britain—from variant CJD and, given the long incubation
period, the final human toll will be much higher. This horrific
experience led to the adoption of much tougher food safety standards
worldwide. Europe adopted a full ban on animal byproducts in livestock
feed and now requires BSE testing of all animals over 30 months
old—one out of every four animals. Belgium alone tests 20 times
as many animals each year for mad cow as the U.S.—Japan tests
every animal killed, regardless of age.
some farm/food activists in the U.S. were diligently following the
mad cow nightmare in Britain with alarm, millions of TV viewers
became unwittingly exposed to the specter thanks to Oprah. On April
16, 1996 Oprah’s guest was Howard Lyman, a Montana rancher
turned vegan activist, and mad cow was one of the topics. Lyman
revealed that U.S. cows were literally eating themselves (with human
help) and this revelation led Oprah to exclaim that it had “just
stopped me cold from eating another hamburger.” Within hours
of the show’s airing, cattle futures dropped by 20 percent
on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and the Texas Cattleman’s
Association pulled $600,000 in advertising from Oprah’s network,
while filing suit under a new corporate-friendly Texas “food
disparagement” law. Their attempt to stifle public criticism
proved unsuccessful, and Oprah won her free speech case after spending
millions on defense attorneys.
1997, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton of Madison, Wisconsin-based
PR Watch released
another warning that was quickly pooh-poohed as hysterical and alarmist
by public officials and industry spin doctors alike. (Their book
is available online at www.prwatch.org/books/madcow.) Howard Lyman
followed in 1998 with his own scathing expose of the meat industry,
Lyman minces no words, letting
consumers know that everything from roadkill animals to euthanized
pets go to rendering plants and ultimately into livestock rations
and onto butcher blocks. Those with a big stake in the status quo
howled for damage control. With the results of a three-year, taxpayer-subsidized,
computer-driven study in hand, the deputy director of the Harvard
Center for Risk Analysis, George Gray, soothingly reported: “We
are firmly confident that BSE will not become an animal or public
health problem in America. The United States is very resistant to
BSE. As far as we know, it’s not here now, but if it does get
in, it can’t become established. Basically with the measures
that are already in place, even with imperfect compliance, the disease
in the cattle herd dies out, and the potential for people to be
exposed to infected cattle parts is tiny” (
12/20/2001). Rural realities have since proven the statistical models
White House knew as early as 1991 that a moratorium on feeding livestock
back to livestock was necessary in the U.S. to avoid its own mad
cow outbreak. A federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
(APHIS) report from that year, obtained by PR Watch through the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) clearly states: “The advantage
of this option is that it minimizes the risk of BSE. The disadvantage
is that the cost to the livestock and rendering industries would
be substantial.” However, it was not until 1997 that the FDA
issued a ruling that all livestock feed containing meat and bone
meal from ruminants must be labeled “do not feed to ruminants.”
Contrary to the rhetoric of government officials and corporate apologists,
there is no “firewall.” The White House never banned the
practice of livestock cannibalism, nor has the government ever offered
proof of its claim that there is 99 percent industry compliance
with the labeling rule. In fact, an FDA inspection of rendering
plants and feed mills in 2000 revealed that up to half lacked the
proper warning labels and up to a quarter had no way to even detect
or prevent mix-ups in their use of risky animal byproducts (
January 2002, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) also issued
a report that found the FDA “has not acted promptly to compel
firms to keep prohibited proteins out of cattle feed and to label
animal feed that cannot be fed to cattle.” According to the
GAO, noncompliant firms had not been re-inspected in two years,
firms with multiple infractions evaded any penalty, and the FDA’s
inspection data were “severely flawed.” As recently as
July 2003, the FDA was still issuing consent decrees against feed
mills for non-compliance. The GAO report concluded, the “FDA
does not know the full extent of industry compliance.” A Friends
of the Earth (FOE) review of FDA records found over a dozen feed
mills in Washington State had violated federal labeling requirements
between 1998 and 2002 (
Seattle Post Intelligencer
12/27/03). In Wisconsin alone there are over 500 feed mills supposedly
subject to some form of government regulation.
consumer watchdog Public Citizen has issued countless warnings about
lethargic food safety enforcement over the last few years. Whereas
close to 35 million head of cattle are slaughtered annually in the
U.S., only 57,000 animals have been tested for BSE since 1990. Public
Citizen has shown that there is little testing consistency across
states, virtually no public transparency of the process, and too
much industry discretion about which animals are tested (www.citizen.org/documents/madcowreport.pdf).
For example, in Wisconsin last year 1.5 million cattle were slaughtered,
yet only 2,900 were checked for BSE. Ongoing White House efforts
to “privatize” regulatory functions, as well as federal
and state budget cutting exercises have meant dwindling food safety
inspections, more cursory and flimsy testing, and a general eroding
of public oversight of the meat industry. Big Beef has been larding
politicians with campaign contributions over the years—$22
million since 1990, mostly to Republicans—towards this end.
thing that has been consistent over time is the concerted effort
by the agribusiness establishment and government bureaucracy to
squash concern about BSE in the U.S. The revolving door between
Big Beef and the White House is notorious. Lisa Harrison, former
public relations director for the National Cattlemen’s Beef
Association—who sent out press releases with titles like “Mad
Cow Disease Not a Problem in the U.S.” following the Oprah
show—is now the USDA’s BSE spokesperson. Veneman’s
current chief of staff, Dale Moore, is a former lobbyist for the
meat industry. Recently appointed to the federal mad cow committee
is William Heuston, another meat industry shill who was an expert
witness against Oprah Winfrey and Howard Lyman in their libel suit.
Such paralyzing and corrupting conflicts of interest in the wake
of the mad cow epidemic forced the UK to create a separate Food
Safety Agency independent from the Ministry of Agriculture. The
USDA, though, is treating mad cow as more of a public relations
problem for meatpackers than as a real safety concern for consumers.
Helping with this effort are right-wing “junk science”
pundits, such as Steve Milloy of the Cato Institute, now hitting
the mass media with stories disputing that prions even cause disease.
fact that mad cow found its way to the U.S. was almost an inevitable
consequence of corporate globalization and industrial agribusiness.
The cow that tested positive for BSE in Washington State was most
likely imported from Canada with 80 others in 2001. So far only
a handful of those other animals have been located and their adopted
herds quarantined. Government regulation of cross border livestock
shipment is minimal at best, and transshipment has skyrocketed with
the expansion of global free trade regimes like the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In 2003 Mexico shipped over 1 million
cows to the U.S., while Canada exported 1.7 million cows. The lack
of government oversight goes even further as revealed by a story
Yakima Herald Tribune.
Because there is no mandated
domestic tracking system, an entire herd of 449 bull calves in Washington
state had to be killed because USDA officials had no way to identify
the single offspring from the BSE infected cow among them.
farming only increases the likelihood for BSE contamination. The
infected cow was part of a mega-dairy operation involving 2,600
milking cows and 1,300 dry and replacement cows in 2 locations—Mabton
and Grandview. Standard procedure on such factory farms entails
recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) injections, as well as
feeding of a total mixed ration (TMR) containing “high protein”
animal byproducts. These cows are prone to elevated levels of mastitis
(udder infection) and other health problems, prompting farmers to
use more (often illegal) antibiotics and other dubious supplements.
Cramped cows on drugs also “burn out” quickly—lasting
only three to four years, half the productive lifespan of a dairy
cow out on pasture—and this high attrition rate means more
“downer” cows in the food stream. Treating animals like
machines also means that factory farms cannot sustain themselves—cows
are culled too fast to produce enough young to even replace themselves—so
they must rely on constant infusions of fresh heifers from either
better managed (but still going bankrupt) family farm dairy herds
or imported livestock herds.
up the food chain, the chance to spread BSE continues. Disassembly
line speeds in U.S. slaughterhouses run at rates three times that
legally allowed in Europe, triggering more worker injuries and aggravating
meat contamination. Cost-saving “innovations” like air
compressed stunning, bolt guns, carcass splitting, mechanical deboning,
and advanced meat recovery (AMR) translate into more “non-meat”
waste in the food supply. Finding a chunk of spinal column still
attached to a T-bone steak at the store is no longer that uncommon.
Even if an animal were to test positive for a health problem in
the U.S., its meat has long since been processed and dispersed throughout
the nation’s food supply—executives and shareholders simply
can’t stomach the prospect of profit being held up due to frivolous
health regulations. Thanks to increasing corporate consolidation
of the meat industry, a single hamburger patty can contain up to
100 different animals, and one sick animal can contaminate up to
32,000 pounds of ground beef. As happened in this case, meat from
the BSE infected downer cow slaughtered on December 9
Lake, Washington quickly found its way to eight states (Washington,
Nevada, Alaska, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, California, Hawaii), as
well as the U.S. territory of Guam. According to the USDA, its subsequent
recall of 10,410 pounds of hamburger and meat cuts was taken out
of “an abundance of caution,” not because of any imminent
threat of BSE contamination. Still in a state of denial, the agency
has not provided any BSE/CJD health advisory to those who may have
consumed the suspect meat either.
have shown that blood can also harbor pathogenic prions. In fact,
U.S. residents who spent extensive time in Europe during the mad
cow epidemic are not allowed to donate blood here and surgeons in
the UK still rely on imported blood for operations there precisely
because of this risk. Yet, under the current USDA regulations there
is no labeling or restriction placed on feeding cattle blood back
to calves in the form of milk replacer, calf starter, and other
supplements. In Wisconsin numerous companies promote these milk
replacers with “spray dried animal blood cells” to dairy
farmers. Bovine serum is also used by corporations like Monsanto
to “feed” the genetically engineered e. coli bacteria
which produce its brand name rBGH—Posilac—yet any potential
connection between this and BSE has not been addressed by the USDA.
legal loophole for possible spread of mad cow involves gelatin,
tallow, and “plate waste”—i.e., cooked meat that
has been offered to humans and then salvaged by the meat industry
for feeding back to livestock. Worse yet, USDA rules still permit
the use of ruminant byproducts to feed non-ruminants—such as
swine, horses, pets, and poultry—which are then in turn fed
back to cattle or people. This vicious cycle of livestock cannibalism
only magnifies the spread of BSE within the animal and human food
immediate USDA response to mad cow in the U.S. was to ban use of
downer cows for any human meat use, to hold all products from BSE
tested animals until the results are actually in, expand overall
BSE testing, ban use of Advanced Meat Recovery (AMR) technology
on animals over 30 months old and phase out air injection stunning,
establish a national livestock tracking system, and require tougher
labeling of animal food products that contain more than just meat
(i.e., spinal cord, brain, nerve tissue, intestine). For farm/food
critics, these are long overdue steps that don’t go far enough.
The USDA plan does not keep downer cows out of rendering plants
to become “fresh” livestock feed, does nothing about ending
the practice of livestock cannibalism, does not insure that livestock
are free of BSE, or that human food is safe from non-meat materials
that might contain pathogenic prions.
Stopping Mad Cow
Immediate Congressional Investigation of the Meat Industry.
There should be national public hearings on the mad cow issue
and more general food safety concerns with the meat industry.
Furthermore, Congress should call on the GAO for a comprehensive
review of USDA and FDA meat industry oversight and enforcement
activity, as well as consideration of alternatives—such as
a more transparent accountable federal agency exclusively responsible
for food safety. The contributing role of the land grant colleges
also needs to be addressed since for decades public researchers
and extension agents have been developing and promoting questionable
technologies such as rBGH, AMR, and TMR, which help spread BSE.
Implement Country of Origin Labeling (COOL).
farmers have the right to know exactly where their food and feed
come from—and this includes meat products, dietary supplements,
milk replacers, and the like. Many farmer and consumer groups
fought hard to include COOL in the last Farm Bill, but it has
now been stalled due to agribusiness lobbying with the support
of the Bush administration. COOL should be passed by Congress
and enacted immediately.
Ban the Feeding
of Animal Byproducts to Livestock.
Livestock cannibalism is
not natural and is dangerous. Herbivores should not be consuming
ground-up carcasses of other animals as part of a “high protein”
total mixed ration (TMR), or a separate nutritional supplement,
no matter what extension agents or agribusiness salesmen say.
The same goes for poultry manure, cooked human “plate waste,”
gelatin, tallow, blood/bone meal, or other animal-derived byproducts
used as livestock “feed,” which could serve as sources
of BSE infection and contamination.
Ban the Use
of Bovine Blood in Milk Replacer and Other Calf Supplements.
citizens who have been to Europe and possibly exposed to BSE are
prohibited from donating blood, yet U.S. agribusiness corporations
are allowed to extract blood from slaughtered livestock and then
sell such to farmers as a “high protein” ingredient
in milk replacer, calf starter, and other growth supplements.
The World Health Organization has warned against this vampiric
practice for over a decade and it should be prohibited. The role
of livestock blood in the manufacture of other livestock products—such
as rBGH—also needs to be federally investigated for its potential
BSE contamination role.
Ban the Use
of “Downer” Cows for Human Food.
Dairy cows that
can’t even walk into a slaughterhouse have obvious health
problems, such as BSE, and are not fit for human consumption.
Meat from downer cows has supposedly been banned from use in the
USDA School Lunch Program for years, yet it has been deemed by
the FDA as safe to eat by adults and children outside of school.
No downer cow meat or other byproducts should be allowed in the
human food supply. The fact that irradiation does not destroy
prions, should also make the USDA think twice about its decision
to allow irradiation as an effective and safe form of “pasteurization.”
Meat Recovery (AMR) and Other Risky Slaughter Practices.
deboning and advanced meat recovery (AMR) are just money grubbing
efforts to extract every last ounce of tissue from a carcass in
order to make “more” product—hamburger, pepperoni,
hotdogs, bologna, tacos, sausage. The use of air injection stunners
and bolt guns to kill livestock should also be banned since this
guarantees the splatter of brain tissue over the rest of the animal
carcass. Such sloppy practices almost guarantee BSE contamination.
People should not be misled into eating brain, cartilage, gristle,
tendons, nerves, and other basically indigestible material they
think is “meat” and thereby exposing themselves to pathogenic
prions. AMR and these other risky meat industry practices belong
in the technological trashbin.
Risk Animal Byproducts in Dietary Supplements and Cosmetics.
tissues that could contain pathogenic prions such as brain, spinal
cord, and dorsal root ganglia are also used as ingredients in
many human dietary supplements. The federal government should
require reporting from manufacturers, mandate risk warnings for
consumers and comprehensive product registration, as well as explicit
identification of the livestock ingredients and country of origin
labeling (COOL). The same federal scrutiny is deserved for cosmetics
that contain beef tallow.
Restrict and Monitor the Importation of Live Animals.
reckless transshipment of disease-carrying species across borders
has been one of the worst consequences of free trade—and
the spread of BSE across North America is but the latest example.
Just because factory farms are so unsustainable that they burnout
their cows prematurely and can’t produce enough calves to
maintain their herd levels does not mean they should be allowed
to import animals from Canada or Argentina at will. The USDA must
conduct strict border checks for diseases like BSE and implement
a national livestock tracking system, like the one already in
place in Brazil (now the largest beef exporter in the world).
testing to All Slaughtered Livestock
. Comprehensivs BSE testing
of all livestock is already mandated in Japan, and can be done
in but a few hours with new BSE tests that the U.S. has not yet
adopted. In fact, one of these quick BSE tests, widely used in
Europe, was developed by 1997 Nobel Prize winning scientist and
prion expert, Prof. Stanley Prusiner at the University of California,
San Francisco. The U.S. needs to upgrade its scientific procedures,
learn from other countries, and get more serious about routine
livestock disease testing. Ignorance is not bliss.
TSE Research and Begin CJD Monitoring in Humans.
Center for Disease Control (CDC) should begin proactive education
of medical professionals about TSEs and initiate nationwide monitoring
of CJD. Casual surveys of death certificates are not adequate.
The National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case
Western Reserve University, created by the CDC in 1997, needs
more funding and publicity of its vital work. While the National
Institute of Health has allocated $27 million towards TSE related
research, this work needs to get beyond theoretical issues to
work on preventative solutions.
E. Peck is the executive director of Family Farm Defenders. For
more information, contact: Family Farm Defenders, PO Box 1772, Madison,
WI 53701; www. familyfarmdefenders.org.
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India’s growing economy has created a paradoxical health problem of undernutrition and obesity. Across the nation, the poor go hungry while the expanding middle class adopt a Westernized lifestyle and indulge in fast food. Heath officials have warned that rising obesity rates, which can spur increases in diabetes and heart disease, could overwhelm the country’s already overburdened health-care system.
To address India’s dual health burden, Stanford researcher Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert, PhD, has joined forces with colleagues across disciplines to better understand the seemingly opposing issues of undernutrition and obesity and to develop nutrition policies aimed at reducing the public health concerns. According to a release:
Bringing his own expertise in mathematical modeling, Goldhaber-Fiebert is working with the group to consider the patterns of future illness and death due to undernutrition and obesity. The researchers would like to know how economic and demographic changes will impact these trends. Ultimately, broadly delivered nutrition policies will have to address undernutrition and obesity issues without exacerbating either one… Although currently focused on India, the research will have broad implications for many other countries that face the undernutrition/obesity dual burden.
The research is funded by a Woods Institute Environmental Venture Projects grant.
Photo by McKay Savage
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| 0.940362 | 261 | 2.875 | 3 |
- not a native letter in Old English; in Anglo-French words it represents the "ts" sound (as in Anglo-French fiz, from Latin filius, modern Fitz); from late 13c. it began to be used for the voiced "s" sound and had fully taken that role by 1400. For letter name, see zed.
Thou whoreson Zed, thou vnnecessary Letter. ["King Lear," II.ii.69]
Series of zs to represent a buzzing sound first attested 1852; zees "spell of sleep, a nap" is slang first recorded 1963, American English student slang.
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| 0.913902 | 132 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Carbon offsetting is a mechanism by which the impact of the emission of a ton of GHGs is neutralised through the implementation of an action elsewhere that will consume or reduce emissions by an equivalent ton of GHGs (learn more).
Benefits to Businesses
- Distinguish yourself from your competitors. Consumer awareness regarding GHG emissions continues to grow and the environmentally conscious customer differentiates between regular brands and brands that have reduced their carbon footprints.
- Improve productivity by driving down energy costs. Energy consumption is one of the largest sources of GHG emissions. Implementation of energy conservation projects reduces your carbon footprint and delivers cost reductions.
- Improve your corporate reputation and demonstrate social involvement in a global issue.
- Develop environmental GHG-friendly products and leverage market position to attract new customers that are seeking zero footprint alternatives.
- Improve employee moral, reduce turnover and improve employee performance.
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. ~Native American Proverb
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| 0.910666 | 203 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Boy-Wives and Female Husbands
edited by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe
The contributions to this volume unequivocally refute claims that African societies lacked homosexual patterns and had no words for those who desire their own sex. Evidence of same—sex patterns has been reported or reviewed here for some fifty African societies, all of which had words—many words, with many meanings—for them. These societies are found within every region of the continent, and they represent every language family, social and kinship organization, and subsistence pattern. There is substantial evidence that same—sex practices and patterns were “traditional”and “indigenous.” While contact between Africans and non—Africans has sometimes influence both groups’ sexual patterns, there is no evidence that one group ever “introduced” homosexuality where it had not existed before. Since anthropologists and other observers have rarely inquired systematically into the presence of homosexuality in Africa (or elsewhere), absence of evidence can never be assumed to be evidence of absence. Considering that this collection represents the first serious study of the subject, undoubtedly future research will identify many other groups with distinct patterns of homosexuality.
African Terms for Same-Sex Patterns*
kimbanda, diviners; esenge (pl. omasenge), man possessed by female spirit; eshengi (pl. ovashengi), "he who is approached from behind"
wändarwäräd, "male-female"; wändawände,"mannish women"
jigele ketön, reciprocal anal intercourse
mzili (pl., inzili); buyazi
kitesha (pl. bitesha), male and female
mokobo, tongo, sterile men
akho’si, lagredis, court eunuch; gaglgo, homosexuality
m’uzonj’ame katumua, male lover; m’ndumbi, "podicator"
onek, active male
’dan daudu (pl. ’yan daudu); k’wazo/baja, older/younger men; kifi, lesbianism
okutunduka vanena, anal intercourse; epanga, lover; oupanga, erotic friendship (male or female)
Boy-Wives and Female Husbands is organized geographically according to four broad regions of sub-Saharan Africa—the Sudan, Horn of Africa, and East Africa; West Africa (including coastal West Africa and the interior sudanic region); Central Africa (from the tropical rainforests of the equatorial region to the Congo basin and east to present-day Tanzania); and southern Africa (from Mozambique and Zambia to South Africa and Namibia). Each of the four regional sections begins with a survey of historical and anthropological reports of same-sex patterns by the editors. The volume concludes with a review of the literature on woman-woman marriages, a general conclusion, and an appendix in which correlations between same-sex patterns and other features of African societies are analyzed. . . .
londo, nonmasculine males
tubele, nonmasculine males
mke-si-mume, "woman, not man," male and female homosexuals; mashoga (sing. shoga), male; basha (pl. mabasha), partner of mashoga; msagaji, msago (pl. wasagaji, misago), "grinders," lesbians
tinkonkana, boy wives
koetsire, sexually receptive males; soregus, friendship bond; ôa-/huru, /huru, mutual masturbation; /goe-ugu, "tribadie"
agyale, "friendship marriages" (sex denied)
eshenga, gender-mixing male shamans
a bele nnem e bango, "he has the heart [aspirations] of boys"
umuswezi, umukonotsi, "sodomite"; kuswerana nk’imbwa, kunonoka, kwitomba, kuranana inyuma, ku’nyo, male homosexuality; ikihindu and ikimaze (Mirundi), "hermaphrodite" priests
nkhonsthana, tinkonkana, nkonkana boy wife; nima, husband
chibadi, chibanda, chibados, jimbandaa, kibamba, quimbanda
omututa, (male) homosexuals; eponji, "lovers"
gor—digen, men—women; yauss, insertors; oubi, "open," insertees
inkosi ygbatfazi, "chief of the women" (diviners); amankotshane, izinkotshane, inkotshane, boy-wife; skesana, cross-gender males; iqgenge, masculine partners
“A superb collection of primary research articles and literature review essays on the organizations of homosexuality and the complexities of same-sex patterns.”
“...will likely become regarded as a groundbreaking and vital addition to several fields of study. It soundly refutes the notion of homosexuality as 'un-African' and forces readers to rethink many of the basic Western concepts they take for granted.”
copyright Will Roscoe 1998—2010
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Munni (9 years old) searches for metal in a pile of garbage on the bank of river Buriganga in Old Dhaka. She lives nearby in a slum. She has three sisters and one brother. Her mother works at a plastic & rubber recycling workshop. Her father died recently in a boat accident. When she is not scavenging, she is usually doing domestic chores like collecting water, cooking, cleaning or washing dirty dishes or laundries.
World Day Against Child Labour 2009: Give girls a chance: End child labour
The World Day Against Child Labour will be celebrated on 12 June 2009. The World Day this year marks the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the landmark ILO Convention No. 182, which addresses the need for action to tackle the worst forms of child labour.
Whilst celebrating progress made during the past ten years, the World Day will highlight the continuing challenges, with a focus on exploitation of girls in child labour. Around the world, an estimated 100 million girls are involved in child labour. Many of these girls undertake similar types of work as boys, but often also endure additional hardships and face extra risks. Moreover, girls are all too often exposed to some of the worst forms of child labour, often in hidden work situations.
On this World Day we call for:
Policy responses to address the causes of child labour, paying particular attention to the situation of girls.
Urgent action to tackle the worst forms of child labour.
Greater attention to the education and skills training needs of adolescent girls - a key action point in tackling child labour and providing a pathway for girls to gain Decent Work as adults.
Girls and child labour
ILO standards require that countries establish a minimum age of employment (generally 15 though developing countries can set the age at 14). They also require that children (including adolescents aged 15-17) are not involved in work designated as a worst form of child labour.
ILO expert Frank Hageman presents a new ILO report that despite recent progress in eliminating child labour which affects 218 million children globally, girls make up an estimated 100 million and more than half of them are under the age of 12. The report cites evidence that as a result of the economic crisis, more girls are kept out of school than boys with the result that they may enter the workforce at an early age.
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As several museums showcase works made at the time of the conflict, contemporary artists continue to reflect on its legacy
One hundred and fifty years after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War still figure prominently in the American imagination. Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and Quentin Tarantino’s more controversial film, Django Unchained, were both nominated for Academy Awards and have been box-office blockbusters. Museums throughout the United States have been planning exhibitions to celebrate the sesquicentennial. Many artists have commemorated, appropriated, deconstructed, and reenvisioned Civil War legacies, which, with much of the rhetoric surrounding last year’s presidential election, seem more relevant than ever.
“The Civil War continues to attract remarkably rich imaginative engagement in many different venues of American culture and society,” writes Thomas J. Brown in his introduction to Remixing the Civil War: Meditations on the Sesquicentennial (John Hopkins University Press, 2011). “The war . . . is our most frequently rehearsed, solemnly enshrined, most commercially exploited, and therefore most readily appropriated history.”
Over the past year, museums across the country have been or will be staging shows to commemorate the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, starting with “A Strange and Fearful Interest: Death, Mourning, and Memory in the American Civil War,” at the Huntington Library last October, followed in November by the landmark show “The Civil War and American Art” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which travels to the Metropolitan Museum of Art this month, coinciding with the Met’s own exhibition “Photography and the American Civil War.” This past February, the National Portrait Gallery opened “Bound for Freedom’s Light: African Americans and the Civil War,” and the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco is celebrating the sesquicentennial with “The Kinsey Collection: Shared Treasures of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey, Where Art and History Intersect,” on view through this month.
None of these exhibitions follows a strict chronology of the war—as from Antietam, to Gettysburg, to Cold Harbor. Instead, they offer new ways of considering depictions of it, both as art and as documentary material. “The Civil War and American Art” revisits the history of American painting and asks why art historians have often overlooked the impact of the Civil War on American artists. “There’s an interesting story of erasure here. Art history starts off with the presumption that the war mattered to some artists but not to others, and I couldn’t believe that was the right answer,” says Eleanor Jones Harvey, the curator of the exhibition. After ten years of research, she concluded that all American artists have been impacted by the Civil War, but many expressed their views through landscape painting, such as Martin Johnson Heade in his 1859 Approaching the Thunder Storm and Frederic Edwin Church in his Meteor of 1860 (1860). “Landscape painting picks up on changes in barometric pressure, if you will—where comets are omens and the aurora borealis is a sign of displeasure from God; lurid sunsets are like a landscape on fire; and a storm presaged the war. Landscape is not an escape. Landscape is the emotional rollercoaster we are on as we navigate the war.”
One reason there are so few paintings of battle scenes by American artists is that photography from the period, most notably the images produced by the Mathew Brady Studio, makes it abundantly clear that battlefields were riddled with corpses; they were not the picturesque or romantic views associated with chivalry. Photographs, however, held a “terrible fascination” for Americans, as described by a New York Times reporter at the time. “Photography tapped into the grief that was occurring,” says Huntington Library curator Jennifer A. Watts, who notes that this was the first time battlefield dead were depicted. “It was also a tether between the home front and the battle front,” she says, “with soldiers taking pictures of loved ones into battle or bringing back home photographs of themselves in uniform so their families could remember them. People are using photographs as a way of thinking about what they are experiencing.”
These exhibitions, fascinating as they are, tell only one side of the story, leaving out the rich source material produced by people of African heritage in America, both freed and enslaved, during the period. The Museum of the African Diaspora bridges this gap through its audio installation “Slave Narratives,” which features nine profoundly moving first-person accounts of slaves dating from the 1700s to the 2000s. “The historical documents, art objects, and artifacts in the exhibition ‘The Kinsey Collection’ provide an opportunity to move beyond one-dimensional stories about slavery, or more appropriately enslavement, to stories about the brutality of the institution and the struggle for survival,” explains MoAD executive director Grace C. Stanislaus. “And it offers more complex and layered stories that celebrate the indomitable spirit of Africans, many of whom endured the Middle Passage and, though forced, were able to establish lives in the New World.” She points to Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley, published in 1773. Born in West Africa in 1753 and sold into slavery, Wheatley became the first published African American poet and is considered a founding figure of black literature. Her portrait printed in the book is the only surviving work by the African American slave artist Scipio Moorhead.
Artists’ interest in the Civil War did not fade in 1865, and contemporary artists continue to mine this rich legacy. African American Kara Walker has, since the 1990s, plumbed the depth of stereotypes, both black and white, from the time of the war and Reconstruction. Her figures are presented as black silhouettes that stand out sharply against a white background. Drawing from Gone with the Wind, minstrel shows, romance novels, and pornography, Walker’s collages, paintings, and silhouettes “accentuate the absurdity and incongruity of the mythic images of slavery and the Civil War,” writes W. Fitzhugh Brundage in Remixing the Civil War. He observes that Walker, rather than looking at the history of the Civil War as an objective set of facts, “seems to dismiss any suggestion that there is an authentic historical memory of slavery or the Civil War uncontaminated by racism and stereotype.”
