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Thesis Statements for a Literature Assignment
A thesis prepares the reader for what you are about to say. As such, your paper needs to be interesting in order for your thesis to be interesting. Your thesis needs to be interesting because it needs to capture a reader's attention. If a reader looks at your thesis and says "so what?", your thesis has failed to do its job, and chances are your paper has as well. Thus, make your thesis provocative and open to reasonable disagreement, but then write persuasively enough to sway those who might be disagree.
Keep in mind the following when formulating a thesis:
- A Thesis Should Not State the Obvious
- Use Literary Terms in Thesis With Care
- A Thesis Should be Balanced
- A Thesis Can be a Blueprint
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http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/guide.cfm?guideid=51
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| 0.963647 | 163 | 3.25 | 3 |
- a Western Slavonic language, related to Polish and Slovak
- about 11M speakers, most of them are in Czechia.
- uses the Latin alphabet with some diacritics (acute accent, hacek and ring)
- has a rich and complex inflection (e.g. nouns: 7 cases, 3(+1) genders, 2(+1) numbers, many paradigms and many exceptions)
- the word order is very free and is used to express topic-focus articulation (and definiteness)
- largely influenced by German (mostly in the lexicon)
- the colloquial version of Czech has a slightly different morphology (simpler) and lexicon than the official one
Software, Corpora, etc.
Prague Dependency Treebank
- morphologically and syntactically annotated corpus (about 2 MWo)
Online Access to Syntax Annotation,
Czech National Corpus
Prague Czech-English Dependency Treebank
- paralel corpus (translation of 20K sentences from Penn Treebank 3 and 50K sentences from Reader's Digest)
Czech Academic Corpus -- 550 KWo from 1970s and 1980s.
Czech Literary Anthology at Brown with translations and audio.
Online Morphological generator /
analyzer and tagger (currently not working)
Czech Free Morphology Download
Markov Model tagger,
Xerox Czech demos - tokenization, morph. analysis, POS disambiguation
Lexical Annotation Workbench
Guide to Czech Parsing
Tree viewers and editors
Tree Editor TrEd
- A graphical editor and viewer of trees and annotation tool for Windows, Linux and Unix systems written in Perl.
- A graphical editor and viewer of trees and annotation tool for Windows.
- viewer of online syntax (surface and deep) trees
PDT format to Penn Treebank format conversion
SGML <-> FS
Dependency trees <-> PS trees
Compact tags <->Positional tags
Valex - Valency Lexicon of Czech Verbs
a list at Seznam,
Links to various English-Czech dictionaries
- automatic generation of CAD/CAM manuals in Czech, Bulgarian, Russian and English.
Czech at wiki,
Czech at BBC,
Czech Lessons at Local Lingo,
Czech at UCLA,
Czech at Ethnologue,
Gustav pro jazyk českýCz,
SlovoDneCz (Fred's Czech Mate - section in English)
at Bohemica (
Czech on Language links,
Czech on computersCz,
Czech at WWW pagesCz,
Czech - English Translation Problems,
Czech keyboard layout,
How not to do a translator:
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http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~hana/Czech.html
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| 0.783391 | 594 | 2.5625 | 3 |
The Future of the Human Race: Our Faces will Look like Anime Characters in 100,000 Years
The human race is constantly evolving. Facial features morph as we naturally select traits that we feel are most attractive. If this is the case, though, how will the human race look in the next 100,000 years? It turns out that we'll look a bit like anime characters--at least according to one scientist.
A specialist in computational genomics, Alan Kwan, and a researcher, Nickolay Lamm, have teamed up to image what the human face might look within 100,000 years. With goggle eyes, distended foreheads and orange-tanned skin, the results aren't pretty.
So how did we end up looking like cartoon characters? According to the Daily Mail, the heads of humans have been growing since our first primate ancestors appeared. Our skulls enlarged as our brains grew. This, in turn, caused us to form bigger heads and flatter features. It's therefore unsurprising that our skulls might become even larger in the future, creating the distended forehead that you can see in the image. The larger eyes, though, are another matter entirely.
Kwan believes that in 100,000 years, it's likely that humans will have colonized space. In response to the dimmer light of space colonies far from both the sun and Earth, people will have developed larger eyes, according to The Huffington Post. It's also likely that humans will possess darker skin in order to alleviate the impact of more harmful UV radiation outside the Earth's protective zone.
It's not only these features that humans will develop, though. We'll also be able to blink sideways in order to protect ourselves from cosmic ray effects, have larger nostrils for breathing in off-planet environments and even have denser hair to contain heat loss from a larger head, according to Forbes.
Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that we'll be able to select the genetic attributes of our children. Parents may choose certain hair or eye color in order to create "designer babies" that possess what are considered the most attractive attributes at the time.
Of course, this is all speculation. It's also possible that the human race could have died off in the next 100,000 years. If we survive, though, we may just get to look like real-live versions of anime characters.
Want to learn more about the project? Check out the video below, originally appearing here.
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http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/7413/20130610/future-human-race-faces-will-look-anime-characters-100000-years.htm
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| 0.957471 | 506 | 2.640625 | 3 |
This file is also available in Adobe Acrobat PDF format
THIS BOOK SEEKS to tell us how and why it happened that the most important feature of our social landscape is the large organization, public or private. Americans celebrate individualism and entrepreneurship, and some see organizations as getting smaller or more decentralized; so concern with bigness and bureaucracy may have abated. But we should be reminded that today, well over 90 percent of the work force works for someone else--as wage and salary employees--up from 20 percent in 1800; over half of the gainfully employed people in the country work for organizations with 500 or more employees, up from 0 percent in 1800. Today, although establishments have an average size of about thirty employees, organizations can own and control many separate establishments. And control is the important factor, not the size of the branch bank or the factory site or the fast food outlet or the service franchise. The truly big organizations, public and private, have come to define and even absorb much of our society.
Despite all the talk of downsizing, our organizational population has not become perceptibly thinner; the Fortune 500 industrials have declined in size by about 8 percent in a decade, but their average size changed little, from about 3,000 employees in 1979, the peak year, to 2,750 in 1993. That is still very big. Meanwhile, the average size of the 500 largest service corporations rose from 1,700 in 1982 to 2,750 in 1993, making them as big as the industrials (Useem 1996, 165). Even with the government contracting out many activities to private firms (generally large ones), government has not shrunk appreciably.
The American population increases, and so does the number of big organizations. More and more they have come to constitute societies in themselves, providing, on their own terms, the cradle-to-grave services that communities and small organizations used to provide. We could not have our level of affluence without organizations, of course, and some of them, including certain government organizations such as the armed forces or the social security administration, are bound to be huge.
But most do not need to be very large, and their size and power is troubling. Our economic organizations--business and industry--concentrate wealth and power; socialize employees and customers alike to meet their needs; and pass off to the rest of society the cost of their pollution, crowding, accidents, and encouragement of destructive life styles. In the vaunted "free market" economy of the United States, regulation of business and industry to prevent or mitigate this market failure is relatively ineffective, as compared to that enacted by other industrialized countries.
Big noneconomic organizations also trouble me. Big churches and school systems and local, state, and federal governments also centralize power, socialize employees to bureaucratic values, "de-skill" them unnecessarily, and generate their own "externalities"--the costs of doing their business that are shifted onto a fragile environment or fragile groups within the polity.
Increasingly, especially since the mid-twentieth century, politicians and government leaders have tried to ameliorate these problems, saying that we need big organizations but that they need to be more responsive to citizens. In this area we have made some progress. But perhaps not enough. Antitrust enforcement has waxed and waned; conceptions of unfair competition are relaxed; big organizations and their masters dominate campaign financing and shape regulatory procedures. Cleaning up after the economic organizations has generated more big organizations to do the clean up, and they bring more externalities, and more incorporation of social functions that once were filled by small groups, families, neighborhoods, and small local governmental units. Elsewhere I have explored the possibilities, faint but real, for networks of small firms that can drive innovation and also distribute wealth and power more equitably (Perrow 1992). Networks of small firms have appeared in some parts of the industrialized world, such as Northern Italy, the Scandinavian countries, Japan and Taiwan to some extent, and even in parts of the United States (Sabel and Zeitlin 1997). An economy that allowed extensive use of small-firm networks was a possibility in the United States in the nineteenth century, and I will explain why that possibility disappeared.
Why did the United States grow big organizations and come to accept them? I will start with the early days of the Republic, with the first mass-production organizations using "wage dependent" labor, the textile mills, and the legal revolution that made big organizations possible before they even appeared. Until the Civil War there were few organizations large enough to matter and they did little shaping of the society, but it is important to examine the first ones because they prefigured future forms. Two types of textile mills developed, one with the attributes and the social consequences of our large mass-production firms, the other resembling small-firm networks that persisted until the end of the century. Then I will examine the second big business in the United States, the railroads, because they created the corporate form we now use.
This book ends with the decade 1910. In future work I intend to show how the organizational revolution that the railroads effected spread to government, schools, and religious and voluntary organizations in subsequent decades. But by 1910 or so, the organizational mold was set. Big bureaucratic organizations were turned out in all sectors in society, making it the form of choice for public and private problem solving by the end of World War II. The relevance of family, friendship groups, neighborhood associations, and small independent business and social service organizations conversely waned. Their vital functions, once a right of citizenship rather than of employment status, were increasingly absorbed by large organizations, creating a "society of organizations" rather than communities. The centralization of wealth and power increased in the nineteenth century as a result of the growth of large organizations. Not until the 1930s was it checked, as a result of steady, if mild, redistributive efforts over the next forty years by the federal government and by a variety of political and voluntary organizations. But centralization surged again in the 1970s and continued through the end of the century, as large private organizations grew, and wealth was further concentrated.
Only two things are more basic to the structure of our society than organizations: basic demographic forces and cognitive structures of the mind. Acknowledging these, I will make the following grand claim for organizations:
Bureaucratic organizations are the most effective means of unobtrusive control human society has produced, and once large bureaucracies are loosed upon the world, much of what we think of as causal in shaping our society--class, politics, religion, socialization and self-conceptions, technology, entrepreneurship--becomes to some degree, and to an increasing degree, and a largely unappreciated degree, shaped by organizations.
This book will investigate the origins of large bureaucratic organizations in the nineteenth-century United States.
SOME CENTRAL CONCEPTS
Density and Concentration
Of course, large organizations have been necessary at least since the pyramids were built, and some, such as the Catholic Church, have been with us for a very long time. It is their sheer number and size, their density and concentration that is new since the nineteenth century. Density--the proportion of productive workers working for wages and salaries under an explicit employment contract--has been very low for most of human history. Wage labor was rare, organizations employing people on contract were few. Density increased a bit in the eighteenth century as the first industrial revolution gained speed. Most estimates put the percentage of economically active people working for salary or wages at 20 percent at the beginning of the nineteenth century in the United States, over 50 percent at the end--enough density to make a difference even in large cities--and over 90 percent today. As we shall see in textile towns in Pennsylvania, having as little as 20 percent of the work force working for wages can affect the social structure of the town if the majority are employed by one or two large organizations. Concentrating the wage workers under one management gives that management power, not only over the lives of the workers, but over the community as a whole.
A factory of 100 employees was big in the first half of the nineteenth century, because most people worked on farms, in small trades, or in tiny organizations. Density may not have had much of an impact on society when these were all small organizations. In a typical mid-century American town, 50 percent of the gainfully employed worked in small organizations, and the rest worked on farms or in family businesses or were craftsmen and artisans and shopkeepers. Organizations of five or twenty people had little impact as organizations, per se. But if the employment in organizations was highly concentrated, that is, if a few of the organizations had 100 or 200 employees, they had concentrated power to shape the community. They could set wages, withstand strikes, ignore industrial accidents, control the school system, select religious denominations, block infrastructure improvements such as water supply and street paving, and fire employees who did not vote correctly. When 75 percent of the citizens of a city depend upon wages for a living, this high density increases the power that flows from concentration.
In the nation as a whole, large organizations became really important only in the last quarter of the century, when density and concentration were significant nationally, but the dynamics of their concentration of wealth and power appeared early in local settings, where it was recognized and opposed. Our story has to begin at the beginning, about 1820, as something historically novel appeared: a combination of a high density of wage workers and their concentration in a few organizations.
Size and Small-Firm Networks
The case of the textile mills in the nineteenth century United States will provide us with an effective example of the role of organizational size. We will find that two models coexisted through much of the century: highly centralized, absentee-owned, and very large mass-production mills in New England (the "Lowell" model), and a network of quite small, decentralized specialty producers in Philadelphia. Once the former were in place little technological innovation occurred in the New England firms, whereas Philadelphia firms were consistently innovative. When the labor shortage disappeared in New England as the Irish victims of the potato famine arrived, the firms exploited labor and let the mill towns decay. In Philadelphia, the firms exploited workers less and invested in the infrastructure to make functioning communities. In the New England firms, wealth became highly concentrated, and their local and national power was great. In Philadelphia, simply because there were so many firms, profits were spread over many more people and families, and they were locally invested and locally spent, enriching the communities.
It should be noted that small firms can exploit workers and the environment just as much as big firms, but if the small firms are linked together in a network, sharing workers, space, capital, and technical knowledge, they are likely to come to realize that they share a common fate and must cooperate as well as compete, investing in labor and its skills rather than exploiting workers. Without the networking that can balance competition with cooperation, small firms are likely to exploit labor. Networks of large firms balance competition with cooperation, too, but their concentrated power is far more likely to produce negative social externalities than networks of small firms with dispersed power. Finally, to complicate things further, there are instances of small-firm networks supplying a few large firms without being exploited by them. The small firms are encouraged, or even required, to have multiple customers. The large firms want the small suppliers to survive even if they do not buy from a particular one in a particular year, since large firms ultimately benefit from cross-fertilization among many small firms.
We will discover these dynamics of size in other areas and even in the unlikely case of the railroads. It might seem inevitable that railroads would become big and national, but their size and reach was a matter of national debate. We will discover the innovative role of a small regional railroad, and the efficiency of decentralization through subcontracting in operating and maintaining the lines. Though the innovations in subcontracting were soon abandoned, they will illustrate that even in this prototype of large organizations some alternatives appeared to be more efficient for society.
Let me repeat that small organizations can exploit labor and produce unnecessary costs for society, but much evidence now exists suggesting that where they are interdependent--linked together in networks of exchange--they are less exploitive than large organizations, and their externalities (from degree of pollution to wealth distribution) are more positive. Nor are they inefficient; networks of small firms can achieve economies of scale that match those of large organizations. They also appear to be more innovative (Perrow 1992; Sabel and Zeitlin 1997; Sabel 1989; Sabel and Zeitlin 1985). Large organizations tend to be socially responsive when appropriate governmental regulation is imposed on all competitors. If regulation is not universal, those who pay the added costs typically associated with socially responsive practices will lose out to their more "efficient" competitors who avoid these costs, at least in the short run. Small firms will be unresponsive to social needs if they do not identify a community of interests that realizes the long-run advantages of cooperation and social infrastructure investment. They will also be unresponsive if they depend completely on one large firm for their business; in such cases, they are price takers, ruthlessly competing with other small firms that want to sell to the large, monopsonistic buyer.
Responsive, innovative networks of small organizations are not prevalent in U.S. history, but could have been if we had taken a different path. (They were more common in Europe, where the state restricted the size and power of for-profit organizations.) Most of the economic organizations up through the Civil War were neither large firms nor part of small-firm networks; rather, the economies were local and the population rural, and although firms had the advantages of local monopolies--not conducive to social responsibility--they also had the constraints of local community pressure to minimize negative externalities. Where ample job opportunities existed, mitigating wage dependence, they at least had to be responsive to their employees.
Organizations or Capitalism
Because the role of organizations in shaping U.S. society has been neglected, I will emphasize them. Some may object that organizations per se are not so important, but rather that capitalism, in its evolving form, can explain much of what I will talk about. As one perceptive critic, Miguel Centeno, advised me, I should decide whether ours is a society of capitalist organizations (and therefore I am really describing capitalism), or a society of capitalist organizations, (wherein the organizational form that capitalists came to use was determinant). It is both, but the emphasis so far has been on capitalism; I believe an emphasis upon organizations is needed from the nineteenth century on. Capitalism predates our nation and existed without large organizations in Europe and in the United States through the early Republic. True, large bureaucratic organizations proliferated under capitalism, from its mercantile through its industrial, finance, and monopoly phases, making capitalism appear to be the independent variable (the cause). But large organizations in noncapitalist economies have most of the same organizational properties and dynamics as those in capitalist countries, and so the form has transcended the type of economy. (I can apply my view of organizations to socialist societies as well as capitalist ones; in both forms the consequences of large size, bureaucracy, absorption, externalities, and other concepts that I will use apply. But I will not discuss or analyze so-called socialist societies in this book.)
Nevertheless, I cannot always separate capitalism and organizations, because they are inextricably entwined. For example, I will explain the drive for vertical and horizontal integration (creating oligopolies and monopolies) at the end of the century as a product of the managements' and workers' need for security and predictability, but one can also attribute the integration drive to the desire of the major capitalists of the time to eliminate competition in order to hold on to their wealth and power. I would argue that the "capitalism" argument (and its associate, the "class" argument) is correct but incomplete. There is an undeniable truth in the statement that historically, capitalism created bureaucracy and bigness. But once this form was loosed upon an industrializing world, no industrializing country, whatever its political system, could function with any alternative to big bureaucracies, though the size and the democratic responsiveness of the bureaucracies could vary greatly. So, although it is both--a society of capitalist organizations and a society of capitalist organizations--it is the latter that needs more exploration and emphasis.
Though I will not pay much attention to noneconomic organizations (government, nonprofits, and voluntary organizations) because they were small, relative to economic organizations in the nineteenth century, they also came to create wealth and power in the twentieth century. But noneconomic organizations centralized wealth far less; the salaries and bonuses to top management are less, there are no stock options and no shareholders. Power is centralized in noneconomic organizations much as in economic ones, in that the top managers, the "masters," control the fate of employees under them, affect the fate of the communities where they provide jobs, extract other resources, and create some externalities by virtue of being big organizations, though not as many as private organizations may. In either economic or noneconomic organizations, small size limits these powers and consequences.
Most important for government, however, is the check of democratic control on governmental masters through the electorate. The check is limited, imperfect, and subject to abuse, but there is no democratic control at all in the case of private economic organizations, on which most of us depend for our living. Only governmental regulation can attempt to control private economic organizations. Because governmental organizations are somewhat responsive to the electorate in democracies, I fear large governmental organizations less than large private ones.
European governments are large and absorb more of the economy's surplus, through heavy taxation, than the U.S. government does, but they also regulate private enterprise more closely, trying harder to limit their wealth and power and to equalize them in society. In addition, more social needs or functions (maternal and child care, health, advanced education, pensions) are provided by democratically elected bodies, rather than as conditions of employment in an organization. Less of society is contained in nondemocratic bodies (firms, most non-profit organizations) and more social needs and functions are provided through somewhat democratically responsive governmental units, often quite decentralized ones. For this reason, the fact that government is large and strong in European democracies does not unduly dismay me. I wish that all large organizations, including government, were smaller, but a large and strong government appears to be necessary to regulate large and strong private organizations. As inefficient and cumbersome and as unresponsive as many governmental organizations are, a vigorous democracy checks the abuses of government far more effectively than the abuses of private organizations.
Big organizations are not everything; a lot of power exists outside them, and I do not try to explain everything through them. My account is not intended as a monocausal theory, though the relentless search for the organizational cause will give it that tone. Other sources of power include public opinion, social movements, voters, ideologies and values, and most important the powerful cultural practices of patriarchy, sexism, and racism. Organizations are shaped by these. They cannot fully have their own way not only because of other organizations (including the state and its legal powers), but because of nonorganizational forces such as culture and public opinion. Nevertheless, organizations have the means to give effect to, and amplify, these other sources of influence or power in society, as well as to create power on their own. We will see how the New England textile mills amplified the cultural practices of ethnic discrimination, for example. Organizations deserve explicit attention in this regard.
I should note that wealth and power are not necessarily linked; an antislavery or pro-environment movement is not likely to be wealthy, but it can be powerful. The opposite--persons with great wealth who are not powerful--is not often remarked, but I assume it occasionally occurs, as with the heirs of private fortunes. But generally, wealth and power beget each other.
A word about one important way in which organizational size centralizes wealth. For economic organizations, the reimbursement structure is designed to have each employee produce a bit more value for the organization than he or she gets back in the form of salary, wages, and benefits. If it is not successful, there is no profit, and the organization is likely to lose out to more "efficient" ones, to be bought up or disappear. Many do. This "profit" on each employee (and a profit on transactions with suppliers, distributors, subcontractors, and the like) accumulates at the top of the organization.1 The bigger the organization, the bigger the surplus is likely to be. (Though I do not have the data to demonstrate it, it is likely that the larger the organization, the greater the multiple of earnings of top officials over the lowest rank, further centralizing wealth.) If an organization buys up other firms, the profits from those employees go to the top. In addition, the larger the firm, the more market power it will have, further increasing profits, and the more political power it is likely to have because of its control of resources (jobs, capital, plants and equipment, etc.) that are vital to governments.
Culture and Other Shapers of Society
Because I want to emphasize organizations as an important force, or independent variable, I point to the cases where I would substitute organizational variables for the other variables that are generally ascribed. This strategy gives the whole project a lopsided emphasis, in that favoring organizations is only the first, remedial step; the second would be to discuss cases in which the other variables are the important variables and are responsible for shaping organizations as well as other things. Some early candidates for this second corrective exercise are the force of ethnic and religious identities and ties formed before organizational socialization; the retreat from business affairs of the Boston Brahmins after their textile and then railroad fortunes were secured (they chose family / class and culture over wealth and power); the Second Great Awakening's impact on political leaders and, thence, organizations, perhaps putting brakes on exploitation; the primitive transportation system that initially limited organizational growth and thus the centralization of wealth and power; demographic changes such as death rates, age of marriage, and age of immigrants; legal structures such as primogeniture and the fellow servant rule; certainly the reform efforts of the Progressive era, which helped shape organizational structure and behaviors in ways they might not otherwise have taken; the growth "mentality" of the nineteenth century in towns and cities that functioned without significant organizational resources, but later built them--a mentality or cultural item that was furthered by the extraordinary abundance of natural resources available to an industrializing population (surely a significant independent variable that did not even need large organizations to be exploited); and the "democratic tradition" (or lack of feudal and monarchical structures) that checked some organizational excesses though it had little effect on organizational structure in the early nineteenth century.2 In these cases organizations were significantly shaped by demographic, political, and cultural variables rather than the other way around. I will not ignore them, but their strength will not be properly assessed.
Instead, I will argue that organizations increasingly make our culture, including norms of family size and age of marriage; determine what is seen as efficient and for whom; and select our political values and direct our "will."