Recently, Walker found herself the subject of controversy when a work of hers on permanent loan to a library in Newark had been covered with cloth for four months before finally being displayed. The 72-by-114-inch surrealistic drawing—titled The moral arc of history ideally bends towards justice but just as soon as not curves back around toward barbarism, sadism, and unrestrained chaos (2010)—depicts aspects of the African American experience, including a view of a slave owner forcing a black woman to perform a sex act on him.
Walker’s work was met with ambivalence among African American librarians, some of whom objected to the abject nature of her depiction of blacks. Likewise, Fred Wilson was also embroiled in a public controversy over his statue E Pluribus Unum when the 2012 scheduled installation of the work in Indianapolis was canceled. For the ten-foot-tall limestone statue, Wilson appropriated an image of a freed slave from the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument in downtown Indianapolis and replaced the man’s broken shackles with a flag held up proudly above his head as in the Iwo Jima Memorial in Washington, D.C. Wilson was acutely aware that this would be the only monument in Indianapolis devoted solely to an African American, and his gesture became a lightning rod for the divided communities’ outrage.
“I like to make work about things that have been hidden or erased,” says Wilson, who has created museum installations uncovering hidden vestiges of the black experience in institutions throughout the world, including the American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. “Something about race is not being spoken about in the monuments of Indianapolis, but it is really about a point of view that’s missing,” he explains. “By revealing my point of view, the work in turn reveals that something that seems completely benign and objective has its own really strong point of view in the existing culture, in either monuments or museums.”
Walker and Wilson first emerged as artists in the 1990s, when identity politics, relating to the social and political roots of gender, race, and sexual orientation, played a prominent role in art. Today, in response to Walker and Wilson’s work, many artists, both black and white, have chosen the Civil War as a way of exploring issues of commemoration and division. “Kara Walker was a huge influence at the beginning. And I thought, ‘How do you respond to that?,’” says Philadelphia-born artist Barnaby Furnas. “I thought the Civil War would be a way that I could get closer to issues like racial violence, racism, and reverse racism.” Furnas, who often depicts huge battle scenes, treats the Civil War as one big conflagration with grand-scale paintings of clashing U.S. and Confederate flags, or the image of a bloody Lincoln with his head exploding. “I was also asking what would history paintings look like at the end of history?” he says. He adds that war movies, like Saving Private Ryan, also influenced him. “War is certainly good box office, and there was a lot of talk about how pop culture was going to eclipse fine arts, and this all got mixed together and I began to think about what a blockbuster painting would look like.”
Allison Smith, born in Virginia, at one time the home of the capital of the Confederacy, views the Civil War as key to her identity. She grew up being taken to numerous Civil War reenactments and to historic homes and monuments in her state and wanted to find a way to express her conflicting feelings about her heritage. She took on the issue of reenactments directly, ultimately producing large participatory installations, like The Muster, a re-creation (sponsored by the Public Art Fund) of a Civil War encampment involving hundreds of people, which took place on Governors Island in May 2005. “When I first started to study Civil War reenactments,” she says, “I was sure that it was motivated by racism, because the vast majority of reenacters are from the South, and it seems like people not wanting to let go of the past,” Smith continues. “But the more I looked at it, it seemed to be about an unresolved trauma that has to be replayed, like in therapy, going back and experiencing the trauma in order to move through it.”
Many other photographers have documented Civil War reenactments. Their popularity is growing, and they can involve tens of thousands of participants, including photographers like Willie Anne Wright, whose pinhole-camera pictures look almost identical to Mathew Brady’s images, and Greta Pratt, whose portraits of Lincoln reenacters are downright hilarious.
In 1862, Thomas Moran painted Slave Hunt, Dismal Swamp, Virginia, a compelling and claustrophobic landscape depicting a slave family, knee deep in water, fleeing two vicious dogs, with white hunters standing in the shadows. In 2002, Whitfield Lovell revisited this subject in his installation Sanctuary: The Great Dismal Swamp, shown at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia in Virginia Beach. Instead of picturing runaway slaves as half-clothed victims, as they were in Moran’s painting, Lovell portrayed the dignified woodcutters and homesteaders they became on the fringes of the wide expanse of land, now a nature preserve, that once hid fugitive slaves.
“I work with old photographs, and I like to work with people who are presenting themselves the way they want to be seen,” says Lovell, referring to the fact that even the most humble people went to photo studios at the time he draws from in his installations. He is currently working on another project based on Camp Contraband, which was located in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Contraband was the term for slaves who had successfully escaped from their masters, and this site was a place where they were considered safe from recapture. Lovell, who is Wilson’s long-term partner, will be showing this work at the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga this month. When asked why he most often portrays emancipated slaves rather than those in bondage, he answers, “Slavery is so much a part of my consciousness, I don’t dwell on the painful part of it. For example, a doctor dealing with people dying all the time can’t really think about death or he might get really upset and not be able to handle it. I think this is my mission to make a statement, so I can’t afford to get too wrapped up in the pain of it.”
Combining Buddhist imagery, slave iconography, and surrealism, Sanford Biggers demonstrates how to confront the pain and transcend it. For example, his iconic work Lotus (2007) takes a key symbol of Buddhism, the lotus flower, but imprints on each petal a diagram of a slave ship. Etched in glass, the work is shimmering and beautiful but also disturbing. “It’s a way of transcending the past, the trials and tribulations of the Middle Passage, by transforming the slave ship into this mandala,” says Biggers, who emphasizes that the esthetic experience should not be overshadowed by the historic content. “I am interested in the slow reveal—for the viewer to be brought in and then find out about the hidden content, and maybe find out more of the story,” he says. Recently, Biggers has been working on transforming 19th-century quilts into multilayered paintings, referencing the role that they played in the Underground Railroad delivering secret messages to fugitive slaves making their way north. “There was coded language within these quilts, and by me repurposing them with my own set of icons, I’m adding another layer of language,” Biggers says.
“For contemporary artists, the material of history often operates in the realm of allegory, pointing a finger toward contemporary issues,” says Creative Time chief curator Nato Thompson, who organized the 2007 exhibition “Ahistoric Occasion: Artists Making History” at MASS MoCA. “History, and particularly the Civil War, is a language that a lot of Americans understand because history is not about art, it is about life,” he says. “So, hopefully, by connecting with history, artists could connect with a broader swathe of people.”
Barbara Pollack is a contributing editor of ARTnews.
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By Blake Silberberg ’13
Former University of Rochester students Catie Hilliard ’10 and Katrina Furth ’10 recently saw two research papers written during their undergraduate studies published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition and Frontiers in Psychology. Working with Florian Jaeger, Wilmot Assistant Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Furth and Hilliard examined how word choice is affected by phonological overlap, or how the sounds of words affect how we choose them in everyday conversation.
Furth became interested in the field of brain and cognitive sciences because she wanted to research psychiatric disorders and how the brain creates perceptions and thoughts. “I was inspired by a family member who dealt with episodes of mental illness to understand how normal brains work and develop in the hopes that we may be able to prevent serious mental illness someday,” she explained.
As an undergraduate student working part time at Tim Horton’s, Furth sought out undergraduate research opportunities in the hopes of doing something with her summer that was more meaningful and relevant to her studies. She was referred to Michael Tanenhaus, who hired her to create videos that would be used in psycholinguistics experiments.
For one of her projects, Furth worked with Susan Cook to study people’s gestures as they described videos to their friends. “As we were making the videos, I noticed that people were using the verbs ‘hand’ and ’give’ at different frequencies to describe videos in which one character passes a gift or a hat to another character.”
This is where the idea for their project was born. “Dr. Jaeger had just joined the University and I started discussing my idea with him. He offered to continue paying me to figure out what was going on,” she said. “I was particularly curious to know if people avoided repeating the same initial syllables if they had the choice. No one knew whether people naturally avoided tongue twisters, though.”
The initial goal of the project was to examine if people avoid phonological overlaps (“hand hammer,” for example) when planning sentences. The project quickly expanded to include word order, speech rate, and fluency to see if people “strategically” avoid sentence constructions that may make them less fluent. “One idea that always really excited me was that we could make these choices without consciously thinking them through – people speak at about 3 syllables per second and so we certainly were not stopping to choose the best words,” she explains. “I was also really excited by the idea that information about how words will be produced can affect things that we think of as getting planned early – you choose your words and the sentence structure before you retrieve all of the sounds, right? Well, the whole premise of this work was that the sounds of words are getting accessed so early that they are affecting which words even get chosen, and in which order you produce those words.”
Furth was tasked with designing the experiment, creating the videos that would be used to test the subjects, recruiting and testing subjects, and instructing other undergraduates on how to annotate the collected utterances. Once the data was collected, Furth sought Jaeger’s help to calculate statistics on word frequency. “I learned a great deal about experiment design and data analysis by working on this project. Since I had never designed an experiment before, I made a lot of mistakes at the beginning, but the biggest piece that I learned about experiments is that one extra hour of planning before you start can save 40 hours of careful analysis at the end of the experiment.” Jaeger, Furth, and Hilliard found that speakers are less likely to choose words that result in phonological overlap, and that this tendency is based on early effects on lexical selection rather than later corrective processes.
About a year and a half into the project, Hilliard joined the team as they began to design more experiments looking at word order and fluency when the words shared similar endings instead of similar onsets. “That was the most fun/weird part of it — having an idea in your head and trying to come up with a way to test it,” Hilliard said.
Hilliard had been on track to complete a major in linguistics, but after a family member experienced a stroke which resulted in a loss of nearly all language abilities, she became increasingly interested in brain and cognitive sciences. “Suddenly, all of these cognitive processes that I had taken for granted seemed so complex and laborious. I wanted to learn more about cognition, how it develops, and the neural structure underlying these abilities.”
Hilliard combined her interests to pursue a concentration in psycholinguistics within the BCS department. After taking a psycholinguistics class with Jaeger, she worked as an assistant in his lab for the summer. This experience with the research process led her to join Furth and Jaeger’s project for the following year.
Both Furth and Hilliard refer to their research with Jaeger as one of the most valuable experiences of their undergraduate career. “I was particularly blessed to have an opportunity to pursue my own research idea as an undergraduate, present the work at international conferences, and be an author on multiple manuscripts,” Furth says. “My mentor, Florian, also sent me to the Yucatan peninsula to help collect data working with native Mayan speakers. These were once-in-a-lifetime experiences as I navigated the world in Spanish and attempted to do basic research in rare languages.”
Furth said the research experiences were pivotal in the graduate school admission process. “I believe that these experiences, and the letters of recommendations that came from them, were the major reason that I was accepted by 12 of 14 graduate schools to which I applied.”
Hilliard has similarly positive things to say about her experience. “Before I had even realized I wanted to continue doing research in graduate school, working in a lab gave me a sense of responsibility and independence that I didn’t always feel for my classwork,” she said. “I became really invested in the projects I was working on. I thought about them a lot, and learned how to communicate my research ideas to other people.”
Like Furth, Hilliard said that conducting research as an undergraduate prepared her for graduate school. “I felt confident in my abilities, and continued to feel supported by Florian, Katrina, and other members of the lab. When I applied for admission, several lab members shared their own experiences and advice, and I ended up in the best program for my research interests.”
Jaeger also emphasized the importance of having Furth and Hilliard in his lab. “Katrina was the first RA I hired six years ago. It was wonderful having Caitie and Katrina in the lab, I got lucky,” he says. “I hope that the University will continue to expand their support for undergraduate research and that we can strike a balance between providing research opportunities for undergraduates and all the other responsibilities of faculty. I think it’s one of the most appealing properties of a place like Rochester that you can actually get your feet wet and get involved in research.”
Katrina Furth (Pictured top right with Professor Florian Jaeger) is now enrolled in the Graduate Program for Neuroscience at Boston University, and is working at the National Institutes of Health with Dr. Andres Buonanno. She is examining the role of the dopamine D4 receptor in modulating cognitive ability and neural network oscillations called gamma rhythms. “Children with an allelic variant of the D4 receptor are more likely to have ADHD and many antipsychotic medications target this receptor as well as others. I am recording from individual neurons using patch-clamp electrophysiology.”
Caitie Hilliard (pictured bottom left) received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for her work with Dr. Susan Cook, a full scholarship for three years of graduate study in the University of Iowa Psychology department under Dr. Cook, a former Post-Doc at the University of Rochester. Hilliard is studying the role of hand gesture in communication, focusing on how speakers modulate their gestures based on the shared information they have with their listeners. She has run two studies examining how speakers’ gestures change when they know that their listener lacks task-relevant information, and is currently investigating how the listeners’ perception of these gestures affects their own cognition.
Article written by Blake Silberberg, an intern with University Communications and a member of the Piggies. He is a senior majoring in political science.
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1Analyze (a sentence) into its parts and describe their syntactic roles.
- They can parse complex words and sentences; but this parsing takes more work than reading simpler, clearer prose.
- You can't parse the sentence that way without adding a missing to.
- You don't have to parse the sentences or measure vowel formants or anything time consuming, so the empirical part of the research just took a few minutes.
1.1 Computing Analyze (a string or text) into logical syntactic components, typically in order to test conformability to a logical grammar.
- To prove that it does, try manually parsing the input string such as we did above.
- For instance, although Perl makes it easy to parse delimited text files with regular expressions, OCaml provides tools specifically designed for writing a compiler.
- Chapter 10 finalizes the discussion of methods and tools repeatedly mentioned in earlier chapters to parse the XML documents.
1.2Examine or analyze minutely: he has always been quick to parse his own problems in public
More example sentences
- His life has been studied, parsed, and analyzed by a host of academics, art historians, and psychoanalysts.
- Together, these functions allow users to seamlessly profile, analyze, parse, cleanse, match and household any type of customer information.
- With considerable forensic skill and with immense dedication, Lord Butler examined, weighed and parsed the intelligence.
An act of or the result obtained by parsing a string or a text.
- There were people who knew there were problems with the parse, but they weren't security people, so they didn't know it was a security problem.
- In either case, we accept the parse as complete and error-free.
- The parses are generated by running Eugene Charniak's statistical parser.
Mid 16th century: perhaps from Middle English pars 'parts of speech', from Old French pars 'parts' (influenced by Latin pars 'part').
Words that rhyme with parseaides-mémoires, Lamaze, Lars, Mars, Paz, Stars and Bars, vase, vichyssoise
For editors and proofreaders
Definition of parse in:
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
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Approximately 30,000 islands can be found in the Great Lakes. They range in size from less than an acre to more than 140,000 acres (Isle Royale). The basin’s islands contain virtually all the unique natural features associated with the Great Lakes shoreline as well as some of the last intact ecological communities found in the Great Lakes.
Great Lakes islands support rare, threatened and endangered species due in part to their biological diversity, isolation from human disturbance, and absence of invasive species. A number of colonial waterbirds, such as common tern, and black-crowned night heron nest on Great Lakes islands at sites free from predators and other disturbances.
Shoals surrounding the islands are of high value to Great Lakes fish. Many islands are also considered important stopover sites for neotropical migratory songbirds that pass through the Great Lakes in vast numbers each year.
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Modified from "What is a Vole" by Chuck Friedrich, RLA
Most gardeners think of moles when they notice that some critter is tunneling under their yard or garden. When plants and bulbs start disappearing, moles have nothing to do with it. Moles are insectivores, which mean they only eat bugs, grubs and worms. If plants are falling over from chewed roots and bulbs are no longer where you planted them, you probably have voles.
Voles (Microtus ssp.) are small rodents often referred to as pine and meadow mice.
Voles are reddish brown to gray, about two or four inches long, with a short tail, blunt face, and tiny eyes and ears. They spend much of their time underground in an extensive tunnel system usually less than a foot deep. One to two inch diameter entrance holes may be noticed in the lawn or garden.
The safest and most effective way to protect plants and bulbs is to create a barrier between the vole and its lunch! Since voles do not like to tunnel through coarse materials, create a barrier out of coarse aggregate with jagged edges.
Espoma Soil Perfector is perfect for this application because it is safe, nontoxic, lightweight and easy to use, it promotes rooting, and is permanent.
For more information about Espoma Soil Perfector call the Espoma Company toll free at (800) 634-0603 or visit their website www.espoma.com.
Dig a 4 inch wide, 1 foot deep “moat” around the drip-line of the plant (where drops of water would hit the ground from the most extended leaves). Fill this "moat" to the top with Espoma Soil Perfector. Voles also like to tunnel under mulch so it's best to reduce the mulch around the plant and use Soil Perfector as a mulch inside the moat instead.
After tilling and preparing the beds, make the planting hole 12 inches wider and 2inches deeper than the root ball. Place 2 inches of Espoma Soil Perfector in the hole. Set the root ball on the Soil Perfector and backfill completely surrounding the roots with 100% Espoma Soil Perfector. Mulch with Soil Perfector around the stem.
Place 2" of Espoma Soil Perfector in the hole and place the bulbs. Surround the bulbs with Soil Perfector leaving just the tips exposed. Finally, place a 50% Espoma Soil Perfector/soil mix over the bulbs to the desired depth.
Bonide Moletox Baited Gel
Bonide Moletox II
Bonide MoleMax Mole & Vole Repellent
Bonide Mouse Magic
Bonide Revenge Rodent Smoke Bomb
Bonide Shot-Gun Mole Repellent
Castor Beans – every foot
Chew – Not
Dr. T’s Rat Away Repellent
Liquid Fence Mole and Vole Repellent
Mole Out Granules
Sweeney’s Poison Peanuts
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April 2005 - Issue 046
Are You Getting Enough? : Food May Not Provide Sufficient Micronutrients Dr. Bill Misner
Reference Daily Intakes (RDIs) is a new term that replaces the familiar U.S. Recommended Daily Allowances (U.S. RDAs). RDIs are based on a population-weighted average of the latest RDAs for vitamins and minerals for healthy Americans over 4 years old. RDIs are not recommended optimal daily intake figures for any particular age group or sex. Government-established Reference Daily Intake guidelines (RDIs) are designed to prevent nutrient-deficiency diseases. Most nutritionally oriented professionals' reference research that supports selection of foods and/or supplements to supply all micronutrients well above RDI levels to maintain optimal health and prevent degenerative disease.
Vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin that like other water-soluble vitamins when it is excessive above the body's needs is excreted via urine. Colgan2 measured vitamin C excretion rate subjects and reported that some could take 5000 milligrams with no increase in excretion rate while others after taking only 1000 mg showed extraordinary urine excretion rate. Colgan calls this remarkable difference in individual's vitamin requirement, "Biochemical Individuality".3 I wondered therefore, in spite of great differences in "Individual Biochemistry," does our food intake provide 100% of the RDI level of micronutrients required for a deficiency disease preventative?
METHOD: A computer-generated dietary analysis was performed on whole food intake from the diets of 20 subjects, 10 men (ages 25-50y) and 10 women (ages 24-50y). This computer-program default utilized the Harris-Benedict formula for determining energy expense against micronutrient needs based on activity-induced calorie expenditure, age, gender, and Body Mass Index (BMI). Each subject was selected based on the highest number of foods consumed daily of 42 dietary analysis subjects. The purpose of this search was to determine if food intake alone provided the Reference Daily Intake (RDI) requirements for 10 vitamins and 7 minerals. The ten vitamins examined were Vitamin A, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, Vitamin K, Vitamin B-1, Vitamin B-2, Vitamin B-3, Vitamin B-6, Vitamin B-12, and Folate. The seven minerals examined for were Iodine, Potassium, Calcium, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Zinc, and Selenium. Diets were analyzed from the following active individuals (A): 2 professional cyclists, 3 amateur cyclists, 3 amateur triathletes, 5 eco-challenge amateur athletes, 1 amateur runner. Six (6) of the subjects were sedentary (S) non-athletes. Fourteen (14) active subjects (A) were compared to six (6) sedentary subjects (S). Based on each subject's caloric expense, age, gender, BMI, 10 of the diets were calculated as calorie-excessive, above energy requirements (4 men and 6 women), but the remaining 10 diets were calculated calorie-deficient, not meeting 100% of their energy requirements (6 men and 4 women).
RESULTS: When total calorie intake percentages were averaged for each group, men consumed only 92.6% of the calories required for their total energy requirements, while women consumed only 97.3% of the calories required to meet their energy requirements. To view this graphically, see table 1.
Of the 20 diets analyzed, 50% were calorie-sufficient and 50% calorie-deficient resulting in an overall -7.4% deficiency for men and a -2.7% deficiency in women. Calorie-deficient menus tended to record a greater number of micronutrient deficiencies as compared to the calorie-sufficient. Of the 340 micronutrient entries generated from 17 micronutrients analyzed, all subjects presented a deficiency of between 3 and 15 deficiencies based on Reference Daily Intake (RDI) values taken from their food intake alone. Males averaged deficiencies in 40% of the vitamins and 54.2% of the minerals Reference Daily Intake (RDI) required. Females recorded deficiencies in 29% of the vitamins and 44.2% of the minerals Reference Daily Intake (RDI) required. The male food intake was RDI-deficient in 78 out of 170 micronutrient entries, or 45.8% of the 10 vitamins and 7 minerals analyzed. The female dietary intake was RDI-deficient in 60 out of 170 micronutrients or 35.2% of the 10 vitamins and 7 minerals analyzed. Both male and females as a single entity recorded 138 micronutrient deficiencies out of the possible 340 micronutrients analyzed, or 40.5% micronutrient RDI-deficiency from food intake alone.
CONCLUSION: This twenty-subject food analysis is not representative of the entire population, but these results imply that micronutrient deficiencies do exist to some degree in spite of calorie adequacy, inadequacy, activity, or inactivity. Activity's effect on caloric deficiency, further imposes micronutrient deficiency and predictably increases the risk of deficiency disease. In highly active persons, micronutrient deficiencies occur at the highest rate when micronutrient-rich foods are not consumed to replace the calories spent. Food alone in these 20 subjects did not meet the minimal Reference Daily Intake (RDI) micronutrient requirements for preventing micronutrient-deficiency related disease-like disorders. The more active the person, the greater the need to employ balanced diet of micronutrient-rich foods; otherwise, micronutrient supplementation is a preventative protocol for preventing deficiencies.
Competing Interests: Bill Misner Ph.D. is the director of Research & Product Development for an endurance athletes' supplement company, E-CAPS INC. & HAMMER NUTRITION LTD @ http://www.e-caps.com
By permission, courtesy of Dr. Bill Misner, Ph.D. in the Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients (c)April 2005 #261; pages 49-52. www.tldp.com / [email protected]
1 Bill Misner Ph.D. is the director of Research & Product Development for an endurance athletes' supplement company, E-CAPS INC. & HAMMER NUTRITION LTD @ http://www.e-caps.com
2 Colgan M. Your Personal Vitamin Profile. New York: Morrow, 1982.
3 Colgan M. Optimum Sports Nutrition. New York: Advanced Research Press. 1993.
4 Iodine is present in sea vegetation, but not in most foods unless iodized salt is added. An iodine intake of less than 20 micrograms (ug) per day is considered severe deficiency; 20-50 micrograms (ug) per day is considered moderate deficiency and 50-100 micrograms (ug) per day are considered mild deficiency. Iodized salt is widely used and some other foods are fortified with iodine. Two grams of iodized salt supplies 150 micrograms (0.15 mg). None of the dietary analysis included salt added by the consumer to their foods. This may an inaccurate estimate of the iodine deficiency rate.
Spring time is in the air and the racing season is upon us. Hopefully your base training went well and you are ready to start hammering. We are ready to help you make 2005 your best season yet with one stop shopping for all of your fueling and supplement needs.
Like the previous 45 issues of Endurance News, this issue is packed full of useful information that you cannot get anywhere else. In fact, we had so much content for this issue that we had to go to 20 pages and still left out a few articles that will have to wait until the July issue.
Whether it's Dr. Bill's landmark research that debunks the tired "balanced diet" mantra, or the interview with George Brunstad, a 70 year old swimming the English Channel, this is simply a must read issue.
If you have been looking for an alternative to the high calorie, high fluid, high sodium, party line that all of the companies pushing sugar and the media who they support continue to blabber about, be sure to read Steve's articles on page 7 and 14. The big mistake that everyone else is making is focusing on what you lose during exercise, not what you can effectively replace.
So as you get ready to start your season, remember that we're your source for superior products and sound knowledge.
To your health,
4th Annual Highline Hammer : Come Ride In The Rockies
We are pleased to announce the dates for the 4th Annual Highline Hammer Weekend. The festivities this year will be held over the weekend of August 4-7, 2005. If you missed out on last year's event, or had so much fun that you can't wait to do it again, please consider this your invitation to join Steve, Dr. Bill, Joe, and myself for a weekend of long miles, beautiful scenery, good conversation, great food, and a lot of valuable "face" time with our endurance gurus. Allen Larsen, 2003 Insight Race Across America winner, will be joining us again this year to share his "ultra" experiences, ride with us and do a video documentary of the weekend. As an added bonus, every attendee will receive a 30 minute DVD as a keepsake along with a CD of all of the photographs taken during the weekend.
We can confidently say that every client who has joined us in the past 3 years has had the time of their life. In fact, we already have nearly 15 slots for the 2005 event reserved by 2004 attendees. That leaves 20 spots available, so there is still plenty of room for you.
We'd love to have you join us this year. If this sounds like something that would be of interest to you, please visit www.e-caps.com/highline. You will find all of the nitty gritty details there as well as a bunch of images and a 5 minute video clip from the 2004 event. If you are the analog type, give us a call @ 800.336.1977 and we'll send you all of the information you need. See you in August!
What's In Your Energy Food : Read The Label Carefully
With so many products flooding the markets these days it can be pretty challenging to sort through the hype and pseudo-science jargon to discern whether or not you would want to use it.
Below is our suggestion for what to seek out and what to avoid in a energy drink, bar or gel or pretty much any packaged food.
Some companies that don't offer protein fortified energy drinks say that there are no benefits from consuming protein during exercise. That's only true when exercise is less than two hours in length. However, for workouts and races longer than that, 5-12% of your energy requirements will be derived from protein. If your fuel source does not contain 10-15% protein, your body will have no choice but to get that protein from muscle stores. Some energy drinks provide 25% protein, but this is 10-15% more than you need. Also, every other drink and gel on the market that incorporates protein uses whey. Whey is a great protein but it should not be used during exercise as it releases excess ammonia into the muscles as it is being metabolized. Soy or rice protein are the only ones suitable for use immediately before and during exercise.
1. You should AVOID products that are comprised primarily or completely of sucrose, glucose, dextrose, and fructose, and use products that are comprised of complex carbohydrates only. There are several significant health reasons for that, but let's focus on the digestibility/fuel availability:
With a simple sugar fuel, the body will only permit a calorically weak 6-8% solution of it into circulating serum for fuel replacement. On the other hand, complex carbohydrate fuels are easily and more-rapidly absorbed in a 15-20% solution. This means that more calories are absorbed faster, and are available for energy production, from complex carbohydrates than simple sugar.
2. You should AVOID products that contain more than 10% of their total carbohydrate content as simple sugars. The higher the percentage of simple sugar in a product, generally the more trouble it will cause over a long period of time. Fueling with simple sugars also dramatically increases electrolyte and fluid demand as well as the potential for GI distress.
INGREDIENTS - AVOID simple sugars such as sucrose, fructose or dextrose by themselves or in combination with other carbohydrate sources.
AVOID any fuel that contains artificial colors (such as FD&C Red #40) or artificial sweeteners such as Acesulfame K, and aspartame. Your body has no need for these toxins so there's no reason to put them in your body! Absolutely avoid products that rely on the use of these ingredients.
Be Kind To Your Teeth : Drink HEED
Recently, a widely publicized report claimed that all of the major sports drinks are very corrosive for your teeth due to their sugar content. So much so that you are now advised to swish with plain water after consuming a sugary sports drink. The experts found that the sports drinks were harder on teeth than soda pop! Of course Hammer Nutrition's HEED energy drink was not included in these findings since it contains no simple refined sugars and actually may improve oral hygiene due to the the presence of xylitol, which is a naturally occurring 5-carbon sugar alcohol found in many fruits and vegetables. We're thinking the new motto could be "switch to HEED, your teeth will thank you". Here's to happy teeth!
Alternatives : Does Honey or Brown Rice Syrup Make An Effective Energy Gel?
Honey is for Bees, Bears, and Sedentary Humans
If you have tried honey for your energy gel, you may already have learned that it is not the best idea. "Normal" harvested honey presents a fructose to glucose ratio of 1:20 and a small amount of organic acids, mostly citric acid. Excessive simple sugar may work for bees and bears, but in people it likely results in transient hyperglycemia to lingering hypoglycemia. In terms of optimal high-demand human endurance performance, simple sugars including honey are not the best choice.
HONEY is analyzed by an average, range, and standard deviation for its major constituents. The standard deviation is an estimation of the variable for each specific ingredient. The higher the number, the more the difference found among various kinds of honey. EXAMPLE: The standard deviations themselves show a large range from 70.9 (total protein is extremely variable) to 0.126 (fructose/glucose ratio is more consistent). Although the percentage of fructose and glucose constituents are about the same in honeys, glucose is more variable with a standard deviation of 3.04 as opposed to fructose's 1.77.
TABLE 1 shows what is natural honey and how much each ingredient varies. Composition of Honey
Honey is composed mainly of a variety of SUGARS, traces of pollen and water. There are also enzymes present. TABLE 2, on the opposite page, shows numbers from 490 samples of largely uncrystallized honeys. Fructose is the major sugar component, which provides the extreme sweetness in honey. Fructose & glucose in honey generate simple sugars that are not absorbed rapidly in the stomach unless they are in an isotonic solution of 6% or less. The lower glycemic index of honey is however favorable for resting food sugar per se, but during exercise, honey is not gastrointestinal friendly in amounts large enough to generate caloric demands. The standard moisture content in honey is typically around 18.6%. Not all honey is the same, and even that made in the same area, varies with each batch, bees, climate, etc. Example: Two honey products from Florida: "Florida Tupelo Honey" is well known for high fructose content and tendency not to granulate in time forming pure "sugar." The percentage of sucrose in other forms of honey from the same state generates a larger range of table sugar than might be expected. "Florida Citrus Honey" has been rejected in some markets because of its high sucrose (table sugar) content. High sucrose honey content sitting in a container in time turns into a granulated form of table sugar, not a good source for an energy gel in an endurance event. The point is honey products vary in their sugar and fructose contents. Whether it is fructose high or sucrose high, both can only be absorbed in a 6% solution which limits how much can be absorbed and if it can be absorbed as a simple sugar solution without causing gastrointestinal upset.
Brown Rice Syrup
Brown Rice Syrup is made from fermented or enzymatic processed brown rice. A number of Brown Rice Syrups are manufactured producing a higher percent of sugar than table sugar! Some Brown Rice Syrups are made with low dextrose equivalences like maltodextrin, while others have very high dextrose equivalences like corn syrup solids. Brown Rice Syrup is first processed through grinding and heating to make a thick syrup resulting in 50 PERCENT MALTOSE + 37 percent complex carbohydrates. What the remaining 37% carbohydrate mixtures are or how it is processed determines its total glycemic index.
Based on glycemic index, Brown Rice Syrup is similar to the GI-value of maltodextrin, with values slightly higher, but it too like honey can only be absorbed in a 6-8% solution, which has the potential to increase the risk of stomach upset during an endurance event. TABLE 3 shows the related data.
Glycemic Index here is set by white bread as the reference food, set to equal 100. The length of glucose chains positively influences absorption rate. If there is a large percentage of short-chain sugars in the compound put into a solution, only a small portion of it [6-8%] will cross intestinal membranes, while a large portion of the calories sit, waiting for the body to draw out electrolyte and fluids in order to lower the osmolality pressure so that the simple individual sugars can cross over and be absorbed. Conversely, if there is a high percentage of long-chain sugars in the compound solution, a substantially larger portion (15-18%) of the calories will cross intestinal membranes and return to the energy cycle at the rate of 240-280 calories per hour during exercise. High Glycemic Index foods should be restricted during sedentary mealtimes, except after exercise or moderately during exercise. Avoiding the dietary-induced insulin response during sedentary states is important to health. Too much insulin from too much total high glycemic carbohydrates at one time when blood sugar demand is low due to not exercising may create an environment producing higher risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and Syndrome X. If the turnover in blood sugar is high, created by muscle demand for energy during exercise, then the glycemic index rating is not the concern as how much fuel food is transmitted across gastric lining. I conclude in favor of long-chain maltodextrin products in preference over short-chain ones such as sugar-rich honey or brown rice syrup gels. The difference between absorption rate of simple sugars and complex carbohydrates is the difference between gastrointestinal stress risk and having an abundance of energy to successfully complete your endurance event of choice.
1 U. S. Dept. of Agriculture Technical bulletin 1261, "Composition of American Honeys" by J.W. WhiteJr., M. L. Reithof, M. H. Subers, and I.Kushnir, 1962.
Ask Dr. Bill, Bill Misner, Ph.D.
QUESTION : I have seen some information on Citrulline Malate that indicates they could be beneficial to athletic performance. Is Citrulline Malate the same thing that is in Anti-Fatigue Caps?
ANSWER : "CITRULLINE", (molecular formula C6H13N3O3), is metabolized within the kidneys to form arginine, raising plasma arginine by +60%. Arginine then raises nitric oxide. Nitric oxide helps regulate blood pressure, blood flow, by causing the wall of a vessel to dilate. In addition, citrulline is converted by the small intestines from dietary glutamine or ornithine. Citrulline hastens removal of ammonia (NH3) excreting of urea out of the body and detoxifies alcohol (ethanol). Endurance exercise produces ammonia, the more ammonia generated the more fatigue is experienced. Citrulline potentiates detoxification relieving the immune system's burden, reduces time to fatigue, increases energy, and recovery.
BIOCHEMISTRY OF CITRULLINE IN THE UREA CYCLE
Arginine->Ornithine->CITRULLINE->Aspartic Acid-> ->Arginosucinic Acid->Arginine<->Fumaric Acid ...|...|--| ...|...V--V ...|...NH3->Carbamyl Phosphate ...|.......|...| ...V.......|...| ...V.......V...V ...UREA EXCRETIONMalate or malic acid is a type of alpha-hydroxy acid a primary intermediate that proceeds out from a reaction of water and fumaric acid found in the CITRIC ACID/KREBS CYCLE:
Citric Acid->Cis Aconitate->Isocitric Acid->Oxalosuccinic Acid- >Alpha Ketoglutate Acid->Succinyl Coenzyme A->Succinic Acid- >Fumaric Acid->MALIC ACID->Citric Acid.Your body makes these kreb cycle intermediates with enzymes, amino acids, minerals, and gases reproducing energy at a remarkably high reaction-like rate, but as with high energy metabolite demand, during extreme exercise intensity or duration they may suffer depletion. Adding citrulline-malate is a rational ingredient to enhance both kreb cycle intermediate production and increasing blood flow dynamics favorably effecting pre-, during, and post- endurance exercise.
ANTI-FATIGUE CAPS is a potent krebs cycle intermediate formula made up of potassium/magnesium aspartates, citrulline, and ornithine alpha ketoglutarate. Each of these are active fatigue-reducing agents which can be taken before, during, or after prolonged endurance exercise sessions. Citrulline, Ornithine, and Aspartic Acid spare energy via detoxification of excess ammonia released from overworked muscle groups during exercise, and each (especially citrulline) acts as a precursor to malic acid reproducing other intermediates in the kreb cycle, though having a malic acid moiety adjoined to Citrulline should be a good energy-sparing ingredient.
Product Spotlight : Anti-Fatigue Caps
Several years ago, as the desire to improve my athletic performance naturally via the use of nutritional supplements intrigued me more and more, I came upon a section in a book by Dr. Michael Colgan that discussed ammonia and its detrimental effects on performance. Colgan wrote:
A second inhibitor of exercise, happening simultaneously with the accumulation of acidity, is accumulation of ammonia. All anaerobic and endurance exercise produces oodles of the stuff. Bad news! Ammonia is toxic to all cells, reduces the formation of glycogen, and inhibits the energy cycle. It has devastating effects on brain function. We still don't know how much it contributes to fatigue, but we do know that the higher your blood ammonia, the poorer your performance. So the second thing that a successful ergogenic supplement has to do is reduce ammonia accumulation.
(Colgan, Michael. Optimum Sports Nutrition. New York: Advanced Research Press, 1993, pp. 282-3)
Well, Colgan's words were all I needed to begin the investigation to determine which nutrients could aid in the removal of performance-robbing ammonia. I only had to read a bit further to get some answers. Later in his book, Colgan discussed the tremendous losses of glutamine during exercise and why it wasn't the best idea to replenish these losses with supplemental glutamine. Instead, he suggested a nutrient called OKG (ornithine alpha-ketoglutarate):
... glutamine is not used with catabolic patients because it adds to the ammonia burden. To overcome this problem researchers in France developed alpha-ketoglutarate, which has the same carbon skeleton as glutamine, that is, provides a substrate for glutamine, but contains virtually no ammonia. Far from adding to the ammonia burden, alpha-ketoglutarate acts in the body as an ammonia scavenger. Ornithine also acts as an ammonia scavenger. The combination of the two is a potent way to reduce your ammonia burden. pp. 377-78
I immediately began taking OKG supplements in my longer workouts and races. Still, I wondered if there were other ammonia-scavenging nutrients I could consider. After quite a bit of investigation, I located two more likely substances, the amino acids aspartic acid and citrulline, in a book by James Balch, M.D. Balch had this to say about these two amino acids:
Because aspartic acid increases stamina, it is good for fatigue and plays a vital role in metabolism. Chronic fatigue may result from low levels of aspartic acid, because this leads to lower cellular energy. It is good for athletes, and helps to protect the liver by aiding in the removal of excess ammonia. ... Citrulline promotes energy, stimulates the immune system . . . and detoxifies ammonia . . .
(Balch, James F. Prescription for Nutritional Healing. Garden City Park, NY: Avery Publishing Group, 1997, pp. 36-37)
Bingo! Ammonia scavenging nutrients #2 and #3 discovered! Now all I had to do was find a source to buy them (which I eventually did) and assemble, in my own kitchen, ammonia-fighting packets to take during my events. And that's just what I did for many years in my ultra cycling career.
A few years ago we combined all three of these substances into one capsule and gave it the appropriate name Anti-Fatigue Caps, because it delays or even prevents ammonia build-up, a major contributor to muscle fatigue. It really is an amazing product (and I'm VERY thankful that it's an all-in-one formula... that makes things a lot easier). Anyway, while it's a product that you need not take daily, it is a product that can be of significant aid for the following applications:
1.) As a pre-workout supplement during shorter workouts when you're increasing your training volume
2.) Every hour during workouts longer than 2-3 hours in length
3.) When you're making a jump in the length of race you're doing such as going from a century to a double century on your bike, or going from doing sprint or Olympic distance triathlons to half or full iron distance triathlons
4.) As a non-stimulating energy booster any time during the day
Anti-Fatigue Caps may not be the premier supplement in the E-CAPS line (I'd give the nod to Premium Insurance Caps, Race Caps Supreme, and Mito-R Caps there) but oh, does it ever work well under specific conditions and for certain applications. It's been a long-time "secret weapon" of mine and it's definitely a product you should consider, too.
Fueling : High Intake Strategies DON'T WORK!
As I mention in my "From the Saddle" column, endurance athletes are being bombarded with fueling suggestions from a variety of "expert" sources that seem to emphasize that you need to replenish what you lose (fluids, calories, and electrolytes) in large amounts, sometimes nearly equal to depletion rates.
Unfortunately, this "high volume replacement" type of fueling program works against normal body mechanisms and usually yields nothing more than a poorer-than-desired performance, if not an outright DNF. We've heard from so many frustrated athletes who have tried to follow a high calorie/fluid/salt regimen (with only dismal results to report) that it simply cannot be coincidental.
Fluids, calories, and electrolytes need to be replenished in amounts that cooperate with your body, not in amounts that overwhelm it. If you'll re-supply your body in smaller volumes of fluids, calories, and electrolytes you'll not only greatly reduce the opportunity of any number of undesired maladies from occurring, you'll enjoy enhanced performance.
Here are our general recommendations - and remember, you need to test everything in your training, tailoring these suggestions to fit your specific needs - for fluids, calories, and electrolytes. Use this as your gauge and see if you don't experience better results in your training and racing.
FLUIDS - We find that most athletes do very well, under most conditions with a fluid intake of 20-26 ounces per hour (roughly the equivalent of a small to large water bottle).
CALORIES - Our common recommendation is approximately 60-70 grams of carbohydrates (240-280 calories) hourly. That will, in most situations, and for most athletes, provide enough carbohydrates for energy production (the limit of what the body can metabolize) while taking into account a percentage of those calories being lost/burned during the digestive/metabolic processes. Larger athletes may need slightly more, lighter weight athletes less.
ELECTROLYTES - Don't oversupply the salt. Most athletes in most conditions do not need more than 200-400 mg of sodium per hour. The key for electrolyte replenishment, as it is with calories and fluids, is to provide an adequate dose to support bodily functions without overwhelming the body with too much. We suggest consistent/hourly replenishment from Endurolytes, which provides all the required electrolytic minerals (not just sodium chloride) and in amounts that allow for flexible and precise dosing.
Electrolyte expenditure (and thus replenishment) varies tremendously from athlete to athlete. Body weight, level of fitness, weather conditions, acclimatization level, and biological predisposition all greatly affect electrolyte depletion and hence, the need for replenishment.
Try following a "moderate" fluid, calorie and electrolyte fueling protocol and see how much better it works!
As part of our post-sales follow up, and in an effort to better serve you, we asked those clients who had already purchased a Compex EMS unit to give us some feedback about how they've used the unit, what gains they've noticed, and whether or not they would recommend the purchase of a Compex.
Here are the questions we asked and just some of the responses...
How many days/times per week do you use the Compex?
What is your favorite program(s) to use and when?
Endurance, and Active Recovery
The Recovery program after my long runs, and the endurance program after my gym days. I don't like to run on those days , they seem to be when I am most prone to injury.
Strength. Recovery after hard rides or intensity workouts.
I just got the Compex a few weeks ago, so I'm a novice user. So far I've focused on the Active Recovery program, especially in the evenings after hard workouts / races. I used the Resistance program once, and plan to start a strength oriented program in the next few weeks after I've completed my racing season.
How have you incorporated Compex routines into your normal schedule, please give examples?
I use it after long weekends of training. For example I use it Saturday nights after a long brisk workout. Sundays, after a long run day. This allows me to recover well enough to ride in group rides on Monday - Tuesday. I also use on Monday and Tuesday nights.
I use Compex as a supplement to my "leg" workouts, primarily as a way to build additional muscle without the wear and tear on my knees of running or cycling. I'm 50, so building and maintaining without stressing my knees is increasingly important.
Strength program to supplement weight training. Recovery program after hard training.
Have you used it to correct muscle strength imbalances? If so, give examples.
When I first started using the COMPEX I noticed my left quads shaking more than my right quads. I read and re-read the instructions you provided on helping correct muscle imbalances. In a nutshell, I crank up the sessions and watch my muscles. If I notice that my right leg isn't twitching as much as my left and that it doesn't feel as intense I simply increase the levels until I see an equal degree of muscle twitch (and it usually feels the same). Sometimes I won't even bother looking at the muscle twitch. Rather, I can feel the difference and will increase the intensity on the weaker muscle group until it feels equal to the other, stronger, group.
Yes, my entire left leg was weaker than my right leg - calf, quad, hamstring and buttock. After a few sessions, I noticed the improvement in the muscles of the left leg, both during the Compex session and, more importantly, on the bike rides.
What has surprised you as an unexpected benefit of using the Compex Sport?
The intensity of muscle contraction is more than I could ever achieve with weights. This should really improve strength on the bike.
How relaxing the Active Recovery program is. I fall asleep every time and the beeping at the end wakes me up.
My legs feel "there". What I mean by that is that I feel that when I run or bike that my legs are totally in the zone and are able to crank out the power as needed without delay. The Active Recovery program, I believe, has helped reduce/eliminate post workout/training/race soreness.
The elimination or significant reduction of quad soreness the next day after intense workouts or races.
I have been impressed with immediate results achieved. For the amount of time the payoff is great.
What would you say to an athlete who was considering buying one?
Based on personal use and the essays provided on the E-CAPS website, I believe the Active Recovery program provides a significant advantage to someone who is taking training seriously enough to approach an over-training threshold or who is having their training performance negatively impacted due to high training volume. My experience has been that the Strength and Endurance programs do improve muscle tone and definition. I believe that the Compex is a valid investment for a serious endurance athlete.
This is an awesome investment. Your body is totally worth it. As with any training, you'll need to be consistent with your use of the Compex to notice the gains/improvements you've heard about. In addition, periodize your workouts and take plenty of time to rest and recover...since this is where you really make your improvements (i.e., over-compensation occurs during this time).
Buy it now. The Compex will allow you to achieve higher levels of performance with less effort and less impact than traditional methods.
So there you go, feedback from athletes who have purchased and used the Compex EMS. If you'd like more information about the Compex log on to www.e-caps.com/compex or call 1.800.336.1977.
Nate's Corner : Changing Focus
Now that the racing season is upon us, the focus on your training should be shifting. You either have peaked in your weekly hours or will do so soon, depending on when your key races are.
Also, you will be shifting to more anaerobic work and less aerobic. The majority of your training is still aerobic - 80% or more - but this should be considerably less than during the winter, when maybe 95% was aerobic. With the increase in intensity, there should be a leveling off or decrease in weekly training hours (up to 20%). This decrease in hours compensates for the increase in intensity. If you schedule deliberate recovery weeks every 4th or 5th week, you can get by with more hours and more hard training. If you still don't include rest weeks of reduced hours (around 50-60% of normal weeks) and reduced workloads (90-100% aerobic - below 75%), then you should think about it. Nothing derails great fitness like overtraining.
Finally, it's time to start cutting back on weights. If you've been lifting 3 days a week (hopefully not more than that), then it's time for 2 days. The fall and winter was the time to make gains in your strength. With 2 sessions a week, you should still make some gains. But you need to reduce the amount of weight work you're doing now that you're increasing your intensity in your primary sport(s). Soon, it will be time to reduce your weight routine to once per week, probably in another 4-6 weeks. At that point, the goal is simply to maintain the strength gains you've made, not to build on them. Too much weight work will break you down and keep the muscles from recovering properly as the rigors of the racing season pile up.
Nate Llerandi is a former national champion class swimmer/world class triathlete. He has been coaching since 1990 and creates programs for athletes of all sports and ability levels. You can contact him at [email protected]
Join the J.O.E. : Journal of Endurance
The Journal of Endurance (J.O.E.) is written by Bill Misner, Ph.D. and contains synopses of peer-reviewed, published research and articles of interest concerning endurance performance and health outcome. If you're serious about your health and performance, and want to know the latest findings in the world of science regarding them, you need to subscribe to the Journal of Endurance! The J.O.E. is distributed monthly via e-mail and also appears on the E-CAPS web site under the knowledge link. Subscribe today! Simply send a BLANK email to: [email protected].
Also, don't forget that the first 100 issues of the J.O.E. are available on CD for $49.95 (a steal!) in the bookstore section of the E-CAPS website. The J.O.E. 100 CD is a compilation of the first 100 issues of the Journal of Endurance and contains 753 pages of relevant articles and studies with timeless advice for athletes in all disciplines at any level. The indexed, PDF format provides an easy way to search for topics of interest and a "comments" column is included in each article to explain the scientific data in laymen's terms. Dr. Bill Misner says, "The information is quite compact and extensive. So many wonderful scientists submitted excellent in-depth information, work which no doubt could be called 'hallmark' in light of what enhances both health and endurance exercise results."
The Compex Owners Lounge : Compex Yahoo Group
We would like to offer you the opportunity to join a private list for owners of Compex muscle stimulators who are primarily endurance athletes. The purpose of this list is to gain and share knowledge concerning the best applications and usage of the Compex devices. This list is owned and maintained by Brian Frank, the owner of Endurance Marketing Group, Inc. which does business as E-CAPS and Hammer Nutrition.
To join the Yahoo Compex Endurance discussion group...
1.) Go to: groups.yahoo.com/group/compex_endurance/ and click the button titled "Join This Group".
2.) You will need to have a Yahoo ID. If you do not have one, you can sign up with Yahoo.
3.) We will receive your request to join the discussion list and review your membership within one or two business days.
4.) Once your membership is approved, you can expect a welcome letter that will give you detailed instructions on how to access the discussion list, post messages, change e-mail preferences and other features.
Athlete Spotlight : George Brunstad
Our Athlete Spotlight this issue is on George Brunstad of Ridgefield, CT. George is a National and World Masters Swimming Champion and on August 28-29, 2004, at the age of 70, he became the oldest person to swim the English Channel - 32 miles in 15 hours, 59 minutes. The previous age record was 67, set by Australian Clifford Bates in 1987 and the American record was 65 by Ashley Harper. The have been only five men over the age of 60 who have swum the Channel.
George used his record-breaking swim to help raise funds to help build a medical center, school, and orphanage in Haiti, a project named the Center of Hope (www.channelhopeforhaiti.org)
Steve: George, congratulations on a superb effort. That's quite an accomplishment. Can you give us a little background about yourself?
George: Thank you. I was born and raised in Washington State of Norwegian parents and graduated from Washington State University - BS 1956, MS 1957 - and was a member of the varsity swim team there. I was in the US Air Force for 7 years and flew for American Airlines for 30 years. I also flew for the Air National guard for 3 years flying refueling tankers. After mandatory airline retirement at age 60, I owned and operated a MiG-17 jet fighter for 5 years and flew it in air shows until age 66. I am married to Judy and we have five grown children (37-43) and ten grandchildren (3-13).
S: Can you tell us a little bit about your masters swimming? What other sports are you involved in?
G: I resumed competitive swimming when the United States Masters Swimming (USMS) program began in 1972. I have trained continuously since that time. I also include work in the fitness room with about 20 different machines and weights along with the ski-cross trainer, all for balanced muscle support. I enjoy my mountain bike and cross-country skiing, but I am not consistent year-around with these and am not competitive in these two disciplines.
S: Well, you certainly sound healthy to me!
G: With all my consistent year around training over the last 32 years, my resting pulse is 38 and I can run it up to 180-190 at age 70 if needed. My blood pressure is 110/70 at 38 beats per minute. I have never smoked or taken any drugs or stimulants, including caffeine, nicotine or alcohol. My wife Judy is a nutritionist and has seen to it that I eat a healthy diet including as much raw food as possible including fruits, vegetables, salads, nuts, whole grains and protein sources that have little fat.
S: Can you share some of your accomplishments with us?
G: I have won over 100 National Masters Swimming Championships, in the pool and in open water competitions. I have won National championships in butterfly and IM (Individual Medley: the combination race which includes butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and Freestyle) as well as freestyle but have concentrated on freestyle and open water swims since 1992. I have won multiple Masters World Open Water Championships and am current repeat World Champion. I was the only American male to win an age division at the Masters World Open Water Championships in Riccione, Italy in 2004. The previous one was in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2002 (only one event held every other year). But these races are only either 3k or 5k and are not in the same class as an English Channel swim. I have a strong and healthy constitution but do not consider myself as a gifted natural swimmer or athlete. I am an ordinary man that has accomplished an extraordinary feat with discipline and consistent hard work.
S: What got the idea of doing the English Channel in your mind?
G: I became acquainted with a number of Channel swimmers over the years, chatting with them during the course of swim competitions. During 2002-2003 I watched a 50-year old man named Jim Bayles preparing for the Channel and became familiar with his training program, chatting often with him about all that was required. Jim had a successful Channel swim the summer of 2003.
Another good friend was Marcia Cleveland, Vice-chair of the USMS Long Distance committee, successful English Channel swimmer and author of the authoritative book Dover Solo. I also chatted with other Channel swimmers during the course of the 2003 competitive season. I was aware that the age record was by a 67 year-old Australian set in 1987, Bertram Clifford Batts (now deceased), that the American record was 65 by Ashley Harper, and the record for a woman was 57 by American Carol Sing set in 1999.
S: And when did you decide to go for it?
G: I had a vision one night in the twilight of my sleep and I saw myself as an old man regretting having passed on the opportunity to become the oldest person in the world to swim the English Channel. This bothered me. I thought the age 70 mark was a significant barrier to cross. Taking machines or human performance beyond what anyone had done before or going places no one had been before have always been of intense interest.
On my 69th birthday, with my family around me, I was asked what I would like to do on my landmark 70th birthday. I blurted out, "Swim the English Channel!" All were in accord, "Yes! Do it!" All except my wife, Judy, that is. "For whose glory would this be for?" she asked. When I pointed out that two swimmers, Jim Bayles and Dave Parcells had raise substantial amounts for charity through their swims, Judy approved. This has led to the Center of Hope project. She has proven to be a driving force in the fundraising efforts.
S: Tell us about your specific training for the English Channel attempt
G: I had to modify my training for the Channel effort. I consulted with 10 veterans of the Channel and also the Channel chat website and picked up bits and pieces from some 200 members worldwide as well as the boat captains. I settled on a Monday through Friday training regimen with recovery on the weekends. Monday and Wednesday were swim days with a mixture of some distance, drills, intervals and some IM work for balance. Tuesdays and Thursdays were dry land cross-training time in the fitness room. I dropped Friday as a workday. This paved the way for ever-increasing distance swims on Friday. I started with 4 miles and ended up at 14 miles (7 hours).
These swims included turning over on my back every 30 minutes and taking about 40-50 seconds to down Perpetuem from a plastic squeeze bottle. Multiply by 4 for the time and energy equivalents for running. Example, 14 mile swim = 56 mile run. The intervals I would do in the middle of my Tuesday & Thursday swims would be 10 X 100 meters on 2 minutes holding 1:30 with :30 rest between intervals. This would be like 10 X 400 meters (440 yards or 1/4 mile) on the track holding the same time on the same interval. This pace was the pace I held for 1500 meters in winning that event at the USMS National Championships in 2004. The 1500 meters is the longest pool distance for USMS competition, the Olympics and the open World Championships.
S: The English Channel is most certainly quite a bit different than that though, isn't it?
G: Yes, the English Channel is not 1500 meters and it does not have smooth water with wave absorbing lane lines. The Channel does have rough water, jellyfish, tides, currents, unpredictable weather and cold water. Fourteen miles would be the longest swim I would make in preparation for the Channel. I would have to more than double that time and distance in the Dover Straits. I would have to give an accurate estimate of my swimming pace to the boat pilot (Captain) without having swum half the distance required to complete the swim. I figured 3200 meters per hour, exactly two miles per hour. This proved to be exactly correct; I swam 32 miles in one minute less than 16 hours.
S: Tell us about the Hammer Nutrition products you used.
G: I tried several products (containing simple sugars) with unsatisfactory results before trying Hammer products. Hammer products were introduced to me by Adam and Andrew Pemberton, brothers and accomplished triathletes who train out of the Wilton YMCA where I work and train. This would prove to be a key to my success in swimming the English Channel.
During training I took two capsules of Tissue Rejuvenator with meals each day and two Race Caps Supreme an hour before workouts. I never ate food within 3 hours of my workouts. I used Perpetuem during my training, feeding each 30 minutes with a mixture of two scoops per 24 ounces of water. I also added a scoop of Endurolytes Powder to the mix. I would sometimes have only Hammer Gel between Perpetuem feedings. I used a mix of Hammer Whey and Hammer Gel for a recovery drink immediately after finishing the training sessions.
During the swim I ate no breakfast prior to departure at 9:13 AM from Abbot's Cliff south of Dover on 28 August 2004. I used the Perpetuem mix regimen with Endurolytes powder through six hours taking the liquid in a plastic squeeze bottle on the end of a rope each 30 minutes. Also added was one Tissue Rejuvenator capsule per 24 oz. I also took some water most feedings and a little mouthwash every two hours or so to remove the saltwater taste. I figure I was taking about 260 calories per hour and burning 800-900. At the 6 hour point the liquid was beginning to hold in my stomach and I could not down more than two or three ounces of liquid. The Captain (boat pilot) told my crew to skip one feeding and then go with the straight maltodextrin Hammer Gel with Tissue Rejuvenator each 30 minutes. This worked like a charm. I did lose 7 pounds during the swim from 215 to 208 and that was to be expected. This weighing was done 4 days after the swim. I was not dehydrated during or after the swim. I can report that I am as of now back to my normal 200 pounds.
At age 70 I completed the 32 miles in 15 hours 59 minutes with no aches or pains in my muscles or joints, no cramps or stitches and never ran out of energy. I truly believe the Tissue Rejuvenator had much to do with the extraordinary lack of any duress to my muscles or joints during the entire training cycle and during the epic record-breaking swim. The last five hours was in darkness under the moon and I had a surge of energy at the end as I ran onto the beach at Sangatte south of Calais, France. I believe the performance of the Hammer products proved more than capable for this extraordinary task. The results speak for themselves. Swimming the English Channel at age 70 has taken human performance and endurance out where it has never been before.
S: You mentioned earlier that your English Channel swim was also a charity fundraiser as well.
G: Yes, I have now raised $46,000 for The Center of Hope orphanage, school and medical clinic in Haiti. The Center of Hope charity info can be viewed at www.channelhopeforhaiti.org..
The English Channel album can be viewed with 48 photos and narration at www.thechannelswimmers.com.
George will be inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in May, 2005.
From the Saddle of Steve Born : Still Diggin' It
Welcome to the spring issue of Endurance News! This issue also marks the beginning of my 6th year here at E-CAPS/Hammer Nutrition (Wow! Has it been that long?). I can honestly say that I'm enjoying the job now as much, if not more, than I did when I first came on board. One reason is that the constantly evolving world of nutritional supplementation never stands still, and that keeps things fresh and exciting. For example (and you kind of had to be there to get the full effect), when Dr. Bill and I first started discussing the landmark research done by Dr. Bruce Ames on acetyl l-carnitine and r-alpha lipoic acid and their effects on mitochondrial health and longevity, you should have heard the almost uncontrollable excitement in my voice... this research was something really spectacular! Now to some people (most people?) finding out that a couple of readily available nutrients could improve mitochondrial health would most likely elicit not much more than a yawn. But to me, because I am so passionate about naturally improving my performance and health, this research was, and still is, about as exciting as it gets. I was stoked!