Organizations as the Independent Variable
The impact of large organizations on society has not been fully appreciated. The story of organizations in the United States can be found in works by historians, but quite a bit of digging is required.3 Even in the other social sciences, organizations appear as dependent variables, created by other forces, rather than as independent variables, as actors in themselves. In many accounts of social change, wealth and power are not associated with organizations; wealth is resident in an individual, a family, or a class, and power is resident in persons or ideologies. Organizations are at best unproblematic resources for other expressions of wealth and power (W & P). This interpretation may occasionally be true, but I wish to explore the extent to which organizations may not only back up these sources of W & P, but shape them because of the characteristics of the organizations themselves, independent of persons, classes, and ideologies. To the extent that organizations are considered in discussions of W & P, they are often merely the suitcases that carry more important variables, and have no distinctive properties of their own. But I argue that organizations produce more than their marketed goods and services, and will shortly list some of these products.
The passive role of organizations in most accounts is suggested by the following familiar formulations, true but incomplete: Politicians "use" organizations; culture is "expressed" through organizations; organizations are "designed" for the efficient production of goods and services. When people do comment on particular organizational characteristics, the comments are generally limited to their imperfections as vessels, as in discussions of their best form or structure or of the leadership qualities required of their managers. But rarely do these discussions take into account any of the many characteristics of organizations that shape society. In this book, however, we shall see the effects of internal properties such as size, degree of centralization, skill requirements, and labor policies; the effect of environmental relations such as network properties, political power and the corruption of officials, and the ability to ignore social costs and pass them off to the weaker parts of society.
We hear that culture shapes our behavior, and because organizations are made up of behaving people, organizations therefore must be shaped by culture. They are shaped by culture, but they also shape culture. Or we hear that efficient forms prevail over inefficient forms, and so we think that the prevailing organizations must be reflections of this efficiency. True, in general and in a largely tautological sense, but whose efficiency is being realized; for whom is it inefficient? Organizational forms or structures may be chosen for ideological reasons by the masters and locked in by group interests; not all the stakeholders such as employees, their families, the community, and the natural environment, see their own efficiency realized by the same form that benefits the masters. Or we hear that political parties or Congress is the means of mobilizing political values or the political will, and thus politics is what we should study--this is the "independent variable." But while it is commonplace that large organizations fund the politicians, and it is noted that, for example, the sizable percentage of the U.S. senators who are millionaires a few times over have their millions invested in particular organizations, political scientists do not then turn toward the characteristics of these politics-shaping organizations. Furthermore, the political parties and Congress and the executive branch are all large organizations in themselves, with interests that are independent of any individual members and certainly the public, and thus can have a large say about which values will be offered and about the terms for mobilizing the "public will." The examination of governmental organizations has been largely limited to the inefficiency or efficiency of their services, not focusing on the way in which their properties as organizations shape our considerations of legitimate services and even hide the source of problems that require services.
WHAT DO ORGANIZATIONS DO?
I am concerned with what organizations do, beyond producing goods and services. As I said, organizations are more important than most theories allow, and their importance has not been fully realized. As a device to remind us that they do a goodly number of things that we are wont to take for granted, thus missing their distinctive contribution, I will sometimes italicize these functions in the rest of this work, as we see them performed in the concrete examples of organizational behavior. I will also run through important theories that have shaped our understanding of economic activity, and I have placed a summary of each in Appendix I for easy reference.4
What do organizations do, beyond producing goods and services, that makes them so protean? Drawing on Karl Marx, Max Weber, and numerous modern theorists, we can be reminded of the following:
Wage Dependence. Organizations generate wage dependence--a condition where you have to work to create the surplus value that will be used by someone else as wealth, prestige, or power, or you won't survive. The condition of wage dependence at first was resisted, but it gradually changed our stratification system and centralized social and economic power in society. Dependence on a wage or salary for survival was not taken for granted in the nineteenth century, but was characterized in negative terms referring to the only two institutions that had such complete control--"wage slavery" and "the industrial army." A democratic society could not experience much centralization of wealth and power if wage dependence were not extensive; it permits the accumulation of wealth from productive activity. Thus, wage dependency centralizes surpluses.
Centralization of Surpluses. If you work for only yourself, accumulation is limited to your own surplus or profit, not that of all your employees. If your employees can freely choose another employer or get part of their livelihood on their own, the employees can extract a larger share of the surplus, limiting accumulation by the boss. If the organizations are large, the mounting surplus means that wealth (or prestige and power for noneconomic organizations) is increasingly centralized, and this concentration can lead to power. Those with great wealth and power can shape ideologies and values and thus shape the culture.
Socialization. Organizations socialize us to fit their needs. From working in organizations, we get organizationally friendly habits of the heart and organizationally friendly cognitive patterns of the mind, stemming from unobtrusive controls over, and extensive socialization of, personnel and even customers. Among working adults in the nineteenth century, roughly three quarters of their waking time was spent in settings that had an interest in shaping their behavior; in the twentieth century, nearly half of their waking hours were so spent. This amount of exposure to conditions controlled by the organization helps transmit the culture favored by the masters.
Divisions. Modern organizations use and shape ethnic, racial, and gender differences and divisions, acting on group identities and family structures, thus affecting much of what we call culture, and shaping the stratification system and political dynamics. They also have the power to reduce the divisions that exist in the society. In either case they are exercising power in society. We will see that in the nineteenth century large organizations used existing divisions and magnified them, reinforcing prejudices in most cases. In the twentieth century this continued, but using and creating divisions increasingly interfered with efficiency as skill levels rose and women were needed for the work force. The most striking case is that of gender divisions, as explored by Robert Max Jackson (1998), where hiring practices promoted more gender equality. Frank Dobbin and John Sutton (1998) document how human resource divisions in corporations, set up in response to federal prodding, developed justification for fair treatment that top management could accept, and thus fostered employment rights, thereby reducing divisions more than top management would have desired. Michael Burawoy (1985, 99-100) and others have noted that in modern organizations the internal divisions of seniority and skill can cut across divisions sustained outside of the organizations, such as race and gender, and thus reduce their salience; John Meyer and associates (1994) even go so far as to argue that large bureaucracies "rationalize" the world and in the process eliminate the "nonrational" divisions and distinctions that I find magnified in the nineteenth century. We know little about the circumstances that encourage the exploitation of division versus those under which organizations would ignore divisions recognized outside of the workplace. I belatedly discovered, too late for serious incorporation, the magnificent and award-winning book by Charles Tilly, Durable Inequality (1998), which has a great discussion of what I call "divisions," which goes far beyond my own formulation.
Structural Interests. Organizations have a "life of their own," in that maintenance and stability requirements, as well as group interests, form around their structure and activities. These two set systemic limits on elite intentions. The ususal emphasis in "neoinstitutional" theory and population-ecology theory is on the way practices become valued for their own sake and thus locked in--a cultural view. I would emphasize instead the interests served by practices, an "interests and power" view. Departments and divisions will have interests that thwart those of the masters. Organizations are tools, but only "recalcitrant tools" (Perrow 1986). (The previously cited Dobbin and Sutton work on employment rights is an example. Another is the striking examination of how engineers in a variety of industries in the late nineteenth century fought both owners and workers in order to rationalize management in their own interests [see Shenhav 1999].) I will refer to the maintenance and stability requirements, and the group interests that become vested in the structure as "structural interests." (The interests that groups can realize are small compared to those that the masters realize; masters generally get what they want. But at times groups can be quite consequential, greatly limiting theories of rationality and efficiency.) These requirements and interests are conceptually distinct from the interests of the masters; they are organizational rather than part of the elite / class / family / person interests of the masters. Of course, in practice, the interests of groups in the organization and those of the masters are most often overlapping and conflated.
The term "structural interests" hardly captures the notion of the organization as an agent, an actor with needs and preferences, but it will have to serve. The organization is structured into groups, which develop interests in survival, growth, sexism, liberalism, and so on. The expression of these interests born of the organizational structure constitutes a part of "organizational behavior." Structural interests affect the socialization, divisions, and externalities of the organization.
Externalities. Organizations shape the external environment of neighborhood, community, and government at all levels. Some of the shaping is what economists describe as "negative externalities," or an unobtrusive transfer of wealth from communities and employees to the masters of the organizations. I have in mind such obvious things as pollution, the exhaustion of natural resources, and workplace accidents, but also the externalities of urban crowding, the failure to smooth production resulting in boom-and-bust cycles and layoffs, and some of our military adventures to secure investments and markets abroad. Since these are not included in the price of the goods or services, they are borne by everyone rather than just those that purchase the goods and services.
Concentration of Wealth and Power. The things that organizations do, beyond producing goods and services, combine to produce inequalities in the distribution of wealth and power. A system with many small organizations deconcentrates wealth and power; a system with a few big ones concentrates it (Perrow 1992).5 I am ignoring the positive externalities here. Life would be shorter, nastier, and more brutish if it were not for the enormous productivity and efficiency of organizations, some of which may necessarily be large and bureaucratic. Organizations generate wealth and power; we need them. But large organizations make it possible to centralize the wealth and power they generate. (I will pass on the possibility that by extending life, and making it more pleasant and refined for the first world, we have condemned much of the third world and, worse still, stretched a canopy over the globe that will end it for all of us. I leave these scenarios to such impressive works as Paul Kennedy's Preparing for the Next Century .) The point, necessarily oversimplified here, is that most of the negative externalities we have experienced were not necessary; with the abundance of this continent and the skills of its conquerors, we could have made far less of a mess of it had it not been for the particular conflux of events that generated our form of organizations. But there is more to this story than the concentration of wealth and power; there are general systemic effects that manifested themselves in the middle and late twentieth century. This is a period beyond the scope of this work, so I will mention them only briefly at this point.
System Accidents. One is the systemic impact of the distinctive dynamics of social systems in which large organizations are tightly coupled to each other so that unanticipated interactions create system-wide disturbances, such as stock market crashes, interruptions of service, widespread contamination, and opportunities for fraud and corruption. (This topic preoccupied me on a much smaller scale in my essay on normal accidents [1984, 1999]).
Absorption of Society. Another systemic effect, increasingly apparent in the second half of the twentieth century, is that large organizations wittingly and unwittingly absorb the functions performed by smaller autonomous units of society such as families, kinship networks, local churches, and small governmental units and businesses, weakening those parts of society that are not governed by an employment contract, and creating a "society of organizations" (Perrow 1991, 1996). For a powerful example of corporations "absorbing" and controlling the legal system see the work of Edelman and Suchman (Edelman 1990; Edelman and Suchman 1999).
WHAT KIND OF ORGANIZATIONS?
I am primarily concerned with organizations comprising large work forces (in the early days 100 persons or more was large). Initially, there were very few of them, and thus large bureaucratic organizations played a minor role (but an important prefiguring role) in the early part of the nineteenth century, and not a major one until the second half of the twentieth century. I assert different internal and external dynamics for small and large organizations (the small foundry compared to International Harvester), and I am not concerned with most small organizations. Nevertheless, it is necessary to discuss organizations with small, even tiny, work forces that control organizations through legislative mandates (e.g., the FTC in the 1920s) or the provision of capital (e.g., investment banks), or trade associations. These controlling organizations, as they might be labeled, such as regulatory bodies or the J. P. Morgan or Jay Gould directorates, have roles to play different from most organizations; there is no adequate conceptual term for them. They need not be "peak associations"; the regulatory agency is not an "executive" organization, though a merchant bank may be; the term "controlling organizations" comes closer, but "controlling" is an awkward adjective to use with powerful government agencies that regulate rather than control.
Behavior is motivated, and I assume that wealth and power are always favored over poverty and dependence. Therefore the motivations of individuals will not explain why we created big organizations in the United States, but not to the same extent in Europe. What needs explaining is why they arose when they did in the United States, why they did not proliferate in Europe, and how their rise might insure against their decline. My explanation is that our particular history allowed less regulation of the pursuit of wealth and power, and the pursuit occurred over a socially and culturally unencumbered landscape. In Europe monarchs, nobles, and the church feared the rise of large organizations that would be beyond their control, so they limited the accumulation of capital. The United States had no such restrictions; the citizens feared a large government but took few steps to limit the size and power of private organizations. In the United States, large private organizations were allowed to grow, in spite of considerable resistance, and this growth generated inequality. The accumulation of wealth and power through large organizations is the modern device for generating inequality.
Wealth is considerably more concentrated in the United States than in most nonsocialist industrialized nations. It is hard to make comparative statements about power, but I believe that economic power is quite centralized in the United States. Social power is more fragmented and cultural in origin, and less in the hands of large organizations, but they play an increasing role here. Some other nations allow for an open contest for wealth and power (the contest is never absent) but restrict the contest considerably through structural devices that favor smaller organizations, limiting the concentration of W & P. They also distribute social services more widely or require private organizations to provide more, reducing the concentration of W & P if the political system is reasonably democratic. There are large governmental bureaucracies in Europe that, more than in the United States, mitigate the concentration of economic power and place more social activities in the hands of elected representatives rather than owners / masters, thus dispersing social power. Much of the dynamics of organizations in the late nineteenth century concerned the displacement of independent, generally proprietary organizations of small- to modest-size by large corporate forms. Unlike developments in Europe, this open field for concentrating W & P was created through deliberate nonregulation at the state and federal level. We will contrast the operation of a dispersed network of small proprietary firms with large organizations having a corporate form in the textile industry, and the modest-size firms before the 1890s with the corporate consolidation after that. Both, we should emphasize, are illustrations of the proposition that the degree of concentration of wealth and power depends on organizational forms and organizational regulation (the state).
My account draws on five theoretical traditions that are available to explain the success of large economic and noneconomic organizations. Technology played a big role, but I will emphasize that it was "socially constructed"--that is, particular technologies were selected and furthered by private organizations and the government. Technology is not often an independent agent acting on its own, though it sometimes is. The strategy and structure argument of the preeminent historian of business and industry, Alfred D. Chandler, is mined for its scholarship and insights, but qualified by paying attention to power and social costs, which Chandler ignored. The same power and social costs qualifications will be added to the valuable institutional economics tradition, which conceptualizes markets and industrial structures. Political scientists have given us a rich institutional argument, examining the governmental and political institutions that have tried to guide the processes of industrialization into democratic channels, but I pay more attention to organizational elites as significant actors than to presidents of governments and to party platforms. I will draw most heavily on two additional theoretical traditions, labor processes theory and neoinstitutional theory, wrought by sociologists, political theorists, and an occasional economist. But both theories, I argue, have been insufficiently attentive to strictly organizational variables. Big organizations are distinctive beasts, and their characteristics have not been fully exploited by these traditions.
Naturally, there are many alternative explanations for the events we shall be discussing. At the pertinent points of the story I will refer to them, highlighting the distinctive nature of my own interpretation. A fuller discussion of these alternative theories and their strengths and weaknesses appears in the appendix. Here I shall do little more than to list them; in the text they will appear in italics to indicate that a discussion of them is available in the appendix. Here is a list of the alternative theories:
Technology. Inventions that required large organizations drove the economy and were an independent variable; organizational size and structure, and the products produced, were dependent on the technology.
Strategy and Structure. The historical work of Alfred Chandler and the theoretical work of "contingency theorists" say that the structure of the organization is shaped by the technology and the strategy employed by leaders. This is a specification and elaboration of the pure technology argument.
Political / Administrative. Administrative theory and the theories of political and governmental organizations assume that organizations are means to political processes and shaped by them, but have little autonomous impact.
Political Power. Organizations are the means to express more basic societal processes and groups (family interests, dynasties, regional interests, etc.); organizations are not actors in their own right.
Stratification. Organizations are signals of class, or carriers of class, and the key variables are such institutions as education, ethnicity, and religion, rather than organizations per se.
Labor Process. Organizations are more central in this theory, they are the source of domination and of accumulations of wealth and power; but the efficacy of elites is overstated (because organizations are not passive tools of elite interests) and the benefits of organizations understated.
Culture / Neoinstitutional Theory. This theory emphasizes routines, imitation, unreflective responses, custom and normative practices, and convergence of organizational forms; it deemphasizes power and conflict.
Society of Organizations. My own position builds on all of these because each has some selective validity, and some of them a great deal. All are important. My own position can be summarized as the "society of organizations" view, which, by way of a brief explanation, focuses on large organizations as recalcitrant tools fashioned by particular elites. My theory involves a group interest / power model, modified by structural constraints of routine cooperative behavior. Its features include the following:
history is path-dependent, accidental, only partially developmental
structure and environment rather than entrepreneurship explain success / failure
technologies are chosen to fit preferred structure / ideology
culture shapes and is shaped by organizations; the latter is emphasized
labor process is shaped in part by workers' resistance and can occasionally be a key factor, but acquiescence in dependency, and tradeoffs in benefits, are more often the common lot of employees
bureaucracy (formalization, standardization, centralization, hierarchy) is the best unobtrusive control device that elites ever had.
The nineteenth century is the prelude to our market society with its distinctive form of capitalism. There was nothing inevitable about the turn that the century took. It was the product, first, of the "initial conditions": a lightly populated land of great natural resources, a fear of a strong state, and a powerful industrial revolution in Europe, and second, it was shaped by the decisions of organizational leaders and a supporting cast of elected and appointed government servants. Many conditions were in place to grow a society of well-regulated and moderate-sized firms focused upon regional economic development; at various points in the century many citizens argued for this. But other conditions made a quite different society possible and it was the one we got--an economy with lightly regulated, very large firms focused upon national economic development, with all the attendant social costs that accompanied the concentration of wealth and power this allowed. My argument is that while culture, politics, technology, efficiency concerns, and entrepreneurship all played a role, the most neglected and the most significant role was played by formal organizations. Organizations are more than the shadow of the entrepreneur. Their shape affects working conditions and points of community access; their size affects their ability to control competition and control politics and regulation; the density and concentration of their employees in a community determines the degree of wage dependence, and thus power over employees and the community. And when organizations grow large enough there is the possibility of significant internal interest groups whose concern for stability and internal power deflects the direction of the organization from the path the leaders prefer.
There were very few large organizations in the United States during the first three quarters of the nineteenth century, and so culture, politics, technology, and investment capital did most of the shaping of society. But we must examine the origins of large organizations and the alternatives available. Political changes in law, contradicting some cultural themes but supporting others, and changing forms of capital accumulation, allowed for the growth of a few large organizations in the first half of the century, particularly among the textile firms. We will examine them closely because one textile area, New England, almost instantly put into place the basic features of large-firm, corporate, mass-production industry, which did not bloom as a dominant form until the last decade of the century, but which determined almost all that followed. Another textile area, Philadelphia, represented another form, that of networks of small producers, which represented a path that became less and less viable by the end of the century. Most industry was not a network of small firms, but rather, small and moderate-sized firms without mass production and significant bureaucracy. But most industry, until the 1880s or so, was closer to the Philadelphia textile model than the New England one.
After examining the legal revolution that made large private, unregulated organizations possible before they even appeared, and considering in detail the two textile models as examples of alternative possibilities, we will turn to the decisive industry of the nineteenth century, the railroads. Absolutely critical to economic development, railroads started out as public-private enterprises, but soon shed most forms of public representation and regulation in favor of privatization. But the railroads did more than privatize a public good of major consequences (and the United States was the only industrialized nation to let this happen): they were the impetus to get (purchase, really) rulings that made organizations "persons," with many attendant privileges; that allowed firms to own stock in, and thus control, other firms (often close competitors) and to centralize capital in New York City; and that when they had drunk their fill of private capital and government gifts, enabled the massive merger movement of the 1890s. Railroads also set the pattern for labor relations, created a national rather than a regional economy, and were the subjects of both the deadliest labor conflicts and the largest fiscal scandal of the century. We will examine their protean impact at length, as well as the alternative organizational forms for railroading that appeared but were discarded.
Return to Book Description
File created: 8/7/2007
Questions and comments to: [email protected]
Princeton University Press
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Newsroom > DHHS News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 3, 2008
Marla Augustine, Communications and Legislative Services, (402) 471-4047 or [email protected]
Sound bites on this topic are available at: http://www.dhhs.ne.gov/Pages/audio.aspx
DHHS Begins Flu Surveillance
Time to Get Your Flu Shot
Lincoln— The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services began its surveillance for flu on October 1, as it does every year. That’s when flu season officially begins, when the virus typically starts circulating in the United States.
"The flu is nothing to mess around with," said Dr. Joann Schaefer, the state’s Chief Medical Officer. "Anyone who doesn’t want to get the flu and doesn’t want to transmit it to their family members should get vaccinated or receive FluMist."
Flu surveillance involves checking with physicians’ offices in the state to see if they are seeing patients with influenza. So far, no reports of cases have come in.
"It’s difficult to predict when cases will start popping up," Dr. Schaefer said. "Sometimes it’s as early as November. Generally it’s in December. The peak time occurs in February or March."
Last year was the harshest one in four years because the flu vaccine did not match the strains in the vaccine, Dr. Schaefer said. This year the vaccine should be a better match because the flu strains are the same ones circulating in the southern hemisphere, which is where influenza develops.
There will be more doses of the vaccine available than ever before—approximately 140 million doses—to meet the expanded requirements.
About 83 percent of the U.S. population is included in one or more of the target groups, but last year less than 40 percent Americans received immunizations.
It takes about two weeks after receiving an immunization before immunity is fully developed.
"It’s a myth that you can get flu from the flu shot," Dr. Schaefer said. The most common reaction to the flu shot is soreness and redness at the injection site. If you don’t like shots, FluMist is a nasal spray available for those who are healthy and between two and 49 years of age, she said.
The flu is spread by respiratory droplets through the air. If someone sneezes or coughs into their hands, they can spread the virus to surfaces like door handles and phones. Cold weather causes people to congregate indoors, causing more transmission. Holidays, which bring families and friends together, usually give the number of flu cases a boost.
The symptoms of the flu include a fever, sore throat, chills, fatigue, cough, headache and muscles aches.
"You’ll feel like you’ve been hit by a truck," Dr. Schaefer said. "You’ll be knocked out for about a week. I’ve had patients say they have never been so sick in their lives."
If you do come down with the flu, don’t ask your doctor for antibiotics, which won’t help with viral illnesses. Using antibiotics unnecessarily can lead to antibiotic resistance, she said. Asking your physician for an antiviral in the first 48 to 72 hours can mitigate the symptoms.
On average, about 226,000 people are hospitalized with flu each year, with 36,000 deaths.
Who should get the flu shot?
This year, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommends that all children aged 6 months to 18 years be vaccinated, especially if they have asthma, diabetes, or compromised immune systems which may be the result of cancer, heart problems, anemia and long-term aspirin therapy. Children aged six months to eight years who are receiving their first dose will need two doses, at least one month apart.
Adults aged 50 and over should be vaccinated, especially if they are at risk for medical complications from influenza or have compromised immune systems. People with transplants or with chronic medical conditions like cardiovascular disease, respiratory difficulties like emphysema, or liver or kidney disease should be vaccinated.
Anyone who lives with or cares for persons at high risk of influenza-related complications, including the contacts of children aged 6 months or younger, should receive the vaccine.
Pregnant women should be immunized because they are four times more likely to have complications.
Residents of assisted living units, nursing homes and long-term care facilities should be vaccinated. And all health care workers should be vaccinated to protect their patients.
For more information about the flu, go to www.dhhs.ne.gov.
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Family: Frontoventral cirri scattered on forward, mid- and rear areas of ventrum.