That's one reason why, after five years at Hammer Nutrition, I'm as excited about what I do as the day I began. I have a passion for the always-changing world of nutritional supplementation. The desire to continue to learn and apply what I've learned only gets stronger, and it's why I'm always keeping tabs on what's happening in the world of nutritional science. And it's this passion that I want to share with you and express to you whenever you read one of my articles or whenever I respond to an email. The passion I have for being the best athlete I can be, the things I've learned from the mistakes I made early in my athletic career, and the knowledge I've been blessed to have accumulated over the course of many, many years is what I vowed to offer you from the beginning. The passion and desire to work with you and help you be the best athlete you can be has only increased with each year. So, as I look forward to another year with the company, you have my word that I'll do my very best to share with you all that I possibly can.
The "Same Ol', Same Ol'" or Still-Valid Information?
I love going to events, meeting athletes, answering questions, and talking about the products. Oftentimes I am asked to give a clinic at the various events, and I always enjoy doing them. The majority of the time my discussion centers on what constitutes proper fueling during exercise. I never get tired of talking about that subject, but once in awhile I start wondering if I'm wearing it out, or if athletes have already heard that information before and are sick of hearing it. As I'm finding out, most athletes are pretty amazed when they hear the information I have to offer because it's usually quite different than what they've been told. So really, the information that comes from us at Hammer Nutrition never goes stale, especially when so many of today's "experts" are still dispensing the advice that the athlete needs to eat more, drink more, and take in more salt during exercise. Some seem to actually be upping the ante when it comes to how many calories, fluids, and electrolytes you need to replenish. They often suggest that since you're burning "x" amount of calories, you need to replace at a rate as close as possible to "x." One well-known athlete/expert suggests amounts that are, quite frankly, staggeringly high. These same "experts" often quote several sweat studies (taking nothing else into account) and use them as the basis for stating that the athlete needs to take in large volumes of sodium (sometimes even in multi-gram amounts!) to replace losses. Lastly, many "experts" still suggest consuming very large quantities of fluids to stave off the "dreaded consequences of dehydration."
This sort of advice has two major problems: it's not in cooperation with how your body deals with its losses, and it's likely to do more harm than good. Simply put, you cannot replace nutrients in amounts equal to, or even near, depletion rates. While you may think you're helping your body by ingesting huge amounts of calories, fluids, and salt, you're only overcompensating, which almost invariably results in poorer performance and/or getting sick. This is a lose-lose strategy. You spend more money and get worse results!
Our position is that yes, you do need to replenish your body with calories, fluids, and electrolytes, but you need to do so in amounts that cooperate with and not override normal body mechanisms and functions. As Dr. Bill says (and it's been my fueling "mantra" for a long time), "To suggest that fluids, sodium, and fuels-induced glycogen replenishment can happen at the same rate as it is spent during exercise is simply not true. Endurance exercise beyond 1-2 hours is a deficit spending entity, with proportionate return or replenishment always in arrears. The endurance exercise outcome is to postpone fatigue, not to replace all the fuel, fluids, and electrolytes lost during the event. It can't be done, though many of us have tried." Your goal is to support your body's stored nutrients, not replace spent nutrients. If you're a serious endurance athlete, you should adopt this as your fueling mantra.
The Endurance Athlete's Guide To Success
A few years ago we distilled our fueling knowledge into a small handbook we called The Endurance Athlete's Guide to Success. We've edited, revised, and expanded the handbook a few times, but the basic information it contains remains valid and as useful today as it was even before we wrote it. What you won't find in the guide are recommendations of high calorie, fluid, and electrolyte intakes. Instead, you'll find research-based fueling strategies that work with your body and its wondrously complex mechanisms and functions. Sounds pretty funny that we would advise that you take less of the products we sell, but that's usually the case. As good as our fuels are, we don't want you to consume more of them, we want you to consume the right amounts of them, which usually means a lot less than what you may be hearing from some other company or "expert." We never want to increase sales at the expense of your performance.
If you're unsure how to properly fuel your body prior to, during, and after exercise, this guide is a vital ally that will provide you with sensible suggestions that sometimes fly in the face of what so many "experts" are recommending. Now, at the beginning of the season, is the time to dial in your fueling protocol. Download a free copy of The Endurance Athlete's Guide to Success from www.e-caps.com today!
Dr. Bill on Fancy Forms of Simple Sugars
Dr. Bill's article on honey and brown rice syrup reveals that they are nothing more than fancy forms of simple sugars, which your body cannot efficiently process for energy. The amount of calories from simple sugars that your body can accept and convert to energy is severely limited, leaving you in a calorie/energy deficit during endurance events. That's one of the reasons why we recommend long-chain carbohydrates. Instead of a weak 6-8% solution, the strongest permitted for efficient absorption of simple sugars, complex carbohydrates allow for a 15-18% solution concentration. Even at this seemingly high concentration, complex carbohydrate solutions will digest efficiently and without the gastric distresses so common with too-concentrated simple sugar fuels. The beauty of complex carbs is that they allow a greater volume of calories to digest efficiently and be available for energy production. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have 280 calories processed and available for use than the scrawny 80-100 calories per hour that simple sugar fuels will allow.
Athlete Spotlight : George Brunstad
George is my all-time favorite athlete that we've profiled in Endurance News. I mean, far too many guys, when they hit the age of 70, just want to have all their "parts" in place and working in some degree of acceptability. George? He's a guy, like Dr. Bill, who shatters the concept of what "getting older" is all about. Heck, I personally believe that a good gauge of what being in shape is, is hanging with Dr. Bill going up Logan Pass here in Glacier National Park. If I can do that, I'm doing OK, fitness-wise. Anyway, do check out George's interview in this issue and tell me you're not both impressed and inspired.
By the way, one of the things I absolutely love about George's interview came in one of his answers where he mentions that he consumed, on average, 260 calories per hour versus the estimated 800+ that he burned during his English Channel crossing. I can only imagine how many people would have thought that was an absolutely crazy protocol to follow ("George, you're burning 800 calories an hour so shouldn't you be eating at least 500 to replace what you're losing?"), but look how wonderfully it worked for George... he set a record!
I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is a lot of information available to athletes, too much perhaps, and the only way you can know for sure what works for you is to put this information to the test. Having said that, I can assure you that you won't be disappointed with our fuels or our suggested use of those fuels. After five years here I have seen and/or heard from literally hundreds to thousands of athletes who, while perhaps skeptical at first, found that they experienced better quality performances in their workouts and their races by using our fuels and following our fueling suggestions. The percentage of those responding favorably to the fueling protocols we outline is so heavily skewed towards the positive that it's not even close.
And you know what? When you don't have to worry about your fuel or whether or not you're using the right amounts of it - when things go right fueling-wise and you can finally focus on getting down the road a little faster than you did before - it makes racing and training a heckuva lot more fun. Maybe that's the biggest reason why I dig my job as much now as I did when I first started: seeing other athletes enjoying success and knowing we played a role in it.
I can't wait for the new season... bring it on and make it your best!
Compex : More Kudos for Compex
New Study Shows Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation (NMES) Training Improves Abdominal Strength and Muscular Endurance
In the April edition of the Journal of Endurance (J.O.E.), which is now available for viewing online at the Knowledge link at www.e-caps.com, the fourth item is well worth checking out. Here you'll find the eye-opening details of recent studies showing the effectiveness of neuromuscular electrical stimulation training in terms of abdominal strength and endurance.
41 volunteer subjects participated in the 8-week study, using a new COMPEX product called the Slendertone FLEXTM. These 41 individuals were randomly assigned into two groups: a control group and a stimulation group. None of the subjects were allowed to alter their diet or engage in any additional exercise during the 8-week study. The subjects were given a battery of tests at beginning of the study, halfway through, and at the end of the eight weeks. These tests included:
The training in the stimulation group involved the use of the Compex five times weekly for eight weeks, increasing the amplitude on the stimulator regularly, to the highest tolerable level. Here's how the program looked:
All 41 subjects completed the study, though the results of one of the male's subjects were not used in the analysis. While there were no significant changes in the various skinfold measurements for either group, both abdominal and waist circumference were significantly decreased with the stimulation group, whereas the control group showed no changes.
Even more impressive is that the stimulation group had a 58% improvement in isometric abdominal strength and a whopping 72% increase in abdominal muscular endurance. The results of the study found that "NMES significantly increased the isometric strength and dynamic endurance of the abdominal musculature." What is interesting to note is the strength gain of 58% is nearly double that found in other studies, which is most likely due to the increased length of this particular study (8 weeks vs. 4 weeks). This suggests that beneficial effects of Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation are cumulative and have the potential to increase over time.
The conclusions of this study showed that "the use of the Slendertone FLEXTM belt (by COMPEX) significantly increased strength and endurance, decreased waist girth, and improved self-perceived abdominal firmness and tone. The results probably can be attributed to the strength of the electrically induced muscle contractions made possible by the quality of the electrodes utilized in the belt system, as well as the stimulator itself."
One reason I've italicized that portion above is because I believe it illustrates that the results of this research have exciting implications for the use of the COMPEX Muscle Trainer on other areas of the body (anyone out there use their quads, hamstrings, calves, back, and shoulders in your workouts?). Simply put, The COMPEX Muscle Trainer is the finest product of its type and research is proving it to be a highly effective and extremely valuable tool in the training "arsenal" of all strength and endurance athletes, taking high quality training to a level it's never before seen.
To find out more about the COMPEX products available at E-CAPS, give us a call or log-on to www.e-caps.com. The full-length study can be found in the Knowledge section of the E-CAPS web site. Click on the Journal of Endurance link and it'll be the top one, the April 2005 edition.
Hammer Gel Safe For Diabetics : Complex Carbohydrates Good for Glucose Levels
Is Hammer Gel a safe carbohydrate source for a diabetic to consume during exercise?
Physician endurance athlete, Dr. Marty Reynolds M.D., recently shared an interesting "case study" for appropriately answering this question:
"My wife is a Type I diabetic (on an insulin pump) that is running her first half-marathon in Austin in February. We tested ALL gel products, and found Hammer Gel to be the most reliable and consistent in providing carbohydrate to keep her blood glucose level normal during a run (we tested almost every alternative product we could obtain. A friend of ours that also has diabetes (on an insulin pump too), who has successfully completed four Ironman Triathlons, has told us that she has found your gel products to be the best for her glucose control. If you ever receive any queries from athletes with diabetes that would like to talk to someone about Hammer Gel for glucose control, I'd be happy to respond to their e-mail. This data was obtained by measuring blood glucose after taking Hammer Gel when my wife Paula, diabetic athlete, was NOT exercising. She and I have even gone to the extreme of taking a unit dose of the gel, then measuring blood glucose levels (which will rise in a diabetic in direct correlation to carbohydrate absorption, when insulin is not given to cover) every 15 minutes for two hours to plot out phamacodynamic curve of Hammer Gel. This interesting data shows that the Hammer Gel begins absorption approximately 30-45 minutes after ingestion, then supplies carbohydrates at a steady state for the next approximately 45 minutes, and then tapers off. Knowing this alters how I take the gel (i.e. I take the first gel at the start of the run, and I won't take any during the last hour of a run as it makes no sense to do so, unless you are relying on it for glycogen repletion after exercise has terminated...
The table below shows how Hammer Gel affected my wife's blood glucose levels taken during rest. The figures were taken during rest (not during exercise when blood sugar turnover rate is higher), which is why the recorded rise in blood glucose was modestly above the ideal glucose values. If my wife had been exercising during that time, her blood glucose would have been normal and stable. In fact, she recently completed a two-hour run using Hammer Gel with her blood glucose at the end of exercise being a healthy normal 112 mg/dl. This shows that Hammer Gel is virtually perfect for keeping blood glucose levels NORMAL and STABLE. The dose amount and timing should be worked out for each individual. For her, at 57 kg body weight, when performing at a moderate intensity rate (heart rate ~ 70-75% of maximum), a single packet of Hammer Gel works out just perfect. Athletes with diabetes with different body weights or doing exercise with different intensity levels may need to adjust the dose amount.
Therefore, I adopted the following guidelines for taking Hammer Gel during exercise:
"Take one dose of Hammer Gel approximately 30 minutes prior to beginning exercise. This one dose alone will cover an exercise session of 45 minutes or less. If the exercise session is planned to continue beyond 45 minutes, then another dose of Hammer Gel is taken at the beginning of exercise. The dose is subsequently repeated every 45 minutes (frequency can be decreased to once an hour during prolonged exercise of > 2 hours). No additional doses of Hammer Gel should be taken when the exercise session is expected to end in less than 75 minutes. When following this protocol, blood glucose values are normal at the start of exercise (between 120-140 mg/dl) and remain stable throughout the exercise sessions (+/- 15% of the starting value), and continue normal through to the end of exercise (usually between 120-140 mg/dl). This is ideal for diabetic blood sugar control and athletic performance.
If any type I diabetic patients need more information, an excellent source is the book, Pumping Insulin, by John Walsh & Ruth Roberts. Chapter 18 and 19 discuss the gram amount of carbohydrate intake required based upon athlete's weight, exercise intensity, and exercise duration. The only thing missing from their discussion is what commercially available carbohydrate formulations provide a steady state glucose absorption over time, and what timing should be used for their intake so that a diabetic athlete's blood glucose level can be maintained in a steady state. This is the final piece of information that Paula and I had to derive by word of mouth from other diabetic athletes, as well as trial and error, and our mini-experiment. However, doing this has allowed her to successfully complete a half-marathon and begin training for a full marathon using your company's product."
Marty Reynolds, M.D.
COMMENT: This remarkable "case study" reports how a diabetic athlete controlled blood sugar using Hammer Gel during exercise. This does not conclude that everyone with a blood sugar disorder will enjoy the same results using the same frequency and dose. However, these guidelines help diabetics to determine how much Hammer Gel to take and how often for generating a healthy blood glucose response during exercise. I wish to thank Dr. Reynolds and his wife, Paula, for sharing this report.
Food Alone Won't Cut It!
As Dr. Bill's research article suggests, a great many people run the risk of having micronutrient deficiencies, even if they consume what most may deem a good diet. The scary thing about these deficiencies is that they fall below the minimal standard for preventing deficiency diseases. Forget about being below optimal levels, we're talking about being below minimal standards, standards that exist to help prevent disease. Anyway, his research echoes something he wrote many years ago: "Athletes today ingest only 11% of the organic nutrients from their food sources that the athletes of the 1940's enjoyed." His article serves as a strong reminder that taking care of basic nutrient needs is something we as athletes need to focus on first and foremost.
The sad fact is that we're simply not getting what we need from our diet. Our intake for many nutrients doesn't even meet minimum RDI levels. Sure, you've been told that eating a healthy diet will provide you with all the nutrients you need, but that statement is becoming less and less valid with time. Far too many people, let alone athletes, are not even getting the MINIMAL amount of many nutrients in their diets. Yes, a variety of foods is still your best bet for obtaining all the phytochemicals from specific food sources (fruit, vegetable). However, to ensure that you're obtaining satisfactory-to-optimal levels of vitamins and minerals, an ever-growing body of evidence clearly indicates that food alone, even in a good diet, won't do the job. Supplementation is not only wise, it's vital.
Many of the athletes I've worked with resist the idea of taking a multivitamin/mineral product, despite evidence that glaring deficiencies exist in even the best of diets. It's pretty easy to guess why-a multivitamin isn't exactly the sexiest supplement we offer. "Multivitamin" conjures up images of the One-a-Day® or Flintstones® pills your mom made you take as child, or doddering old folks looking for their bottle of Centrum Silver®. Quite frankly, many (most?) endurance athletes aren't going to fly for something they may associate with kids and geriatrics. They want a product for them, one that screams, "Knock 10 minutes off your PR." If that's your current attitude, or if you're unwilling to pay for something you think you're getting in your diet, you've got to change that attitude. We've said this before, and we'll keep saying it: an endurance athlete is a healthy person first, an athlete second, and an endurance athlete third. If you don't support the first two functions, you don't have a chance at the third. When basic micronutrient deficiencies exist and remain unremediated, the whole body suffers and optimal athletic performance and health will most likely never be achieved.
I've long considered the Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA, now changed to RDI) to be an archaic standard to begin with and absolutely irrelevant for athletes, whose dietary needs far exceed that of the sedentary population. My belief in the inability of the RDA/RDI (or whatever you want to call it) to satisfy an athlete's requirements is confirmed by one well-known sports nutritionist who stated, " If you use the RDAs to plan your nutrition, you will never, never reach your athletic potential." Also, the RDA handbook has this caveat: "RDA are recommendations for the average daily amounts of nutrients that population groups should consume over a period of time. RDA should not be confused with requirements for a specific individual." In fact, a former chairman of the RDA Committee has even been quoted stating that RDAs "are not recommendations for the ideal diet."
You, my friend and endurance athlete, are a "specific individual." You need far more than RDI amounts. Don't look at the side of your cereal box and think you're doing fine. So even though a multivitamin/mineral supplement may not be glamorous compared to many other supplements, the evidence tells us it's a primary nutritional key for achieving optimal athletic performance and overall health. That's why we sell Premium Insurance Caps and that's why, if you're not already taking this product, you should be. Failing to provide the body with adequate supplies of basic nutrients (vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and other micronutrients) is like building a house without a strong foundation. The foundation might go unnoticed, and it sure isn't the prettiest part of the house, but the entire structure and its contents depend on that foundation. Without it, the house will have no structural integrity, it won't withstand any physical stress, and it won't be of much use.
Log on to our website and scope out the nutrient profile that just one packet of Premium Insurance Caps adds to your diet. You'll find that this is a powerhouse product, loaded with ideal amounts of key nutrients that address needs far beyond the RDI's minimal standards. We use the Optimal Daily Intake (ODI) standard for Premium Insurance Caps, a standard much more reflective of athletes' prodigious needs. As Dr. Bill alludes to in his article, we want to select foods and/or supplements that will supply our nutrient needs at levels well above RDI amounts in order to maintain optimal health and prevent degenerative disease. That's why I encourage you to incorporate Premium Insurance Caps into your daily supplement regimen. We truly believe and guarantee that it is the most comprehensive and cost effective way to remedy the problem of nutrient deficiency. It's a true Daily Essential, a product you should use every day, year round.
On the subject of diet, health, and micronutrients, let me add a quick footnote here about our Phytomax capsules. Unless you live near the equator and have home-grown fruits and vegetables available all year, you're probably running a big deficit in the phytochemical column. That's why we have Phytomax in our lineup. Please read more about this interesting product on our website or in our catalog, or give us a call. It's yet another way to ensure that your nutritional basics are well met.
Race Report : Catching Up With A Few Amazing Athletes
Hammer Nutrition Sponsored Athlete John McGovern Named USAT Duathlete of the Year
From a USAT News and Information Press Release:
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (March 16, 2005) - USA Triathlon has announced its age group Athlete of the Year Award winners, as determined by the Age Group Commission and members of other committees and commissions.
The committee members considered the results from various high profile races during the 2004 season including the USAT Age Group National Championship, the long course national championship, results from the world international and long course championships and the Ironman Triathlon World Championship.
From these and other races, the committee congratulates the following outstanding athletes on their accomplishments: Duathlon Open Division Male John McGovern (40, Kingston, N.Y.): McGovern had strong overall finishes at the two major world championship races (second American at short course worlds, first American at long course worlds), and top finishes at short course nationals (seventh overall) and long course nationals (third overall.
Steve's Note : John's 2004 season was, in a word, stellar. Check out these results:
Powerman Alabama, 1st Masters
Virginia Duathlon, 1st Amateur (2nd to Greg Watson)
USAT New England Du Championships, 1st Amateur
(2nd to Travis Kuhl, fastest bike split)
Rochester F1 Duathlon, 1st Overall
Bronx Duathlon, 1st Overall
Queens Duathlon, 1st Overall
Trooper Duathlon, 1st Overall
Hudson Valley Duathlon, 1st Overall
Harriman Duathlon, 1st Overall
Duathlon Long Course Worlds, 3rd in age group
Duathlon Short Course Worlds, 7th in Age Group
Duathlon Long Course Nationals, 1st Masters
Duathlon Short Course Nationals, 1st Masters
USAT Duathlon Grand Prix Overall Winner
... and, of course
USAT Duathlete of the Year
Congratulations on a superb year John and for being named USAT Duathlete of the Year!
ACT-UPMC's Papp is #1 in USCF Rating
ACT-UPMC's team captain Joe Papp is currently the top-ranked rider in the United States Cycling Federation's Road Race Rankings for Category 1 men. "I'm very happy to have topped the rankings," says Papp, who in 2004 was one of the most consistent elite amateurs racing in the USA.
Congratulations from all of us at E-CAPS and Hammer Nutrition!
Rain, Rain Go Away...
Beating the elements in Arizona
I returned yesterday from my first race of the season (24 hours of Old Peublo) in Arizona. Warm, sunny Arizona turned into rainy, hail, fog, and high wind Arizona for the race. The most brutal race I have ever seen but I finished on a high note Sunday. I placed first overall female, and 8th overall out of 80+ solo men and women. I also had the fastest solo female lap with 16 miles, in 1:13. A great way to start the season.
Thanks for all the support! Heather Mosley
Cruising to victory
I just wanted to thank you for your support. Your products are really great! I had my best cyclo-cross season yet using Race Caps Supreme, Hammer Gel, Endurolytes and Tissue Rejuvenator. I was 2nd overall in the Elite division of the Cyclo-cross Crusade series which averages 500 racers per race. I placed 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 4th, 4th and 4th and I am 44 years old!
1st Disco Cross, Hood River, OR
1st Thrill in the Milla Series, Bend, OR placing 1st, 1st, 1st and 2nd
1st Frozen Cross, Bend
3rd in 45-49 age group at Nationals in spite of having a broken seat post.
Thanks, Mark King
Congratulations to Connie Gardner who won the women's 50-mile race at the 2004 Sunmart in a time of 7:16:24. Connie was also recently named one of the top 5 Women Runners Of 2004 by UltraRunning magazine and her time of 15:48:04 at the Olander Park 100 garnered recognition as one of the top 5 Women's Performances of 2004.
In other ultra running news, sponsored athlete Scott Eppelman's 144.03 miles at the World 24 Hour competition was named one of the top 10 Men's Performances of 2004.
Great job Connie and Scott!
Congratulating an All-American
...and up and coming pro mountain biker
Thanks again for your support over the last season. I just checked at USAT and I made All-American last season!
I'm in heavy training for Ironman Arizona right now, but am in the middle of the State Mountain Bike Series as well. I'm doing well on the mountain bike side, this being my first year as a Pro. I have so far taken 6th in the season opener and just a week ago stood on the podium with a 3rd! Hammer Gel and HEED are great for these races and I use Race Caps Supreme beforehand.
Training for Ironman is coming along very well. I've had some great runs and rides, and have a nutrition plan with Hammer Gel, Perpetuem, and Endurolytes that is working great.
Thanks, Brian Grasky
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February 18, 2011
MESSENGER: One Month Until Mercury Orbit Insertion
After more than a dozen laps through the inner solar system, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft will move into orbit around Mercury on March 17, 2011. The durable spacecraft "” carrying seven science instruments and fortified against the blistering environs near the Sun "” will be the first to orbit the innermost planet.
At 8:45 p.m. EDT, MESSENGER "” having pointed its largest thruster very close to the direction of travel "” will fire that thruster for nearly 14 minutes, with other thrusters firing for an additional minute, slowing the spacecraft by 862 meters per second (1,929 miles per hour) and consuming 31% of the propellant that the spacecraft carried at launch. Less than 9.5% of the usable propellant at the start of the mission will remain after completing the orbit insertion maneuver, but the spacecraft will still have plenty of propellant for future orbit correction maneuvers.The orbit insertion will place the spacecraft into an initial orbit about Mercury that has a 200 kilometer (124 mile) minimum altitude and a period of 12 hours. At the time of orbit insertion, MESSENGER will be 46.14 million kilometers (28.67 million miles) from the Sun and 155.06 million kilometers (96.35 million miles) from Earth.
"The journey since launch, more than six and a half years ago, has been a long one," says MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "But we have rounded the last turn, and the finish line for the mission's cruise phase is in sight. The team is ready for orbital operations to begin."
Engineers recently tested the arrayed-antenna configuration that will be used during the Mercury orbit insertion. During the maneuver, MESSENGER's orientation will be optimized to support the burn, not to support communications with the team on the ground. As a result, the signal home will be weaker than usual. To boost the signal, communications engineers will use four antennas at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex "” one 70-meter dish and three 34-meter dishes.
"This arrangement is not typical for a maneuver, so we wanted to do a few dry runs before orbit insertion," says MESSENGER Communications Engineer Dipak Srinivasan, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. "We are still analyzing the data, but everything went as expected."
Since the last deep-space maneuver (DSM) almost a year and a half ago, the primary focus of the team has been on preparing for the orbit insertion maneuver and for orbital operations. Detailed plans have been developed and vetted through an extensive series of meetings ranging from internal peer reviews of each subsystem to formal reviews with external experts assessing overall readiness. Three of the major reviews were dedicated specifically to the activities associated with the MOI maneuver itself.
In addition to taking advantage of planned DSMs to practice aspects of the orbit insertion maneuver, the team has conducted a number of flight tests to characterize key subsystem behavior and to confirm the proper operation of various spacecraft components. Three full-team rehearsals using the hardware simulator have been conducted to practice all activities to be followed during the upcoming maneuver. The first of these exercises mimicked a nominal orbit insertion, and the following two presented anomalies for the team to recognize, analyze, and address.
"Although we feel that the preparations to date "“ and those scheduled for the next month "“ have been well thought-out, that the decisions made to define the specific activities were sound, and that the level of review and rehearsal has been more than adequate, we recognize the extraordinary complexity and unique nature of this endeavor," says APL's Peter Bedini, MESSENGER's project manager. "But at this point, four weeks out, we are well positioned for success. The spacecraft is healthy, continues to operate nominally, and is on course to be at the right place at the right time at 8:45 P.M. ET on the evening of March 17."
On the Net:
- For an overview of Mercury Orbit Insertion and planned orbital observations, go online to http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/mer_orbit.html.
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How justice Antonin Scalia described a recent Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act.
The abandoned and now discredited practice of parents gathering children around a child known to have chicken pox and, among other methods to spread the infection, sharing lollipops. The theory was that chicken pox is less dangerous to children than adults, and should be encountered as early in life as possible. See also 70's.
Another form of daring, especially of the heroic or archaic sort. See also Medieval.
See also Old-Timey.
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Auto Advance Music By The Boston Pops Orchestra While Not Russian musicians , this Russian music is universally popular all around the world
Saint Petersburg ___________________ Established for the Czar Peter the Great One on 27 of May in the year 1703. It became the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years. It then ceased being the Capital of Russia in 1918, after the Revolution of 1917. It also had other names: Petrogrado (1914-1924) and Leningrad (1924-1991 Russia __________________________________
Saint Petersburg Dvortsovaya Square - Column Remembering Alexander The Great note Employees & Visitors to the Hermitage Museum.
Saint Petersburg Hermitage museum – As it appears beside the flowing river. Established in 1764 and inaugurated in 1852, the museum occupies five contiguous palaces . T he grea test being the old Winter Palace which was the official residence of the czars.
Saint Petersburg Hermitage Museum. - from the other the side directed toward the Dvortsovaya Square. Commissioned by Bartolomeo Rastrelli in white and green style . T he palace has 1,057 halls and rooms; 1,786 doors and 1,945 windows.
Saint Petersburg Catherine the Great was the first imperial occupant. The construction required more than three million craftsmen , one of its first great acquisitions received in 1865 – Madona and the Child (Litta Madona), by Leonardo of the Vinci -
Saint Petersburg Hermitage museum – Interior Balconey
Saint Petersburg Hermitage museum – Beautiful architectural columns and glowing light of candelabras
Saint Petersburg Hermitage m useum - the old original library
Saint Petersburg Hermitage museum - the Raphael Loggias gallery
Saint Petersburg Hermitage museum – Perhaps the beginning of a new great Russian artist? Who knows…
Saint Petersburg Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan (1810-1811), the main cathedral of the M etropolis of St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg Peter The Great’s , summer palace . Actually it is a series of palaces and gardens, constructed between 1714 and 1725
Saint Petersburg Peter The Great P alace - the source of the “ Gulf of Samson” and the canal to the sea, with sight of the G ulf of Finland , an arm of the Baltic sea. .
Saint Petersburg Peter The Great P alace - architecture and paintings
Saint Petersburg Peter The Great Palace One of the dining rooms
Saint Petersburg Peter The Great Palace - One of the bedrooms.
Saint Petersburg Resurrection church of Christ (known as the Church of the spilled blood of Our Savior) was constructed between 1883 and 1907
Saint Petersburg Resurrection of Christ Church (known as Church of the spilled blood of Our Savior
Saint Petersburg The Catherine palace , in rococo style . It was the summer residence of the Russian czars, situated in the district of Tsarskove today known as , Pushkin .