Genus: Marginal cirri not confluent at rear; oral cavity wide, expansive; caudal cirri (usually 3) prominent (Illustrated Guide, 1985). Cell body ovoid to elongate, inflexible; large AZM supported anteriorly by a collar; two rows of marginal cirri not confluent posteriorly; strongly-developed frontoventral & transverse cirri present; three long, stiff caudal cilia; dorsal surface ornamented by short rows of cirri; two macronuclei; cyst stage recorded in some species (Carey, 1992).
8 (3 + 2 + 3) frontal, 5 ventral, 5 transverse, 3 caudal cirri.
Species: About 150 μm long (Kudo, 1966). Ovoid; 150 μm long; AZM 1/3 body length; 3 frontoventral, 3 long caudal cirri; two ovoid macronuclei (Carey, 1992).
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Two months shy of its 22nd birthday, the Landsat 5 Earth observatory has a new lease on life after controllers dodged a potentially fatal bullet involving a crucial mechanism in charge of pivoting the craft's solar array that began to show problems in November.
The solar array drive system is responsible for ensuring the satellite's power-producing solar panels can correctly point toward the Sun throughout each 99-minute circuit around the Earth. Electricity is then stored in on-board batteries for use during the nighttime portion of the orbit.
Without this important device, imaging operations are not possible due to inadequate power reserves. Landsat 5 had already encountered a difficulty with the solar array drive system last January when the primary mechanism failed after functioning normally for almost 21 years. Engineers studied that issue and declared it a total loss, leaving the venerable spacecraft reliant upon a backup driver.
Similar behavior was noted in the secondary system on November 26, and movement of the drive became too sporadic to provide the needed electrical power to sufficiently charge the batteries, the United States Geological Survey said in a statement late last year. Normal operations were immediately halted to allow controllers to study the problem.
Engineers conducted a month-long investigation before finalizing a testing plan that was carried out through the first few weeks of January. The tests resulted in a set of new operating practices that make it possible for Landsat 5 to return to its role as a key environmental observation satellite used by scientists and other officials around the world.
The first new images of targets inside the continental United States were captured a week ago, and international observations are set to resume within the next few weeks.
"This is good news for the global science and operational communities," said the USGS Land Remote Sensing Program Coordinator, Jay Feuquay. "The Landsat program has a well-established record of over 30 years of Earth observations. The latest developments allow the Landsat user community to continue to rely on Landsat imagery. I am optimistic about the 'fix' applied to the solar array problem and the future operations of Landsat 5."
Landsat 5 was launched into polar orbit on March 1, 1984, from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base atop a Delta rocket to begin what was then anticipated to be a three-year mission to gather images of locales across the globe. The spaceborne survey platform is just one of two remaining members of the original Landsat fleet - joining the more recent addition of Landsat 7 in a combined mission to continue the Landsat legacy in producing tools for scientists to better monitor Earth's surface changes on scales ranging from weeks to decades. Operating in tandem, the duo can offer full global coverage on an eight-day cycle.
The long-lived observatory has taken over 620,000 images in its almost 22 years in orbit, witnessing from 435 miles high a number of major world events including the Chernobyl disaster, two wars in Iraq, the 2004 tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina.
Landsat 7 has been suffering from the loss of an imaging instrument component known as the scan line corrector since mid-2003. The SLC compensates for the forward motion of the craft as it speeds along at five miles per second. Officials opted to offer reduced quality images without the use of the SLC by late 2003, and these products are still on the market today.
Copyright 2006 SpaceflightNow.com, all rights reserved.
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There are now over one billion cars traveling roads around the world directly and indirectly costing trillions of dollars in material resources, time and noxious emissions. Imagine all these cars running cleanly for 100 years on just 8 grams of fuel each.
Laser Power Systems (LPS) from Connecticut, USA, is developing a new method of automotive propulsion with one of the most dense materials known in nature: thorium. Because thorium is so dense it has the potential to produce tremendous amounts of heat. The company has been experimenting with small bits of thorium, creating a laser that heats water, produces steam and powers a mini turbine.
Current models of the engine weigh 500 pounds, easily fitting into the engine area of a conventionally-designed vehicle. According to CEO Charles Stevens, just one gram of the substance yields more energy than 7,396 gallons (28,000 L) of gasoline and 8 grams would power the typical car for a century.
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Native American tribes began the history of Illinois agriculture about 7,000 years ago. They cultivated corn, squash, and other crops that we still produce today. In the nineteenth century Euro-American settlers displaced Native Americans when they immigrated to the newly annexed Illinois Territory. They started small farmsteads on southern Illinois prairies near the Wabash and Mississippi Rivers.
Illinois gained statehood in 1818. Land sales offices opened and more settlers moved to the state to create farms. Population grew rapidly as English, German, African American, and other groups started settlements and towns. These settlers had stories of hardship and success to tell about their new lives.
After thousands of farms were created, mechanization of farming began to increase. Subsistence farming gave way to commercial farming. Crop plants, and livestock breeds were improved and machines did more of the labor. From 1850 to 1900, great growth developed in farm production. The marketing of commodities became faster and easier as the roads and railroads reached many areas of the state. Chicago was growing as a center of rail and water transportation and commerce.
The twentieth century brought the continuation of technological change. Some small farms disappeared, but others are still in the hands of the descendants of the original owners. Other farms were absorbed into larger farms, suburbs, and growing cities. Farming changed continually as new machinery was invented and improved and chemical and genetic sciences developed new products. Illinois became a “breadbasket” of the nation.
Today we reap the benefits of this agricultural history. This Web site chronicles
some of the peoples and individuals who lived this history. The Museum’s
collections and research illustrate the history of agriculture in Illinois
with photographs, artifacts, and specimens.
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| 0.97072 | 354 | 3.921875 | 4 |
Sexual, Physical, and Emotional Abuse
Few things leave a mark on someone's life more than sexual abuse or other severe emotional or physical abuse. We tend to fall apart, numb out, withdraw, or attack when we experience abuse. We learn a very defensive approach to the world that can be difficult to alter later. We become afraid of others, ourselves, and/or our environment.
Undoing these patterns takes awareness and work. But it can be done. Therapy and support groups can provide a "safe place" to talk about ones experiences and to learn that one was not at fault for the abuse. Self esteem can be developed and self-confidence increased. Anxiety and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress can be lessened. Life can become much more enjoyable and meaningful.
Current trends in abuse treatment
Treatment for abuse has come a long way in the last ten years. In some ways it is more gentle than it used to be, with a greater understanding of attachment issues and the psychobiology of treating traumatic stress. Helping the person to feel safe in their body and to develop emotion management skills prevents the therapy from being a traumatic experience itself. Note the book listed to the left about safe ways to manage trauma recovery.
Sexual abuse can be overt and blatant (molestation) or covert and subtle (being dressed as a child in provocative clothing). It "explodes" the feelings of a child. The following information is provided to give some idea about the nature of sexual abuse.
What are the general signs of sexual abuse?
- Feelings of loss and grief
- A lack of energy
- Problems with memory
- Poor self esteem
- Excessive worry about ones body and appearance
- A feeling of being powerful in a malignant way
- Wanting to die
- Fear of authority
- Impaired spirituality
- Fear of being touched
- Fearfulness of perpetrator
- Need to be in control
- Regressive behavior
- Fear of intimacy
- Dissociative symptoms
- Feelings of detachment
- Excessive time spent in fantasy
- In severe situations, multiple personality, post traumatic stress, etc.
- Keeping unnecessary secrets
- SHAME (the feeling of not "measuring up")
- Gastrointestinal problems
- Sexually transmitted diseases
- Sexual preoccupation in thought and conversation
- The need to reenact event--repetition compulsion
- Sexually precocious behavior
How do these symptoms look during childhood and adolescence?
- Failure to thrive
- Whining, crying
- Speech problems
During early childhood
- Scratching, picking
- Self-injurious behavior
- Conduct disturbances
- Sleep difficulties
- Compulsive or inappropriate sexual behavior/seductiveness
- Excessive sexual knowledge
During middle childhood
- Sexual symptoms as above
- Depression, suicidality
- Nightmares, insomnia, night terrors
- Pseudo-mature behavior
- Fears and phobias
- School and social functioning impaired
- Startle responses (being "jumpy" and easily surprised)
During early adolescence
- Acute anxiety
- Sexual promiscuity
- Social withdrawal/good girl behavior
What factors influence severity of disturbance?
- Duration and frequency of the abuse
- The age of victim at time of abuse
- The type of sexual activity involved
- How overt the abuse was, versus how covert it was (the dynamics can be different)
- Penetration of body parts
- Use of force/violence
- Age, gender, and relationship of perpetrator
- Response of responsible others--parents, teachers, law enforcement officers
What type of people tend to abuse?
- Those who were made into adults during childhood
- Those who feel like they can't allow themselves to be nurtured
- Emotionally undeveloped and starved adults
- Morally rigid individuals
- Those who feel the need to lead to control their feelings
- Those with poor interpersonal skills
- Both men and women
- Those who were abused
- Those who struggle with shame/anger/rage related to sexual issues
Who do the victims tend to be?
- The more vulnerable child (the child who is more emotionally and/or circumstantially dependent)
- The more accessible child
- Often, family members
Preventative measures for anyone who works with children or families
Other Forms of Abuse
Other forms of abuse can have similar symptoms, and they will tend to be more like the original form of abuse or its opposite. Violence leads to violence or extreme passivity, etc.
Adult Children of Alcoholics
Children who grew up in homes where there was alcoholism were typically exposed to one form of abuse or another. Even the "quiet" alcoholic--the one who never yelled or threw a lamp--often deprives a child of any interaction and leaves a serious wound.
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| 0.9266 | 1,009 | 2.96875 | 3 |
In which Scrabble dictionary does CONTRALTO exist?
Definitions of CONTRALTO in dictionaries:
- noun -
a woman singer having a contralto voice
- noun -
the lowest female singing voice
- adj -
of or being the lowest female voice
The lowest female voice or voice part, intermediate in range between soprano and tenor.
Often used to modify another noun: a contralto part; contralto tones.
There are 9 letters in CONTRALTO:
A C L N O O R T T
Scrabble words that can be created with an extra letter added to CONTRALTO
All anagrams that could be made from letters of word CONTRALTO plus a
Scrabble words that can be created with letters from word CONTRALTO
9 letter words
8 letter words
7 letter words
6 letter words
5 letter words
4 letter words
3 letter words
2 letter words
Images for CONTRALTOLoading...
SCRABBLE is the registered trademark of Hasbro and J.W. Spear & Sons Limited. Our scrabble word finder and scrabble cheat word builder is not associated with the Scrabble brand - we merely provide help for players of the official Scrabble game. All intellectual property rights to the game are owned by respective owners in the U.S.A and Canada and the rest of the world. Anagrammer.com is not affiliated with Scrabble. This site is an educational tool and resource for Scrabble & Words With Friends players.
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| 0.893125 | 330 | 2.8125 | 3 |
About Numbers with Prof. Haas
Subjects: Math, Special Education
Player Mode: Single
User Access: Parent, Student, Teacher
Improve students understanding of numbers using this dynamic online quiz.
Developing both analytical skills and mathematical skills this is an exciting and essential addition to Mathematics teaching tools.
- Pedagogically designed to raise standards and motivate learners
- Five exciting and different dynamic games
- Games are available at three levels
- Holds individual attention for a long period on time
- Flash based and platform integrated.
- Design of app is both functional and visually stimulating
- Edmodo badges awarded to aid motivation and assessment.
- Enables pupils to work independently, learning at their own pace both in the classroom and at home
- Curriculum aligned
- Improves higher order thinking skills
- Essential skills and concept are practiced and reinforced.
Similar Apps on Edmodo
About the Edmodo Store
In the Edmodo Store, you can discover innovative apps that integrate seamlessly with Edmodo to help create engaging learning experiences for students.
Visit our help center to learn more about using apps with your students.
Edmodo helps connect all learners with the people and resources needed to reach their full potential.
Sign Up with Edmodo and start using it with your students today.
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| 0.902422 | 273 | 2.734375 | 3 |
While for children and adults alike the highlight of Halloween just may be the candy you may be surprised to learn that there is a practical side to the candy gathering as well. If you are a parent trying to help your child develop better math skills or a teacher who would like to focus the interest back on math you can use Halloween candy in a number of interesting and educational ways to teach math. Here are just a few ways you can use Halloween candy in math projects-
Candy Sort-This math project is designed for older elementary grades but could be structured to be easier for younger children or more complicated for even older children. Parents can also follow these steps at home. The steps of the project are as follows-
1. Have the students sort and count their Halloween candy at home after trick-or-treating.
2. At school the next day, have the students organize their data from the most common to the least common type of candy.
3. The students will then make a bar graph of your data.
4. Over the next several days, in small groups or as a class, have the students collect and organize their data on a spreadsheet application (Excel, for example), one row per student, one column for each candy type.
5. Now they can use the auto-sum feature on each column to find the most common types of candy for the group. (As an option, use the formula feature or your own calculations to find the mean number of candies of each type per student.)
6. Students can then use the sort feature to reorder the data from most common to least common type of candy.
7. Have the students use the graphing feature to make and print a whole-class bar graph or pie chart of their candy data. (Which type of graph is most effective for summarizing the group’s candy data?)
Variation of the lesson is as follows: Younger students can bring in their candy wrappers and decide as a class how to sort the candies into several categories. They can then make a diagram to classify the candy by different characteristics. Students even can glue their wrappers to the diagram.
Estimation and Measurement Activities: There are many ways to use Halloween candy in estimating and measuring. Students will be highly interested in these activities when they know they can have a sweet reward at the end.
1. Have the students estimate about how long a licorice “whip” is, in centimeters or inches. (A centimeter is about the width of your little fingernail. An inch is about the distance between the first and second knuckle on your finger.) Have them figure which was easier to estimate in centimeters or inches?
2. Have the student’s measure to see how long one licorice “whip” is, using a centimeter ruler. Based on this measurement, how long would a whole package of licorice candies be if you placed each piece end to end?
3. Have the students estimate the weight of a licorice whip in grams. (1 gram is about the weight of paper clip.) Have them figure based on this estimate, how much would a bag of licorice whips weigh?
4. Have the students estimate about how many Skittles, M&M’s or other candies will fit into a tablespoon without spilling. Have them test their estimate.
5. Have the students compare the weight of different candies. For example how many Skittles balance a Starburst? Which candy weighs the least and which candy weighs the most?
6. Have the student’s figure what is the area of a Starburst candy or a mini-candy bar?
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| 0.938685 | 767 | 4.0625 | 4 |
Stanza 4 Summary
Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
- A holy litany is a kind of prayer in which a list of things are mentioned or asked for. It's usually repeated.
- The speaker would like to write one of these kinds of prayers, but someone keeps hitting him the back of the neck with spitballs. Come on, America. It seems as though the country has no time for serious religious contemplation.
- Once again, the speaker can't get away from the country itself. As he's part of America, America's mood affects him, for better or, in this case, for worse. How can we tell? Because of that weird pronoun confusion. America's mood affects the speaker's ability to write. Or maybe America's mood is the speaker's.
- Add that to the speaker's Big List o' Gripes!
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
- Looks like another definition is in order here. A "strophe" is a section of a poem. It's kind of like a stanza, only a strophe does not follow a pre-set pattern.
- You want 'em? The speaker's churning 'em out! In this simile, he's making these bits of poetry just like Henry Ford, whose company developed the assembly line in order to crank out automobiles with greater efficiency and consistency.
- But the speaker's strophes are unique, in a way. At first he says they're as "individual as…automobiles," but of course each automobile produced on an assembly line is practically identical. Even so, the speaker's lines come in "all different sexes." Can a strophe have a sex, really? The speaker says that he's churning out words that exist across a spectrum of gender identity, more than just "women" in one door, and "men" in the other.
- Act now, and you can buy your very own! The speaker's like a used car salesman here, offering you a fair trade-in value on your old strophe. But is he being serious? Or is this another joke to point out how very different the act of writing a poem is from the act of making and selling a car?
- Poetry's not something that can be spat out of a factory and pushed into the economy, he seems to be saying. It's a lot more complex and, therefore, more important to the speaker.
America free Tom Mooney
- History note: Tom Mooney was a labor activist and a member of the Wobblies (check out line 27 for more on them).
- He was arrested on suspicion of his involvement in a 1916 bombing in San Francisco, but the evidence was sketchy. He was eventually freed in 1939, but all the same the speaker wants us to know that he totally had Tom's back all the way.
America save the Spanish Loyalists
- Who were the Spanish Loyalists—other than some folks who were loyal to Spain? Well, they were on one side of the Spanish Civil War, which lasted from 1936 to 1939. They fought in favor of the elected government of the Spanish republic, which was more liberal in its policies (pro-labor unions, for example). The Loyalists fought against the Nationalists, who were the more conservative members of the army, business, and the Catholic Church. Again, the case was decided before this poem was written (the Loyalists lost), but the speaker still wants us to know that he stands with their cause.
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
- Wanna know who else the speaker is a big fan of? These guys. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were two Italian immigrants who were arrested in 1920 for robbery and murder. Many folks thought that they were only arrested because they were known anarchists and anti-war activists (not to mention foreign-born). After lots of debate and legal wrangling, the pair was executed in 1927. Once again, the speaker has the back of the losing side.
- And he seems to be stepping out of time a bit, too. These guys were dead long before this poem was written. So what's all that about?
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
- More history notes, you ask? Why, certainly.
- The Scottsboro boys were nine African-American men who were arrested on suspicion of raping two white women on a train, in March 1931. Initially, all but one of them was sentenced to death.
- The lack of evidence and the racial nature of the case, however, sparked protests worldwide. After many appeals, they were all eventually freed (though the last defendant was not released until 1950). In this line, the speaker allies himself once more with a persecuted, underprivileged group that (in this case, literally) had to fight for its life.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
- Okay—deep breath here. This is actually one looooong line that is, like several lines before it, multiple sentences all smooshed together. (For more on the effect of this style of writing, see "Sound Check," and then head on back here.) This looks to be a memory from the speaker's childhood, a fond memory of going to communist meetings with his mom. There he enjoyed some yummy (and cheap!) snacks.
- We also learn that the people there were pure in their support of the workers. There's that word "angelic" again (see line 8).
- The speaker tells us how great the communist party was in 1835, which is a bit odd time-wise, since we're reading this as written in 1956. As the speaker looks back on his childhood, though, he's also here looking much further back in time to a better place.
- Of course, it's also possible to read this another way, since there is no punctuation to guide us. You could see the line as "In 1835, Scott Nearing was a grand old man…" Still, we don't think this is what is meant.
- Why? Because Scott Nearing wasn't born back then, man! Nearing was a radical economist, pacifist, socialist, and communist (and probably some other -ists, too) who lived from 1883 to 1983. The speaker is clearly a fan of his.
- He's also a fan of Mother Bloor who, like Nearing, was a social reformer and communist sympathizer who lived around the same time as Nearing (though she died in 1951). The speaker says that she made him cry, but we're guessing that this was in a tears-of-inspired-joy sorta way, not in a tears-due-to-slamming-your-hand-in-the-car-door sorta way.
- The speaker says that he saw Israel Amter, another pro-communist activist and organizer who was active the same time that Nearing and Bloor were. More than that, he saw him "plain," which suggests that he got a true sense of the man.
- Still, even this joyful memory turns sour at the end. The speaker thinks now that everyone at the meetings "must have been a spy." This suggests that he's coming to some kind of conclusion about meetings like this one. Is he suggesting that the ideal of national communism was never achieved in America because it was undermined from within? Or did he find someone's secret decoder ring after a meeting cleared out?
America you don't really want to go to war.
- Really, you don't. Do you? No, we didn't think so.
- That's because America, at the time this poem was written, was in the middle of the Cold War. The Cold War was a political standoff with the Soviet Union that never actually resulted in direct armed conflict. That was probably because, in part, both sides had enough nuclear weapons to blow up the Earth many times over. So, rather than a shooting ("hot") war, it was U.S.A. versus U.S.S.R in the Cold War. (For more on this, check out Shmoop's take on the Cold War.)
- Still, we don't think that the speaker is being descriptive here. And it's not like he's taunting America. It seems more like he's trying to convince America that it doesn't really want to fight a war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
- This is an interesting turning point in the poem. While the speaker has so far had a tendency to smoosh sentences together into a single run-on for effect, here we get what seems to be deliberately bad grammar.
- What are we to make of "them bad Russians" and "them Chinamen." Who says "them" instead of "those" anyway? It seems like this bad grammar is purposeful, maybe to emphasize the ignorance of those who would blame China and Russia for America's problems.
- Also, notice how "them Russians" is repeated so many times in these lines. It seems like the speaker is poking fun not only at these people's ignorance, but at their obsessiveness, as well.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
- Huh? The Russia? Is after our cars? This just doesn't make much sense. We mean, we drive a Ford Pinto, Shmoopers, and last time we checked, there was no waiting list.
- Why would Russia want that? It's the kind of thing we might expect to hear from a delusional person. The speaker here seems to be poking more fun here, suggesting that the kind of people who really fear Russia, and who might support the American role in the Cold War, are a bit paranoid, and a bit out of touch with reality.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. Her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
- Man, this grammar is getting worse in a hurry. By "her," we're assuming that the speaker means Russia. It's interesting to note here how, as the grammar of the language gets worse, the paranoia of the lines also increases.
- So it's not just that "the" Russia wants our cars. "Her" is after our cities now, and our magazines (Reader's Digest, and "red" was a popular nickname for a communist). "Her" is also out for our auto plants, and our filling stations.
- The dumber these ideas are, the dumber they literally sound. Our speaker is putting those people, who would claim that Russia is an imminent threat, in a very unflattering light.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
- Here's a touchy line, but it's important to understand that the speaker is continuing his criticism of America (in this case both "him" and "her").
- We still have the degenerated grammar, and it goes along with the degenerate things that have been done in America's history—namely, the forced acculturation of the Native Americans (forcing them to read English and convert to Anglo ways), slavery (using African Americans as a source of unpaid labor), and the abuse of labor (forcing factory workers and others to work sixteen hours a day).
- All of this seems to be too much for the speaker. All he can do is utter a small cry for help.
America this is quite serious.
- … as a heart attack, Jack! In case you think the speaker is joking by pantomiming with this bad grammar and caricatures of those bad elements of America, he wants you (and everyone else) to know that this is no joke.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
- Ah, okay. Things are becoming a bit clearer now. We would say that, starting in line 63 up to here, the speaker has been performing a kind of imitation of the nonsense that he sees on TV. Everything he watches suggests a brutish, ignorant, and abusive country. (Maybe he should've switched over to Sesame Street?)
- Still, he wants to be sure that this impression over the last few lines is accurate. Might he be wrong? Could America be more than just a collection of mindless brutes?
I'd better get right down to the job.
- That's right! These vacuums aren't gonna sell themselves! Wait. By "the job," perhaps the speaker means something more than just a 9-5.
- If we follow from the question he asks in line 70, we might say that the work he speaks of might be the work of correcting the negative impression he's gotten of his own country.
- Not to pooh-pooh the importance of vacuum salesmen, but we get the feeling that this speaker has more far-reaching work in mind.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
- To back our reading of line 70 up, the speaker tells us that he's not after any sort of regular job (like joining the Army or working in a factory).