Saint Petersburg Catherine palace in Pushkin – architectural details
Saint Petersburg Catherine palace in Pushkin – informal dining room
Saint Petersburg Statue of Alexander Pushkin (1900), The poet whose vast knowledge of the Russian language and wealth in its use influenced authors such as Gogol, Liermontov and Turgueneiev
Saint Petersburg Mikhailovsky palace, constructed in 1819-1825, home of the State Russian Museum since 1895.
Saint Petersburg Morning Coffee at the Grand Europe Hotel
Saint Petersburg Th is most sumptuous building other than the imperial palace, was constructed in 1760 . In 1830 it was bought by Duke N.B. Yusupov. O n a visit to Italy the eccentric Duke was so enchanted with a staircase in white marble: he bought the palace only to bring the steps to St. Petersburg . Today this palace is a museum .
Saint Petersburg Monument to the water carrier – Museum and administrative complex of Vodokanal.
Saint Petersburg Egyptian Bridge - crossing the Lermontov Avenue on the River Fontanka. “Esfínge” workmanship of the sculptor Pavel Sokolov - 1 9 th. century.
Saint Petersburg The r iver s nows and the Twelve Colleges of the Saint Petersburg University
Saint Petersburg Bank Bridge - on the Griboyedov canal – 19 th . century
Saint Petersburg Dom Knigi “Book House”, situated in Art Nouveau building that was once the Singer House
Saint Petersburg Dom Knigi “book House” The Exterior Interior
Saint Petersburg Fyodor Dostoievsky, writer whose work s , including “Crime and Punishment” ‘ The Karamazov Brothers”, had deep and permanent effect on intellectual thought and literature
Saint Petersburg Dostoievsky Memorial Museum - where he wrote `Crime and Punishment '
Saint Petersburg East St. Petersburg is a charmer and Dostoevsky often said : ”it’s beauty only will save the world”
Saint Petersburg Just one normal day in St Petersburg…
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Belgrade (bĕlˈgrād) [key], Serbian Beograd, city (1991 est. pop. 1,168,454), capital of Serbia, and of the former nation of Yugoslavia and its short-lived successor, Serbia and Montenegro, at the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers. It is the commercial, industrial, political, and cultural center of Serbia, as well as a transportation and communications hub. An industrial city, Belgrade produces a variety of manufactures.
Strategically situated athwart land and river routes between Central Europe and the Balkans, Belgrade has been the target of numerous conquerors throughout history. The city grew around fortresses built by the Celts (3d cent. B.C.), Illyrians, and Romans. Under the name of Singidinum it served as the harbor for much of Rome's Danubian fleet. Captured by the Huns, Goths, Sarmathians, and Gepids, who destroyed its forts, the city was retaken by the Byzantine emperor Justinian in the 6th cent. A.D. It was held in the late 8th cent. by the Franks and from the 9th to 11th cent. by the Bulgars, who refortified it and named it Beligrad ("white fortress"). It was then ruled again by Byzantium before becoming the capital of Serbia in the 12th cent. Before it fell to the Ottoman sultan Sulayman I in 1521, it was under Hungarian control.
The Ottoman Turks made Belgrade their chief strategic fortress in Europe. Although the Austrians stormed it in 1688, 1717, and 1789, they were able to hold onto it only from the Treaty of Passarowitz (1718) until the Treaty of Belgrade (1739). Liberated by Karageorge and Miloš Obrenović during the Serbian uprising of 1806, Belgrade was recaptured by the Turks in 1813. The Turks largely left Serbia in 1815 but kept a garrison in the Belgrade fortress until 1867.
Belgrade became the capital of the Kingdom of Serbia in 1882. Occupied by Austrian troops during World War I, the city was made the capital of the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Yugoslavia from 1929) after the war. During World War II, Belgrade suffered much damage and extreme hardship under the German occupation. It was liberated by Yugoslav partisans, with Soviet aid, in 1944. After the disintegration of the Yugoslav federation in the early 1990s, Belgrade remained the capital of a much smaller Yugoslavia, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro only, until that nation was reconstituted (2003–6) as Serbia and Montenegro. The city was a target of NATO bombers during the Kosovo crisis (1999).
Belgrade is noted for its fine parks, palaces, museums, and churches. The former Kalemegdan citadel is now a military museum. The 16th-century Barjak Mosque was built by Sulayman I. The city is the home of the Serbian Academy of Sciences, a university (founded 1863), a Roman Catholic archbishop, and an Orthodox Eastern patriarch.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Former Yugoslavian Political Geography
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about us campaigns news and blog Home Heating buyers guide videos get involved events calendar resources ventilation index Report an open burn contact us
News and Blog
A proper burning wood stove will have little to no smoke coming out the chimney
It's a cold winter day, a smoking chimney makes you think:
“Oh what a nice cheery fire inside that house!'
“Oh, no, that fire is burning poorly, wasting money and polluting the air.”
Most of us have been trained to think fires equal smoke. The truth is that, with proper burning techniques, no smoke should be visible from our chimneys.
In fact, visible smoke is caused by incomplete burning and is full of toxins that irritate airways, cause serious respiratory illnesses and even cause cancers, . This isn't only a problem for the outside air. This toxins include microfine particulates, smaller then bacteria, that easily penetrate our homes and pollute the inside air. Even “air tight” new homes are no match for these stealth particles, and many of us live in much breezier older homes.
So how can we protect ourselves from these toxic invaders?
Here is a list of quick tips to help clear our air:
Use dry wood. Wood needs to be well seasoned, and cut into 10-15cm wide pieces.
Start a great fire by using generous amounts of paper (no glossy or coloured) and 5-10 pieces of kindling.
Add two or three pieces of additional wood.
Attend the fire closely while it gets going to ensure proper air flow. Starting a fire requires lots of air!
Open air fireplaces, remember that the amount of draw fireplaces require results in an overall heat LOSS. These fires are for beauty or “mood” only and should be kept small and very hot. Use small dry pieces of wood and burn them completely. Do not allow large smouldering logs to burn slowly and emit toxins into your home.
Wood stoves, as a primary source of heat, or added heat source, wood appliances are designed to burn wood efficiently.
If you can afford it, replacing an older stove with a new high efficiency stove will allow you to take advantage of new technology. New stoves increases secondary combustion of smoke within the stove, adding heat to your home and reducing smoke production.
No matter what stove you have these tips will help keep you safe from toxic smoke exhaust:
When starting a fire open the air intake completely and leave the door ajar to maximize air intake. The door may need to be open for up to 15 minutes to properly heat up the stove and chimney. Always attend closely during this time to keep watch for flying embers. For safety, remember to use a fire screen and ensure no combustibles are stored near the stove.
Once the stove is hot the door can be closed. If you have a glass front stove, check to ensure that the flames are bright orange/yellow/blue. Dull small flames indicate a lack of oxygen and incomplete combustion.
A thermostat on your chimney can also tell you if the fire is hot enough. A hot fire reduces polluting smoke and minimizes creosote build-up.
Minimize dampening down your fire. Limit air intake only to the point where the flame is still burning brightly and actively.
Allow the fire to burn down to large embers before building it up again. This will maximize efficiency and reduce that annoying “puff” of smoke that escapes when you open the door to reload.
When rebuilding the fire add a few pieces of kindling and a couple of pieces of wood. Open air intake completely and leave the door ajar for a few minutes to return the fire to a high temperature as soon as possible.
Never leave a smouldering fire, even overnight. While it may seem like a good idea or a time saver to have some embers in the stove when you go to relight, the damage to your health is simply not worth it.
If in doubt have a look at your chimney, if there is smoke coming out your fire is burning poorly.
These tips are just a starting point. To learn more about wood burning look for a Burn It Smart workshop in your neighbourhood.
SAFTY TIP: Always insure your home has functioning smoke and carbon monoxide detectors!
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An editorial in this week’s New York Amsterdam News, the legendary Black newspaper of New York, highlights the rise of Rev. Al Sharpton’s storied civil rights organization The National Action Network, which will celebrate its 20th year of operation April 6-9 at their national convention in New York City.
The editorial, written by the publisher and editor-in-chief of the paper Elinor Tatum, talks about the birth of the National Action Network in 1991. Tatum called the organization “the heart” of the continuing civil rights movement. She views Sharpton’s group as the premier civil rights organization of her generation in the same way that the NAACP and the National Urban League were to her parents.
“Happy birthday, National Action Network. For many of us, we literally might not be here without you.” Elinor Tatum
Founded by Sharpton in 1991, the organization was one of the first civil rights groups of the 21st century. From the onset, the organization’s mission has been to to address the social and economic injustice experienced by Blacks in the United States. The main focus of Sharpton’s organization has been to tackle three key areas affecting minorities in America — the criminal justice system, social justice issues, and reducing verbal indecency within the African-American community.
The National Action Network is headquartered in Harlem, New York, but currently has over forty active chapters nationwide.
– The National Action Network is widely credited with drawing national attention to such critical issues as racial profiling, police brutality, and the US Naval bombing exercises on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. Notably, the organization was prominently involved with the police brutality cases of Amadou Diallo (New York), Abner Louima (New York) and Patrick Dorismond (New York). Sharpton also took the lead in protesting the Jena 6 case in Jena, Louisiana which garnered national attention. This past year, Sharpton held a march in Washington D.C. called “Reclaim The Dream” which thousands attended.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON AMSTERDAMNEWS.COM
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Deliberate Acts of Teaching
It is a “given” that effective teachers:
actively teach skills, content & key competencies;
co-construct learning intentions with learners;
know what they are teaching & why;
understand the learning progressions;
plan relevant, interesting learning activities;
provide opportunities for learners to reinforce & practise new learning;
provide effective feedback & feed-forward;
are flexible & responsive;
are flexible, organised & collaborative;
use language the learner understands.
ask another question;
rephrase the question;
give hints & clues;
provide thinking time / wait time;
encourage learners to use what they already know;
scaffold the next learning steps;
understand learning styles.
Feedback (how, why & next step):
provide specific feedback & feed-forward;
acknowledge the skills & process learned;
make links to the learning intention;
understand learning progressions;
give immediate feedback;
provide opportunity for learners to follow up & action the feedback / feed-forward.
Directing (giving a specific instruction):
clearly state the learning intention & displays clarity of purpose;
makes connections between prior & new learning;
directs learners to discuss, compare, understand & learn from others’ ideas;
directs learners to other resources.
Modelling (showing how):
use a variety of: approaches, appropriate language, question types, strategies / formats / technologies / structures, recording formats, relevant contexts, grouping structures, …;
make displays of learners’ work to include strategies, recording, language & thinking used;
display exemplars of learning;
paraphrase, clarify, discuss & model what learners say;
model themselves as a learner;
model & articulate desired learning attributes including thinking skills, repeated attempts, enjoyment, risk taking, generalising, connections to previous learning, listening, challenge.
Questioning (asking the right question):
ask a variety of questions;
allow for prediction, explanation & reflection;
challenge thinking & learning;
provide wait time;
question the learner to reveal & extend thinking processes & strategies;
encourage learners to ask questions;
create discussion opportunities;
expect response & commitment from the respondent.
supply, give or tell what the learner needs;
fills a gap so learning can progress;
reminds the learner of prior knowledge;
provides language needed.
Explaining (give a reason why):
use “because” to justify their reasoning;
use a variety of ways to explain a learning opportunity;
use explicit, relevant explanations;
use language learners understand;
are alert to the teachable moment.
Based on research from: “The Effective Literacy Handbook Years 5 – 8″
Please contact us to find out more!
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Do ham radio operators make good engineers or do good engineers make ham radio operators?
Do ham radio operators make good engineers or do good engineers make ham radio operators? Either way, the profession and the hobby go hand-in-hand in an investigation as to why my father's toys were destroying each other. "Son, it's time to pay for some of that college education!"
My father spends a considerable amount of time with his ham radio
hobby. Over the years he has created an elaborate station composed of a
room full of radios and a backyard full of antennas. Together the
equipment can operate most frequencies from DC to light.
Perhaps dad slacked off on his operating schedule this summer, because
recently it seemed like the radios were becoming jealous of each other
and competing for dad's attention. When the radios failed to gain his
attention by conventional means (whatever conventional for a radio is),
they began seeking revenge on each other and began destroying each
other's components. What is going on here?
A few crops from K8TL's Antenna Farm. The satellite antenna is on the
left. The Moonbounce antenna is in the center. The HF antenna is on
One of dad's favorite communications modes is satellite communications where a signal is relayed through a satellite from one side of the country to the other. He got this bug in 1983 when the space shuttle Columbia carried aloft Owen Garriott W5LFL. Owen used some of his spare time in space to try to communicate with earth-bound hams. We failed to contact the shuttle but had the bug and dad proceeded to build a bigger and better station.
The east wall holds the VHF, packet radio and satellite equipment.
Staying with the "space" theme, dad recently expanded his interests to an operating mode affectionately known as "Moonbounce." Technically, it is called Earth-Moon-Earth or EME. In the 1960s, NASA had a monopoly on this type of communications. Today's electronics have placed this extraterrestrial communications ability into the hands of your neighborhood amateur radio operator. To "Moonbounce", a high-powered radio signal is transmitted directly at the moon. The moon acts as a passive reflector and a portion of the radio signal is reflected back to planet Earth. Any stations that can see the moon can talk to each other.
The Northwest corner holds the Moonbounce equipment. The power amplifier is shown on the right.
In order to reach a low-orbit satellite or space shuttle at a mere 400 miles, 25-50 W of transmitter power is sufficient. That is in the neighborhood of a cellphone base station of approximately 50 W. Your pocket cellphone is less than 2 W. To reach the moon at a more impressive 238,857 miles, a transmitting power of 350 W to 1500 W is used. On top of that, you will need an antenna gain of 100 times or more (21 db). The closer you are to the 350 W, the more antenna you will need. On the receiving side, you will need a good GaAs FET Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) that provides a gain of 50 times (15 db). The lower your partner's transmitting power the more gain you will need.
Prior to the ubiquitous Internet email we all use, ham radio operators pioneered some of the concepts by using their orbiting satellites to store and forward messages. It became convenient (and fun) to create an automatic station that could lock onto the satellite and transfer the mail. This feature could be left running if the equipment is not in use for another activity. Since dad's ham station has multiple radios and antennas, he was able to leave the satellite email running while he operated another portion of the station such as HF or Moonbounce.
Shortly after the Moonbounce station upgraded from 350 W to 1500 W, strange things began to happen. The satellite email system stopped working. It seemed like the receiver could no longer copy the reflection of the transmitted signal. Tuning around the band revealed that the receiver worked fine. That left the transmitter as the culprit. Trouble shooting and repair revealed that a number of components including the power amplifier MOSFETs were dead. This appeared to be a cascade effect from a toasted tuned circuit on the antenna side of the power amplifier. Transmitting into the shorted tuned circuit caused the failure of the MOSFETs. But what caused the tuned circuit to fail?
While leafing through the log, dad noticed that the last successful transmission from the satellite station occurred prior to the 1.5 kw upgrade to the moon station. On a hunch, the satellite station was replaced with a watt meter and a dummy load in place of the receiver. With the antennas parallel, I keyed the EME transmitter. With about 750-W output, I measured a bit under 200 W coming down the satellite antenna coax. The satellite antenna was receiving a massive signal from the EME transmitter. Though careful thought had been given to protecting the receiving portion of the system, it wasn't originally obvious to protect the transmitter.
When the satellite antenna and the Moonbounce antenna cross paths while in action, you are now putting high power into a sensitive receiver from 20 ft away. The transmitters finals want to send, not receive. The receiver wants a weak signal, not a strong one. Mismatch these conditions and the life expectancy of your electrical components (LNA and PA) becomes quite short.
So if either radio was operating and the antennas were pointed together, various combinations of transmitting and receiving could cause the pre-amp to be overloaded and fail. Or, either transmitter power amplifier could "receive" a high power signal and fail.
A little attention to antenna aiming solved the mystery of the failing components and caused the toys to begin playing nice with each other (and with dad).
([email protected]) is a software engineer building premium automotive suspension systems for Beijing West Industries. Steve frequently appears in embedded systems contests by Circuit Cellar and most recently, by Renesas. Steve has an Extra Class Amateur Radio license and he repays his college "loan" by building Amateur Radio embedded systems for his father K8TL.
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Background of Munda1
Occupation of the Russells, following closely on the heels of the Guadalcanal victory, seemed to whet the appetite of Allied forces in the South Pacific for more action, more show-downs with the Japanese. In Admiral Halsey's New Caledonia headquarters, optimism and enthusiasm ran high. Singleness of purpose and a spirit of camaraderie united all representatives on ComSoPac's staff; and, charged by Halsey's impatience to get on with the war, his staff busied itself planning for the next major offensive in the Solomons. The objective: seizure of the New Georgia Group.2 (See Map II, Map Section.)
A compact maze of islands separated by shallow, coral-fouled lagoons or narrow reaches of open water, the New Georgia Group lies on a northwest-southeast axis between Bougainville, 110 miles to the northwest, and Guadalcanal, 180 miles to the southeast. Nearly 150 miles long and 40 miles wide, it comprises 12 major islands outlined by many smaller islands and formidable reefs. A dense, forbidding jungle growth covers the rugged terrain and accents the abruptly rising, conical mountains which mark the volcanic origin of the group.
Largest island in the group is its namesake, New Georgia. It is hugged closely on the north by the islands of Wana Wana, Arundel, and Baanga and guarded to the southeast by Vangunu and Gatukai. Standing off to the south are Rendova and Tetipari, with two islands--Vella Lavella and Ganongga--in a line to the northwest. Gizo Island chains Vella Lavella to Wana Wana and blocks the southern end of Vella Gulf. Completing the New Georgia Group is the circular, 5,450-foot mountain peak, Kolombangara, which juts out of the sea between Vella Gulf and Kula Gulf, only a few miles northwest of Arundel.
The group centers on New Georgia. A tortuous, misshapen mass with a spiny ridge of peaks, it lies pointing north in a big inverted V, 45 miles in length and 20 miles wide. Its southern coastline is bordered for nearly 20 miles by Roviana
Lagoon, a coral-laced and treacherous stretch of water varying from one to three miles in width. Only small boats can safely trace a channel between the narrow openings in the reef and around the shallow bars of the lagoon. Viru Harbor, southeast of Roviana, is one of the few easy-access points on the southeast coast. A land-locked anchorage, it has an unobstructed but zigzag channel.
The entire east and northeast side of the island is reef-lined, with Marova and Grassi Lagoons bordering that coast almost as Roviana does on the south. As the coastline turns south at Visuvisu Point--apex of the V--Kula Gulf swells directly into three deep-water anchorages formed by jungle rivers rising in the mountains on the north coast. Rice Anchorage and Enogai Inlet are short and mangrove-lined with deep forest crowding the shores; Bairoko Harbor, deeper and longer, is partially blocked by reefs but is the best anchorage along the gulf. Past Bairoko, Hathorn Sound connects the gulf with the passage through to the south, Diamond Narrows. Only 224 feet wide at its narrowest point and 432 feet across at its widest, the Narrows separates New Georgia from Arundel and is the northern entrance to Roviana Lagoon. Its twisting channel is navigable, however, only by small boats.
The dank, oppressive nature of the island characterized even the life of the New Georgia natives. Theirs was a scrubby existence from small gardens, native fruits, some fishing, and occasional trading. One-time headhunters, they became aggressive sailors who moved from point to point through the lagoons by canoe, avoiding the rugged inland travel. As a result, they were, in 1943, excellent guides to the coastlines of the islands but almost completely ignorant of the interiors.
In November 1942, while still contesting possession of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, the Japanese sought another airfield which would bring their fighter planes within shorter striking distance of the southern Solomons. They found it at Munda Point on New Georgia, about two-thirds of the way from Rabaul to Guadalcanal. It was a natural selection. Munda Point was relatively flat and could be reached from the sea only through one narrow break in its barrier reef, which was risky even for shallow-draft ships at high tide, or through several openings in the string of islets locking Roviana Lagoon to the island. An overland approach required an arduous jungle trek either from river inlets 10 miles to the north or from points to the east in Roviana. The position of the proposed airfield made an ally of the entire island, utilizing in protection all the reefs and islets which ringed New Georgia and the matted canopy of jungle growth which covered it.
The Japanese came to Munda in force on 13 November 1942. Their transports stopped off Munda reef late that day and, by early morning of the 14th, troops completed debarking by small boats. The occupation unit immediately sent out armed patrols to "subjugate" the natives and inform them of the Japanese intentions. Kolombangara, Rendova, Vangunu, and surrounding smaller islands were visited and quickly put under control. The construction of an airfield began with the arrival of additional troops and engineers on 21 November.
Coastwatcher Donald G. Kennedy at Segi Plantation on the extreme southeastern tip of New Georgia was one of the first
to hear of the occupation. In October, a month previous, when the Japanese first reconnoitered New Georgia, Kennedy organized a band of natives to help him defend his post. When they informed him of the Munda landing, he sent Harry Wickham, a half-native co-worker, to Rendova to watch Munda and report on the progress of the airfield.
Wickham's report of Japanese activity at Munda was investigated immediately by Allied air reconnaissance. The first report, on 24 November, was negative. Photographs clearly showed a plantation area, a small cluster of buildings at Munda, and a similar cluster of buildings at Kokengola Mission north of Munda. There was no activity which could be classed as enemy, no evidence of airfield construction. Allied planes bombed the area anyway. It was a gesture of confidence in Kennedy and Wickham.
Then photo interpreters picked up interest. New buildings began to show up in later photo strips, and a strange white line appeared beneath the plantation trees. On 3 December, SoPac interpreters announced their discovery: a possible landing strip under construction. Two distinct strips, 125 feet wide and about 1,000 feet apart in a direct line with each other, were visible in the prints. One strip was about 175 feet long, the other about 200 feet. Natural camouflage, it was decided, partially shielded the construction. Two days later the field was 2,000 feet long. No trees had been cut down, but piles of either loose earth or coral appeared beneath each tree. New buildings, obviously control towers, had been built adjacent to the field. On 9 December, photos showed the field nearly clear, the trees apparently pulled up and taken away, and the holes filled in with coral. The Japanese, alerted by the continued interest of Allied planes over Munda, had abandoned further camouflage attempts.3
By 17 December, after only a month at Munda and despite multiple bombing raids, the enemy had an operational airstrip 4,700 feet long. A series of revetments and a turn-around loop eventually finished the field. An advance echelon of 24 aircraft was moved to Munda upon its completion, but all were destroyed or badly damaged by bombing raids within a week after arrival. Thereafter, the Japanese used the field mainly for servicing planes after raids on Guadalcanal and the Russells, and few pilots dared Allied bombings to tarry at Munda very long. Repair of the strip was easy; bulldozers quickly filled in the holes. Despite the rain of bombs and occasional shellings, the field was never out of operation longer than 48 hours.4
New Georgia, the Allies had decided, would be the target of the next offensive in the South Pacific. Munda airfield was the bull's-eye. As a military prize, it held the enemy's hopes for a re-entry into the lower Solomons and the Allied hopes for another step towards Rabaul.
New Georgia Reconnaissance5
Halsey had intended to be in New Georgia by mid-April. His planning date scrapped by the JCS and his offensive tied to construction of airfields at Kiriwina and Woodlark, the admiral waited for the go-ahead signal. While waiting, he sent reconnaissance patrols probing the Central Solomons.
Guadalcanal land operations had been plagued by a dearth of information on terrain and topography. New Georgia was likewise unmapped and hydrographic charts were badly out of date. Since aerial photography revealed only thick jungle growth, actual physical scouting by trained men was the only answer. A combat reconnaissance school with experienced Marine and Army personnel and selected coastwatchers as instructors was organized at Guadalcanal, and about 100 men were trained and formed into scouting teams. Halsey found their reports invaluable, and beginning with ELKTON planning, "never made a forward move without their help."6
First terrain information on New Georgia had been received from a patrol of six Marines and a ComSoPac staff officer that had prowled Roviana Lagoon and the Munda area in late February, contacting coastwatchers, scouting and mapping trails, and selecting possible landing beaches. Their report helped the admiral reach a decision on hitting the Central Solomons and gave SoPac planners the information for tentative strategy.7
On 21 March, a group of Marine scouts drawn from the raider battalions and graduates of the combat reconnaissance school landed by PBY (Catalina flying boat) at Segi Plantation.8 With Kennedy's natives as guides, the group split into patrols and set out to scout possible landing beaches, landmarks, and motor torpedo boat (MTB) anchorages. Traveling by canoe at night and observing during daylight hours, the patrols checked travel time from point to point, took bearings on channels, scouted enemy dispositions and installations, and sketched crude maps to help fill in the scanty information already available. One group had the mission of "collecting information about the Viru garrison, armament and accessibility to the area, both by way of direct attack up the harbor cliffs and by inland native trails through the jungle,"9 which marked
it as a possible target in the assault. Other patrols ranged from Roviana Lagoon to Arundel and Kolombangara, along the northern shore of New Georgia from Enogai Inlet to Marova Lagoon, and around the coast of Vangunu. Another patrol contacted the Rendova coastwatcher, Harry Wickham.10 The missions were virtually the same: to bring back all possible data on the enemy and terrain.
At this early date in the spring of 1943, tentative invasion plans envisioned a divisional landing at Segi Plantation followed by a sweep overland to capture Munda field. The patrol reports confirmed the growing suspicions of the ComSoPac war plans staff: Segi's beaches would not accommodate a large landing force, and a sizable body of troops could not move through untracked jungle to Munda with any hope of success. Another method of attack would have to be developed.
The patrols continued to shuttle back to New Georgia for more information. Coastwatchers A. R. Evans on Kolombangara, Dick Horton and Harry Wickham at Rendova, and Kennedy at Segi played hosts to furtive guests who slipped in by native canoes from submarines, fast destroyers, or PBYs. The patrols searched openings in the barrier reef of Roviana, checked overland trails from Rice Anchorage on the north coast to Zanana Beach on the south in Roviana, and looked for easy access to Munda field. In this connection, Wickham--who had lived on New Georgia most of his life--"was particularly valuable."11
The reports on Munda were discouraging. Hathorn Sound had no beaches and shallow landing craft could pass safely only halfway through Diamond Narrows.12 LSTs might possibly skirt the west shore of Baanga Island to get to Munda, but it would be a hazardous, obstacle-lined trip. Crossing the reef at Munda bar was another risk. Soundings indicated that the opening, through continued coral deposits, had become more shallow and restricted than admittedly outdated reports indicated. A direct assault over Munda bar, the closest entrance to Munda, was patently the most dangerous course and held the least chance of success.
Final assault plans were a concession to the terrain. They provided for landings off-shore from Munda, followed by a troop buildup on New Georgia and then a strong attack on the airfield from all sides. The last reconnaissance patrols went into the New Georgia Group on 13 June. Landing at Segi they took off in log canoes for the four landing spots finally selected: Rendova, Rice Anchorage, Viru Harbor, and Wickham Anchorage. Teams of Marine Corps, Army, and Navy officers studied the designated beaches and sought artillery positions, observation posts, water points, bivouac areas, and interior trails. Some of the patrols skirted Japanese defenses, noting the strength and habits of the enemy, before striking inland for terrain information. When the teams paddled back to Segi, some of the members stayed behind with natives to
guide the landing parties to the beaches with lights flashed from the shore.
Munda assumed a new role in enemy strategy during the spring of 1943. Instead of the proposed springboard for recapture of Guadalcanal, it became a keystone in Japan's decision to build up the Lae-Salamaua defense line while maintaining the Solomons as delaying positions.
Japanese engineers, after rushing Munda into completion, hurried to Kolombangara to construct another field at Vila Plantation on the southeast shore. Here they did not attempt concealment. The task went ahead despite almost daily bombings and occasional naval bombardments. The enemy now had two strips from which they could stage attacks against Allied positions on Guadalcanal and the Russells; but the air over The Slot was a two-way street, and most of the traffic was from Henderson Field.
Buildup of troop strength in the Vila-Munda area was steady but slow. Air supremacy was still contested, but the initiative was with the Allies. Japanese plans for reinforcing the Central Solomons were slowed by the continual harassment from planes of Commander, Aircraft Solomons (ComAirSols), and the enemy was eventually reduced to scheduling troop transfers "from the end of the month to the beginning of the following month to take advantage of the new moon."14 Then, too, the transport losses in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea on 3 March and the steadily mounting attrition of naval craft from air attacks was slowly sapping Japanese sea power.
By the end of April, land defenses in the Central Solomons had been strengthened with Army and Navy troops, and additional reinforcements were standing by in the Buin-Shortland area for further transportation. The 8th Combined Special Naval Landing Force (CSNLF), which included the Kure 6th Special Naval Landing Force and the Yokosuka 7th SNLF was the Navy's contribution to the defense of Vila-Munda.15 After Japan lost the initiative in the Pacific, these amphibious assault troops were changed to defense forces. Named for the naval base at which the unit was formed, an SNLF generally
included: a headquarters unit; two rifle companies; a heavy weapons company with howitzer, antitank, and machine gun units; an antiaircraft company; a heavy gun or seacoast defense unit; and medical, signal, supply, and engineer troops.
The Yokosuka 7th landed at Kolombangara on 23 February with 1,807 men, and was followed on 9 March by the Kure 6th with 2,038 men. This unit went into positions between Bairoko and Enogai and around the airfield at Munda. Rear Admiral Minoru Ota, commanding the 8th CSNLF, assumed responsibility for the defense of the New Georgia sector.
By prior agreement between the Seventeenth Army and the Eighth Fleet, Army and Navy strength in the Central Solonmons was to be about even. After sending the 8th CSNLF to the New Georgia area, the Navy was determined to hold the Army to its end of the bargain. Following a number of conferences, the Army reinforcements began arriving in late March. The original force at Munda consisted of two companies from the 2d Battalion. 229th Regiment of the 38th Division, with two antiaircraft battalions for protection for the naval base construction troops. Kolombangara was garrisoned early in 1943 with troops from the 51st Division including an infantry battalion, an artillery detachment, and engineer and air defense units.
The remainder of the 229th Regiment at Buin, with supporting troops, began to filter into New Georgia late in April and the 51st Division troops on Kolombangara were relieved. The 229th moved to the Munda airfield area, and a battalion from the 13th Infantry Regiment, 6th Division, took over actual defense of Kolombangara. As opportunities arose, the Japanese moved in more troops.
Guadalcanal had been a well-learned--albeit painful--lesson. The reinforcement of the Vila-Munda area reflected Japan's new strategy:
Our fundamental policy was to bring the desired number of troops into strategic key points before the enemy offensive, in spite of manifold difficulties; and in event of an enemy offensive, to prevent our supply transportation from being hampered; to throw in our entire sea, land, and air strength at the first sign of an enemy landing to engage it in decisive combat; and to secure completely the strategic key positions linking the Central Solomons, Lae, and Salamaua, which formed our national defense boundary on the southeastern front.16
On New Georgia, the Japanese prepared defenses for all eventualities. Munda Point and the airfield vicinity bristled with antiaircraft and artillery weapons. The enemy did not discount the threat of a direct assault over Munda bar and sited some of their armament to cover that approach; but the bulk of the weapons pointed north toward Bairoko--from which an overland attack might come--and toward Laiana Beach on Roviana Lagoon--where an attack seemed logical. The Japanese believed, however, that the next Allied objective was to be Kolombangara in an attempt to attack Munda from the rear; so Vila likewise was prepared to repulse any assault. Increased Allied air activity, the presence of a great number of troop transports in the Guadalcanal area, and increased reconnaissance convinced the enemy that an attack was imminent. Their intelligence reports of about 50 cargo-type airplanes at Henderson Field also prompted speculation on the possibility of airborne operations against Vila-Munda.
With both Army and Navy troops occupying identical Central Solomons positions, a more unified command arrangement was sought. Admiral Ota, the senior commander in the area, had been responsible for both Army and Navy land defenses in the Vila-Munda area. On 2 May, however, Imperial Headquarters directed that a command post be established in New Georgia, and on 31 May, Major General Noboru Sasaki of the 38th Division arrived at Kolombangara to head the new Southeast Detachment, a joint Army-Navy defense force. Administratively attached to the Seventeenth Army but under the operational command of the Eighth Fleet, General Sasaki was assigned responsibility for all land defenses in the New Georgia sector and command of all Army troops in the area. Admiral Ota, still in command of Navy troops, was directed to give him fullest cooperation. It was a command structure which criss-crossed Army and Navy channels, but with Sasaki's assignment spelled out, and with Ota's cooperation assured, a unified force was established.
By late June, as Japan waited for an Allied thrust she believed was coming, the defensive positions in the New Georgia Group were set. To obtain greater coordination, General Sasaki divided his defense area into three zones of responsibility: the Central (Munda); the Western (Kolombangara); and the Eastern (Viru-Wickham). The task of defending Munda Point he gave to Colonel Genjiro Hirata and the 229th Regiment, augmented by two batteries of the 10th Independent Mountain Artillery Regiment. Air defense would be provided by the 15th Air Defense Unit which combined the 41st Field Antiaircraft Battalion (less one battery), the 31st Independent Field Antiaircraft Company, the 27th Field Machine Cannon Company, and the 3d Field Searchlight Battalion (less one battery). One company of the 229th Regiment was dispatched to Rendova.
To aid Sasaki in the defense of the airfield, Admiral Ota established three seacoast artillery batteries at Munda with 140mm, 120mm, and 80mm guns. Also based there was an antiaircraft machine gun company of the Kure 6th SNLF, the 21st Antiaircraft Company and the 17th and 131st Pioneers (labor troops). Ota also sent a rifle company from the Kure 6th to Rendova. The remainder of the Kure 6th, under Commander Saburo Okumura, was to defend the Bairoko Harbor area. Kolombangara's defense was entrusted to a battalion of the 13th Regiment, reinforced by a battery of the 10th Independent Mountain Artillery. Air defense of Vila airstrip rested with the 58th Field Antiaircraft Battalion (less one battery), the 22d and the 23d Field Machine Cannon Companies, and a searchlight battery. The main detachments of the Yokosuka 7th SNLF and the 19th Pioneers were also based on Kolombangara.
Viru Harbor was garrisoned by the 4th Company of the 229th, less one platoon which went on to Wickham Anchorage to augment a seacoast defense battery from the Kure 6th. To complete the defensive picture, lookout platoons were scattered about the coastline of New Georgia and on some of the small adjacent islets to act as security detachments.
In all, as Sasaki's reinforcement and defense plans raced right down to the wire with Allied offensive preparations, the Japanese had about 5,000 Navy and 5,500
Army troops in the New Georgia-Kolombangara area. Although the 8th CSNLF was not combat tested, the 229th Regiment and the 13th Regiment were another matter. The 229th had participated in the capture of Hong Kong before taking part in the occupation of Java. Committed to combat again, the regiment had one battalion nearly annihilated on New Guinea and another battalion suffered heavy casualties at Guadalcanal. Reinforced by fresh troops at Rabaul and Bougainville, the survivors had been formed into new battalions to join the 2d Battalion at New Georgia. The elements of the 13th Regiment, before being sent to Kolombangara, were part of the 6th Division which garrisoned the Northern Solomons. One of Japan's oldest divisions, the 6th, was likewise hardened by combat in China before being sent to the Solomon Islands.
Expanding sea and air offensives by the Allies in the late spring of 1943 had a definite bearing on Japan's outlook toward her defenses in the South Pacific. Widening the scope of the war, a large-scale bombing attack in mid-May plastered the Japanese-held atoll of Wake in the Central Pacific. This strike followed a landing in the Aleutians on 11 May by U.S. Army troops covered by naval forces. The enemy believed that the counterlandings in the North Pacific were a direct threat to the Home Islands, and plans for the southeast area were immediately curtailed. About 20 per cent of the troops earmarked for the Solomons and New Guinea were shifted to the northeast area; and Admiral Mineichi Koga, successor to Admiral Yamamoto, pulled his Combined Fleet headquarters out of Truk and moved to Tokyo so that he could better control operations throughout the Pacific. His main fleet units, however, remained at Truk.
True to his promise to the JCS at the time of the 28 March directive, Admiral Halsey kept the pressure on the Japanese in the Central Solomons. Under the pounding of bombs and sea bombardments, the Vila-Munda area never had the opportunity to develop past its use as a refueling point for enemy planes. The Allied strikes scored few casualties among the Munda defenders, relatively secure in underground defenses near the airfield, but kept enemy engineers busy repairing the cratered runways. The attacks lowered morale, however, by keeping the Japanese "sleepless and fatigued,"18 and occasional hits were scored on fuel and supply dumps. Prior to May, Munda and Vila had taken nearly 120 bombing raids, and four major naval bombardments had rained shells on the two airfields.
The Tokyo Express--fast destroyers carrying troops and supplies to the New Georgia Group--still steamed on. The Allies found they could not possibly cover all avenues of supply, and that to halt the traffic entirely would require more planes
and ships than South Pacific forces could muster at this stage of the war. On 6 May, however, the express runs were abruptly, if only temporarily, disrupted. Rear Admiral Walden L. Ainsworth, heading a Third Fleet task force of three cruisers, five destroyers, and three converted destroyer-mine layers, steamed up the gap between Gizo and Wana Wana Islands into the Vella Gulf. As Ainsworth's cruisers and four destroyers blocked the northern entrance to Vella Gulf, the three mine layers escorted by a radar-equipped destroyer laid three rows of mines across the straits between Kolombangara and Gizo. Then the entire force turned for home bases at Guadalcanal. (See Map II, Map Section.)
Dividends were almost immediate. The next night, four Japanese destroyers slipped into Blackett Straits with Vila as their destination. They never reached it. The trap was sprung. Blundering into the mine field, one ship went down almost immediately; two others were badly damaged. The fourth ship stood by to pick up survivors. And that's the way Allied planes, somewhat delayed by adverse weather, found them the next day. The two damaged ships were sunk by bombs, but the fourth ship, heavily bombed and strafed, managed to limp back toward Bougainville. Gleeful coastwatchers radioed the box score to Guadalcanal.
Heartened by the success, the Third Fleet planned another surprise. This time, Vila would be shelled as the northern entrance to Kula Gulf was mined. On the night of 13 May, Admiral Ainsworth led a force of three cruisers and five destroyers in firing runs past Vila, steaming in from the north, while a destroyer and three fast mine layers planted mines off the east coast of Kolombangara. As each of Ainsworth's ships completed her run past Vila, she turned and pumped heavy fire into the Bairoko and Enogai-Rice Anchorage areas.
At the same time, a force of one cruiser and three destroyers plastered Munda on the opposite side of New Georgia. The airfield had not been included in the original bombardment plans, but a last-hour switch in orders--accomplished by dispatch and a message drop from planes to the ships designated--had added that stronghold. Vila was hit by a total of 2,895 six-inch and 4,340 five-inch shells, Munda by 970 six-inch and 1,648 five-inch. The operation was covered by an air strike in the Northern Solomons and additional fighter planes flew cover and reported bombardment results.
The mine-laying did not produce the earlier results. It slowed the Japanese supply chain by forcing it to be more cautious, but it did not halt it. The bombardment was a bigger disappointment. Less than 12 hours after the last shell had been fired, a flight of 26 Japanese fighters staged from Munda-Vila was chasing the attack force back to Guadalcanal. Coastwatchers radioed the warning; 102 Allied aircraft formed a welcoming committee. Seventeen enemy planes were reportedly shot down; 16 of them were claimed by Marine fighters. Five Allied planes and three pilots were lost in the action. The bombardment was the last scheduled before the actual invasion; the results, it was apparent, were not worth the price. A harassing bombardment, CinCPac later advised, was not justified when "all ships were subjected to the hazard of enemy MTB and SS [submarine]
attacks with no prospect of equal opportunity to damage the enemy."19
Air activity increased during June. Airfields in the Russells gave the Allies a shorter range to targets in the Northern and Central Solomons, as well as providing another launching area for getting planes into the air to repel attacks. Attracted by the concentration of shipping in the Guadalcanal area, the Japanese tried a new one-two punch of heavy flights of fighters followed by large numbers of bombers, but three major strikes on 7, 12, and 16 June resulted in staggering losses. The enemy had hoped to break even in fighter tolls, which would then give their bombers opportunity to attack unmolested. The maneuver boomeranged. Each time, ComAirSols was able to meet the threat with from 105 to 118 aircraft and in the three strikes, a total of 152 enemy airplanes was claimed. The Allies lost 21.
Preparing to Strike20
The assault of New Georgia, viewed in optimism contagious at the time, seemed an easy assignment despite the inaccessability of Munda. Reconnaissance had virtually pinpointed Japanese strong points, and the combat effectiveness of the Vila-Munda airfields had been reduced considerably by the Allied pounding. Intelligence sources, which later proved remarkably accurate, estimated that there were only about 3,000 Japanese at Munda, with another 500 troops at Bairoko and a detachment of 300 men at Wickham Anchorage and about 100 more at Viru Harbor. The bulk of the forces, estimated at 5,000 to 7,000 troops, was on Kolombangara, together with an additional 3,000 laborers.
Japan's reinforcement ability from points in the Northern Solomons was noted, but there was no ready estimate of the numbers available for quick assignment to combat. Her sea strength in the Solomons was believed to be 6 destroyers, 5 submarines, and 12 transports, with a cruiser, 5 destroyers, 7 submarines, and 25 attack transports at Rabaul. Japanese air strength was put at 89 land-based aircraft in the Solomons with another 262 at Rabaul. While troop estimates were near the actual enemy totals, ComSoPac guesses on air and sea numbers of the enemy were low. The entire Eighth Fleet was in the Shortlands area, while a part of the Combined Fleet at Truk was committed to lend assistance in Southeast Area operations. The Japanese Navy had 169 land-based planes available for combat from a total of nearly 300 deployed in the Bismarck Archipelago and the Northern Solomons. The Eighth Area Army had about 180 aircraft attached directly to it; however, most of these were supporting operations against the Allies in New Guinea.
The target had been marked. Early in June, Admiral Halsey published his orders for the seizure and occupation of New Georgia. The improbable code name TOENAILS masked Halsey's part in the CARTWHEEL offensive. The missions: capture Wickham Anchorage and Viru Harbor as small-craft staging areas; seize Segi Plantation as a possible airfield site; seize Rendova as a base for the neutralization of Munda by artillery fire. Orders for the actual assault of Munda airfield
would be issued by ComSoPac after the successful completion of the first phase of TOENAILS.
Task units of the Third Fleet were assigned covering missions which would insure success of the operation by blocking any enemy force attempting to disrupt the landings with a counteroffensive. While one force of destroyers and cruisers moved in to mine the main sea channels around the Shortland Islands, another heavier force of battleships and destroyers was to stage a bombardment of Japanese strong points in the Northern Solomons and Shortlands. Air units of the South Pacific Air Command, under Vice Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch, were assigned strikes against shipping in the Shortlands area and bombing missions on airfields on Bougainville. Carrier air groups were to intercept any enemy ships or aircraft heading for the New Georgia Group. SoPac submarines were to range into the Northern Solomons for interception and early warning of any Japanese force, and destroyer units would provide close-in support for the transport groups engaged in the actual landing operations. Thus, with Admiral Halsey's forces guarding the northern and eastern approaches to New Georgia, and General MacArthur's operations in New Guinea shielding the western flank, the assault forces could proceed with the seizure of TOENAILS objectives.
The Army's 43d Infantry Division, part of Major General Oscar W. Griswold's XIV Corps, was named as the assault and occupation troops. The 2d Marine Aircraft Wing headquarters under Brigadier General Francis P. Mulcahy was assigned to direct tactical air support over the target during the operation. Rear Admiral Turner, commander of amphibious forces in the South Pacific, was given overall responsibility for New Georgia operations. Detailed planning for the actual seizure and occupation of the objectives outlined in Halsey's broad plans would be Turner's job.
To accomplish the TOENAILS missions, Turner divided his command into two units. He would personally direct the larger Western Force in the main landing at Rendova and would be responsible for movement of troops and supplies to the objective and for their protection. The Eastern Force, under the direction of Rear Admiral George H. Fort, would seize Viru, Segi Plantation, and Wickham Anchorage. Admiral Fort would be responsible for movement to these targets and for embarking troops and supplies from the Russells for subsequent operations.
Admiral Turner's ground commander, Major General John H. Hester, headed the New Georgia Occupation Force (NGOF). Its combat units consisted of Hester's own 43d Infantry Division, including the 172d and 169th Regiments and one battalion of the 103d Regiment; the Marine 9th Defense Battalion; the 136th Field Artillery Battalion from the 37th Infantry Division; the 24th Naval Construction Battalion (NCB); Company O of the Marine 4th Raider Battalion, the 1st Commando, Fiji Guerrillas;21 and assigned service troops.
Fort's Eastern Force would include the 103d RCT (less the battalion with Nester); Companies N, P, and Q from the 4th Raider Battalion; elements of the 70th Coast Artillery (Antiaircraft) Battalion; parts of the 20th NCB; and service units.
The landing force would be headed by Colonel Daniel H. Hundley, commanding the 103d RCT. Selected as ready reserve for the operation was the 1st Marine Raider Regiment (less the 2d, 3d, and 4th Battalions), commanded by Colonel Harry B. Liversedge. The Army's 37th Infantry Division (less the 129th RCT and most of the 148th RCT) would be in general reserve at Guadalcanal, ready to move on five-days' notice.
Execution of the assigned tasks looked easy. Turner's original concept was to seize the southern end of New Georgia simultaneously with Rendova. Artillery based on Rendova and offshore smaller islands would soften Munda field while the buildup of assault forces began. Four days later, it was planned, Munda would be attacked through Roviana Lagoon and over Munda Bar, while Bairoko would be struck either from the Russells or by a force hitting overland from Roviana Lagoon. This maneuver would block reinforcements for the airfield. Capture of Munda would then trigger the next shore-to-shore jump to Kolombangara, the last phase of Operation TOENAILS.
These were the first plans. ComSoPac orders stressed their successful completion with a minimum of forces. It could not be foreseen at the initial planning conferences that, before Munda could be captured and the New Georgia Group occupied, elements of four infantry divisions would be committed and extensive changes in plans would be required. The problems mounted early. Laiana Beach on Roviana Lagoon east of Munda was heavily defended, although the best landing area. The channel through Roviana, scouted from canoes, was too shallow for LCMs. The islands near Rendova originally considered for artillery positions were not within effective 105mm howitzer range of Munda airfield. And coastwatcher reports indicated that the enemy--despite Allied efforts--was slipping reinforcements into the Vila-Munda area. Further, a reconnaissance team reported that a strike at Bairoko from Roviana was impossible within the time limits planned.
The solutions plagued Turner's staff. Zanana Beach, about 5,500 yards east of Laiana, was smaller but virtually undefended, the scouts reported. While it would hold only a few landing craft, the Piraka River mouth 1,000 yards farther east could permit beaching of additional boats. Hester decided on Zanana as his landing beach, and Turner gave his approval. Reaching Zanana would be a problem, however. Landing boats would have to slip through narrow, coral-choked Onaiavisi Entrance that threaded between the small offshore islands and then follow a twisting channel to the beaches. The selection of Zanana was based as much on its undefended nature as on its capability of being reached by LCMs. It had, however, one apparent drawback. The attacking troops would be unloaded at a considerable distance from their objective. (See Map 5.)
The planning problems were unexpectedly magnified by an emergency. An urgent call for assistance by Coastwatcher Kennedy at Segi resulted in the premature commitment of two Marine raider companies and two companies from the 103d RCT on 21 June. Admiral Turner made the decision. The speedup in schedule upset previous planning, but it was deemed necessary. It required a change in basic
strategy, a shuffling of troops, a change in the transport plans--and some around-the-clock supply duty by the Marine 4th Base Depot in the Russells--but the decision retained possession of Segi for the Allies until the actual New Georgia invasion.22
General Hester, who would direct the operations ashore, continually faced thorny problems. To deal with the mounting complexities, he delegated the planning for the Rendova landings to a 43d Division staff headed by his assistant division commander, Brigadier General Leonard F. Wing. A second staff, the NGOF staff, completed the New Georgia attack planning. Hester retained command of both staffs. The final assault plans evolved from the best solutions to a multiplicity of problems. In the scheme of maneuver, part of the Western Force would hit at Munda through Onaiavisi Entrance with two regiments landing at Zanana and pivoting to the west in an overland attack with one flank resting on the lagoon. This force, designated the Southern Landing Force, would be commanded initially by General Wing.
Liversedge's raiders--now titled the Northern Landing Group--would strike directly at Bairoko from Kula Gulf. This would be coordinated with the landings at Zanana and would block reinforcements to Munda. It was not expected that the Munda forces would attempt to reinforce the Bairoko defenders. This half of a pincer movement faced one handicap; the area was not as well scouted as that of Roviana Lagoon. The Hester plan of attack envisioned a short campaign during which the Japanese would be caught between a hammering force from the south and a holding force in the north. Thus, the enemy would be pushed back towards an area where, ringed by Allied troops, they could be pounded into submission by aircraft and Rendova-based artillery. To insure success, additional 43d Division artillery (the 192d and the 103d Field Artillery Battalions) was added to the NGOF.
D-Day assignments were set. Troops of the 172d Infantry would seize two small islands guarding the approaches to Rendova and then establish a beachhead on Rendova itself. Through the secured passage, Hester and Wing would funnel the rest of the landing force, with the 103d Infantry given the task of expanding the beachhead and mopping up the island, reported to be lightly defended. Simultaneously, two companies of the 169th Infantry would land on islets flanking Onaiavisi Entrance and a detachment of Fiji guerrillas and Marine raiders would mark the channel with buoys to Zanana Beach and the nearby Piraka River. Four days later, the 172d Infantry would make the Rendova-Zanana move and establish a beachhead for the landing the following day of the 169th Infantry from the Russells. The 169th was to move inland to the north of the 172d, then face to the west. This would put two regiments abreast, ready to launch an attack from a line of departure along the Barike River, some 2,000 yards closer to Munda. Artillery on the offshore islands and Rendova would support the attack. Five days later, it was planned, the 3d Battalion of the 103d Infantry and the eight tanks of the Marine 9th Defense Battalion would cross Munda bar for the final, direct assault on Munda airfield.
Marine Corps Support23
Marine units which were to participate in the seizure of Munda were fulfilling a number of tasks and training missions prior to the operation. The actual job of pushing the enemy from New Georgia belonged mainly to General Hester's 43d Division; contributions to the campaign by the Marine Corps would be in support of the main effort. The 9th Defense Battalion was given a dual mission of making enemy positions on Munda untenable by artillery fire and of providing antiaircraft protection for the landing forces. The 1st Marine Raider Regiment, at first intended as a reserve element, was thrust into an active role with its mission of wedging a block on Dragons Peninsula between the Munda defenders and reinforcements at Bairoko Harbor.
Colonel Liversedge's raiders were a cocky, confident group which prided itself on being a volunteer unit within a volunteer Corps. Carrying only 60mm mortars and light machine guns as supporting weapons, each battalion was generally organized with four rifle companies, an engineer and demolition platoon, and a headquarters company. Smaller in authorized strength than the regular Marine infantry battalion, the actual strength of the raider battalions varied between 700 and 950. Specially trained for jungle fighting, amphibious raids, and behind-the-lines guerrilla action, the raiders had participated in the Tulagi- assault, a hit-and-run raid at Makin Island in the Gilberts, the defense of Midway, and jungle warfare on Guadalcanal. These Marines thus brought to the New Georgia campaign considerable combat experience plus the conviction that the fighting ahead would follow no orderly lines of battle. The vexing problems presented by the jungle in maintaining communications and supply would demand the utmost in courage, ingenuity, and stamina; but the raiders felt up to the task. They were firm in the belief that these difficulties, inextricably complicated by the terrain and enervating climate, could be overcome by their tough physical training, combat experience, and high morale.
At the time of consolidation of the four battalions under one command on 15 March 1943, the raiders were scattered throughout the South Pacific with regimental headquarters and the 2d and 4th Battalions at Espiritu Santo, the 1st at Noumea, and the 3d in the Russells. Upon assignment to the TOENAILS operation, the regiment (less the 2d and 3d Battalions) moved to Guadalcanal, arriving there the first week in June. Here the raiders had only a few days to go over their orders, iron out organizational kinks, and practice as a single unit before the 4th Battalion was abruptly assigned to Kennedy's assistance.
The 9th Defense Battalion commanded by Lieutenant Colonel William J. Scheyer, had particular reason to be proud of its assignment in the TOENAILS operation. With a quick conversion of its seacoast batteries to field artillery units, the 9th would be in an offensive role against the Japanese at Munda and the prospect pleased the entire battalion. One of 14 such highly specialized defense forces scattered from Cuba to New Zealand, the 9th was providing antiaircraft protection for Guadalcanal forces when picked for the New Georgia offensive. Activated early in 1942, the 9th trained extensively in Cuba before arriving at Guadalcanal on 30 November 1942. The battalion was in defensive action almost immediately, and its 90mm batteries bagged a total of 12 enemy aircraft in the following months.
Organizational changes had to be made, however, to get the unit ready for its part in the capture of Munda. In 21 days, the seacoast batteries, augmented by 145 new men, were trained in field artillery fire direction methods and had test-fired newly arrived 155mm pieces. The change from seacoast sights to field artillery sights and different fire commands was only part of the problem, though. As one battalion officer reported:
Our problem was not one of training but one of obtaining the necessary equipment and ammunition so that a relative calibration could be fired to obtain some idea as to the relative velocity errors of the new weapons in order to mass their fires. We were plagued throughout the operation with this equipment and ammunition problem. When the ammunition did arrive from Noumea, there were 19 different powder lots in a shipment of 25 rounds. Obviously, calibrations could not be conducted with propellents of different powder lots and about all that was accomplished was test firing of the weapons so that the men could be familiar with them.24
The battalion, with an assist from its relieving Army unit, the 70th Coast Artillery (Antiaircraft) Battalion, picked up new 90mm antiaircraft guns equipped with power rammers and remote control equipment in exchange for the old guns which were left in position. In addition, power-operated mounts were placed on spare 20mm guns, increasing speed and efficiency over the standard mounts which were pedal-operated. The 9th also borrowed 12 amphibian tractors from the 3d Marine Division, and Griswold's XIV Corps exchanged new trucks and jeeps for old. As the 9th readied itself for its mission, its armament included a platoon of 8 light tanks, 8 155mm guns, 12 90mm guns, 16 40mm guns, 28 20mm guns, and 35 .50 caliber antiaircraft machine guns.
Relieved of its defensive role on Guadalcanal on 17 June, the battalion spent the remaining time in familiarization firing of weapons, gun drills which included reconnaissance, selection, and occupation of positions, and practice landings. Gunners and loaders from the antiaircraft batteries turned riflemen to give the tankmen practice in tank-infantry tactics. The amphibian tractors were test-loaded until a loading arrangement was obtained which would provide enough 40mm, 20mm, and .50 caliber ammunition for all three types of antiaircraft guns to go into action immediately upon landing. The 9th also took advantage of a liberal interpretation of its orders to get more ammunition for the 90mm batteries. Loading orders specified three units of fire were to be carried. Since an Army unit of fire for the 90mm guns was 125 rounds and a Marine unit of
fire 300 rounds, the 9th interpreted the orders to mean Marine Corps units of fire and carried the extra ammunition. Despite some misdirected trucks and some confusion as to unmarked dock areas, the eager 9th was aboard ship and waiting hours before the scheduled departure.25
In time, elements of the 10th and the 11th Defense Battalions would be called upon to augment the 9th in its mission at Rendova and Munda, but until placed on alert, they continued to assist in the defense of Guadalcanal and the Russells. A fourth unit, the 4th Defense Battalion, which had been in the New Hebrides before going to New Zealand, was soon to be recalled to Guadalcanal for participation in the final phase of the campaign in the Central Solomons. The employment of these battalions as offensive elements instead of defense forces illustrated the change in the character of the war.
Although not carried on the orders as part of the New Georgia Occupation Force, another Marine Corps element was to provide invaluable support to the operation. This was the 4th Base Depot, a supply organization which had been activated at Noumea on 1 April 1943 as the direct result of a logistics logjam in the South Pacific. Prior to the New Georgia operation, the Army had responsibility for unloading all supplies, but as the size of forces in the area grew, the inadequate and limited facilities and the understaffed corps of laborers in the Pacific were strained to maintain a smooth and uninterrupted flow of necessary supplies. Despite the Army's best efforts, the result was a confused backlog of equipment and supplies at New Caledonia and Guadalcanal which almost sidelined the New Georgia operation.
Shipping to the lower Solomons, except for vital aircraft engines and spare parts, motor transport spare parts, rations, and medical supplies, was curtailed for a time, and all other goods were routed to Noumea for transshipping to Guadalcanal on call. Supplies necessary for the New Georgia operation were then plucked from the stockpiles at Noumea and assembled at Guadalcanal. Other war materials were directed to the Southwest Pacific forces, added to the growing dumps in the New Hebrides, or stored in New Zealand.
The 4th Base Depot, under the command of Colonel George F. Stockes, and with personnel gleaned from the 1st, 2d, and 3d Base Depots and the Marine 12th Replacement Battalion, moved with 61 officers and 1,367 men to Guadalcanal to help relieve the congestion. Placed under the command of the XIV Corps, it was ordered by Griswold to relieve the service elements of the 43d Infantry Division in the Russells, and to bring order out of the general confusion. The 4th Base Depot was then to receive and store all supplies for the New Georgia operation and the Russells garrison; maintain a 60-day level of supplies for TOENAILS forces; and handle and load aboard ships all supplies as called for by the 43d Division and supporting troops on New Georgia.
The assignment was insurance that logistical problems would not slow the attack. It was a timely move. Shortly after the 4th Base Depot began working on the jumbled stockpiles of material, the initial phase of TOENAILS began with the Segi Plantation occupation, and the Marines were called upon for supply assistance.
By the time the main operations started at Rendova, the depot had the necessary material ready for forward movement, and in the following months it funneled a steady stream of lumber, cement, ammunition, rations (including fresh fruit and meats), clothing, tires, spare parts, gasoline, lubricants, sand bags, tents, engineer equipment, post exchange items, and many other types of supplies into New Georgia.