- Again, it's not that he looks down on those sorts of jobs. In fact, he says he's super-unqualified ("nearsighted and psychopathic") to hold those jobs. He must be talking about some other kind of work.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
- Okay! Well, whatever job this speaker is taking up, he seems wholly determined to see it through.
- "Shoulder to the wheel" is another metaphor. Basically, the speaker tells us that he's going to be putting his all into this work, exerting every ounce of energy he has to see it through. What's this job, you ask?
- Well, we know that it's not any sort of regular work. Given the list of complaints about his country, and the way he begs and cajoles America to behave better, we're left to assume that this speaker is putting down his pen and getting straight to work to make his country a better place to live.
- Perhaps by writing this poem, he's already gotten started. What do you think?
- And one last thing. That word "queer"? Well, that's just another example of Ginsberg identifying himself with what would have been, at that time, the margins of society.
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| 0.979879 | 3,241 | 2.8125 | 3 |
As you walk up Walton Street in Oxford, England, the road bears slightly to the left, and a large 19th-century building comes into view: the headquarters of the Oxford University Press (OUP). OUP is the largest university press in the world, dating its origins from about 1480. In 1983, I arrived at this building carrying a Texas Silent 700 printer. This used thermal ink technology and had two rubber ears on the top into which a telephone handset could be inserted to link the printer into the public telephone network. It was a beautiful April morning, and carrying this terminal into a circa 1830 building seemed rather inappropriate.
At that time, I was heading up the initial attempts by Reed Publishing to develop electronic publishing products. Reed owned International Computaprint Corp. (ICC), based in Fort Washington, Pa., which specialized in keyboarding and printing directories. We had been working with IBM and the University of Waterloo, Canada, on the New Oxford English Dictionary (NOED) project, which was to create a digital version of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The proof of concept was to digitize one of the supplements to the first edition, starting at the letter S. Once the digitization and indexing had been completed, I, together with Hans Nickel, the founder and CEO of ICC, were to demonstrate what we had achieved to the NOED project team, led by Tim Benbow and Edmund Weiner. Many members of the team of lexicographers were skeptical of the project’s value, and there was a mixture of expectation and disinterest around the table.
The OED seeks not only to provide a definitive definition of a word but also the origins of when the word was first used, with examples of subsequent use that may have modified the definition. All these examples were contained on about 4 million slips of paper. We set up a connection with a terminal (at 300 baud) to the computer in Fort Washington. I recall the first question, which came from one of the more skeptical lexicographers, who wanted to know how many words in the OED originated in The Times (London) newspaper. Because all the text had been marked up in Standard Generalized MarkUp Language (SGML; a forerunner of XML), we could identify the source and provide not only a count but also a printout of the results (albeit a very slow task). There was a short period of silence, and then these distinguished scholars realized the potential of information retrieval. They also recognized that it was not going to put them out of a job but enable them to improve the value of the product. A host of queries were proposed, and the session only came to an end when we ran out of supplies of thermal paper.
The NOED project was an enormous success, not only for the OUP but also for the University of Waterloo, as the project team became the Open Text Corp. IBM used the knowledge gained from the project in the development of its search technology. For me, it was also a day of discovery about the power of search to discover new relationships between items of information.
But there were some other lessons to be learned. The first of these was the value of metadata structure in searching. Because of the way the individual elements of the entries had been marked up in SGML, searching for words that had first been used by, say, Charles Dickens could be efficiently executed. The second lesson was gained in listening to the members of the project team from IBM and the University of Waterloo as
they talked about the importance of computers being able to understand the structure of sentences, work that would lead to the development of semantic search technologies. (If you want to read more about the OUP and the OED, the Wikipedia entries are excellent. Also read James Gleick’s view on the subject at http://around.com/oed.html.)
Search is all about the meaning of words, and we need to take this into account in developing search technology. There are now more than a million words in the English language. But when I see people searching, I am often intrigued by their lack of knowledge of synonyms, in particular when trying to get the best out of a search application. We’ve been working on this since the early 1960s, and many of the vendors in the EC100 this year have innovative solutions. There is still much to be done by the search industry to make information retrieval success less dependent on the literacy and subject knowledge of the searcher.
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| 0.971855 | 914 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Eating at least two hours before class will make sure your stomach empties, so that will help gas in the stomach, or if you get reflux (esp. with all that rolling). But it won't necessarily do anything for gas in the intestine.
Things that might help that: avoid gas producing foods (esp for meals earlier in the day)---for most folks this is beans, onions, cabbage, cucumbers, melon, often milk. Also, gulping your meal, or talking and eating, may cause you to swallow air, increasing the gas problems. Solution? Eat like Mom always told you to, slowly and chewing carefully, and without a lot of talking at the table.
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| 0.953906 | 142 | 2.5625 | 3 |
- Cardiovascular Reactivity
- Coping Strategies
- Measures of Depression as a Clinical Disorder
- Personal Control
- Measures of Psychological Stress
- Purpose in Life
- Social Support
- Social Conflict
- Subjective Social Status
- Exposure to Violence
- Vitality and Vigor
The MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status
Summary prepared by Nancy Adler and Judith Stewart in collaboration with the Psychosocial Working Group. Last revised March, 2007.
Theories of social class and social stratification suggest a variety of bases for social hierarchies. On an empirical basis, different indicators of socioeconomic status each show similar graded relationships with health despite the fact that they are only moderately interrelated. Education, income and occupation provide specific resources. In addition, they locate individuals in relevant social hierarchies where relative position may itself be a risk or protective factor. The MacArthur Network on SES & Health developed a measure of subjective social status to try to capture individuals' sense of their place in the social ladder which takes into account standing on multiple dimensions of socioeconomic status and social position.
The MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status was developed to capture the common sense of social status across the SES indicators. In an easy pictorial format, it presents a "social ladder" and asks individuals to place an "X" on the rung on which they feel they stand. There are two versions of the ladder, one linked to traditional SES indicators (SES ladder) and the second linked to standing in one's community (community ladder). The difference between these two ladders may be of particular interest in poorer communities in which individuals may not be high on the SES ladder in terms of income, occupation, or education, but may have high standing within their social groups such as a religious or local community. Insofar social standing has beneficial effects on biological processes related to health, standing on the community ladder may be as important as standing on the SES ladder. Ideally, it would be best to use both ladders (and, if so, one should have participants complete the community ladder first so responses to it aren't keyed to the SES indicators which are described for the SES ladder). If the research is investigating traditional SES, it will be of particular importance to use the SES ladder to be able to make comparisons between objective and subjective SES.
Relationship to SES
Relationship of objective indicators of SES to the SES ladder.
Several studies have examined predictors of the SES ladder. We would expect there to be a significant but not perfect relationship of traditional indicators of SES (e.g., measures of education, individual and family income, occupation and wealth) and subjective social status. Ladder rankings should reflect but not be redundant with the objective indicators. The SES ladder provides a summative measure of social status. Individuals are asked to summate across those indicators and each may assign different weights to the various components of SES. In addition, people may have a deeper understanding of the meaning of their standing on a given aspect of SES. Thus just like self-rated health predicts mortality even when adjusted for all known objective risk factors (Idler and Benyamini, 1997), subjective social status may be a "value added" of the individual's evaluation of their status and the actual implications of the objective indicators. For example, measures of educational attainment treat "high school graduation" as the same value whether one graduated from an elite prep school or an inner city high school, and "college graduation" the same for graduation from a top-ranked college or a diploma-mill. Yet the life chances of these graduates are quite different and are likely to be more sensitively captured by the ladder ranking than by the rather crude educational levels.
Whitehall II Study of British civil servants SES ladder scores are predicted by employment grade, education, household and personal income, household wealth, satisfaction with standard of living, and feelings of financial security. Childhood SES is also related to ladder ranking. Education and income are more strongly related to objective SES (as assessed by occupational grade) while a feeling of financial security is more strongly related to subjective SES as assessed by the SES ladder. Childhood SES and wealth are almost equally related to objective and subjective SES. Singh-Manoux, Marmot, Adler, (2005) suggest that the stronger association between subjective SES and the feeling of financial security in this middle-aged cohort suggests that subjective SES provides a better assessment of a person's future prospects, opportunities, and resources than objective SES.
In the US, predictors differ for White and Black participants in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA). Financial security, material deprivation and education are significant predictors of ranking on the SES ladder for both white and black participants. However, household income and wealth predict subjective social status for Whites in CARDIA but not for Blacks (Adler, Singh-Manoux, Schwartz, Stewart, Matthews & Marmot, 2008). Unlike the results in Whitehall II where psychosocial factors were not related to ladder scores, in CARDIA ladder rankings were associated with optimism for both groups, and with control in Whites and mental health for Blacks.
Qualitative investigation of criteria used for SES ladder rankings. In an exploratory qualitative study done for the MacArthur Network, Snibbe, Stewart & Adler (in preparation 2007) explored the criteria people say they use to decide their position on the SES and Community ladders. In an interview, 60 participants in the CARDIA study narrated how they ranked themselves on the SES ladder.
The most frequently mentioned source of subjective social status on the SES ladder was material wealth, mentioned by over 90% of participants (however about a fifth of participants also rejected materialism). The next most frequently mentioned sources of subjective social status were occupation (72%) and education (62%). Almost a quarter of participants indicated using their spirituality or ethical values, and a fifth of the sample used the extent to which they give to others and their health as considerations when determining ranking on the SES ladder. It is not surprising that respondents thought about financial, educational and occupational standing in answering the question of where they stand on the SES ladder since these are the dimensions the scale specifically mentions. The categories of ethics/spirituality, health and social responsibility or altruism ("giving") which were spontaneously generated have more to do with personal qualities and a subjective sense of self-worth than objective markers of status. As indicated such factors may play a not insignificant role in subjective social status.
Definition of "community" and criteria used for Community ladder rankings. In addition to the SES ladder a second ladder asks people to indicate how they stand in their communities. No criteria are given either for the nature of community or the dimensions of status to be used. The qualitative analyses revealed that the majority of participants defined community as their neighborhood (57%). Significantly more African American participants (80%) than European American participants (33.33%) used this definition. The next most popular definition of community was city or town (37%), followed by religious groups (22%), social supporters (20%), workplace (18%), family (18%), friends (12%), people who share their interests (12%), their region (12%), and, finally the nation or world (10%). Additionally, almost half of the participants generated idiosyncratic definitions of community that did not fit in any one category. There were no gender or race differences in mentions of categories other than "neighborhood."
Unlike their responses to the SES ladder, participants relied little on their wealth (25%), education (7%), or occupation (22%) when deciding where to place themselves on the Community ladder. Instead, they most frequently mentioned the everyday ways they give to others—as volunteers, as donors, as good citizens, and as good neighbors with close to 87% mentioning participation in giving activities. A second frequently mentioned source of subjective social status was how well-liked or respected they are by others (52%), followed closely by admissions of feeling as if they do not give enough to their community (50%). (Interestingly, "being respected" was a high frequency content code for the Community ladder but not for the SES ladder.) The remaining categories, in order of frequency, were giving as a leader (37%), giving as a parent (32%), and 12% rejected materialism as contributing to Community subjective social status. Health was not mentioned as a source of subjective social status on the Community ladder as it had been on the SES ladder.
Analyses of the Community ladder narratives revealed that more African American (36.67%) than European American (13.33%) participants mentioned materials / money, and conversely, more European American (13.33%) than African American (0.00%) participants mentioned education. Finally, a trend-level effect showed that more African Americans (33.33%) mentioned spirituality and ethics than did European Americans. The best predictor of the Community ladder rankings was SES ladder ranking, which alone explained 33% of the variance with two of the "giving" variables—giving as a parent and complaining of not being active enough—increasing the explained variance to 47%.
The qualitative study gives some hints about answers to important questions such as how people define community and what dimensions they use in placing themselves on the Community ladder.
Relationship of the SES and Community ladders. To date relatively little research has been done using the Community ladder. In the few studies where both ladders have been used they have been found to be correlated. Goldman, Cornman and Chang (2006) in a Taiwanese sample showed that although the two ladders were highly correlated (with a Pearson correlation, equal to the Spearman rank correlation of 0.78), their sample of middle-aged and older Taiwanese residents ranked their social position within their community an average of 0.4-rung higher than they ranked their position within Taiwan. Analyses of ladder rankings from CARDIA at the Year l5 exam show the two ladders were correlated 0.54. In this group of over 3,000 participants African-American men and women ranked themselves an average of 0.92 rungs higher on the Community than SES ladders whereas European-American men and women demonstrated more similar SES and Community ratings, 0.19 and 0.34 differences respectively (personal communication J.Schwartz).
Relationship to Health
A growing literature is emerging on the linkage between subjective socioeconomic status and health. The SES ladder has been used in a number of studies with populations that range from British civil servants (Singh-Manoux, Adler & Marmot, 2003; Singh-Manoux, Marmot & Adler, 2005), to pregnant women from four different US ethnic groups (Ostrove, Adler, Kuppermann & Washington, 2000), to adolescents in the US Midwest (Goodman, Adler, Kawachi, Frazier, Huang & Colditz, 2001; Goodman, Adler, Daniels, Morrison, Slap & Dolan, 2003; Goodman, McEwen, Dolan, Schafer-Kalkhoff & Adler, 2005), to elderly residents of Taiwan (Hu, Adler, Goldman, Weinstein & Seeman, 2005), to residents of small towns in three provinces in China (Yip & Adler, 2005), to low-income rural Mexicans (Jamison, J., Fernald, L., Burke, H., & Adler, N.E., July 2005), to older retired residents of Britain (Wright & Steptoe, 2005) and representative samples of individuals in the United States (Operario, Adler & Williams, 2004), and Hungary (Kopp, Skrabski, Rethelyi, Kawachi & Adler, 2004; Kopp, Skrabski, Kawachi & Adler, 2005). The results have shown that subjective status is related to a range of health indicators, including poor self-rated health, higher mortality, depression, cardiovascular risk, diabetes and respiratory illness. For example, in the Whitehall II Studies of British civil servants higher SES ladder scores were associated for men and women with lower prevalence of angina, diabetes, GHQ depression, and better perceived general health. Higher SES ladder scores were also associated with lower prevalence for men of respiratory problems.
In several of the studies subjective status showed a stronger relationship with the health indicators than did objective status and remained significant when objective indicators of SES were entered simultaneously into analytic models. In one study, for example, the ladder metric did a better job of predicting heart rate, body fat distribution, and cortisol responses to stress than did objective SES measures ( Adler, Epel, Castellazzo, & Ickovics, 2000). Other studies show that the relationship between the ladder and health outcomes remains robust even when researchers statistically control for objective SES indicators (Ostrove, Adler, Kuppermann, & Washington, 2000; Singh-Manoux, Adler, & Marmot, 2003). In the Whitehall study of British civil servants, subjective social status predicted change in health status even controlling for occupational grade (Singh-Manoux, Marmot, Adler, 2005). Wright & Steptoe (2005) showed that the impact of subjective social status on the cortisol response to awakening was independent of age, body mass index, smoking, time of waking, educational qualifications, financial strain, number of chronic illnesses and medication count in an older retired sample. They note that in older adults, subjective social status may be particularly useful in providing an aggregate estimate of lifetime social experience not so effectively captured by objective markers of SES.
Differences by race/ethnicity. Although the ladder has been used with a variety of samples, there is some evidence that it may not operate in the same way for all groups. Ostrove, etal (2000) found that subjective SES was significantly related to self-rated health among four groups of women (White, Chinese American, African American and Latina). Subjective social status was a significant predictor of self-rated health after the effects of objective indicators were accounted for among White and Chinese American women, however, among African American and Latina women, household income was the only significant predictor of self-rated health. After accounting for the effects of subjective social status on health, objective indicators made no additional contribution to explaining health among White and Chinese American women however household income continued to predict health after accounting for subjective social status among Latina and African American women.
What the ladders are capturing. The research to date provides evidence that the ladder ratings are picking up something meaningful for health, but it is not clear what these ratings reflect. One concern, of course, is whether these ratings are simply reflections of other variables with which they are confounded. There are two plausible types of variables which could account for an association of ladder scores and health outcomes.
One potential confounder is response bias. It could be that individuals who rate themselves high on the ladder also report better health because of a response set or social desirability. If so, we would expect to find associations of ladder rankings with self-rated variables, such as global health, but not with variables measured independently, such as physiological functioning or mortality. Ladder scores show significant associations with both types of variables suggesting that response bias alone cannot account for the association of subjective social status and health. In addition Singh-Manoux etal (2005) showed that ladder rankings predicted global health 3 years later, controlling for global health status as assessed at initial measurement. Since this controls for the shared variance of subjective social status and self-rated global health, the prediction of subsequent global health ratings would be independent of any shared association due to response bias or other confounders.
A second potential confounder is negative affect. Individuals who are depressed or who experience negative affect may both rate themselves low on the ladder and rate their health as poor. There is a relationship between ladder scores and negative affect and depression. However, it appears that this is more likely to be due to the influence of low subjective status on affect than vice verse. As above, findings from studies with outcomes that are not self-report and the longitudinal study suggest that negative affect is not a major confounder. In addition, several studies demonstrate a significant association of ladder rankings with self-rated health even when negative affect is controlled for. Operario, etal (2000) found that negative affect was not only related to subjective SES but also to objective SES indicators. Moreover, when adjusted for negative affect, both objective and subjective SES showed somewhat weaker associations with global health. This is consistent with a mediational model in which both objective and subjective status affect health in part by increasing negative affect.
Given that the SES ladder shows robust associations with health which are not simply due to confounding with response style or negative affect, it is important to know what the ladder rankings are capturing. Below we discuss quantitative and qualitative approaches to that question.
The SES ladder has become an integral measure in network research. We receive many requests to use the ladder in non-network research. Nancy Adler has consulted on the majority of studies noted in this review. New versions of the ladders, for example, for research with adolescents, and Spanish and Hungarian translation have been developed in the last few years.
Adler, N. E., Epel, E. S., Castellazzo, G., & Ickovics, J. R. (2000). Relationship of subjective and objective social status with psychological and physiological functioning: preliminary data in healthy white women. Health Psychology, 19(6), 586-592.
Adler, N.E., Singh-Manoux, A., Schwartz, J.E., Stewart, J., Matthews, K. & Marmot, M.G. (2008). Social status and health: A comparison of British civil servants in Whitehall II with European- and African-Americans in CARDIA.
Goldman, N., Cornman, J.C. & Chang, M. (2006). Measuring subjective social status: A case study of older Taiwanese. J. Cross Cultural Gerontology, Mar-Jun;21(1-2):71-89.
Goodman, E., Adler, N.E., Kawachi, I., Frazier, A. L., Huang, B. & Colditz, G.A. (2001). Adolescents' perceptions of social status: Development and evaluation of a new indicator. Pediatrics, 108(2). http://www.pediatrics.org/cgi/content/full/108/2/e31
Goodman, E., Adler, N.E., Daniels, S.R., Morrison, J.A., Slap, G. B. & Dolan, L.M. (2003). Impact of objective and subjective social status on obesity in a biracial cohort of adolescents. Obesity Research, 11(8), 1018-1026.
Goodman, E., McEwen, B. S., Dolan, L. M., , Schafer-Kalkhoff, T. & Adler, N. E. (2005). Social disadvantage and adolescent stress. Journal of Adolescent Health, 37, 484-492.
Hu, P., Adler, N. E., Goldman, N, Weinstein, M. & Seeman, T. E. (2005). Relationship between subjective social status and measures of health in older Taiwanese persons. Journal of American Geriatrics Society, 53, 483-488.
Kopp, M., Skrabski, A., Rethelyi, J., Kawachi, I. & Adler, N. E. (2004). Self-rated health, subjective social status and middle-aged mortality in a changing society. Behavioral Medicine, 30, 65-70.
Kopp, M. S., Skrabski, A., Kawachi, I. & Adler, N. E. (2005). Low socioeconomic status of the opposite sex is a risk factor for middle aged mortality. Journal Epidemiology Community Health, 59, 675-678.
Jamison, J., Fernald, L., Burke, H., & Adler, N.E. (July 2005). Relationship of objective and subjective socioeconomic status and health among poor Mexican women. Abstract presentation at 2005 International Health Economics Association World Congress, Barcelona, Spain.
Operario, D., Adler, N. E., & Williams, D. R. (2004). Subjective social status: Reliability and predictive utility for global health. Psychology & Health, 19(2), 237-246.
Ostrove, J. M., Adler, N. E., Kuppermann, M., & Washington, A. E. (2000). Objective and subjective assessments of socioeconomic status and their relationship to self-rated health in an ethnically diverse sample of pregnant women. Health Psychology, 19(6), 613-618.
Singh-Manoux, A., Adler, N. E., & Marmot, M. G. (2003). Subjective social status: Its determinants and its association with measures of ill-health in the Whitehall II study. Social Science & Medicine, 56(6), 1321-1333.
Singh-Manoux, A., Marmot, M.G. & Adler, N.E. (2005). Does subjective social status predict health and change in health status better than objective status? Psychosomatic Medicine, 67, 855-861.
Snibbe, A.C., Stewart, J. & Adler, N.E. (2007). Where do I stand? How people determine their subjective socioeconomic status.
Yip, W. & Adler, N.E. (July 2005). Does social standing affect health and happiness in rural China? Abstract presentation at 2005 International Health Economics Association World Congress, Barcelona, Spain.
Wright, C. E. & Steptoe, A. (2005). Subjective socioeconomic position, gender and cortisol responses to waking in an elderly population. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 30, 582-590.
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Last month, the South Australian parliament unanimously accepted a bi-partisan motion moved by Labor member, Tony Piccolo, to acknowledge the wrongful internment of Italian civilians living in Australia during World War II.
This small step may usher in a new period of reconciling with the darker side of wartime Australia and help us better understand this chapter of our history.
Silent for too long
During World War II, as in the Great War, civilians from enemy nations were detained behind barbed wire regardless of age, health or political views. Italian migrants experienced popular resentment in Australia, although they had escaped Fascism and another war looming in Europe.
Monarchist Italy had fought with the British in the Great War, but the British viewed Benito Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship differently after its invasion of Abyssinia in the mid-1930s. Britain and other European nations also had strong colonial interests in Africa which led to uneasy political relationships.
Once Italy declared war on Britain and its allies on 10th June 1940, Italian migrants in Australia became political pawns.
Heartfelt apology needed
Successive Australian governments have been silent on the issue of wartime reparation to civilians who were swept up as “enemy aliens” when their country of birth became a wartime enemy.
Piccolo’s motion to acknowledge Italian migrants’ wartime suffering at the hands of the Australian military and security services revisits WA Liberal Senator John Panizza’s original motion presented to the Hawke government in 1990, which was less successful.
It is a welcome step forward to have Italian pre-war migrants’ sufferings acknowledged by the South Australian parliament. The next stage should be full acknowledgement by our Federal Parliament, as occurred with the Stolen Generations and Child Migrants.
Regrettably, the South Australian motion stops short of a genuine heartfelt “sorry” for the many political, military errors of judgement and violations of human rights that caused incredible sufferings for migrant families in this nation.
There was limited acknowledgement of the widespread xenophobia against Italian families throughout the war years. My research has found that even after 70 years, there is still unresolved anguish for Italians who lived through that era.
The internment story
Italian internee families in Australia during the war had no access to government support. The Salvation Army offered emergency relief for destitute families, but a number of these were eventually interned at Tatura to access basic food and shelter.