For Marine Corps aviation units, establishment of an exact date for the start of the New Georgia campaign is difficult. The conflict for air superiority was constant and continuing, not boundaried by beachheads or D-Days. The struggle for undisputed possession of the lower Solomons phased directly into the New Georgia campaign, and it is hard to differentiate between the squadrons which supported the consolidation of the Solomons and those which directly took part in the capture of Munda airfield. In any event, most Marine squadrons then based at Guadalcanal or in the Russells participated in both campaigns, either in part or in whole.
Rear Admiral Marc A. Mitscher, as ComAirSols, had an Allied force of 627 planes with which to support operations in the Central Solomons. It was a composite of Marine, Army, Navy, and New Zealand aircraft, and included 290 fighters, 94 scout bombers, 75 torpedo bombers, 48 heavy bombers, 26 medium bombers, 30 flying boats, 24 seaplanes, and a miscellany of 40 search, rescue, and transport planes.26
Although plans for garrisoning New Georgia were still in the tentative stage, a number of Marine squadrons were to be based at Munda airfield following its capture and would become an integral part of the New Georgia Air Force. Prior to the campaign, however, this term was a paper designation for a forward echelon of the 2d Marine Aircraft Wing, attached to the NGOF; its commanding officer, General Mulcahy, would "exercise operational control of aircraft in flight assigned to air cover and support missions in the New Georgia area."27 Requests for air support strikes would be made to liaison parties with each landing force, and General Mulcahy as ComAir New Georgia would approve, disapprove, or modify. It was, in effect, a fighter-bomber direction center for both air defense and direct support missions. Control of the assigned aircraft would pass to ComAir New Georgia when the planes took off from their home fields.
Available for such tactical air support missions as would be assigned them in the months ahead were seven Marine fighter and four scout bomber squadrons, backed up by three utility squadrons and a photo reconnaissance detachment. For the most part, though, the role of the Marine squadrons in the seizure of Munda is part of the bigger story of how Allied air strength reduced the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul to impotency. This will be related in Part V of this volume.28
1. Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: Allied GeographicalSec, GHQ, SWPA, Study of New Georgia Group-Terrain Study No. 54, dtd 26Mar43; IntelSec, SoPacFor, ObjectiveRept 25-13, New Georgia Group, dtd 15Feb43; SoPacFor PhotoInterpretationU Repts Nos. 37-39, 42, 43, and 47, 24Nov-17Dec43; Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier; Maj John N. Rentz, Marines in the Central Solomons (Washington: HistBr, G-3, HQMC, 1952), hereafter Rentz, Marines in the Central Solomons. Documents not otherwise identified in this part are located in the following files of the Archives, Historical Branch, G-3 Division, Headquarters Marine Corps: Aviation; Monograph and Comment; New Georgia Area Operations; Publications; Unit Historical Reports.
2. In the succeeding chapters, the term "New Georgia Group" will refer to the entire island group. The term "New Georgia" will refer only to the island of that name.
3. One of the popular but unverified stories about the camouflage of Munda field is: "The Japanese had spun a web of wire cables between the tops of the palm trees. The trunks were then cut out from under the branches which remained suspended exactly in place, held by the cables." Capt Walter Karig, USNR, and Cdr Eric Purdon, USNR, Battle Report, Pacific War: Middle Phase (New York: Rinehart and Company, Inc., 1947), p. 201.
4. USSBS, Interrogations No. 195, LCdr S. Yunoki, IJN, 1, p. 192.
5. Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: ComSoPac Apr-May42 WarDs; ComPhibFor, SoPacFor WarD, 17-30Jun43; Col William F. Coleman, "Amphibious Recon Patrols," Marine Corps Gazette, v. 27, no. 12 (Dec43); Sgt Frank X. Tolbert, "Advance Man," Leatherneck, v. 28, no. 3 (Mar45); Feldt, The Coastwatchers; Rentz, Marines in the Central Solomons.
6. FAdm William F. Halsey and LCdr Julian Bryan, III, Admiral Halsey's Story (New York: Whittlesey House, 1947), p. 158, hereafter Halsey and Bryan, Halsey's Story.
7. A member of that first patrol said that Halsey, after hearing the reports on New Georgia, declared, "Well, gentlemen, we're going to hit that place. I don't know when or how, but we're going to hit it." Maj Clay A. Boyd interview by Maj John N. Rentz, dtd 16Feb51.
8. The senior member of this patrol group later commented: "I never heard of the 'combat reconnaissance school' and know that I and the other two members of the patrol from the 3d Raider Bn. didn't graduate from it." Col Michael S. Currin ltr to Head, HistBr, G-3, HQMC, dtd 11Oct60, hereafter Currin ltr.
9. Maj Roy D. Batterton, "You Fight by the Book," Marine Corps Gazette, v. 33, no. 7 (Jul49), hereafter Batterton, "You Fight by the Book."
10. Currin ltr.
11. Feldt, The Coastwatchers, p. 149.
12. In the later stages of the campaign, some LSTs made it through the Narrows with 25th Infantry Division troops and equipment on board, but the division's chief of staff remembers the trip as "a tight squeeze w/fast tidal flow--no picnic." MajGen William W. Dick, Jr. USA, ltr to ACofS, G-3, HQMC, dtd 31Oct60, including comments by MajGen David H. Buchanan, USA.
13. Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: MilHistSec, G-2, FEC, Japanese Monograph No. 34, Seventeenth Army Ops-Part I (OCMH), hereafter Seventeenth Army Ops-I; SE Area NavOps-II; CIC, SoPacFor Item No. 635, New Georgia Area DefButai SecretO No. 16, dtd 23Mar43, Item No. 647, Kolombangara Island DefO A No. 5, dtd 2Jul43, Item No. 672, Outline of Disposition of SE Det, dtd 20Jun43, Item No. 690, Kolombangara Island DefTaiO, dtd 1Mar43, Item No. 702, New Georgia DefOpO "A" No. 8, c. late Jun43, Item No. 711, Seventeenth ArmyO No. 244, dtd 27Apr43, Item No. 753, SE DetHq IntelRec No. 2 (Middle June Rept), dtd 24Jun43; SoPacFor POW Interrogation Repts 105 and 106, dtd 9Oct43, and 138 and 140, dtd 24Nov43; USAFISPA OB G-2 Rept No. 27, 17-24Jul43; Rentz, Marines in the Central Solomons.
14. Seventeenth Army Ops-I, p. 6.
15. The total ordnance of the 8th CSNLF included: 8 140mm coast guns; 8 120mm coast guns; 16 80mm coast guns; 4 120mm AA guns; 8 75mm AA guns; 12 40mm AA guns; 2 75mm mountain (artillery) guns; 2 70mm howitzers; 40 13mm AA machine guns; 38 heavy machine guns; 102 light machine guns. MilIntelDiv, WarDept, Handbook on Japanese Military Forces (TM-E 30-480), dtd 15Sep44, pp. 76, 78; GHQ, SWPA, MilIntelSec, Organization of the Japanese Ground Forces, dtd 22Dec44, p. 299.
16. SE Area NavOps-II, p. 4.
17. Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: CinCPac Ops in POA, May43, dtd 15Aug43; CinCPac Ops in POA, Jun43, dtd 6Sep43; ONI, Combat Narratives, Solomon Islands Campaign: IX--Bombardments of Munda and Vila-Stanmore, January-May 1943 (Washington, 1944), hereinafter cited as ONI, Combat Narratives IX; SE Area NavOps-II; Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier; Miller, Reduction of Rabaul; Sherrod, MarAirHist.
18. USSBS, Interrogation No. 224, Cdr Yasumi Doi, IJN, I, p. 210.
19. ONI, Combat Narratives IX, p. 74.
20. Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: ComSoPac OPlan 14-43, dtd 3Jun43; ComThirdFlt OPlan 12-43, dtd 5Jun43; CTF 31 OpO A8-43, dtd 4Jun43; NGOF FO No. 1, dtd 16Jun43 and No. 2, dtd 24Jun43; Rentz, Marines in the Central Solomons.
21. Central Office of Information, Among Those Present (London, 1946), pp. 53-56.
22. The capture of Segi is related in the following chapter.
23. Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: 1st MarRdrRegt WarD 15Mar-30Sep43, dtd 6Oct43; 9th DefBn RecofOps 1-28Jun43, dtd 3Oct43; 9th DefBn Rept on AA Ops 18Jun-18Sep43, hereafter 9th DefBn AA Ops; 9th DefBn NarrativeHist 1Feb42-14Apr44, dtd 2May44; 4th BaseDep OrgHist 1Apr-31Jul43, dtd 24Aug43; HistSec G-2, SoPacBaseComd, MS Hist of the New Georgia Campaign, 2 vols., c. 1947 (OCMH), hereafter New Georgia Campaign; LtCol Wilbur J. McNenney, Observers Rept New Georgia Ops to CG, IMAC, dtd 17Jul43; LtCol Wright C. Taylor ltr to CMC, dtd 4Mar52; Col Archie E. O'Neil ltr to CMC, c. 1Mar51; LtCol Robert C. Hiatt ltr to CMC, c. 26Feb52; Maj Cyril E. Emrich ltr to CO, 10th DefBn, dtd 1Jul43; Maj John L. Zimmerman, The Guadalcanal Campaign (Washington: HistDiv, HQMC, 1949); Rentz, Marines in the Central Solomons; Sherrod, MarAirHist.
24. Hiatt ltr, op. cit.
25. Emrich ltr, op. cit. In order to avoid similar misunderstandings and to facilitate logistical planning, Nimitz' headquarters subsequently published a CinCPac order listing units of fire for all types of weapons.
26. ComAirPac to ComSoPac ltr ser 00517 of 4Jun43, quoted in New Georgia Campaign, p. 60.
27. NGOF FO No. 1, op. cit.
28. Stationed in the Solomons in June 1943 were VMF-112, -121, -122, -123, -124, -213, and -221, with several more squadrons due to arrive as replacements later; VMSB-132, -143, -144, and -234; VMJ-152, -153, and -253; and a photographic detachment from VMD-154.
Transcribed and formatted for HTML by Jerry Holden for the HyperWar Foundation
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http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/II/USMC-II-II-1.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00063-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.961872 | 13,548 | 3.171875 | 3 |
President Barack Obama won an unprecedented 96 percent of the black vote. That's not much of a news story since blacks typically give their votes to the Democratic candidate. Blacks are probably the most politically loyal people in the nation and it is almost taken as gospel, at least among civil rights organizations and black and white liberals, that the only way black people can make socioeconomic progress is through the politics of race and special government programs. However, such a vision can be subjected to empirical evidence.
In 1940, when blacks were politically impotent, their poverty rate was 87 percent. By 1960, before blacks achieved much political power, it fell to 47 percent. During that interval, in various skilled trades, the incomes of blacks relative to whites more than doubled. Before 1960, there were no anti-poverty programs or affirmative action programs that can explain an economic advance that exceeded any other 20-year interval, though there were Truman and Eisenhower administration attacks on some of the gross forms of racial discrimination. A significant chunk of black progress occurred simply through migration from rural areas in the South to big Northern cities. Between 1960 and 1980, black poverty fell roughly 17 percent and continued falling to today's 24 percent. The decline in black poverty between 1960 and 1980 might have simply been a continuation of a trend starting much earlier and cannot be attributed solely to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, President Johnson's War on Poverty, or Richard Nixon's affirmative action.
Most of the major problems that many black people face are not amendable to political solutions and government anti-poverty programs. Let's look at some. In 1940, 86 percent of black children were born inside marriage, and the illegitimacy rate among blacks was about 15 percent. Today, only 35 percent of black children are born inside marriage, and the illegitimacy rate hovers around 70 percent. Today's breakdown of the black family is unprecedented. It began in the 1960s with the War on Poverty and the harebrained ideas of the welfare state. In the mid-1960s, Daniel Moynihan sounded the alarm about the breakdown in the black family in his book "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action." At that time black illegitimacy was 26 percent. Moynihan said, "(A)t the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of the Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family." He added, "The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States." Moynihan's observations were greeted with charges of racism and blaming the victim. By the way, the welfare state is an equal opportunity family destroyer. Today's illegitimacy rate among whites, at nearly 30 percent, is higher than it was among blacks in the 1960s when Moynihan sounded the alarm. In Sweden, the mother of the welfare state, illegitimacy is 54 percent.
Blacks hold high offices and dominate the political arena in Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., New Orleans and other cities. Yet these are the very cities with the nation's most rotten schools, highest crime rates, high illegitimacy rates, weak family structure and other forms of social pathology. I am not saying that blacks having political power is the cause of these problems. What I am saying is that the solution to most of the major problems that confront many black people won't be found in the political arena and by electing more blacks to high office. In fact, politicians tend to be hostile to some of the solutions to problems many blacks face such as school choice as a means to strengthen education, the elimination of oppressive licensing restrictions for various occupations, and supportive of job-destroying labor legislation such as minimum wage laws.
The bottom line is there is very little evidence anywhere on the planet that political power is a necessary condition for economic power.
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<urn:uuid:bab9799f-0227-4dc3-9540-72f68ad5282e>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2009/08/12/politics_and_blacks
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|
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| 0.968276 | 793 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Deforestation Effects Depend on Location
WASHINGTON -- The effect of deforestation on climate depends on three things -- location, location and location.
Environmentalists concerned about global warming have long encouraged preservation of forests because they absorb carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
But the issue, like most things, may be more complicated than it first appears.
New research in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirms the effectiveness of tropical forests at reducing warming by absorbing carbon. But it suggests that in snowy latitudes, forests may actually increase local warming by absorbing solar energy that would otherwise be reflected back out into space.
That doesn't mean forests in cold areas should be chopped down, stressed Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution department of global ecology, located at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.
"I am a little concerned about this being misapplied as an excuse to chop down the forests in the name of saving the environment," said Caldeira, a co-author of the report.
"A primary reason we are trying to slow global warming is to protect nature. It just makes no sense to destroy natural ecosystems in the name of saving natural ecosystems," he said.
But, he added, efforts to increase the forested areas in northern regions may be ineffective in combating warming and can be a distraction from the real answer, which is the need to reform our system of energy production.
The result does suggest "it's more important to preserve and restore tropical forests than had been previously recognized," he added.
Tropical forests help cool the planet in two ways, Caldeira pointed out -- by absorbing carbon dioxide and by drawing up soil moisture which is released into the air forming clouds.
Those clouds reflect solar energy back into space, he said, while reducing the amount reaching the ground.
Steven W. Running, a professor of ecology at the University of Montana, praised the researchers, but questioned their conclusion.
"I don't think the conclusions they draw are ready for prime-time policy, and particularly their conclusion that reforestation in high latitudes might be counterproductive," Running said in a telephone interview.
"What they are doing is sparking a lively scientific discussion that is very necessary and I applaud them for that," he said. But until the scientific community can "chew this over" it shouldn't be used in setting policy, he said.
"This is challenging work" said Running, who was not part of the research team. "This is a real top group of scientists and they are doing some really intriguing earth systems model analysis that is exceedingly difficult to do," he added. It shows how complex Earth system feedback is.
Govindasamy Bala of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a co-author of the paper, added: "Apart from their role in altering the planet's climate, forests are valuable in many other aspects. Forests provide natural habitat to plants and animals, preserve the biodiversity, produce economically valuable timber and firewood, protect watersheds and indirectly prevent ocean acidification."
The research was funded by the Energy Department.
On the Net:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: http://www.pnas.org
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<urn:uuid:ca42eb68-d61d-4ce9-b6c9-f357b89f6f5a>
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/6342
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en
| 0.95192 | 660 | 3.078125 | 3 |
|Publication number||US4287806 A|
|Application number||US 06/009,726|
|Publication date||Sep 8, 1981|
|Filing date||Feb 6, 1979|
|Priority date||Feb 6, 1979|
|Publication number||009726, 06009726, US 4287806 A, US 4287806A, US-A-4287806, US4287806 A, US4287806A|
|Inventors||John R. Neary|
|Original Assignee||Neary John R|
|Export Citation||BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan|
|Patent Citations (9), Referenced by (14), Classifications (10)|
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet|
This invention relates to a method of tensioning a drum, and to a low torque device for tensioning the drum by applying uniform torque to the tension rods of the drum.
The pitch of the musical beats which a drummer produces by tapping on the head of a drum depends on the amount to which the head is tightened by tension rods coupled between the head and the shell of the drum. The drummer must occasionally check that the head is properly tensioned or tuned because the amount to which the head is tightened either changes with, for example, changes in air temperature and air humidity or changes as the material from which the head is made deforms through creepage. Presently, the drummer checks that the head is properly tightened by tapping on the head, listening to the beats so produced, and adjusting each of the tension rods with a drum key until satisfied that the head is again properly tightened. An obvious disadvantage is that the drummer must depend solely on his senses of hearing and touch to decide when the drum head is correctly tightened.
In the present invention a device is provided which a drummer may use to ensure visually that the drum head is properly tightened. Once the drummer has initially tuned the drum to produce the pitch desired, he notes the amount to which the tension rods are torqued, and thereafter ensures that the drum is kept in tune by checking and adjusting the tension rods so that they are constantly torqued to this amount.
In one aspect of the invention, a device for torquing drum tension rods has a housing having a central aperture and a concentric upper recess. The upper recess has a first partial annular groove and a second annular groove. A shaft assembly is rotatably disposed in the central aperture and the upper recess. Means coupled to the lower end of the shaft are provided for gripping a tension rod. The shaft assembly has a stop portion disposed in the first partial annular groove. Biasing means disposed in the second annular groove and connected between the shaft assembly and the housing are provided for applying torque to a gripped tension rod upon turning of the housing. Also, means are located between the shaft assembly and the housing for indicating the amount of torque applied to the gripped tension rod.
According to another aspect of the invention there is provided a method of tensioning a drum, the drum having tension rods coupled between a drum head and a drum shell. The method comprises the steps of applying the gripping means of a torque device as described next above to the tension rods of the drum. The tension rods are first adjusted to initially tension the drum to produce the pitch desired and the amount to which the tension rods are torqued is noted. Thereafter, the housing of the torque device is first turned in a direction to partially loosen the tension rods, and then is turned in the opposite direction until the predetermined torque is indicated by the indicating means.
Advantages that can be achieved by use of the invention will become apparent from the following description of a preferred embodiment of the invention, condsidered in association with the accompanying drawings wherein:
FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a preferred embodiment of the invention;
FIG. 2 is a sectional view along the line II--II of FIG. 1; and
FIG. 3 is a sectional view along the line III--III of FIG. 1.
Reference is first made to FIG. 1 wherein a low torque device for torquing the tension rods of a drum constructed according to a preferred embodiment of the invention is indicated generally at 1. The torque device 1 is provided with a housing indicated generally at 2 having a handle portion 4 and a head portion 6.
Turning next to FIG. 2, the housing 2 is provided with a central aperture 8 and an upper recess 10 concentric with the central aperture 8. The concentric upper recess 10 has, as is readily seen in FIG. 3, a first partial annular groove 12 and a second annular groove 14. The second annular groove 14 is preferably disposed interior of the first partial annular groove 12, but it will become obvious that it may instead be disposed exterior of the groove 12.
A shaft assembly indicated generally at 16 is rotatably disposed in the central aperture 8 and the concentric upper recess 10. The shaft assembly 16 comprises a shaft 18 rotatably disposed in the central aperture 8, a radially extending member 20 in the form of a cover plate disposed in the concentric upper recess 10 and connected to the upper end of the shaft 18 for conjoint rotation therewith, and a stop portion 22 in the form of a pin portion protruding downwardly from the radially extending member 20 and disposed in the first partial annular groove 12.
The radially extending member 20 is provided with a square aperture 24 for snugly receiving a square head 26 of the shaft 18. The square head 26 is bored and threaded to receive a threaded bolt 28. A pointer 30 is attached to the square head 26 by means of the threaded bolt 28. As is readily seen in FIG. 1, the pointer 30 is used to indicate, in association with a scale indicated generally at 32 on the upper surface of the head portion 6, the torque or inch-pounds or kilogram-centimeters imparted to a tension rod.
A biasing means 34 is disposed in the second annular groove 14 and connected between the housing 2 and the shaft assembly 16. Preferably, the biasing means 34 is a helical spring, which is generally more accurate than, for example, a flat coil spring for measuring low torque values. A suitable helical spring is a 1 inch diameter helical spring sold by Wallace and Barnes of Montreal, Canada. This spring, which has a generally linear relationship, requires a torque of approximately 24 kilogram-centimeters to be twisted through 180°. It will be apparent from FIG. 2 that the housing 2 defines a bushing on the inside of helical spring 34. This bushing has an outside diameter of approximately 3/4 of an inch, and is used to locate and guide the spring and thus maintain the accuracy of the relationship between torque and torsional displacement or twisting.
One end of the helical spring is inserted into a recess 36 in the lower surface of the radially extending member 20 and the other end of the helical spring is inserted into a recess 38 in the lower surface of the second annular groove 14. Recesses 36 and 38 are disposed relative to each other such that pin portion 22 abuts land 39 when the torque device 1 is not in use. Consequently, as is readily seen in FIG. 1, when not in use, pointer 30 indicates a small initial amount of torque. This prevents rattle of the biasing means 34 and also improves its accuracy.
The lower end 40 of the shaft 18 of the shaft assembly 16 is adapted to receive socket means 42 for gripping a tension rod. As illustrated, socket means 42 has a square socket for use with a square headed tension rod, but it is obvious that the shaft 18 may be provided with socket means 42 for gripping a tension rod other than a square headed tension rod.
To assemble the torque device 1, one end of biasing means 34, which is preferably a helical spring, is inserted into the recess 38 in the lower surface of the second annular groove 14. A washer 44 is next slid onto the lower end of shaft 18, and a retaining ring 46 is snapped onto this lower shaft end. Shaft 18 is then inserted into the central aperture 8, so that square head 26 of the shaft 18 projects above aperture 8. Radially extending member 20 is then located over shaft 18, and the adjacent end of helical spring 34 is inserted into recess 36 in the lower surface of member 20. Member 20 is then rotated slightly to pre-load spring 34, and member 20 is lowered onto shaft 18 so that square head 26 is located in the square aperture 24 in the radially extending member 20. Finally, pointer 30 is attached to the head 26 of shaft 18 by means of the threaded bolt 28, the bolt 28 also securing the radially extending member 20 to the shaft 18.
Preferably, the housing 2 is injection moulded using polycarbonate, ABS, nylon or other plastic material and the shaft assembly 16, which comprises the shaft 18, the radially extending member 20 and the stop portion 22, is fabricated from light-weight aluminum or steel.
The drummer initially tensions the drum to produce the pitch desired and then notes the amount to which the tension rods are torqued. Thereafter, to tension a drum which for some reason, such as through use or environmental change, has become improperly tensioned, or to check that the drum is properly tensioned, the tension rods are gripped by socket means 42, and housing 2 is turned in a counter-clockwise direction (viewed from above) to partially loosen the tension rod and reduce the amount to which the tension rod is torqued. When the housing 2 rotates in a counter-clockwise direction, it will be appreciated that land 39 abuts against and pushes pin portion 22, so that torque device 1 acts directly as a wrench to untorque the tension rods.
Once the tension rods are thus partially untorqued, the housing 2 is then rotated in a clockwise direction (viewed from above) to torque the tension rod to the desired value. It will be appreciated that as housing 2 rotates in a clockwise direction, biasing means 34 causes the radially extending member 20 and the shaft 18 to rotate in a clockwise direction, thus torquing the tension rod, and that pointer 30 indicates when the desired torque value is attained.
It will be evident that a drummer, with a quick twist of his hand, can untorque the tension rods of a drum and then, with a quick twist of his hand in the opposite direction, can torque the tension rods to the desired value. Thus the drummer can conveniently visually ensure that the head of the drum is properly tensioned by ensuring that each of the tension rods is correctly torqued. The reason for partially loosening the tension rods before torquing to the desired value, is to overcome inaccuracies that may be caused by static friction should the rods become frozen or difficult to initiate turning.
Having described a preferred embodiment of the invention, it will be appreciated that modifications may be made to the structure and method described. For instance, the radially extending member 20, the stop portion 22, and the pointer 30 might be replaced by an outwardly projecting member attached to the head 26 of the shaft 18 and downwardly angled in the concentric upper recess 12. In such a case, one end of the helical spring could be attached to the shaft 18. Also, pointer 30 may be replaced by an indicator line marked on the top surface of radially extending member 20. However, the pointer described has the advantage that its position can be adjusted to calibrate torque device 1, if desired. It will also be appreciated that device 1 may be made for operation in the opposite direction to that described, should it be necessary to torque tension rods having left-hand threads.
From the above, it will be apparent that the present invention provides a very simple apparatus and method of tuning a drum, so that drums may be tuned visually and very quickly compared to prior art methods.
|Cited Patent||Filing date||Publication date||Applicant||Title|
|US1742869 *||Apr 20, 1928||Jan 7, 1930||Henry John West||Pitch indicator for musical instruments|
|US2013938 *||Jul 13, 1933||Sep 10, 1935||Toledo Scale Mfg Co||Line tension measuring instrument|
|US2256478 *||May 21, 1938||Sep 23, 1941||Hill James M||Tension wrench|
|US3091866 *||Feb 7, 1962||Jun 4, 1963||Scovill Manufacturing Co||Micrometer|
|US3364734 *||Feb 12, 1965||Jan 23, 1968||Slope Indicator Co||Torsional vane shear apparatus for earth testing|
|US3405590 *||Jul 16, 1965||Oct 15, 1968||John W. Pease||Tuner for stringed musical instruments|
|US3412638 *||Jun 16, 1966||Nov 26, 1968||John W. Pease||Tuner for stringed instruments|
|US3667336 *||Jul 12, 1971||Jun 6, 1972||Itzler Sidney||Mechanical tuner for string instruments|
|US4056998 *||May 24, 1976||Nov 8, 1977||Rampton Roger H||Tonal pitch indicator for a kettledrum|
|Citing Patent||Filing date||Publication date||Applicant||Title|
|US6925880||Nov 17, 2003||Aug 9, 2005||John H. Roberts||Apparatus and method for measuring the acoustic properties of a membranophone|
|US7371955 *||Feb 22, 2006||May 13, 2008||Pearl Musical Instrument Co.||Drum tuning key|
|US7462767||Mar 20, 2006||Dec 9, 2008||Swift Dana B||Stringed musical instrument tension balancer|
|US7511210 *||Jan 7, 2008||Mar 31, 2009||May Randall L||Drum rim gap or space dimension gauge|
|US8283544 *||Apr 15, 2011||Oct 9, 2012||The Trustees Of Columbia University In The City Of New York||Automatic drum tuner|
|US8759655 *||Nov 29, 2012||Jun 24, 2014||Overtone Labs, Inc.||Drum and drum-set tuner|
|US8772617 *||Jan 31, 2013||Jul 8, 2014||Michael Dale McGee||Drum tuner|
|US9135904||Dec 10, 2013||Sep 15, 2015||Overtone Labs, Inc.||Drum and drum-set tuner|
|US9153221||Sep 10, 2013||Oct 6, 2015||Overtone Labs, Inc.||Timpani tuning and pitch control system|
|US20070193433 *||Feb 22, 2006||Aug 23, 2007||Akito Takegawa||Drum tuning key|
|US20080173156 *||Jan 7, 2008||Jul 24, 2008||May Randall L||Drum rim gap or space dimension gauge|
|US20100212475 *||Jun 13, 2008||Aug 26, 2010||Anglia Ruskin University||Tuning or training device|
|US20110252943 *||Oct 20, 2011||Daniel Zuffante||Automatic Drum Tuner|
|US20130145921 *||Nov 29, 2012||Jun 13, 2013||Overtone Labs, Inc.||Drum and drum-set tuner|
|U.S. Classification||84/458, 84/454, 984/258, 984/151|
|International Classification||G10G7/00, G10D13/02|
|Cooperative Classification||G10G7/00, G10D13/02|
|European Classification||G10D13/02, G10G7/00|
|
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://www.google.com/patents/US4287806?dq=6,243,373
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| 0.916159 | 3,354 | 2.59375 | 3 |
At the time, I couldn't find the rule stated any earlier than William Cullen Bryant's (c. 1870) "Index Expurgatorius." But since then, I've found it in an earlier handbook, "Five Hundred Mistakes of Daily Occurrence in Speaking, Pronouncing, and Writing the English Language, Corrected," by one Walton Burgess (1855). "Over/more than" was mistake No. 130:
"There were not over twenty persons present:" say, more than. Such a use of this word is not frequent among writers of reputation. It may, however, be less improperly employed, where the sense invests it with more of a semblance to its literal signification: as, "This pair of chickens will weigh over seven pounds." Even in this case, it is better to say more than.Who was Walton Burgess? According to a New York Times obituary, he had worked for his father’s publishing business in New York City, then started his own. He “dropped dead of paralysis” in his office, aged 57, in December 1890. Since "Five Hundred Mistakes" was published by Daniel Burgess & Co., it sounds like the same W.B., but I found no clues to where he learned the "over" rule.
Not everyone subscribed to the rule, of course. In 1848, Seth T. Hurd used "over" in the forbidden way in his own "Grammatical Corrector, or, Vocabulary of the Common Errors of Speech," objecting to "A LONG MILE, for a little over, or a little more than a mile." And in 1900, Scott and Denney's "Elementary English Composition" said of "The buildings cost over a million dollars" simply: "This use is correct."