Women who were left at home, barely managed to survive on farms, in businesses or as seamstresses. A few internment guards and locals also pillaged internees’ packages sent from families or the Red Cross. Vehicles, bicycles, cameras, and radios were permanently confiscated or later returned broken. Italian doctors’ medical instruments were found in private surgeries after the war, requiring lengthy legal action to be returned.
The motion also omits to mention the many sad cases of Italian deaths during internment. In some cases, the internees were denied access to essential specialist medical care. While the number of reported deaths seems relatively small, many were avoidable while others remained unreported.
There were also women and children who died during their internment at the Tatura camp, but these are never discussed. Salvatore Previtera, a Queensland internee whose child died, wasn’t allowed to attend the funeral.
No nation has a monopoly on unfair treatment of enemy civilians and Australia was not immune to abuses against the most vulnerable migrants from enemy nations. But must Italian migrants accept their wartime sufferings in silence simply because Fascist Italy decided to declare war on Britain?
Most pre-war Italian-Australian families suffered far more than they have ever dared to reveal until now. My research on Italian internment hopes to add to many other eminent scholars works by exploring details of the daily lives of Italian men, women and children in Australia during the war years.
Loveday in South Australia was the largest Commonwealth internment camp in the Southern Hemisphere. Italian-Australians were arguably the largest group of almost 5,000 Italian civilians incarcerated in any Allied nation, yet this remains insignificant in Australia’s wartime story.
There are only a few of the former internees left today, now reaching their late 80s and 90s who would benefit greatly from a public acknowledgment of the past, as well as material compensation.
The time is ripe for a full and sincere apology with appropriate compensation for the Italian families who lost so much in Australia during World War II. Canada and the USA have fully apologised to Japanese, German and Italian interned civilians with reparations.
Australian Indigenous Peoples waited for 200 years for an apology. How long will interned Italian-Australians need to wait?
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Four program areas support CHF’s mission:
- The Donald F. and Mildred Topp Othmer Library of Chemical History houses major collections of rare and modern books, papers of prominent scientists and organizations, and historical photographs that form a valuable resource for studies in the history of chemistry and related sciences. The library features primary sources from the 15th through the 21st centuries.
- The Roy Eddleman Institute for Interpretation and Education, the outreach arm of CHF, brings chemistry to a broad audience through public programs, print and Web-based publications, and educational materials. The institute also operates the Museum at CHF, which explores subjects ranging from alchemy to nanotechnology.
- The Institute for Research initiates, coordinates, and conducts research at the core of CHF’s mission to foster dialogue on science and technology in society. Its work is grounded in the idea that historical knowledge is crucial to a full appreciation of science and technology, the roles they play in our modern world, and the ways they will help shape the future. Through work in oral history and applied history, Institute for Research staff and fellows capture history in the making and make it relevant for contemporary conversations.
- The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry hosts a community of visiting fellows. These fellows conduct historical research, interact with staff, publish academic and popular works, and establish CHF as a leading research center in the history of chemistry and related sciences, technologies, and industries.
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The Three Gorges area is a unique zone. Everyone comes to Yangtze River will be deeply impressed by its exceptional natural scenery and many unusual cultural phenomena. The hanging coffins are one example. The term hanging coffin refers to a coffin that is suspended in a natural or a man-made cave high up in the cliff.
According to historical records, the earliest coffin had a 1500-year history. Because of the low technology level in ancient times, people considered the mystery of the coffins for a long time. During that time, lots of folk legends came about.
Legend about the Hanging Coffins
People thought that human beings came from the water, mountains and caves, so they needed to return there. During the age of troglodytism, humans hunted in the forests and fished in the water, so they had a special connection with nature. Placing their ancestors’ coffins on cliffs above the water could be seen as sending them back to nature. There was a sentence in the famous poem “Flower Burying”: “the inner being came from cleanness and would return to the cleanness”, which is an example of the returning to nature theory.
History of the Hanging Coffins
Most of which date from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Warring States Period (770 BC-221 BC), were placed high above the water, particularly the ones found along the Daning River, with the lowest distance being 30 meters (98 feet) and the highest 500 meters (1,640 feet). With no support and backstop in the surrounding area, how the heavy coffins were placed in such a high place still remains a mystery. However, experts have speculated several feasible means by which ancient people did the great work. One theory is that the coffins were lowered down from the top of the mountain by ropes.
It was a common funeral custom in ancient times for Yangtze River people to hang coffins on the cliffs. But the intention remains controversial. One legend among the Ba people has it that a man called Wuxiang defeated his rival competing for the chief of the tribe by making a boat out of earth that would float in the water. In order to commemorate the great leader, his descendants made his coffin boat-shaped and placed it high up in the cliffs. Thus this practice was retained by later generations.
Places to See the Hanging Coffins
The length of the Three Gorges is 192 km, from the beginning of Qutang Gorge to the end of Xiling Gorge, where more than 10 cliff coffins have been found. If you take a Yangtze River cruise, you’ll not only just see the hanging coffins along Three Gorges but also discover more during your shore excursions to Lesser Three Gorges and Shennong Stream.
“There are countless treasures in the cliff coffins in the Three Gorges, which can not be obtained, even by risking your life”. While, you could travel with yangtze-river-cruises.com to discover some treasures of the hanging coffins not by risking your life.
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Hawker Typhoon - Fighter-bomber
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Hawker Typhoon - British Fighter-bomber
Originally intended as the replacement for the Spitfire, the Hawker Typhoon experienced early difficulties with carbon monoxide leakage into the cockpit, vibration induced failure of the tail unit, and enormously increased drag over 400 mph by the thick wings.
By late 1942 the Typhoon entered service as a mid level and low level fighter, sporting black and white stripes on the lower wings to distinguish the plane to allied anti-aircraft units from the German Fock-Wulf 190. Soon the thick wings of the Typhoon were turned to advantage and the plane was being outfitted as a fighter bomber. By October of 1943 the plane was fitted with rockets to play it’s most well known ground attack role.
Although very effective against trains, trucks, wagons, artillery, half tracks, armored cars and infantry, the Typhoon only rarely destroyed German heavy tanks. Only the engine doors and tread of the heavy tanks were vulnerable to the rockets and 20 mm canon fire of the Hawker Typhoon. 3,330 Hawker Typhoons were built. Photo: IWM FLM 1461 from the Imperial War Museum Collections.
A rocket being fired from a Hawker Typhoon at a ground target. This is photograph No. IWM FLM 1461 from the Imperial War Museum Collections.
* Hawker Typhoon facts
|Used in WW II by
|| Royal Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
|Cruising speed||330 mph|
|Max. speed||405 mph|
|Altitude||34,000 feet service ceiling|
|* Numbers are approximate.|
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Robert P. Lockwood
When I was in college during the late 1960s, it raced through the campus that the actor who played the "Beaver" on the television show "Leave It to Beaver" was killed by friendly fire in Vietnam.
The fact was that young Jerry Mathers, the "Beaver," was alive and well and had never even served in Vietnam. But the legend outpaced the reality, and Mathers had to actually issue public denials of his death before things started to calm down. Months later there were still kids weaving the cautionary tale of the "Beaver" as a symbol of our generation dying in Southeast Asia.
The story of Jerry Mathers is a classic urban legend. To briefly define, urban legends are not so much fairy tales, but specific, believable stories told as fact with a populist appeal and a moral to the story. They show up everywhere, are repeated routinely, and are so widely accepted that they become part of the common cultural baggage. Everyone assumes the urban legends are true because everyone tells them as truth.
But they are not true. Just like Jerry Mathers allegedly dying in the jungles of Vietnam when in reality he was fine, urban legends having nothing to do with facts. They play on events to create an alternative reality that tells a story that better fits our perceptions or prejudices.
There is a subset of urban legends that are just as widespread, just as believed, and just as false. I call these "Catholic Urban Legends." They are distortions or fabrications from history that are part of the common anti-Catholic baggage that is carried around by many, Catholics included.
A simple example: The brave scientist Galileo has been forced by the Inquisition in 1633 to recant his teaching that the earth orbits the sun. But as he exits the Inquisition trial he exclaims loud enough for his loving supporters to hear: Eppur si muove!-"And yet it moves!"
Galileo never said it. The first mention of any such statement came nearly 125 years after his death. It was an invention, another bit of propaganda created in the eighteenth-century battle between the so-called French Enlightenment and the Church.
But Eppur si muove! became part of the corpus of Western thought. By the nineteenth century, every Protestant school child would have known it. Most Catholics would have heard it as well, and no doubt believed it real. To the scientific community it became a rallying cry against the Catholic faith and in support of scientific truth as the only real truth.
Today, Galileo’s quote is a given, bound to arise in any conversation touching on the relationship of faith and science in general, or the Catholic Church and the modern world in particular. But it is simply a Catholic urban legend.
The Makings of a Legend
Catholic urban legends have the same characteristics as most secular urban legends:
■ They are ubiquitous. One of the difficulties in refuting them is that simply everyone believes them. Catholic urban legends are not the strange beliefs of one particular sect. They are part of the Western cultural inheritance shared by everyone. They are believed because everyone believes them.
■ They are presented as absolute fact. People are not required to prove such assertions. They are simply accepted as actual fact. Galileo's stalwart statement to the Inquisition doesn't have to be defended; it is simply cited as unvarnished truth.
■ They are based on real events: Urban legends are commonly based on something real, not fantasy or fairytales. The trial of Galileo took place. There were Crusades and Inquisitions. Pius XII was pope during World War II. Catholic urban legends are usually rooted in real historical events. It’s just that the legends have been grafted on to the actual history.
■ They are populist cautionary tales. Urban legends are almost always cautionary tales-they mean more than just the events described and are often propaganda from a particular perspective. The alleged death of Jerry Mathers in Vietnam symbolized an innocent generation dying in Vietnam as a result of the allegedly evil, uncaring administration of President Johnson. Catholic urban legends are meant to silence the counter-cultural voice of the Church.
Often invented in the past as part of post-Reformation theological propaganda, Catholic urban legends are utilized today to dismiss Church positions out-of-hand. Like anti-Catholic rhetoric, they are a way to argue against Catholic positions in the public arena without having to actually refute the logic, meaning, and purpose of the Church’s positions: The Church is anti-science, as proven in the Galileo Catholic urban legend, and therefore its position on embryonic stem cell research can be readily dismissed without arguing the merits of that position.
Catholic urban legends are passed on from generation to generation and viewed not as the product of anti-Catholicism, but as normative thinking for the enlightened person. They have been repeated so often for so many years that they are accepted as basic truths. They are fabrications of history cited as truths.
I am not arguing that the lessons of history or the interpretation of historical events are not open to debate and contrary opinions. Thousands of books have been written on the origins of World War I with a thousand different explanations for the same actual events. The Crusades and the events surrounding them are immensely complicated. After years of study, fair-minded people can reach fair-minded conclusions contrary to each other.
But Catholic urban legends are not varying interpretations of history. They are falsifications of history. They are mistakes in fact, or more likely converting legend and propaganda to fact, until the truth of the actual events are forgotten in the culture and the public mind.
Crusades and Inquisitions
There is the common Catholic urban legend of the Crusades. This Catholic urban legend teaches that the Crusades were an unwarranted European invasion of an innocent Islamic people instigated by Pope Urban II in 1065.
But the Crusades were never portrayed in such a fashion until the dying Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used them as an example of European colonialism to stir up contemporary Islamic nationalism. It was later picked up as another example of Catholic intolerance.
The simple historical fact is that the Crusade announced by Pope Urban II was the answer to an urgent plea from the Eastern Byzantine emperor for assistance against an Islamic invasion from the Seljuk Turks. The Seljuk Turks had overrun Armenia and threatened Constantinople itself. The Eastern imperial army had been virtually destroyed at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, and the Empire survived solely on deft diplomacy to neutralize the Seljuk advance. In 1095, representatives from the East begged for assistance to ward off the Seljuk Turks and to ensure that safe passage would remain to the Holy Land for Western pilgrims. The Holy Father agreed and issued the call for a crusade to rescue eastern Christendom from Islamic invasion.
Why did the Crusades happen? They were not a Church-ordered attack on innocent people. They were a direct response to the invasion of the Byzantine Empire by the Seljuk Turks.
The Spanish Inquisition shares the title of "The Granddaddy of Catholic Urban Legends" with the trial of Galileo. One thing is certain: Virtually everyone has heard of the Spanish Inquisition, and rare is the person who understands the historical reality of it.
The historical reality of the Spanish Inquisition has its own tragedies. They should be neither whitewashed nor dismissed. But the Catholic urban legend of the Spanish Inquisition is little more than post-Reformation propaganda. That legend holds that the Spanish Inquisition, dominated by the papacy with cackling monks torturing the innocent, killed hundreds of thousands of Protestants branded as heretics.
Just a few basic points to keep in mind when you run into this Catholic urban legend:
■ The Spanish Inquisition was at its height in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. During that period, there were approximately 2,000 victims, not untold millions.
■ Monks never tortured anyone, as they were forbidden to do so by the laws of the Church.
■ The Spanish Inquisition was aimed primarily at practicing Catholics-families of Jewish heritage that had converted to the faith (many for generations). They called them "conversos," and the charge was that they were practicing the religion of their ancestors secretly.
■ There were few, if any, "Protestant" victims of the Spanish Inquisition simply because there were no Protestants in Spain. Luther’s revolt never took hold anywhere in Spain.
■ The motivating factors for the Spanish Inquisition were primarily greed, jealousy, and racial enmity. The "old Christians" saw these "converso" families having great success. They considered them impure racially-at a time when the reunited Spanish peninsula had defeated Islam-and wanted their money and their influence.
■ Both Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) and Pope Innocent VIII (1484-1492) complained about the treatment of the "conversos," but they had no authority over an Inquisition that was controlled by Spanish civil authorities.
As in many parts of Europe, those who were not "conversos" and were tried by the Inquisition were Catholics who had made crude anti-religious sentiments, were renegade priests, or simply annoyed their neighbors. For the most part, the Spanish Inquisition was an exercise in controlling unsociable behavior and looked for repentance as a final outcome. It was not hunting down heretics because, quite frankly, there were few, if any, heretics in Spain. But the "Black Legend" of the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition persists to our day, despite serious historical studies-by non-Catholic scholars-that regard most of it as anti-Spanish propaganda from an Elizabethan England fearing a Spanish invasion.
From its English heritage, the United States made many of the post-Reformation Catholic urban legends its own. But we also developed any number of unique Catholic urban legends to fit our own political and social purposes.
Veterans of the pro-life movement remember well that when the legalization of abortion became an issue in the United States, the debate focused more on the Catholic Church than abortion itself. The claim was made that the Church was attempting to impose its morality on the country. Instead of trying to defend a practice that horrified most Americans, proponents of abortion wanted to make the debate a church-state issue.
The Catholic urban legend surrounding abortion is that it was Catholic "power" that had made abortion illegal in the United States, forcing a religious belief into secular law. The reality is that laws against abortion developed throughout the nineteenth century in the United States at a time when the Catholic Church had little or no influence on public policy.
Laws against abortion resulted from increased medical knowledge of fetal development. The "pressure" to make abortion illegal came from a combination of anti-prostitution movements, civic reform movements attempting to improve the life of immigrant women, and, most important of all, the support of the entire medical establishment. It was a liberal effort that would also receive strong support from the women’s suffrage movement. But the Catholic urban legend persists that the Church was the power behind such legislation, though there is no historical evidence whatsoever to back that claim.
Pope Pius XII: No Friend to the Nazis
In recent years, another powerful Catholic urban legend has been the charge that Pope Pius XII did nothing in World War II to protect the Jews of Europe in the face of the Nazis. Pius has been painted as nearly a co-conspirator in the Holocaust, and this has certainly become the popular image. It is absolute nonsense, and over the last few years most historians have come to see it as such.
The simplest response to the Catholic urban legend of the alleged silence of Pope Pius XII in the face of the Holocaust is two-fold:
■ The Nazis considered Pius such an enemy that they had hoped to kidnap him. Though without an army or a weapon, Pius was considered a dangerous enemy of Hitler and hardly a friend of Nazi Germany.
■ In the aftermath of the war, Jewish sources estimated that as many as 800,000 Jewish lives were saved in Europe by the direct actions of the Church under Pius. Even if that number was wrong by half, the Catholic Church under Pius saved more Jewish lives than any entity, any government, any army, any international organization that existed in Europe.
The Catholic urban legend of Pius grew out of a left-wing post-war intellectual culture that resented the anti-Stalinist, anti-Communist agenda of his later pontificate. Discredit Pius, and his agenda could be discredited as well.
Pius died on October 9, 1958. On that day Golda Meir, future Israeli prime minister and then Israeli representative to the United Nations, said on the floor of the U.N. General Assembly, "During the ten years of Nazi terror, when our people went through the horrors of martyrdom, the Pope raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and commiserate with the victims."
For the Record
A final note on Catholic urban legends, returning to Galileo. In1992, Cardinal Paul Poupard presented to Pope John Paul II the results of the Pontifical Academy study of the 1633 trial of Galileo. He reported the study’s conclusion that at the time of the trial, "theologians failed to grasp the profound non-literal meaning of the Scriptures" when they condemned Galileo for describing a universe that seemed to contradict Scripture.
Headlines around the world screamed that the Vatican "finally admitted Galileo was right." And thus a final Catholic urban legend surrounding Galileo was born that it took until the late twentieth century for the Church to remove the condemnation of Galileo's scientific observations.
To set the record straight: Galileo died in 1642. In 1741, Pope Benedict XIV granted an imprimatur to the first collected edition of the complete works of Galileo.
Robert P. Lockwood is the director for communications for the Diocese of Pittsburgh and general manager of the Pittsburgh Catholic. His latest book is A Guy’s Guide to the Good Life: Virtues for Men (Servant Books).
This article is taken from the Mar/Apr 2010 Issue of Lay Witness Magazine. To access it online or to see more articles like this one, go to: http://www.cuf.org/LayWitness/LWindex.asp.
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If you handle oils and chemical without protecting your hands, you’re exposing yourself not only to skin damage but also to damage to your nervous system and vital organs. You also risk developing skin irritants, oversensitivity and corrosion damage because of the chemicals.
Always use our chemical protection guide or consult with our sellers when choosing gloves. Chemical protection gloves are intended for single-day use, and sometimes for even shorter periods.
THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN CHOOSING CHEMICAL PROTECTION GLOVES:
- A glove that gives good protection against a certain individual chemical may give very poor protection against a mixture of chemicals.
- As a rule, chemical protection gloves are intended for single-day use. They must not be re-used.
- A used glove is chemically contaminated and there is a risk that the skin will be exposed to harmful substances when it is handled.
- Higher temperatures shorten the time it takes for the chemical to break through.
- Thicker materials generally mean longer breakthrough times.
- Once a chemical has been absorbed, it continues to break through (permeate) the protective glove.
- Permeation through a protective glove takes place at the molecular level and is therefore not visible to the naked eye.
- Even the best gloves lose their protective properties if they are mechanically damaged or if the chemical has broken through the material.
- Strongly corrosive chemicals can destroy the glove material by breaking it down before the specified breakthrough time.
PERMEATION is a process whereby the chemical is absorbed into and passes through the glove material at a molecular level.
PENETRATION involves the chemical moving through pinholes and other imperfections in the glove material.
DEGRADATION is when the glove material’s physical resistance deteriorates under the influence of a chemical.
MIXING CHEMICALS CAN HAVE UNEXPECTED RESULTS
Two chemicals with known characteristics can produce unexpected effects when mixed. Since the number of chemicals marketed is huge, it is virtually impossible to test all conceivable combinations of them. Models do exist for estimating combined effects on the basis of what is known about the component chemicals. However, they presuppose that data is available and that the various chemicals involved have the same mechanisms of action. This means that the models can only be used for groups of chemicals that act in a similar way – not for the complex mix of chemicals that we are exposed to in reality.
Contact one of our sellers and get help in finding a suitable glove for protection against the relevant chemical mix.
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A is of Accelerator, B is for Black hole, C is for Cryostat! Those are just a few of the particle physics lessons your kids will get from Symmetry Magazine’s new lovely, animated alphabet book that gives them an early start on science. Heck, you might learn a little something too.
The 26-page book—Symmetry’s ABCs of Particle Physics—is available in three different formats: the animated version runs smoothly in your browser when you scroll up and down the pages, or you can view the static version or a pretty PDF edition to read the book offline or in print.
The short, rhyming collection of basic particle physics concepts “will lead you to minuscule particles, high-tech equipment, far-out phenomena and fascinating theories” write the book’s authors, Lauren Biron and Chris Smith. And the book’s images, a few of which we’ve included below, are something to behold too.
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Google and Facebook have open sourced the designs for the computing hardware that powers the artificial intelligence logic used in their products. These intelligent algorithms power Google’s search and recommendation functions, Facebook’s Messenger digital assistant, M – and of course both firms’ use of targeted advertising.
Facebook’s bespoke computer servers, codenamed Big Sur, are packed with graphics processing units (GPU) – the graphics cards used in PCs to play the latest videogames with 3D graphics. So too is the hardware that powers Google’s TensorFlow AI. So why is artificial intelligence computing built from graphics processors instead of mainstream computer processors?
Originally GPUs were designed as co-processors that operated alongside a computer’s main central processing unit (CPU) in order to off-load demanding computational graphics tasks. Rendering 3D graphics scenes is what is known as an embarassingly parallel task. With no connection or interdependence between one area of an image and another, the job can be easily broken down into separate tasks which can be processed concurrently in parallel – that is, at the same time, so completing the job far more quickly.
It’s this parallelism that has led GPU manufacturers to put their hardware to a radically different use. By optimising them so that they can achieve maximum computational throughput only on massively parallel tasks, GPUs can be turned into specialised processors that can run any parallelised code, not just graphical tasks. CPUs on the other hand are optimised to be faster at handling single-threaded (non-parallel) tasks, because most general purpose software is still single-threaded.
In contrast to CPUs with one, two, four or eight processing cores, modern GPUs have thousands: the NVIDIA Tesla M40 used in Facebook’s servers has 3,072 so-called CUDA cores, for example. However, this massive parallelism comes at a price: software has to be specifically written to take advantage of it, and GPUs are hard to program.
What makes GPUs suitable for AI?
One of the reasons GPUs have emerged as the supercomputing hardware of choice is that some of the most demanding computational problems happen to be well-suited to parallel execution.
A prime example is deep learning, one of the leading edge developments in AI. The neural network concept that underpins this powerful approach – large meshes of highly interconnected nodes – is the same that was written-off as a failure in the 1990s. But now that technology allows us to build much larger and deeper neural networks this approach achieves radically improved results. These neural networks power the speech recognition software, language translation, and semantic search facilities that Google, Facebook and many apps use today.
Training a neural network so that it “learns” works similarly to establishing connections between neurons and strengthening those connections in the brain. Computationally, this learning process can be parallelised, so it can be accelerated using GPU hardware. This machine learning requires examples to learn from, and this also lends itself to easy acceleration using parallel processing. With open source machine learning tools such as the Torch code library and GPU-packed servers, neural network training can be achieved many times faster on GPU than CPU-based systems.
Are GPUs the future of computing?
For decades we have become accustomed to the version of Moore’s law which holds that computer processing power will roughly double every two years. This has mainly been achieved through miniaturisation, which leads to less heat generation, which allows CPUs to be run faster. However, this “free lunch” has come to an end as semiconductors have been miniaturised close to silicon’s theoretical, elemental limits. Now, the only credible route to greater speeds is through greater parallelism, as demonstrated with the rise of multi-core CPUs over the last ten years. GPUs, however, have a head start.
Besides AI, GPUs are also used for simulations of fluid and aerodynamics, physics engines and brain simulations, to name just a few examples. Some of the world’s most powerful computers, such as the Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, currently the world’s second fastest supercomputer, are built on Nvidia’s GPU accelerators, while competitors include Intel’s Phi parallel co-processor that powers Tianhe-2, the world’s fastest supercomputer. However, not all problems are easily parallelisable, and programming for these environments is difficult.
Arguably, the future of computing, at least for AI, may lie in the even more radically different neuromorphic computers. IBM’s True North chip is one, with another under development by the €1 billion Human Brain Project. In this model, rather than simulating neural networks with a network of many processors, the chip is the neural network: the individual silicon transistors on the chip form circuits that process and communicate via electrical signals – not dissimilar to neurons in biological brains.
Proponents argue that these systems will help us to finally scale up our neural networks to the size and complexity of the human brain, bringing AI to the point where it can rival human intelligence. Others, particularly brain researchers, are more cautious – there may well be a lot more to the human brain than just its high number and density of neurons.
Either way, it’s likely that what we now learn about the brain will be through the very supercomputers that are designed to ape the way it works.
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Published: Jan 1950
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The properties of weldments at low temperatures are of interest for a number of reasons. One is the use of welded joints at low temperatures and the need for information as to how they will stand up in service. A second reason for testing weldmentsat low temperatures is that one can thereby simulate conveniently the effect of combined stresses, such as may exist in welded structures in service. It is well known that lowering the temperature of testing will have the same effect on the relation between flow stress and fracture stress in ferritic steels as will increasing the rate of loading or increasing the severity of constraint in the specimen. The result of any of these is to lower the ductility and increase the tendency of the steel to fail in a brittle fashion. The discussion here will be limited to a brief survey of past work and some experimental results obtained at Lehigh University. It should be stated first that the effects of low temperature observed in unwelded steels can be expected to occur in weldments as well. The effect of welding is usually to intensify these effects. Except in mild steels, the welding operation is apt to be accompanied by an impairment of ductility and notch resistance in the steel. Thus, if the steel to be welded is of poor quality and properties, welding cannot be expected to improve it, but rather may introduce additional difficulties. In order to reveal the low-temperature properties of steel, suitable testing methods are required, as the other papers of this Symposium have indicated.
Stout, Robert D.
Associate Professor of Metallurgy, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa
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The Rise of Political Economy as a Science
The classical age of economics was marked by an intense interest in scientific methodology. It was, moreover, an age when science and philosophy were not yet distinct disciplines, and the educated were polymaths. The classical economists were acutely aware that suitable methods had to be developed before a body of knowledge could be deemed philosophical or scientific. They did not formulate their methodological views in a vacuum, but drew on a rich collection of philosophical ideas. Consequently, issues of methodology were at the heart of political economys rise as a science. The classical era of economics opened under Adam Smith with political economy understood as an integral part of a broader system of social philosophy; by the end, it had emerged via J. S. Mill as a "separate science", albeit one still inextricably tied to the other social sciences and to ethics.The Rise of Political Economy as a Science opens with a review of the epistemological ideas that inspired the classical economists: the methodological principles of Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Newton, Locke, Hume, Stewart, Herschel, and Whewell. These principles were influential not just in the development of political economy, but in the rise of social science in general. The author then examines science in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, with a particular emphasis on the all-important concept of induction. Having laid the necessary groundwork, she proceeds to a history and analysis of the methodologies of four economist-philosophers--Adam Smith, Robert Malthus, David Ricardo, and J. S. Mill--selected for their historical importance as founders of economics and for their common Scottish intellectual lineage. Concluding remarks put classical methodology into a broader historical perspective.
—Robert Heilbroner, New School for Social Research
—Mark Blaug, Visiting Professor of Economics, University of Exeter, UK
—D. Wade Hands, Professor of Economics, University of Puget Sound
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Aristotle was born in Stagita, Greece in 384 B.C. Though he was neither Christian nor Jew, his thinking has had an influence on the Christian church. He was a student of Plato.
Aristotle tried to teach on every area of knowledge in a logical and systematic fashion. He emphasized rationality and observation in determining truth. He taught by walking with his students and asking them questions. He had a brilliant mind and he is one of the most influential people of Western history. Since Christianity originated in the Middle East and traveled through the Roman Empire, the indirect effects of Aristotelian thought using logic, questions and answers, etc., were the cultural context in which much of the New Testament was written. He was studied heavily by Thomas Aquinas, the great Medieval theologian of the Catholic Church.
Aristotle taught that God was pure mind and that we are imperfect creatures who cannot completely understand God. "Aristotle believed that the relations between man and God are so different because man has imperfections and hindrances that do not exist in the perfect God. God, according to Aristotle, goes through no processes as man does. He is pure mind, which can contemplate in a single instant. He is the one full and perfect being. God does not go out to the world, but the world cannot help going out to him. He is the necessary goal of perfection, and he moves as the object of desire. According to Aristotle, God is the Unmoved Mover.1
Aristotle was the teacher of Alexander the Great who conquered the Mediterranean world and introduced the Greek language, philosophy, and thought. It was in this setting that the Roman empire arose and within that Empire that Judaism abided in Israel until finally Christianity was born.
He fled Athens after being accused of lack of reverence to the gods. He went to Chalcis and later died there.
- 1. HDouglas, J. D., Comfort, P. W., & Mitchell, D. (1997, c1992). Who's who in Christian history. Illustrated lining papers. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House.
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Leishmaniasis (Kala azar), is a group of diseases caused by one type of protozoan that are endemic in 88 countries with an estimated 350 million people at risk of infection. The overall prevalence of the leishmaniasis is estimated at 12 million cases with 5.5 million new visceral leishmaniasis cases per year. In recent years there have been major endemics of visceral leishmaniasis with high loss of life in Southern and Eastern India, Bangladesh and Northeast Brazil.
The infection of leishmaniasis are related to environmental changes such as deforestation, building of dams, new irrigation schemes, urbanization and migration of non-immune people to endemic areas. It seriously hampers productivity and vitally of the socioeconomic progress.
Leishmaniasis / HIV co- infection:
Leishmaniasis is spreading in several areas of the world as a result of epidemiological changes which sharply increase the over lapping of AIDS and visceral leishmaniasis. So far, 3 countries worldwide have reported co-infections of leishmaniasis with HIV.
Intravenous drug users have been identified as the main population at risk.
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Effect of elevated piston temperature on combustion chamber deposit growth full repor
Effect of elevated piston temperature on combustion chamber deposit growth ppt.PPT (Size: 485.5 KB / Downloads: 220)
Effect of elevated piston temperature on combustion chamber deposit growth report.doc (Size: 734.5 KB / Downloads: 170)
Combustion chamber deposits are found in all internal combustion engines. When fuel and air burn inside an internal combustion engine, deposits form on the walls inside the cylinder. The factors influencing deposit formation are changes in fuel composition, coolant temperatures, engine speed and load, and spark timing. One way to discourage deposit formation is to prevent condensation. Raising the wall temperature prevent condensation. With increased wall temperature, hydrocarbon condensation tendencies decreases and thus deposit formation is reduced.
In these attempts is made to investigate the effects of wall temperature on deposit growth, without the use of ceramic coatings on the combustion chamber surfaces. Also methods for monitoring combustion chamber deposit growth as a function of metal wall temperature are described. In this, a composite piston design was developed to control and monitor surface temperature. The design incorporated ceramic wafers of varying thickness encapsulated between a metal cap and piston top. The cap was fitted with surface-mounted thermocouples to measure wall temperatures. An accelerated test cycle was used to accumulate deposits. There is a description of methodology employed in raising the wall temperature and monitoring deposit growth. After stabilization of deposit growth a physical and chemical analysis of deposits from different locations were also conducted.
Combustion chamber deposits are recognized as a major contributor to the deterioration of SI engine performance . Their build-up leads to reduced air mass flow rates, increased charge emissions, and increased tendency for knock. The primary mechanism of formation of fuel deposits is condensation of the high boiling point components, such as aromatics, and their carbonization while in the liquid phase. The amount of air mixed with the fuel has been found to be critical to the deposit growth in engines. Therefore, oxidative fuel pyrolysis better describes the mechanism of deposit formation. With increased wall temperature, hydrocarbon condensation tendencies decrease, and therefore deposit formation is reduced. Deposits on hot surfaces, such as the exhaust valve of the spark plug, are primarily composed of oil-based inorganic compounds. Deposit growth in the end gas region, the region with the coolest surfaces, is typically higher than in any other portion of the combustion chamber, end chamber deposits also have lower oxygen and higher carbon content than elsewhere in the combustion chamber.
The purpose of this experiment is to investigate the effects of wall temperature on deposit growth, without the use of ceramic coatings on the combustion chamber surfaces. This study monitors in -situ combustion chamber deposit growth, as a function of metal wall temperature, and attempts to determine the critical wall temperature for no growth a composite piston design was developed to control and monitor surface temperature. The design incorporated ceramic wafers of varying thickness encapsulated between a metal cap and piston top. The cap was fitted with surface-mounted thermocouples to measure wall temperatures. An accelerated test cycle was used to accumulate deposits. This also contains the methodology employed in raising the wall temperature and monitoring deposit growth.
COMBUSTION CHAMBER DEPOSITS
Combustion chamber deposits are found in essentially all internal combustion engines. Their influence can be seen in many aspects of engine performance. Deposits form on all engine surfaces that are in contact with fuel or fuel air mixture at any point in the cycle. The mechanism by which these deposits form from fuel are not well understood .the effect of deposit include increased engine NO emissions, octane requirement increase and changes in flame speed and thermal efficiency.
The factors influencing deposit formation are changes in fuel composition, coolant temperatures, engine speed and load, and spark timing. These factors affect the rate of deposit formation and removal and the structure of deposits. To create a deposit control strategy needed is the magnitude and direction of these various effects over a wide range of fuel types and engine conditions.
The chemical and thermo physical properties deposits depend on fuel and oil composition, wall temperature, engine operating conditions, and engine design. The carbon to hydrogen (C/H) ration of the deposits indicates the relative proportion of fuel and oil contribution to the deposits. A low carbon to hydrogen ratio indicates deposit constituents are mostly oil based, and originate from oil cracking on the wall. A high carbon to hydrogen ratio indicates the deposits are primarily fuel derived. In general, deposits collected from engines that operate under normal conditions are primarily fuel derived.
OCTANE REQUIREMENT INCREASE
The actual octane requirement of a vehicle is called octane number requirement. A new engine require a fuel of octane number 6-9 lower than the same engine running for a long time. This octane requirement increase is due to the formation of a mixture of organic and inorganic deposits resulting from fuel and the lubricant. When using unleaded fuel two-thirds of the octane requirement is caused by deposit accumulation in the end gas region.
EFFECT OF COMBUSTION CHAMBER DEPOSITS
The effect of combustion chamber deposits include octane requirement increases, decreased volumetric efficiency, increased thermal efficiency due to insulation of the cylinder, combustion chamber deposit interference(CCDI) and combustion chamber flaking.
As deposits build up on the combustion chamber surfaces, the minimum fuel octane number needed to avoid engine knock increases. In modern engines this increase is approximately 4 to 5 octane numbers on average as the deposits build up to their equilibrium thickness. Combustion chamber deposit interference is the result of physical contact between deposits on the piston top and cylinder head. Combustion chamber deposit flaking causes low compression pressures due to improper sealing of the valves.
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND PROCEDURE
THE ENGINE CONFIGURATION
The investigation was performed using a Waukesha, single cylinder, split head, variable compression ratio, Cooperative Fuel Research (CFR) engine. Engine motoring and loading was handled by a General Electric DC dynamometer with 20 hp motoring and 35 hp absorbing capacity. The CFRâ„¢s intake manifold was modified to incorporate a throttle body in order to regulate engine load. An active magnetic pickup, mounted in close proximity to the dynamometer shaft, was used to measure engine speed. The dynamometer was controlled with a Dyne Systems DYN-LOC IV controller
The fuel delivery system was converted from the standard CFR system to a modern electronic fuel injection setup which was comprised of an automotive fuel fitter and pump, along with a Bosch fuel injector and pressure regulator. The fuel injector was installed in the in take manifold where the CFR injector was normally fitted. The ignition system consisted of a single pole, ignition coil and a TFI module that was used to trigger coil discharge. A fuel/spark controller was developed to control timing of the fuel injector and initiate coil discharge so as to achieve desired fuel flow rate and spark timing.
Engine oil and water jacket cooling was provided by tube type heat exchangers. The jacket water consisted of a mixture of approximately 80 percent water and 20 percent ethylene glycol. Engine oil temperature and jacket water temperatures were measured with K-type thermocouples. During testing, oil temperature in the crankcase sump was maintained at 90± 20 ºC. The jacket water temperature stabilized to 100 ºC in 15 minutes after starting the engine.
Air flow was measured with an ASME 5/8 inch metering orifice with flange mounted pressure taps. Fuel flow rate was measured with a calibrated burette Cylinder pressure was measured with a water cooled piezoelectric transducer mounted in the knock sensor hole of he head. The transducer was cleaned and covered with high temperature silicone RTV.
CONTROL AND MEASUREMENT OF PISTON SURFACE TEMPERATURES
Deposit growth was investigated on the top surface of the piston, which typically accounts for two-thirds of the deposit growth in the combustion chamber.A composite piston design was developed to control and monitor surface temperature. The design incorporated a ceramic wafer between an added iron cap and the standard iron piston top. The ceramic wafer was fabricated from a glass/ceramic material with low conductivity of 1.38 W/m. ºC, and high compression strength of 344 Mpa, and excellent machinability. The wafer measured 76.2mm in diameter, and 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0 mm in thickness. By varying the thickness of the ceramic wafer, the surface temperature of the cap could be increased from its baseline value. Predictions ware generated through a one-dimensional heat transfer analysis of the composite piston design, based on an assumed transient heat flux on its combustion surface.
A series of caps was machined from ferromagnetic iron, with each cap having a matching pocket to a seat a given ceramic wafer. For all caps, the distance between the top surface and its pocket was maintained at 4 mm for structural support. The cap was secured to the standard piston by countersunk fasteners. The CFR cast iron piston was used because its material closely matched the piston cap material. Since the iron piston has four compression rings and only one oil ring, the connecting rod oil jet, which is normally used for cooling the pistonâ„¢s underside, was sealed off to avoid excess oil consumption in the combustion chamber.
Surface-mounted thermocouples were mounted flush with the cap surface to allow monitoring of its temperature during engine operation. Four constantan wires were affixed to the cap at 36.5 mm radially from the iron wire. The J-type thermocouple wire used was 24 gauge and has a peak temperature range of 700 ºC. The wires were fitted in the cap through counter-bored and counter sunk holes. The wires were bonded to the cap by welding the wire end into the countersunk holes.
TRANSMISSION OF ELECTRICAL SIGNALS-
Due to the harsh environment of high accelerations and temperatures, the piston assembly was meticulously wired to insure electrical continuity between the capâ„¢s thermocouples and the connecting road. Augat electrical connectors which forming good electrical contact with 24-gage copper wire, were placed in the piston top to serve as an electrical socket for the thermocouple wires. Standard 26-gauge copper wire, which was secured to the connector with silver solder, was used to continue transmission of the electric signals. An RTD was placed next to a protruding Augat connector on the pistonâ„¢s underside to establish the reference junction temperature. The RTD and all wires were bonded to the piston with epoxy.
A stainless steel band was used to provide a path between the piston and the connecting rod. The band was mechanically secured to the pistonâ„¢s skirt and the connecting rod. Finely stranded copper wires were guided along the bandâ„¢s outside surface and held with high-strength RTV and segmented high-strength heat shrink tubing. After passing under two aluminum plates which were fastened to the connecting rodâ„¢s shank, the wires were eventually routed to the end cap of the connecting rod. In order to establish electrical continuity of the thermocouple signals from the end cap of the connecting rod to an external data acquisition system, a mechanical telemetry linkage system was designed. The system works on the concept of classical four bar linkage. The longest possible wire life was achieved by minimizing angular deflection and by maximizing the transmission angle between adjoining linkage members. This reduced bending of wires at linkage joints, thus promoting longer wire life.
A transient test cycle, appropriate for a single-cylinder engine, was designed for the test The test schedule was broken down into four and one half hour test cycles, followed by engine cool down to ambient temperature. Within each test cycle, a repeated fifteen minute test segment was conducted. One and one half minutes were spent at idle, thirteen minutes at low load, and one half minute at a high load. At the beginning of each test, the engine was warmed up at 800 rpm for twenty minutes.
The four and one half hour test cycle was repeated as many times as needed for establishing well defined growth patterns. For each four and one half hour test cycle, fast response, pressure and temperature data were recorded every half hour during the 1800 rpm segment. Additional measurements included airflow, oil and cooling water temperatures, exhaust temperature, and intake pressure. Fuel consumption measurements were documented periodically during testing.
At the end of testing with a given cap, the cylinder head was removed, and the deposit thickness on the head, valves, bore, ports and piston were recorded. Deposits were removed from the cylinder head, valves and ports. Then the valves were lapped and the engine was reassembled for further testing. All piston configurations were tested with a base premium unleaded fuel without reformer bottoms. The 3 mm cap test was repeated with the unleaded fuel doped with reformer bottoms.
IN-SITU MONITORING OF DEPOSIT GROWTH
A technique for in-situ monitoring of deposit growth is through measurement of local surface temperature using thermocouples affixed to the combustion surface. As deposits build up on the surface and form an insulation barrier, heat flow is reduced from the combustion gases to the wall. The restriction in heat flow reduces the wallâ„¢s surface temperature which is measured by the surface-mounted thermocouple. The rate of change of wall surface temperature is thus indicative of the rate of deposit growth. The surface temperature has been found to decrease almost linearly until deposit growth has stabilized, from then on, the surface temperature remains relatively constant.
Temperature gradients and stabilized growth periods have been found to be greatly influenced by the fuelâ„¢s hydrocarbon structure. Fuels with aromatic hydrocarbons, toluene and xylene, measured higher surface temperature gradients, during the first three hours of testing, than fuels containing paraffins, like iso-octane. The higher the boiling point of aromatic components, the faster the deposit growth, and the lower the measured wall temperature
Initially the baseline cap was run for a 42 hour deposit growth test. Recorded temperature histories exhibited two distinct temperature discontinuities at the 10th and 22nd hour. The first temperature discontinuity was due to the thermocouple wires and connectors being coated with a carbonaceous film, as a result of combustion gases penetrating into crevices of the contact surface between piston and cap. The gap was seated with a thin layer of high temperature RTV applied on the lower surface of the cap. The second temperature discontinuity was associated with vibration in the flat head fasteners. This was corrected by the use of flat head lock washers with the fasteners. After this, the first 12hours of the baseline test were repeated.
Regional differences in the measured rate of temperature decay are attributed to differences in deposit composition and thermal properties at the different locations. There is an accelerated deposit build-up in the regions surrounding thermocouples 3 and 4 (under the intake valve). The differences are driven by regional variations in wall surface temperature and changes in the C/H composition of deposits. The surface-averaged wall temperature of the baseline cap decreased linearly over time, at a rate of 0.38oC/hr.
EFFECT OF ELEVATED PISTON TEMPERATURE ON DEPOSIT GROWTH
TEST USING UNLEADED FUEL
Caps insulated with a1, 2 and 3 mm ceramic wafer were tested with the base unleaded fuel without reformer bottoms. An overall test period of 18hours was used to define deposit growth patterns. Local and averaged surface temperature histories of the insulated caps are compared with those of the baseline cap. Insulating the piston cap raised the initial temperature of the surface from an average of 215 ºC to 317 ºC for 3 mm cap .Elevating the initial temperature of the cap reduced the rate of decay with time, from “0.38 ºC/hr (baseline) to 0.02 ºC/hr for the last 11hours of the test with the 3mm insulated cap. This shows an overall decrease in deposit growth with elevated piston temperature
The discontinuity in the surface temperature gradients of the 3mm cap is that light engine knock was experienced after 6hour of testing with the unleaded fuel without additives. Spark timing was then retarded by three crank angle degrees to eliminate knock, and the test was continued. A thermocouple histories in the 3mm insulated cap shows surface temperatures to decrease at a rapid rate, particularly in the end gas region of thermocouples 2 & 3, between the second and sixth hour. This decrease indicates accelerated early deposit growth, with the largest concentration in the end gas region. Deposit growth causes an increase in gas temperature, which leads to knock. The high thermal stresses crated by the knocking condition cause deposit flaking, or random removal of deposits. Once flaking occurred, deposit accumulation on the exposed surfaces was retarded. A deposit film remained on the capâ„¢s surface leads to periodic reoccurrence of knock and flaking, this shows the observed fluctuations in surface temperature after the sixth hour of testing.
There is a slightly positive slopes for the recorded temperature change at locations 2 and 3. This is attributed to , an inability to take data during the first one hour of testing, when a relatively large deposit accumulation occur at those locations, and difficulties during the first four-and-a- half hour test cycle. Data with the second test cycle establish negative (or close to zero) slopes. A little deposit growth is experienced with the 2 mm insulated cap, by an average rate of temperature decay of 0.06 ºC/hr. With further increase in cap insulation, the mean temperature gradient during the last seven hours of testing was “0.02 ºC/hr, indicating negligible deposit growth with the 3mm insulated cap. An average wall temperature of 320 ºC identifies a critical point above which the base unleaded fuel does not form deposits.
Results through in-situ monitoring of deposits using unleaded fuel yielded a critical surface temperature of 3200C.
TESTS USING FUELS WITH REFORMER BOTTOMS
Reformer bottoms are large hydrocarbon molecules which have poor oxidation characteristics, and thus enhance deposit growth rate. This is also affected by potential changes in the thermal properties of fuel deposits.
Testing with the reformer bottoms fuel was conducted for only eleven hours. The average wall temperatures for the reformer bottoms test were compiled from thermocouples 1 and 3.No knock occurred during testing of the 3 mm insulated cap with the reformer bottoms fuel. The linear decay in the average temperature of the piston surface (at a rate of 0.350 C/hr) shows a steady deposit growth. Reformer bottoms can promote deposit growth under operating conditions at which no deposits are formed with the base fuel.
The wall surface temperature for the reformer bottoms test was approximately 8 ºC lower than that for the base fuel test, after one hour of testing. This difference can be accounted for by a 4 o C lower inducted air temperature for the reformer bottoms test. The other differences are a result of differences in thermal properties of deposits from the two fuels. The deposit layer from the reformer bottoms fuel experiences a lower temperature swing during the cycle, and a lower peak surface temperature, this also leads to a lower mean wall temperature and thus increased deposit growth. The deposit growth is effectively controlled by the temperature at the deposit surface. The temperature difference (5 0C) between the peak temperatures at the gas-exposed surface of deposits from unleaded fuels with and without reformer patterns, shows differences in deposit growth patterns.