The OED shows "over" used with numbers since Old English. The "over/more than" thing is an invention of American journalism, unknown and unloved outside that shrinking cabal. In "Write It Right," I said that maybe only the death of newspapers would kill off this parasitic superstition; I hope that was just hyperbole.
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| 0.976808 | 442 | 3.1875 | 3 |
On the origin of the Earth's moon DEC 14 2007
The Moon has been a stabilizing factor for the axis of rotation of the Earth. If you look at Mars, for instance, that planet has wobbled quite dramatically on its axis over time due to the gravitational influence of all the other planets in the solar system. Because of this obliquity change, the ice that is now at the poles on Mars would sometimes drift to the equator. But the Earth's moon has helped stabilize our planet so that its axis of rotation stays in the same direction. For this reason, we had much less climatic change than if the Earth had been alone. And this has changed the way life evolved on Earth, allowing for the emergence of more complex multi-cellular organisms compared to a planet where drastic climatic change would allow only small, robust organisms to survive.
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| 0.953486 | 175 | 3.8125 | 4 |
An acronym for National Aeronautics and Space Administration
, which is a major agency of the United States Federal Government
. It is widely known for its attempts at extraplanetary
flight, but also focuses to improve upon intraplanetary
flight as well. The technological discoveries and scientific achievements of NASA for over a quarter of a century have revolutionized daily life and continues to perpetually redesign our future. Everything from tang
to freeze-dried ice cream
is indebted in one way or another to the American space program. NASA was the organization under which such space programs as Mercury
, and the Space Shuttle
missions were initiated and executed. Because of NASA, astronaut
s Neil Armstrong
and Buzz Aldrin
became the first men to walk on the moon during the Apollo 11
Today, NASA still continues to reach for the stars despite constant financial and political opposition from influential individuals and organizations who feel it a waste of time and resources. NASA has for decades been flying Space Shuttles into orbit around the Earth conducting experiments and maintaining a vast network of satelites. As an example of the costs involved, the price tag to make Space Shuttle Endeavour which replaced the ill-fated Space Shuttle Challenger, was about $1.7 billion. That was just to get it to fly the first time, and does not include upkeep or cost of manpower to keep her in the air.
As of the winter of 2000, there were plans to construct an international Space Station orbiting the planet, plans to colonize the moon, and plans to operate a manned mission to the planet Mars. All of these and many more initiatives are at various stages of accomplishment, and NASA continues to forge ahead despite obstacles and setbacks, although it is hindered and at times nearly crippled by two factors: 1) It must constantly accomplish great things with comparatively little funding and 2) It must never fail. Consequently it often looks worse than it is, due to incredibly near impossible standards and limitations set upon it. Quite frankly, it's amazing they get anything done, constantly having to placate to the lowest bidder in any given project.
|
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|
en
| 0.964781 | 428 | 3.421875 | 3 |
|Green jobs to help the environment and keep inner-city youth off the streets|
|Detail:|| The Green Jobs Act of 2007 is an innovative component of the Energy Package that is set to pass the U.S. House this week. This new legislation will make $120 million a year available across the country to begin training workers (and would-be workers) for jobs in the clean energy sector. |
The City of Oakland became one of the first cities to pass a Green Jobs Bill. This meant rebuilding and retrofitting energy infrastructure and training workers to do so. The labor shortage in green jobs prompted the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights to start a pilot project called Oakland Green Jobs Corps to partner with community colleges to start training young people so that they can independently pursue careers in the new energy economy. This training program also seeks to collaborate with other community based organizations, unions and private companies to make sure that those people who most need the jobs — urban youth, returning veterans, struggling farmers, displaced workers from manufacturing sectors — can get all the training they need to fill those posts.
According to Van Jones, president of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, “…the good thing about that is you teach a young person how to weatherize a building, how to double pane that glass. That young person can now join the union as a glazer. If you're putting up solar panels, you're on your way to becoming an electrical engineer. You can join the United Electrical Workers Union. That's a green pathway out of poverty…So when we try to meet this energy challenges and environmental challenge trying to save the polar bears, you also have a chance to save a whole generation of African-American, Latino and poor youth in our inner cities.”
As these jobs of retrofitting homes and city infrastructure cannot be outsourced overseas, green jobs provide job security to the American worker.
|Source:||News & Notes 9:00 AM EST, National Public Radio (NPR), July 18, 2007 Wednesday; and http://www.ellabakercenter.org/page.php?pageid=82&contentid=289|
|
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| 0.930396 | 441 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Democracy and Human Rights
The human rights normative framework
The values of freedom, respect for human rights and the principle of holding periodic and genuine elections by universal suffrage are essential elements of democracy. In turn, democracy provides the natural environment for the protection and effective realization of human rights. These values are embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and further developed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which enshrines a host of political rights and civil liberties underpinning meaningful democracies.
- “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.”
A voter casts her ballot in Timore-Leste’s
parliamentary elections in July 2012. (UN Photo)
The rights enshrined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and subsequent human rights instruments covering the rights of certain groups (e.g. indigenous peoples, women, minorities, people with disabilities, migrant workers and members of their families) are equally essential for democracy as they ensure inclusivity for all groups, including equality and equity in respect of access to civil and political rights.
For several years, the UN General Assembly and the former Commission on Human Rights endeavored to draw on international human rights instruments to promote a common understanding of the principles, norms, standards and values that are the basis of democracy, with a view to guiding Member States in developing domestic democratic traditions and institutions; and in meeting their commitments to human rights, democracy and development.
This led to the articulation of several landmark resolutions of the former Commission on Human Rights.
In 2000, the Commission recommended a series of important legislative, institutional and practical measures to consolidate democracy (resolution 2000/47); and in 2002, the Commission declared the following as essential elements of democracy:
Supporters of South West Africa People's
Organization demanding UN- supervised elections
at a rally in Windhoek, Namibia, 1978. (UN Photo)
- Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms
- Freedom of association
- Freedom of expression and opinion
- Access to power and its exercise in accordance with the rule of law
- The holding of periodic free and fair elections by universal suffrage and by secret ballot as the expression of the will of the people
- A pluralistic system of political parties and organizations
- The separation of powers
- The independence of the judiciary
- Transparency and accountability in public administration
- Free, independent and pluralistic media
Since its establishment in 2006, the Human Rights Council (successor to the Commission) has adopted a number of resolutions highlighting the interdependent and mutually reinforcing relationship between democracy and human rights. Recent examples include resolutions 19/36 and 28/14 on “Human rights, democracy and the rule of law”.
Addressing democracy deficits
Democracy deficits, weak institutions and poor governance are among the main challenges to the effective realization of human rights. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) seek to address these challenges through their advisory services and programmes, which focus on strengthening the legal framework for human rights protection and promotion (institutional and legal reform); capacity building for stronger national human rights systems; implementation of the Universal Periodic Review recommendations, promoting human rights-based approaches, including empowering vulnerable and disadvantaged segments of the society to claim their rights; advocacy, awareness raising and human rights education.
In transitional democracies and countries emerging from conflicts, OHCHR collaborates with national governments and actors to build a strong and independent judiciary, a representative, efficient and accountable parliament, an independent and effective national human rights institution, and a vibrant civil society. In fragile contexts UNDP particularly focuses on human rights through its Rule of Law, Justice, Security and Human Rights programming, for example with National Human Rights Institutions in more than 80 countries; including through the Global Focal Point arrangement on Justice, Police and Corrections and the partnership between UNDP, DPKO, OHCHR, UNODC, UN Women and others.
Promoting democratic governance
Democratic governance, as supported by the United Nations emphasizes the role of individuals and peoples — all of them, without any exclusion — in shaping their human growth and the human development of societies. But individuals can only make such contributions when their individual potential is unleashed through the enjoyment of human rights.
In 2011, UNDP helped more than 130 countries and devoted US$1.5 billion in resources to democratic governance, making UNDP the world's largest provider of democratic governance assistance. UNDP supports one in three parliaments in the developing world and an election every two weeks. In 2014, UNDP programmes strengthened electoral processes around the world and helped register 18 million new voters. UNDP also works to foster partnerships and share ways to promote participation, accountability and effectiveness at all levels, aiming to build effective and capable states that are accountable and transparent, inclusive and responsive — from elections to participation of women and the poor.
OHCHR promotes democratic governance by providing sustained support to democratic institutions, including national actors and institutions involved in the administration of justice; enhancing the capacity of parliamentarians to engage in human rights protection, supporting civil society, facilitating constitution-making, and conducting human rights monitoring in the context of electoral processes.
Supporting transitional democracies
Protestors demand an end to
lawlessness in Tripoli,
December 2011. (UN Photo)
Popular uprisings across the world were led by youth, women, and men from all social strata and are opening greater space for civic engagement in decision making. The calls for transformational change are a popular cry for choice, participation, transparency and respect for people’s legitimate quest for democratic space. These events have reaffirmed the pivotal importance of democratic governance as a system premised on inclusion, participation, non-discrimination and accountability.
In transitional democracies and countries emerging from conflict, OHCHR collaborates with national governments and other actors to confront the past in order to rebuild public confidence and restore peace and the rule of law. OHCHR has actively supported transitional justice programmes in more than 20 countries around the world over the past decade. Its support includes ensuring that human rights and transitional justice considerations are reflected in peace agreements; engaging in the design and implementation of inclusive national consultations on transitional justice mechanisms; supporting the establishment of truth-seeking processes, judicial accountability mechanisms, and reparations programmes; and enhancing institutional reform.
Guiding national and regional efforts
People holding up their registration cards during
a referendum in Goma, Democratic Republic of
In March 2012, the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution titled “Human rights, democracy and the rule of law,” which reaffirmed that democracy, development and respect for all human rights and fundamental freedoms were interdependent and mutually reinforcing. The Council called upon States to make continuous efforts to strengthen the rule of law and promote democracy through a wide range of measures. Further to this resolution, OHCHR, in consultation with States, national human rights institutions, civil society, relevant intergovernmental bodies and international organizations, published a study on challenges, lessons learned and best practices in securing democracy and the rule of law from a human rights perspective. Based on the study, in June 2013 OHCHR organized a panel discussion on these issues, with the participation of international experts.
In March 2015, the Human Rights Council adopted resolution 28/14, which established a forum on human rights, democracy and the rule of law, to provide a platform for promoting dialogue and cooperation on issues pertaining to these areas. This forum will be held for the first time in 2016.
OHCHR also works to underline the close relationship between human rights and democracy within the United Nations system. In collaboration with the UN Department of Political Affairs and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), OHCHR organized a ‘Round Table on Democracy and Human Rights’ in New York in 2011. The round table discussed democracy movements and their characteristics in a number of States, including those involved in the Arab Spring. It underlined the importance of working with regional and sub-regional organizations when dealing with unconstitutional changes of Government, and when promoting democratic movements and democracies more generally.
OHCHR also seeks to partner with intergovernmental democracy-promoting organizations such as l’Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and regional intergovernmental organizations. In addition, the Office provides dedicated support to the UN Democracy Fund, advising the decision making process on programme funding criteria and on project proposals.
For more information:
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| 0.925636 | 1,775 | 4.09375 | 4 |
Transit fares remained relatively stable during the 1990s (figure 37). Increases in fares per passenger-mile for some modes of transit were offset by lower fares per passenger-mile for other modes.
Local transit bus service, which accounts for 60 percent of public transportation ridership (by number of unlinked passenger trips1), is slightly more expensive than it was 10 years ago (figure 38). Transit bus service cost 20¢ per mile in 2000, up from 18¢ per mile in 1990 (in chained 1996 dollars).2 Bus ridership, which dropped by about 15 percent during the mid-1990s, rebounded by 2000. Rail transit—heavy, commuter, and light rail—was less expensive in 2000 than in 1990, with light-rail fares dropping the most, at 30 percent.
Heavy rail comprises most of the nation’s subway systems. It is the second most heavily used form of transit with over 30 percent of total transit ridership. The cost of using heavy rail declined from 19¢ to 18¢ per passenger-mile between 1990 and 2000 .
1. American Public Transportation Association, Public Transportation Fact Book 2001, Tables 18 and 26, available at http://www.apta.com/stats/fares/faremode.htm, as of February 2003. Data for 2000 are preliminary.
1 See Urban Transit Ridership in section 7, “Availability of Mass Transit,” for a discussion of unlinked trips.
2 All dollar amounts are expressed in chained 1996 dollars, unless otherwise specified. Current dollar amounts (which are available in appendix B of this report) were adjusted to eliminate the effects of inflation over time.
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| 0.935702 | 336 | 3.234375 | 3 |
CNN Calls Hawaii 'The State That Doesn't Vote,' But What If That Changed?
Getting Hawaii out of the registered voter basement.
(page 1 of 2)
Low voter turnout is an embarrassingly persistent Hawaii trend.
How bad is it? In 2012, CNN sent a crew here that filed a report called: “Hawaii: The State that doesn’t vote."
In 2012, about 62 percent of Hawaii’s registered voters cast ballots in the general election. Of those voters, only about a third of registered voters under 30 went to the polls.
People are busy or uninterested; they feel their votes don’t count because the presidential election often gets called before our results are final; by the time they get interested enough to want to vote, the voter deadline has passed, and on and on and on.
If parents are passing these attitudes on to their children, young voters might not pick up the habit themselves. “Voter apathy is a huge barrier,” says state Rep. Beth Fukumoto.
What if Hawaii could change that, though? We asked an HPU Communication professor, a Campbell High School government teacher, and two young legislators from each party about how to get Hawaii’s young people to vote and what difference it would make for the state.
How can we get young people interested in politics?
Campbell High School teacher Corey Rosenlee has an interesting idea for getting young people to vote: lowering the voting age to 16.
Rosenlee, who teaches a mandatory Participation in Democracy course and an Advanced Placement government course, says allowing kids to vote while they’re still in school would get them to register to vote and actually experience the voting booth for the first time with their peers. As Rosenlee points out, by time they’re 18, most potential voters are no longer in high school and have no one to walk them through the voting process.
“We teach the kids how to drive, but we don’t necessarily teach them how to vote,” Rosenlee points out.
John Hart, chairman of the Communication Department at Hawaii Pacific University, suggests young voters need a cause. During the Vietnam era, 18-year-olds decided if they were old enough to go to war, they should be old enough to drink. So they mobilized and got the drinking age lowered in several states. When the Vietnam vets got older, they didn’t protest when the age was raised back to 21.
In a sense, a compelling cause is how state Rep. Kaniela Ing, a 25-year-old Democrat from Maui, ended up in politics. While Ing was in college, he was a musician, his friends were musicians, and none of them had an interest in politics. That is, until budget restrictions forced cuts to the University of Hawaii-Manoa music program in which Ing was planning to get his second major. His then-girlfriend’s education program was also in danger of being cut back, so he decided to do something about it.
Ing ran for president of the Associated Students of the University of Hawaii (ASUH), won, and continued his political career in the state Legislature, where he’s the youngest member in the House. And he did it with some help from those musician friends who also hadn’t been interested in politics.
But not everyone gets interested in politics because of a cause. In fact, Ing speculates that some voter apathy can be attributed to the fact that people are fine with the status quo. “If you don’t see a lot of problems, you probably aren’t inclined to vote,” Ing says. “It’s not because they think their vote doesn’t count. It’s because they’re happy.”
Rep. Beth Fukumoto, 31, a Republican representing Mililani, didn’t get interested in politics until after college. (She notes that was different for her husband David Chang, who served until recently as head of the Hawaii Republican Party. He was always interested in politics. Now 34, Chang at one point was the youngest party leader in the country.)
Fukumoto was attending Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., during Barack Obama’s first presidential election. Obama may have galvanized a lot of youth voters, but Fukumoto wasn’t one of them. “I was just not interested,” she says.
She became engaged in politics after coming back to Hawaii and realizing that a master’s degree in English doesn’t qualify you for many jobs. She had a cousin who worked at the state Legislature and ended up getting a job there, too. “It was very accidental,” she says.
But, as Fukumoto learned more about state politics, she realized it was time for her generation to start stepping up: “At this point in time, it’s our turn to change things -- or not. We’re not going to be able to blame the generations before us because now it’s our time.”
People who are ambivalent about politics should spend some time at the state Capitol and look at it from a youth perspective. “They think it doesn’t matter, but if you came down here, you could see that it does matter and we would have a better system,” Fukumoto says.
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| 0.9765 | 1,136 | 2.96875 | 3 |
The jacket and publisher’s blurb suggest this text might be suitable for students in an introductory statistics course, or even a curious layperson. In fact the level is much higher. Calculus is assumed through defining a function of t as an integral with respect to x in which t is a parameter of the integrand. The Gamma function is assumed to be familiar, as is practical linear algebra through eigenvectors.
The general plan for each chapter is to present the topic at a glossary level and then give an example problem with answer. There is some attention to assumptions but brevity precludes much practical advice. The computational examples suggest an exam on the horizon — a researcher might want more on the uses and weaknesses of the technique than the computations. The level of prior statistical training assumed is unclear, as histograms are explained but we soon get to moment generating functions. Readers are often referred to texts in mathematical statistics for details.
It is a bit hard to place this work in the context of higher education in the United States. The work seems more geared to the British educational system. We might conceptualize this as a study guide for an imaginary examination that all undergraduate statistics majors have to take — sort of a GRE for statistics. It could remind an examinee of material studied some time ago, or alert them to topics they may not have studied at all.
For an MAA member, this book might serve as a small desktop encyclopedia of statistics covering one person’s view of the core of an undergraduate major. For someone with the mathematical prerequisites, it can answer questions such as “What is logistic regression?” with a bit more detail than a dictionary of statistics. (Such a dictionary is among the author’s other publications.) This certainly seems more a reference work than something to be read from cover to cover. This is not a bad book but it is not a book with a clear audience.
After a few years in industry, Robert W. Hayden ([email protected]) taught mathematics at colleges and universities for 32 years and statistics for 20 years. In 2005 he retired from full-time classroom work. He now teaches statistics online at statistics.com and does summer workshops for high school teachers of Advanced Placement Statistics. He contributed the chapter on evaluating introductory statistics textbooks to the MAA's Teaching Statistics.
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| 0.952582 | 481 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Series / Storylords
A live-action Edutainment Show
developed in 1984 at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, Storylords describes the adventures of elementary school students Norby and Mandy, two children who become apprentice Storylords to help save the land of Mojuste. Aided by Lexor and the skills they learn from reading class, the Wisconsinite duo fight the evil Storylord Thorzuul and his henchman Milkbreath, and helping Mojuste citizens solve their problems along the way.
Reruns of the dozen episode long series continue to be shown on public television and the entirety of Storylords is also available on the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board (WIECB)'s YouTube channel
This show contains examples of:
- All There in the Manual: The lessons for students watching the show in the teacher's guide give some added backstory about some of the characters.
- Catch Phrase: Norby tends to shout "Holy Camole" when he is particularly surprised.
- Chekhov's Classroom: Somehow, Mrs. Framish always has either covered the necessary reading skill that day, or taught it the next day, in plenty of time for Norby to use it to defeat Thorzuul.
- Expy: Lexor seems to be an awful lot like Obi-Wan Kanobi, especially in his master/apprentice relationship with the young storylords.
- Harmless Villain: Thorzuul's challenges may have potentially adverse consequences, but aside from turning people to stone occasionally, Thorzuul does not seem to do much that is really evil. Some of the ways he tries to trap the apprentice storylords near the end of the series may be examples of Not-So-Harmless Villain however.
- Little Miss Snarker: Mandy occupies this role from time to time, even around the intimidating (or not so intimidating) Thorzuul.
- Magical Incantation: With the phrase "Thunder and Lightning, Trumpets and Drums, Readers Rejoice, a Storylord Comes!" Norby (and later Mandy) can use the bike-a-tron to teleport to Mojuste.
- Magic Feather: The magical storylord gloves.
- Overlord Jr.: Thorzuul Jr. is introduced near the end of the series and he clearly resembles his father. The teacher's guide also mentions Thorzuul Jr.'s cousin Kayzuul.
- The Reveal: Mrs. Framish turns out to be a storylord herself in the last episode.
- Summon Everyman Hero: This is part of the reason why Norby is surprised that Lexor believes he is the key to saving Mojuste.
- Taken for Granite: Thorzuul turns anyone who cannot understand what they read into statues for his collection.
- Trademark Favorite Food: According to the test he gives the apprentice storylords, Thorzuul is a big fan of turnips.
- Villain Decay: Thorzuul can suffer from this, going from a big bad guy to someone who sneezes at dandelions.
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| 0.915841 | 641 | 2.609375 | 3 |
The act of throwing upward; a rising and falling suddenly; a rolling and tumbling.
2. Mining (a)
A process which consists in washing ores by violent agitation in water, in order to separate the lighter or earhy particles; -- called also tozing, and treloobing, in Cornwall. Pryce
A process for refining tin by dropping it through the air while melted.
© Webster 1913.
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| 0.917626 | 88 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Facts and Events
Most of what is known about James Lawrence Nichols comes from the autobiography he dictated to his wife, Elizabeth Barnard Nichols, upon his death bed, as well as the obituary that appeared in the local newspaper, the Naperville Clarion. He told his wife:
"I was born in Coburg, Germany, as near as I can learn. I do not know whether Coburg is a province or a town. My first recollections were in a little stone cottage. I can hardly remember it. I remember there were some very nice plum trees, and my mother used to go out and work in the fields. But in the course of time another man came along and she was married, and they sold out what they had."
Nichols, his mother, and stepfather crossed the ocean in a ship, landed in New York,and went up the Hudson River to a broom farm. After time, they earned enough money to take a train from Albany to Chicago. From Chicago, they went to La Moille, west of Mendota, where his mother knew some people. In the course of about a year, his mother got sick and died in childbirth. He was taken in by a German family at the request of his mother before she died. He described them as "poor and brutal people."
He left them and went from family to family. He suffered a great deal of hardship and was frequently abused by drunken and cruel people and cheated out of the wages he had earned.
Elizabeth Nichols wrote:
"At twelve years of age he could not speak English. The next six years were spent in hard work on farms, often cheated out of his rightful wages, hard study at night, a short winter term of school. By these bitter experiences he learned something of the ways of the world and how to look after himself. By intense application he managed to master the English language and acquired enough education to secure a certificate to teach a country district school when he was eighteen. In the attempt to blot out the memories of those sad childhood days, Mr. Nichols deliberately shed all traces of his German birth. When I knew him he had intentionally forgotten the German language, since it had so happened that all his worse persecutors had been of his native tongue. He had anglicized his name and adopted very appropriately as his namesake that old American naval hero, James Lawrence, who refused to "give up the ship." This was the only evidence of bitterness towards his early tormentors he ever exhibited, always rather calling to mind in loving gratitude the one or two motherly women who were "good to him!" From this time forward his star of hope had risen, and the lines of his life fell into pleasanter places. Having saved some money he entered a classical seminary in Paw Paw, Illinois, and attended there five years, keeping up expenses by teaching and canvassing for books."
James Nichols arrived at North Western College in Naperville (now known as North Central College) in 1876 and graduated in 1880. He went to school in Nebraska for a year, then returned and taught for one year in a public school, then worked as a professor in North Western's Commercial Department for eight years.
While he was teaching, he wrote the book "The Business Guide," intending to use it as a textbook for his classes. The book was first published in 1886 and sold three million copies by 1917. It was a phenomenal success, and he ended up leaving teaching to work on his publishing company.
While he was a professor, he also met his future wife, Elizabeth Barnard, in one of his classes. Elizabeth was the daughter of one of the area's pioneers, Algernon S. Barnard. She later recalled:
"I was but thirteen when I entered old North-Western from a nearby farm home, as Naperville did not at that time boast of a High School. But we did have the college and its influence has always meant much to the young people of this community. So it happened that I spent seven years here in the preparatory department, a three years German course, and graduated in what was then called the Latin Scientific course. When I attended college Professor Nichols was a very popular bachelor member of the faculty. Popular not only with the men students, but with the young ladies as well! And when on my graduation day our engagement was announced, I was, at least in my own estimation, quite an object of envy among the girls!!! We were married the following year."
Marriage and Family
James and Elizabeth were married for nine years and had three children: Grace, James II, and Laura. In the early 1890s Mr. and Mrs. Nichols built a French provincial mansion at 320 E. Chicago Ave.
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| 0.993869 | 970 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Helium-3 and Lunar power for Earth reactors
"All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct." -- Carl Sagan
When former astronaut, Harrison Schmitt, gave his talk at the Cradle of Aviation Museum about being the last crew on the moon in Apollo 17, he said something that really got my interest when he mentioned that the moon has Helium-3 which can be a great resource to commercial fusion power on Earth. Since NASA’s manned space program is no longer in existence, are we just giving this resource to the Russians, Chinese or whoever comes next trying to send a manned ship to the moon? Of course, there are the US private enterprises that are targeting space travel, but right now I only hear about getting rich people to pay in excess of $1M to fly into space or to send a man and woman to Mars. Hopefully this might be an alternative in conjunction with NASA’s expertise in manned space flight.
Schmitt’s book, “Return to the Moon” has some great points which I will outline in this article. I’d like to hear from our readers as to what they think.
This is an artist's concept of a small lunar outpost. Someday, larger lunar outposts may serve as a backup for civilization in case of a global catastrophe, like an asteroid impact or a pandemic. Image courtesy of NASA
Schmitt is a geologist (PhD from Harvard) by trade originally, so I take his insights very seriously.
Helium-3 is emitted by the Sun. Earth’s atmosphere prevents it from arriving here in any significant quantity---but Lunar soil has been absorbing it for a billion years!
Helium-3 exists in the debris layer at the lunar surface generated by meteor impacts (called the lunar regolith). Pre-Apollo knowledge told us that fusion reactions in the Sun produce helium-3. The major by-product of any helium-3 production on the Moon will be large amounts of hydrogen. Hydrogen is present at measured levels of at least 50 to 150 ppm in the Apollo regolith samples brought back to Earth.
The flux of the solar wind ions impacting the Moon per unit area varies with the quantity ejected by the Sun and their interactions with the Earth’s magnetosphere. Since the Moon has no atmosphere, unlike the Earth, these ions hit the mineral and glass particles exposed at the surface. They penetrate up to a few then thousandths of a millimeter beneath the exposed surfaces of the individual grains.
What can this do for power generation here on Earth? Current nuclear power stations are based on the nuclear fission process. This releases energy by splitting a uranium nucleus by breaking it into fragments---thereby releasing radioactivity and nuclear waste. Nuclear fusion reactors, which use the process that fuels the Sun, have the potential to replace fission reactors in the future. One type of fusion process involves fusing together the nuclei of Tritium and Deuterium to release energy and Helium in a “clean” nuclear reactor, but a drawback is a so-called “fast neutron” that is produced along with the Helium that causes energy loss and containment problems that currently prevent nuclear fusion generation.
The fusion of Helium-3 with Deuterium and the production of protons and alpha particles had been demonstrated by scientists in 1949. Scientists believe that future “clean” nuclear reactors can be based on this ‘neutronic” fusion in which Deuterium and He-3 are fused together in a reaction that releases energy and only results in normal He and a proton. The major problem is getting a supply of He-3.
Extremely small, commercially insignificant amounts of primordial helium-3 can be found in the helium mixed with natural gas and with gases emanating from the mid-oceanic vents. Amounts adequate for experimentation are available at about $1,000/gm from the processing of tritium used in nuclear weapons (Tritium decays to helium-3 with a half-life of about 12.3 years and can be purchased from the US and Russian governments.)
It is believed that the Moon has over one million tons of He-3 on its surface that can be extracted by heating the lunar dust to 600 degrees. A full Space Shuttle cargo bay could have fit 25 tons of He-3 and that could power the entire US for one year! Economists value He-3 at $3B/ton---more than enough to make it economically feasible to extract it from the Moon.
Schmitt’s book outlines the economic and technical chain that ties lunar resources to commercial fusion power on Earth with three major links:
1 Reliable low-cost payload transport to the Moon
2 competitive helium-3 based fusion power plants on Earth
3 competitive helium-3 fuel costs
The value of lunar helium-3 for fusion electrical power plants on Earth will be a function of the cost of competitive energy sources. Residual fuel oil and steam coal are future direct competitors to helium-3 for power generation. We know how their prices are rising.
There is significant interest in going to the Moon to mine He-3:
- In 2006 Russian Space Corp., Energia reported plans to establish a permanent Moon base by 2015 and to be mining He-3 on an industrial scale by 2020
- NASA in the US has plans for a base on one of the Moon’s poles, where He-3 is known to be in largest concentrations
- China plans to have a man on the Moon by 2017 to measure the thickness of the Lunar soil and the amount of He-3 present there.
I don’t hear much about He-3 as a potential energy source in most media reports of alternative energy. Several nations have committed billions of dollars so this must tell us something about the viability of He-3 projects as fuel. This subject certainly demands greater public attention and debate at a minimum. Let’s start that debate here on EDN with our engineering minds and experience. Please give your comments.
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| 0.942719 | 1,249 | 3.359375 | 3 |
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