TEST ANALYSIS OF DEPOSITS
A physical analysis of deposits is important in fully characterizing deposit growth patterns. At the end of each test schedule, overall observations were made concerning the color and texture of deposits in each of the four cap quadrants. In addition deposit thickness measurements were made with a Titan ZDM-1 microscope. This information was useful in correlating deposit growth and change in wall restricted within a square region defined by the thermocouple locations. The exact locations on the cap surface where deposit thickness measurements were taken.
Deposit thickness measurements are taken for various caps. At the baseline 12 hour test deposits in cap regions 1, 2, and 4 appeared as dark down in color with a sooty texture, while region 3 deposits had a lighter shade of brown and a crusty texture. After 18 hours of testing, the 1 mm insulated cap was covered with a deposit coating of a lighter shade of brown. In regions 1 & 4, deposits were observed to be denser and more sooty than those in regions 2 & 3, the regions 2 & 3 had a gritty texture. Compared to the 1 mm insulated cap which collected an average deposit thickness of 6.28 m, the 2mm cap had a reduced deposit growth (1.83 µm on average), particularly in region 2 where no deposits had accumulated . The deposits on the remaining three quadrants of the cap had a light- brown metallic color with a gritty texture. The 3mm cap exhibited almost negligible deposit accumulation after 18 hours of testing. In regions 3 & 4, the cap surface seen under a rough and gritty texture whereas regions 1 & 2 were covered by a thin, smooth, brownish white deposit film.
The exhaust valve maintained a white color in all cases, at the end of each test with the unleaded fuel (without reformer bottoms).The intake valve color changed from a dark brown to a light gray as the piston surface temperature increased. At the end of the 3 mm insulated cap test, the exhaust valve had a clear evidence of deposit flaking. This is due to high surface temperature as well as engine knock.
The average deposit thickness was found to decrease at 3.38 µm per millimeter of ceramic insulation. Low temperature regions, such as under the intake valve, were not always found to be covered under the thickest deposit coating. Thicker deposits accumulated on the cap for the longer test period. After 42 hours more deposits were found under the intake valve (region 3). Deposit flaking under the intake valve, where there is a tendency for large accumulation of deposits, resulted in removal of excessive deposit build-up with a long test period.
After 11 hours of testing with the reformer bottoms fuel, the 3mm cap accumulated a deposit layer with an average thickness of 0.47 µm, 55% more than the layer accumulated after testing the unleaded fuel without additives for 18 hours. Aside from the poor oxidation properties of the reformer bottoms, the differences in these growth patterns are attributed to differences in thermal properties of the two types of deposits. Deposits from the reformer bottoms fuel were primarily centered in regions 3 & 4, as well as the edges of regions 1 & 2. They were identified with a dark brown color, and a rough, sooty texture. The intake valve from the reformer bottoms test accumulated a dark brown deposit layer. The exhaust valve appeared to maintain a light brown appearance. Deposit flaking was not found on this component.
Insulating the piston cap had a noticeable impact on deposit characteristics. The deposits were found to progress from a dark brown color with a sooty texture ( baseline cap ) to light-brown pigment with a gritty texture (3 mm cap ) Deposit growth on the cylinder head, showed similar trends. Deposits on the 3 mm insulated cap from the reformer bottoms fuel test exhibited comparable characteristics to those formed on the baseline cap using unleaded fuel without reformer bottoms.
A carbon to hydrogen (C/H) ratio analysis indicate the relative proportion of fuel and oil in the deposits, as well as the mechanism of deposit formation. The analysis reveals that deposits in the end gas region have the highest fuel content, as a result of deposition of unburned hydrocarbon products on the end gas region surfaces. The region between the spark plug and the intake valve has lower fuel content than the end gas region, and higher oil content. Since the former region runs approximately 16 ºC hotter than the latter region, this behavior can be attributed to fuel vaporization on the higher temperature surfaces. The deposits collected near the cap™s edge in the end gas region present the highest oil content. Excess oil on the cylinder liner accumulates on the latter region of cap during the piston™s travel.
Mole fraction of carbon and hydrogen in the deposits collected under the exhaust valve portion of the end gas region (region 2) for each cap configuration tested with unleaded fuel without additives, shows an increase in the concentration of carbon within the deposits. The C/H ratio decreases with increased surface temperature. As wall surface temperature elevate, more oil contributes to deposits. A decreasing C/H ratio with increasing wall temperature indicates that deposit growth primarily originates from oil cracking on the wall. Deposits collected on high temperature, combustion chamber walls were composed mostly of inorganic compounds, such as those preset in engine lubrication. Deposits collected on cooler surfaces have been composed primarily of carbon.
CORRELATION OF TEMPERATURE DECAY AND DEPOSIT GROWTH
An analysis was performed that, measured changes in temperature over a given test period were normalized with respect to the measured deposit thickness at the corresponding location. The all four thermocouple locations were considered for the base unleaded fuel tests with the baseline metal cap (for 12 hours) and the 1mm insulated cap (for 18 hours). For all except one case, there appears to be a strong correlation between measured temperature decay and associated deposit thickness.
The effective conductivity of the deposits collected at a given location is nearly constant during the accumulation period. This holds true as long as there is no drastic change in local composition of deposits while increasing piston operating temperature. For the case of the 1mm cap, the region between the spark plug and the intake valve (region 4) progressively accumulated deposits of lower fuel content and higher oil content, with increasing piston temperatures.
When fuel and air burn inside an internal combustion engine, deposits form on the walls inside the cylinder. Deposits form on all engine surfaces that are in contact with fuel or fuel-air mixture at any point in the cycle. These deposits have significant effects. The deposit layer on the cylinder wall prevents the coolant that runs through the engine from bringing down the temperature inside the cylinder. Due to the increased temperatures, parts of the fuel-air mixture may ignite before the flame front reaches them, causing the engine to knock. Another effect of the raised temperatures is increased production of pollutants such as nitrogen oxides inside the engine cylinder. One way to discourage deposit formation is to prevent condensation. Raising the wall temperature prevent condensation. With increased wall temperature, hydrocarbon condensation tendencies decreases and thus deposit formation is reduced. Deposits on hot surfaces such as exhaust valves or ceramic of the spark plug are composed of oil based inorganic compounds. Deposit growth in the end gas region (region with coolest surfaces) is typically higher than in any other portion of combustion chamber.
Disadvantage of increasing wall temperature is that, if defects the overall goal of keeping cylinder temperatures down.
Combustion chamber deposits are found in essentially all internal combustion engines. When fuel and air burn inside an internal combustion engine, deposits form on the walls inside the cylinder. Factors that influencing deposit formation are changes in fuel composition, coolant temperatures, engine speed and load, and spark timing. These affect the rate of deposit formation and removal and the structure of the deposits. Deposits form on all engine surfaces that are in contact with fuel or fuel-air mixture at any point in the cycle. These deposits have significant effects. The deposit layer on the cylinder wall prevents the coolant that runs through the engine from bringing down the temperature inside the cylinder. Due to the increased temperatures, parts of the fuel-air mixture may ignite before the flame front reaches them, causing the engine to knock. Another effect of the raised temperatures is increased production of pollutants such as nitrogen oxides inside the engine cylinder.
One way to avoid deposit formation is to prevent condensation. Raising the wall temperature prevent condensation. With increased wall temperature, hydrocarbon condensation tendencies decreases and thus deposit formation is reduced. The unleaded fuel would not condense into a carbonaceous film once a critical wall temperature is reached. Reformer bottoms yielded a 55 percentage increase in deposit thickness compared to base unleaded fuel. This difference was due to poor oxidation properties of reformer bottoms. Elevating wall temperature increases the carbon to hydrogen ratio in the composition of deposits. Deposits in the end gas region are mostly fuel derived.
Disadvantage of increasing wall temperature is that, if defects the overall goal of keeping cylinder temperatures down.
Christopher Forssen oâ„¢Brien , Combustion chamber deposit research.
Energy laboratory research And related activities at the MIT , Inside engine cylinders; cleaner walls for lower emissions, higher efficiency
Chevron U S A , Gasoline vehicles deposit control.
The engineering society for advancing mobility land sea air and space, Effect of elevated piston temperature on combustion chamber deposit growth SAE Technical paper series ,940948,1994
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Alright, I have questions about SALT in fresh water tanks. So I figured I wasn't the only one and would help answer for others. Hopefully this will get populated and become a sticky.
Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Doc Wellfish's Fresh Water Aquarium Salt
A small amount of this all-natural “salt” for freshwater fish will reduce electrolyte loss caused by disease and stress, and promote healthy gill function. It does not evaporate and is not filtered out. Also ideal for Goldfish bowls.
Here is a resource for the salt at about.com:
From above resource:
When To Use Salt
Nitrite Poisoning - The addition of one half ounce of salt per gallon of water is beneficial in the prevention of nitrite poisoning in a newly set up tank.
Keep in mind that scaleless fish cannot tolerate much, if any, salt. Parasites – Many parasites can be effectively treated with the use of salt, particularly Costia infestations.
When Not To Use Salt
Live plants - If you have a tank with live plants, avoid using salt. Plants can be damaged with a relatively low dosage of salt, which is one reason its best to treat sick fish in a hospital tank rather than your regular tank.
Scaleless fish – Scaleless fish, particularly cordydoras, are very sensitive to salt. Even a small amount could harm them. Tetras are also fairly sensitive to salt. Contrary to popular view, it is not advisable to add salt to your aquarium on an ongoing basis unless the fish require brackish water conditions.
Performing a Dip (How To: Dissolving the Salt)
When treating parasites, a dip is the method of choice. Place 4 teaspoons of salt in a clean bucket, then slowly add one gallon of water from the aquarium, swirling it to dissolve the salt. Once the salt is completely dissolved, place the fish in the bucket for five to thirty minutes. Observe the fish closely, and if it exhibits any signs of distress, return it to the original aquarium immediately.
Performing a Bath
A bath is useful in treating an entire tank for prevention of nitrite poisoning, or for reduction of stress.
For stress treatment, measure out 1 teaspoon of salt for each gallon if water in the tank. Using a small container, dissolve the salt in a small quantity of water taken from the tank. Once it is completely dissolved, slowly add the solution to the to the tank.
For treatment and prevention of nitrite poisoning, measure out 3 teaspoon of salt for each gallon if water in the tank. Using a small container, dissolve the salt in a small quantity of water taken from the tank. Once it is completely dissolved, slowly add the solution to the to the tank.
When using bath treatments, weekly water changes of 25% should begin one week after initial treatment. Do not add additional salt once bath treatments have begun.
That's a nice write-up.:wink2: Besides, we can't be repeating most instructions so this deserves to be stick.
Feel free to post more of your opinions, people.:)
Moved to a more appropriate section.
so i shouldnt add any salt to my tank? i have danios, corys and a betta, and the betta has ich, i have the proper medication from the other stickys, but wasnt sure if the salt would be safe. i could have hurt my poor little corys!
gotta love threads like this.
On another note, I am not a fan of aquarium salt for something less expensive such as table salt.:wink2: It's your choice. Either way, table salt is still cheaper. Why people worry about the iodine content is beyond me.
The information posted above still has its validity but aquarium salt is just in my opinion a waste of money when you have something less expensive sitting around your table.
personally i think marine salt works the best.
Epsom salt vs aquarium salt
I hear that epsom salt does not contain sodium which is harmful to fish that are bloated and trying to relieve pressure due too much sodium. Is that correct? I really am confused on the issue of salt, on the one hand it is very good for the gills and for healing (which is what i need) but on the other i don't want to increase the bloating discomfort if sodium really is the cause. Any help would be appreciated! :|
The box said 1 TBSP for every 5 US gallons. I'm trying to get rid of Hydra's. Is this dosage fine?
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|Geology of the County|
In Christian County, water is obtained from consolidated sedimentary rocks of Mississippian through Pennsylvanian age and from unconsolidated sediments of Quaternary age. Geologists call the oldest rocks found at the surface in Christian County the St. Louis Limestone. The most common rocks in Christian County are Mississippian limestones, which were deposited 350 million years ago in the bottom of a warm, shallow sea. At the end of the Mississippian Period, 320 million years ago, the seas receded and sediments of the Pennsylvanian Period were deposited. The warm climate of the Pennsylvanian allowed extensive forests and great coastal swamps to form at the edges of water bodies. Marine waters advanced and receded many times, which produced many layers of sandstone, shale, and coal. Vegetation of all sorts fell into the water and was buried under blankets of sediments, which over long geologic time were compressed into coal. The nonvegetative sediments such as sand, clay, and silt were compressed into sandstone and shale. Over the last million years, unconsolidated Quaternary sediments have been deposited along the larger streams and rivers.
Geologic Formations in the County
Coals, sandstones, and shales
Interbedded limestones, sandstones, and shales
For more information, see the definitions of geologic terms and rock descriptions, a geologic map of Christian County, a summary of the geology of Kentucky, and a discussion of fossils and prehistoric life in Kentucky.
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The Modular Robotic Architecture was developed by SSC San Diego as a generic platform control system offering developers a standard set of software and hardware tools that could be used to quickly design modular robotic prototypes with minimum start-up overhead (Smurlo & Laird, 1990). The concept facilitates customization of a testbed system by providing sensor, actuator, and processing modules that can be configured on demand as required by the particular needs of the application being addressed. The ability to later accept newer modules of increasing sophistication provides for evolutionary growth potential, ensuring maximum effective service life before the hardware becomes obsolete.
The ModBot is an example of a mobile robot implemented under this modular concept, employing several independent modules of varying intelligence and sophistication connected together in a generalized distributed network. The platform is made up of a detachable base with accompanying power source and various sensor, actuator, and processing modules. Each of these modules enables the robot to obtain and process different information about its surroundings.
The Collision Avoidance Sonar Module is active whenever the robot is in motion. It continuously looks for obstacles within a predefined distance and reports back to the High-Level Processing Module for appropriate action if an object is detected. The Near-Infrared Proximity Sensor Module is another means of determining if objects are in close proximity to the robot. This ring contains 11 Banner diffuse-mode optical proximity sensors facing the forward 180 degrees, each one having a range of approximately 3 feet. This module is used to complement data obtained by the Collision Avoidance Sonar Module. The High-Level Processing Module, housing a WinSystems AT286 computer mounted in a card cage, receives commands from the remote control station. This module uses its internal map representation, as well as information from other modules, to plan and execute a path to the desired destination.
During data transfers, the Control Station Module communicates with the ModBot via the Communications Module. An RS-232 umbilical cable was initially used during the early stages of development and later replaced by an OCI LAWN spread-spectrum RF link. Some exploratory work was also performed using a full-duplex near-infrared datalink made by STI. The modular nature of the robot allowed the Communications Module to be upgraded without any other reconfiguration necessary to the rest of the ModBot systems.
The flexibility and extendibility of the ModBot architecture have made it a valuable testbed for the pursuit of new ideas and applications involving robot mobility. One of the first was a significantly upgraded version of the robotic security concept carried over from ROBART II. The Intrusion Detection Module is used to detect intruders in the vicinity of the robot and reports the bearing back to a remotely located Control Station Module. The Intrusion Detection Module consists of ultrasonic, passive-infrared, and microwave motion detectors which cover the full 360-degree surrounding area. A video motion detector in this module also receives information from the acoustic and video sensors on the Stereoscopic Pan-and-Tilt Module to determine if an intruder is present. Audio and composite video signals are transmitted back to the operator via two separate analog RF links.
ModBot's most recent role was a testbed for the Robotic Sensor-Motor Transformation research project, applying biological neural modeling to autonomous robotic control. For this application, another central processing module was added, housing an 80486 computer hosting two Intel i860 co-processors, and a 120MB hard disk. Sensory input consists of only data from the video camera and wheel encoders, all other sensory modules were removed. All processing as well as software development takes place on ModBot itself.
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STSAT (Science and Technology Satellite)
The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Satellite Technology Research Center [SaTReC] was founded in 1989 as Korea's first research organization dedicated to education and research in satellite engineering, space science and remote sensing. It was selected in 1990 as an Engineering Research Center by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation, which marked the beginning of space activities in Korea. SaTReC developed: Korea's first two satellites: KITSAT-1, KITSAT-2; Korea's first earth observation satellite: KITSAT-3 (13.5m Multi-spectral GSD); and Korea's first space science satellite: STSAT-1 (Other names: KITSAT-4 or KAISTSAT-4).
Science and Technology Satellite STSAT-1 was launched by Cosmos 3M on Sept. 27, 2003 with the main payload of Far Ultra-violet Imaging Spectrograph (FIMS). STSAT-1, the fourth satellite developed by Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and the first under the Korean national scientific satellite program, was launched into a sun-synchronous orbit at 685 km altitude on September 27, 2003.
The mission of FIMS is to observe universe and aurora. A simple and reliable strategy was adopted in STSAT-1 to synchronize time between On-board Computer(OBC) and FIMS. For the characteristics of STSAT-1, this strategy is devised to maintain reliability of satellite system and to reduce implementation cost by using minimized electronic circuits. Far-ultraviolet IMaging Spectrograph would determine which of the highly contentious global models best describes the behavior of the hot, highly ionized interstellar medium in the Milky Way be creating the first-ever maps of the far-UV sky, including CIV and OVI emission. FIMS would therefore determine the impact of high-mass stars on the surrounding, star-forming ISM, known as "feedback". FIMS would also map superbubble emission, constraining hot gas breakout models, which also determine feedback effects.
While the primary objective of the STSAT-1 mission is to perform spectral sky survey of hot Galactic plasmas with Far Ultra-violet Imaging Spectrograph (FIMS, also known as SPEAR), a set of plasma instruments (Space Physics Package) on board the same spacecraft measures electrons of energies from below 1 eV to about 400 keV over the polar region to study the interaction of precipitating electrons with ambient plasmas. These instruments often operate simultaneously with FIMS which observes nightside auroras with the bandwidth 900 - 1175 A and 1335 - 1750 A, including important atomic oxygen lines and Lyman-Birge-Hopfield (LBH) emissions. The data of simultaneous observation of FIMS with SPP provide useful information on the precipitated electron energy associated with auroras.
FUV emission profiles of airglow and aurora were observed by Far-Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (FIMS) on the Science and Technology SATellite-1 (STSAT-1). The observations which almost were performed in 2004 include the prominent atomic oxygen lines, atomic nitrogen lines and the N2 Lyman-Birge-Hopfield bands. The limb profile in dayside airglow compared with simulation results from Atmospheric Ultraviolet Radiance Integrated Code (AURIC). The spectrum of tropical nightglow was executed for examination about the effects of the energetic neutral particles.
Science Technology Satellite-2 (STSAT-2) has been developed since October 2002 as a sequel mission to KAISTSAT-4 (STSAT-1). STSAT-2 was scheduled to be launched into an ellipsoidal orbit of 300km x 1500 km in December 2005 by the first Korea Satellite Launch Vehicle KSLV-1 from the domestic space center (NARO Space Center).
The objectives of STSAT-2 consist of three missions, which are the domestic development of a low earth orbit 100kg satellite which will be launched by KSLV-1 (Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1), the development of advanced technology for small spacecraft, and the development and operation of world-class space science payloads. STSAT-2 have two payloads: the main payload, DREAM (Dual-channel Radiometer for Earth and Atmosphere Monitoring) and the secondary payload, LRA (Laser Retroreflector Array). The DREAM mission objectives are to acquire brightness temperature of the earth at 23.8 GHz and 37 GHz, and to acquire physical parameters such as cold liquid water and water vapor after post-processing. The mission objective of spacecraft techologies is to develop a thermally, mechanically, electrically stable and radial resistant spacecraft system having high-precision attitude determination and control capability in a high eccentric ellipsoidal orbit.
For spacecraft technology experiments, STSAT-2 has the following instrumentations onboard:
- Pulsed Plasma Thruster (PPT)
- Dual-Head Star Tracker (DHST)
- Fine Digital Sun Sensor (FDSS)
- Compact on-board computer
- High-speed data transmission (10Mbps)
The Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) mission objectives are to determine the more precise orbit of STSAT-2 than possible with S-band tracking data alone, to calibrate the main payload (DREAM), and finally to support the science research such as earth science and geodynamics. SLR technology will provide the unique opportunity to investigate the variations of an ellipsoidal orbit. Additionally, the precise orbit determination (POD) of STSAT-2 can be used to evaluate the performance of the first Korean launcher (KSLV-1).
Anticipated Launch Date: Two quarters (between April and June) of 2009 (STSAT-2A), December 2009 (STSAT-2B)
Expected Mission Duration: Two years
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The photographs were commissioned in 1948 by University of Texas professor George I. Sanchez to illustrate the Study of the Spanish-Speaking People of Texas. Directed by sociologist Lyle Saunders, the multi-year, socioeconomic study aimed to fill substantial gaps in the data then available about the expanding Spanish-speaking population of Texas. Sanchez and Saunders hoped to educate public officials, bureaucrats, and other powerful and influential Texans, as well as the general public.
Sanchez wanted to investigate social aspects of prejudice and discrimination. He chose Saunders to direct the study, assured by his colleague's credentials, previous success in the field, and knowledge of the specific areas to be surveyed. The work of experts in health, housing, education, and labor was to be coordinated and woven into a thorough analysis consisting of many points of view. Sanchez believed that this broad-ranging survey approach would leave no significant aspect of social or economic conditions among the Spanish-speaking people unexamined.
Photographs as Social Documentation
Sanchez made repeated use of photographs in his publications to illustrate and to complement his arguments. His careful and effective selection of images is evident in such publications as Forgotten People: A Study of New Mexicans (1940), and in the 1947 publication "The People": A Study of the Navajo. For "The People", Sanchez borrowed photographs from Milton Snow, a photographer with the Division of Roads of the Navajo Service, and from the U.S. Air Force. For earlier publications, Sanchez had provided his own camera work. These photographs included portraits, panoramic landscapes, as well as still life, architectural, and industrial compositions. In a scrapbook he mounted in 1934, Sanchez displayed photographs he had taken to record the conditions of schools in New Mexico, where he taught for several years before continuing studies for advanced degrees in education.
While serving as consultant for the Inter-American Educational Foundation of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Sanchez also relied on visual images to demonstrate to public officials the effects of segregation on Mexican-American children in the New Mexico school systems. His work with several committees of the federal agency served as the springboard for the Study of the Spanish-Speaking People. In the grant proposal to the General Board of Education which provided the funding, Sanchez said the aim of his study was "to change the pictures of the Spanish-speaking people of Texas that now exist in the minds of...people." 2
1.Saunders to Lee, letter dated December 8, 1948, in the Russell Lee Photographic Collection, Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.
2. A Socio-economic Survey of the Spanish-speaking People of Texas, n.d., in the Russell Lee Photographic Collection, Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.
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20. Health Issues
True or false: Your non-cancer health issues may increase your cancer risk.
True: Many diseases increase a person’s risk of developing one type of cancer or another. For instance, hepatitis B and C increase the risk of developing liver cancer, GERD (gastro-esophageal reflux) increases the risk of esophageal cancer, and inflammatory bowel disease increases the risk of cancer in the area of the GI tract that is affected.
See complete information at www.philly.com/whatsmyrisk.
Join us every day this month for a special project between Philly.com/health and OncoLink. Throughout the month of April, What’s My Risk? will provide a daily fact you may not know about your risk of getting cancer.
What’s My Risk? is a comprehensive program designed to help the user learn about factors that determine their personal risk of many types of cancer and what they can do to decrease that risk. Find out more about Cancer Risk and Prevention.
Begin What’s My Risk? Questionnaire
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Scientists at UC Berkeley have found something unusual: a smattering of anti-matter.
It's only a few atoms of the mysterious substance, but it's enough to pique the interest of researchers around the world.
Anti-matter can destroy regular matter, resulting in a massive explosion, but there's no risk to the Bay area. The 38 atoms of antihydrogen only existed for a tiny fraction of a second, and could barely generate enough power to perceive. Future experiments will generate more antimatter for further analysis, hopefully leading to new discoveries about the creation of the universe.
The Big Bang is thought to have created equal parts of matter and anti-matter, but for some reason the anti-matter is nearly impossible to find. Scientists have known how to create it for many years, but keeping it from vanishing has proven a more difficult challenge.
The key to observing the anti-matter atoms is a chamber of magnets, which holds the antihydrogen in place for just a moment. Now that scientists have successfully stored antimatter -- even just briefly -- they can study how it behaves in gravity and when shot with lasers.
The journal Nature reported that the Berkeley antimatter was short-lived, but since those experiments, scientists have been able to keep the atoms around for much longer: long enough that humans can perceive them. The new discoveries are coming at a fast pace right now, and it's a field of study that's likely to continue producing revelations about our place in the universe in the months to come. It's the first opportunity to examine a number of assumptions, and the findings could give us clues about the creation of the universe.
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The United States now dealt with Indians through the War Department. Considering the Indian as a military threat, Congress established an Indian agent system in 1896. Through this system, they assigned agents to different tribes whose responsibility it was to maintain friendships among the Indians, carry out treaty obligations, and mediate issues over land. They stationed agents, referred to as “Farmers in Charge,” at small posts in different regions of the country. The agent who served at Turtle Mountain was E. W. Brenner. He was headquartered at Fort Totten.
By 1910, a Bureau of Indian Affairs office was established in Belcourt. The Turtle Mountains now had its own agent. The agent handled weekly business, one day of which was set-aside as “Indian Day.”
In 1919, Indian men, who were not citizens, enlisted in large numbers in the World War I. Citizenship was granted to all Indian people with the passage of the Snyder Act in 1924. This piece of legislation became known as the Indian Citizenship Act and granted citizenship status to all Indian people, born within the territorial limits of the United States.
The drought and Great Depression had a devastating impact on all of America. Accustomed to continuous poverty, struggle, and hunger, the impact on Turtle Mountain Chippewa was not as severely felt. Hardworking and resourceful people, the Chippewa adopted farming and gardening. Gardening was a means of maintaining a livelihood after the decline of their traditional occupations of hunting, trapping, and trading. They raised cattle, pigs, and fowl and supported themselves with limited hunting, trapping, and fishing. Through ingenuity, work was found in a variety of areas such as selling berries, trading and bartering, chopping and selling of wood, farm work, and even collecting medicinal herbs for pharmaceutical companies. Resources were limited and the people continued to struggle economically.
It was under the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt that the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Act was passed in 1933. This program offered many economic options for the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. Jobs were provided for men in road construction and home improvement on the reservation. Construction jobs entailed the building of small two- and three-room houses to replace one-room cabins. Women were given jobs and training in sewing, cooking, canning, and gardening. Some felt the depression was a blessing for tribal members because it opened up job opportunities through the WPA.
Because of allotment and lack of employment opportunities, many Chippewa left the Turtle Mountain region. However, after the WPA program was off to a good start, people began to return. The Indian people in Rolette County numbered 2,400. Ten years later that number was up to 5,000. The work boosted the morale of the people and their standard of living. Most of the jobs provided were of a seasonal type, leaving a big part of the year in unemployment where hardship prevailed.
Congress approved the first constitution of the Turtle Mountain Band in 1932. All of the subsequent revisions made by the tribe were approved by the Department of Interior. The Wheeler-Howard Act, known as the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934, was the attempt to undo the damage caused by the earlier allotment acts. The Act was envisioned by John Collier, who became Commissioner of Indian Affairs. This legislation allowed tribes the opportunity to draft their own constitutions and bylaws, to “reorganize” under the authority of IRA and devise their own system of governance. This legislation also provided funds to some tribes to help them in reorganizing. By a vote of the people, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa chose not to accept the Indian Reorganization Act as its form of government.
During this time, the Turtle Mountain people, through their resourcefulness, had established and maintained a comfortable community. In 1922, a large mercantile store was built. Known as “the Big Store,” this store, which was situated beside the lumber yard, served as a local gathering place. The town also supported a creamery, a grain elevator, a privately owned gas station, and a lumber yard. The people, returning to the reservation following the depression, required new opportunities. It was during this time that a hospital was built to accommodate the needs of the people.
Congress established the U.S. Court of Claims in 1948. This legislation allowed the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa to file a claim against the government for unfair market value of lands ceded under the McCumber Agreement. The Chippewa pursued this claim from 1892 to 1975. For nearly a century, Chippewa people gathered, discussed, and journeyed to Washington, D.C. to gain redress. The payment of expenses and countless years of time came from the hearts of the Pembina descendants.
The relocation program was established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1952. This program encouraged relocating Indians to urban areas in search of employment. The program offered vocational training, travel monies, moving expenses, one year of medical care, and assistance in finding employment. By the 1960s, 2,900 Chippewa had moved away from the reservation. People were moving to California, Illinois, Washington, and other urban areas. Many Chippewa, who moved away at one time or another, returned. This rate of relocation continued until President John Kennedy’s “War on Poverty.” Many Chippewa, who took advantage of the relocation program, continued to return as the economy of the country fluctuated and urban communities decayed. The longing for family and cultural ties also drew them home.
In 1954, Congress attempted to end the reservation system. Two men in particular, Arthur Walkings and E. Y. Berry, served on Indian Affairs committees. Congressman Walkings proposed the mainstreaming and assimilation of tribal people, thus freeing the federal government from its constitutionally-bound trust responsibility to tribal nations.
Before the passage of this bill, Congress undertook three studies. These studies swayed Congress away from federal policies supported by the government under the “Reorganization Act.” This shift in federal policy openly encouraged termination. One report, the Zimmerman Report, proposed a four-part formula which assessed and ranked the tribes in terms of their relative level of economic readiness. They determined that ten (10) tribes were ready for termination. The Turtle Mountain Band was one of the names on the list of ten tribes to be terminated.
By 1954, Congress made it known to tribes that they were holding hearings concerning their termination. The Turtle Mountain Band raised funds locally to send a delegation to Washington. Tribal Chairperson Patrick Gourneau testified that the Turtle Mountain people were unprepared economically, still living in poverty, and that such a move would be devastating. Following the testimony of the Turtle Mountain group, the subcommittee decided that the Turtle Mountain Band was not economically self-sufficient, and was dropped from the list. Perhaps because the Turtle Mountain people have always been resourceful, Congress made a preliminary determination, based upon the BIA Superintendents’ reports, to terminate the Band. They did not consider the fact that the Chippewa were still poverty stricken, occupied an extremely limited land base, and suffered from low education levels and high unemployment.
Poverty was, and still remains, a concern for the Turtle Mountain people. In 1955 Dr. David Delorme described the socioeconomic conditions at Turtle Mountain as a “rural slum.” Economic deprivation created poverty conditions requiring rectification. President Kennedy addressed many concerns involving civil rights and social reform. Even though Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, used his influence to put Kennedy’s reform into action. Several efforts under the Johnson Administration provided new opportunity for Tribes. Congress passed laws forbidding racial discrimination. The President, in 1964, declared a “War on Poverty” and the “Great Society” reform was implemented.
The Economic Opportunity Act of 1965 opened the door to “self-determination.” The Economic Opportunity Act directed financial aid into the hands of tribal governments. Prior to this, monies were filtered through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Now, for the first time, Tribal governments would handle their own budgeted monies. The limited powers of Tribal councils were increased and supported by the passage of the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968. This legislation affirmed the rights of Tribal Nations and extended some provisions of the Bill of Rights to Indian people that had been afforded to all American citizens.
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Brown adipose tissue (often known as brown fat) is a specialized tissue that burns calories to generate body heat in rodents and newborn humans. Recently, adult humans have also been found to possess brown fat. This piqued the interest of researchers seeking to combat the obesity epidemic, the thought being that increasing the amount of brown fat a person has will make them lose weight. A team of researchers led by Sheila Collins, at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, Orlando, has now determined that hormones produced by the heart known as cardiac natriuretic peptides can cause regular fat cells (white adipocytes) from mice and humans to take on characteristics of brown fat cells in vitro. Moreover, infusing one cardiac natriuretic peptide into mice caused regular white fat to upregulate markers of brown fat and increase energy usage. Collins and colleagues hope that with further mechanistic studies it might be possible to exploit these findings clinically to help combat the obesity epidemic.
In an accompanying commentary, Andrew Whittle and Antonio Vidal-Puig, at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, highlight the importance of the data generated by Collins and colleagues and discuss the clinical implications of the results.
TITLE: Cardiac natriuretic peptides act via p38 MAPK to induce the brown fat thermogenic program in mouse and human adipocytes
Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, Orlando, Florida, USA.
Phone: 407-745-2134; Fax: 407-745-2032; E-mail: [email protected].
TITLE: NPs -- heart hormones that regulate brown fat?
University of Cambridge Metabolic Research Laboratories, Institute of Metabolic
Science, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Phone: 44-1223-762790; Fax: 44-1223-330598; E-mail: [email protected].
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| 0.847447 | 399 | 3.0625 | 3 |
A Practical Introduction To Literary Study
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Keywords: study, literary, introduction, practical
Category: Criticism & Theory, History & Criticism, Literature & Fiction,
ISBN-10: 0130947865 ISBN-13: 9780130947864
Binding: Paperback (1)
List Price: 73.20 USD
This brief, practical book addresses how and why people read literature, and then shows different ways of thinking about the literature they are reading¿teaching users to read critically and analytically, to write thoughtful and concise papers of literary analysis, and to perform competent literary research. The book¿s comprehensive coverage offers a detailed description of practical research methods, an understanding of criticism and how to use it in papers, and a complete section on MLA documentation. The main topics address: what is literature and what is critical thinking?; reading critically; understanding literary language; explication and analysis; and secondary sources, research, and critical theory. For those new to literary study.
- Export Citation(BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan)
- Download multimedia files (txt, html, PDF)
- 0130947865.pdf (text only)
- 0130947865.zip (currently not available)
You can search on LeatherBound to download or purchase an ebook.
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We Need More Heroes
By: Lurita Doan / Townhall Daily
Sally Ride was a scholar, an astronaut and an entrepreneur. Her degrees from Stanford, B.S., M.A. and a Ph.D. in Physics were clear proof of her brilliance and dedication to science. And, in the 70s, a time when many women were just beginning to enter male-dominated fields, Sally was a standout. What many people may not know is that Sally was also an English major at Stanford, and it was perhaps her superb ability to communicate, both verbally and in writing, that translated the complexity of science into everyday language to inspire new generations of kids who wanted to be astronauts and captivated the public.
As the first American woman to enter earth orbit in space, Sally became a thing of legend. And she used her fame and her knowledge for good.
In 1987, Sally Ride wrote a report for NASA, expressing her concerns that NASA had begun deviating from its core mission. She urged a stronger focus on space travel, outposts on the moon and, eventually, travel to Mars. The report was not well received by the NASA bureaucracy and Sally Ride retired and became a professor at Stanford.
But Sally was right to call her report NASA Leadership & America’s Future in Space. NASA had, and continues, to stray from its core mission. The U.S. space program has, essentially, been canceled. Instead of pushing the agency to focus on its core mission and core competencies, Obama has allowed NASA to take itself out of the space business, and thus take the country out of space for the next 30 years.
Worse, to put a man in space, America will now be required to pay Russia for shuttle space. Not too surprisingly, Russia has already stepped forward and declared that the next decade will be "the era of the Soyuz" as Russian space exploration continues.
When I met Sally Ride (we share a 2003 entrepreneurial visionary award), she had become an entrepreneur. Her company, which she had started in 2001, focused on grabbing the attention of the next generation through books for kids about science and space, and seminars and teaching materials for elementary and high school teachers.
Ride understood the power of business and the positive good that can come from capitalism well deployed. She understood that waiting for the government to take action was not necessarily the best way to get something done. And she understood that, often, the private sector can do better than the government, and at substantially less cost.
Sally Ride also understood that many of our problems, in this country with attracting a new generation into careers in math and science, lay with the teacher corps--oftentimes so unionized and so narrowly focused in what a teacher can and cannot teach in a curriculum, that all enthusiasm, from both student and teacher, is lost.
She was no stranger to the political machine, but unlike many other celebrities trotting up to Capitol Hill, who seem to be motivated by a combination of media stunt and activism, Sally only came when called. She worked on several Blue Ribbon commissions, including the prestigious and contentious Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger. Ride was familiar with congressional grandstanding, political witch-hunts and Washington’s CYA-at-all-costs mentality. But she didn’t let that stop her from taking a tough stand.
So many women, moving up the professional ladder try too hard to “be one of the boys” or to break into “the old boys’ club”. Sally Ride proved she could be more than just one of the boys, and that sometimes, being in a club of one is just fine.
Sally Ride was also an inspiration to anyone who ever considered a career change. At least three times, she changed her course professionally. Sally Ride, in academia, in space and in business empowered women to enter fields previously restricted to them because of gender, and she did it with a quiet heroism and without a lot of fanfare.
Sadly, many of the news articles written on Ride focused predominantly on the fact that she was gay. So what? Big deal. In what appears to be an effort to pander to the LGBT community, press coverage highlighted Ride’s sexual preference over her other accomplishments.
It is natural in Washington these days for special interest groups to grab at any straw to advance their issues, but one wonders: if the 2012 International AIDS conference had not been in Washington, DC the week that Sally Ride died, would the main stream media have deigned to give her death any coverage at all?
Each week, dozens of books and articles on leaders and leadership make it to print. Many of them, as a subtext, bemoan the current scarcity of “true” leaders. The truth is that we do have leaders, though they are not always the ones who make the leads in front page stories. Our nation has extraordinary Americans, doing extraordinary things, everyday, all around us. We just don’t value them the way we should.
Dr. Sally Ride showed the world what America was all about—that we truly are the land of opportunity. She showed the world that it’s up to each of us to do our best with every opportunity that comes our way, without entitlements, without handouts. She was an exemplary role model in self-sufficiency and common sense and the power of free market enterprise to change the world.
There are lots of folks talking about making the world a better place, but then they wait for the government to do it. Not Sally. She just did it. She made the world a better place, and we are all just a bit better off because an exceptional young woman once looked to the stars and made her dream a reality.
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1A polished copper plate with a design engraved or etched into it.
- Much controversy still remains regarding the techniques used, but all processes began with etching and/or engraving the desired design on a copperplate.
- Then the copperplate is etched, and the image transferred onto fine Japanese paper.
- By the age of eleven, Maria could engrave a copperplate.
1.1A print made from a copperplate.
- The atlas's hundreds of thousands of copperplate pages rolled off his nine Amsterdam printing presses (then the largest in the world) at a time when the Dutch East India Company was dominating Asian trade and mapping its territories.
2A style of neat, round handwriting, usually slanted and looped, the thick and thin strokes being made by pressure with a flexible metal nib.
The copybooks for this round hand were originally printed from copperplates
- Even then I regretted not being allowed to learn and to use copperplate but the days of the flexible steel pen nib were already ending.
- Please note that he only wants entries via email, so if your manuscript is written in copperplate across twenty-seven violet-scented onionskin pages, start typing.
- The hand with which she wrote her reply still showed the strong traces of a schoolgirl's copperplate, but her careless haste removed from it the appearance of any formality.
Of or in copperplate writing.
- A painting of the sun setting over the sea in his book in 1921 was accompanied by the following message in very small copperplate writing.
- Visitors can take their place at desks in three period classrooms and write on slates with chalk before progressing to dip pens and exercise books to practise ornate copperplate writing.
- Not since Arthur Stace's copperplate eternity signature graced Sydney's streets in the '50s has street art attracted such attention.
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Most solar panels convert less than 20 percent of the energy in the sunlight that falls on them into electricity. A new $2.4 million project funded by the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy aims to greatly increase the amount of sunlight that becomes electricity. Its goal is a conversion efficiency of more than 50 percent, which would more than double the amount of power generated by a solar panel of a given size. This would cut the number of solar panels needed in half and potentially make solar power more competitive with fossil fuels.
In the new research effort, Harry Atwater, a professor of applied physics and materials science at Caltech, plans to use precisely structured materials to sort sunlight into eight to 10 different colors and direct those to solar cells with semiconductors that are matched perfectly to each color. As a result, more of the solar spectrum will be absorbed, and the energy contained in each slice of the spectrum will be converted mostly to electricity, rather than heat.
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Reducing Pollution at its Source
Amish farmers in rural Lancaster County, well-known for their traditional way of life, face contemporary environmental challenges. Their region of south central Pennsylvania is one of three “hot spots” in the Chesapeake Bay watershed where polluted runoff from farms drains into local streams and helps create dead zones in the Bay.
For 23 years, Lancaster Farmland Trust has worked with Amish families to permanently protect their lands. The Trust, a NFWF grantee since 2008, has helped to preserve more than 360 farms and a unique way of life. “Younger farmers want to find out how to increase production, improve the health of their dairy cattle and protect the health of their families,” explains executive director Karen Martynick.“Our long-term goal is to assist farmers with Best Management Practices — to bring everybody into compliance for clean streams, waterways and the Chesapeake Bay.”
- 208,448 acres of chesapeake farmland where best management practices are implemented
- 6.3 million pounds of nitrogen pollution removed from agricultural runoff entering the chesapeake bay annually
- 10% progress toward agricultural nitrogen reduction goal achieved through chesapeake bay stewardship fund grants
Restoring the Chesapeake requires reducing pollution in tributaries throughout the watershed. In 2010, the Trust received NFWF funding for a project to help Amish families in the Mill Creek watershed install fencing along streambanks on their properties and build livestock crossings. Both are proven measures that keep cattle and manure out of local creeks, but can be too expensive for farmers to adopt. “The reason they’re not doing it is because they don’t have the money. Farmers want to be good stewards, but the margins are so slim they don’t have the financial resources to make improvements,” Martynick explains.
Utilizing its unique relationship with farm owners, the Amish community and the Millcreek Preservation Association, Lancaster Farmland Trust is organizing the installation of nearly five miles of streambank fencing and 10 livestock crossings on seven local farms. “With NFWF’s help, we can offer assistance to Amish farmers who won’t work with government programs,” says Martynick. “Mill Creek has lots of preserved farms that have stream frontage. And as we make people aware of the benefits of installing fencing, we’re improving the water quality.”
Corporate partner Altria, which helped to fund four NFWF projects in the mid-Atlantic in 2010, provided support for the streambank fencing undertaking, as well as other urban, forest and wetland conservation efforts throughout the Chesapeake region.
“When we looked at the challenge of protecting and also being good stewards of Lancaster farmlands, we knew we had a responsibility to work with the Amish,” says Martynick. “We applied for the NFWF grant with one goal: to help improve conservation on their lands.” But improved water quality will benefit local trout populations as well, and contribute to the larger effort to bring the Chesapeake Bay back to life.
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A report by Strike Debt on the disaster wrought by Hurricane Sandy and the government’s response. This is a preliminary and living public service document that highlights the use of loans as the main form of assistance to help those affected better understand the choices being imposed on them. You are not a loan!
This report is a preliminary and living document highlighting the economic effects of Hurricane Sandy on New York City. It examines how the use of loans as the main form of “aid” to disaster-impacted communities is not effective at addressing individual or community needs. Further, the use of loans may lead to disastrous longer- term economic consequences for the impacted communities.
Although Hurricane Sandy was the first “Frankenstorm” to hit New York City, in recent years climate disasters have become a regular sight on the evening news. From Hurricanes Katrina and Irene to Midwestern droughts and wildfires in the Southwest, many communities are facing these types of crises all across the country. As our climate has changed, the burden of the cost of disaster has also been shifting. Individuals are now expected to shoulder relief expenses that used to be shared publicly. Victims are faced with long-term, unexpected economic consequences as well as displacement from the communities they call home.
This report was compiled based on observations made at a community meeting in Midland Beach, Staten Island on November 18, 2012, as well as on interviews with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Small Business Association (SBA) representatives, legal assistance volunteers, volunteer relief workers, local business owners and community members throughout New York City. Data was drawn from newspaper articles, statements from advocacy organizations and official reports.
- The economic costs of the disaster are placed on individuals. Federal aid programs require victims to first apply for loans before qualifying to apply for FEMA aid.
- “Aid” programs favor those who can take on debt. Preexisting inequalities are further exacerbated by this form of aid.
- Federal programs are inflexible and fail to meet even basic needs of affected individuals and communities.
- Relief options are not clearly communicated or well understood. Policies are so complex that even lawyers are confused and are “learning as they go.”
- Mold is at a crisis level. Residents will not receive FEMA aid to pay for the mold remediation necessary to make their properties even temporarily livable.
Federal Responses To The Disaster
Implementation of federal disaster services in New York City reveals a policy whereby government responds to national disaster by transforming economic consequences into long-term, individual financial burdens. Most Americans believe that FEMA will be there to help in the event of a disaster. However, the vast majority of FEMA’s resources and efforts are spent on public assistance grant programs that provide infrastructure restoration. Individual victims of disaster are mostly offered personal loans to help them “get back on their feet.” Although these loans might seem good on the surface, they have many features of predatory subprime lending techniques and ultimately make long-term financial burden the precondition for “recovery.”
There are three main sources of financial support being offered to Sandy victims: insurance, grants and loans. Federal support is only available once private insurance has been exhausted.
Many residents of New York City’s coastal communities believed they had insurance that would cover them in the case of a severe storm. However, for a variety of “fine print” reasons, frequently these claims are being denied.
In some cases denials hinge on whether the storm was officially classified as a hurricane or a tropical storm and by whom. While FEMA classified Sandy as a hurricane, the National Hurricane Center of the National Weather Service declared Sandy a tropical storm at 7 PM on October 29th, an hour before it hit land. In cases where homeowners did not have hurricane insurance, many are being denied coverage by insurers who are classifying the storm as a hurricane. In other cases insurers are denying coverage because, though hurricane insurance covers damage from wind, it does not cover damage from flooding due to storm surge.
Insurance policies are typically written with “anti-concurrent causation” clauses that are intentionally difficult to understand. These clauses allow insurers to deny coverage even when a single exclusion is accompanied by inclusions, for instance when a home is destroyed by fire, wind and flood, but the homeowner did not carry flood insurance, the claim can be denied. In an attempt to prevent denial of claims in areas such as Breezy Point, Queens, where 111 homes were destroyed by fire, the Consumer Federation of America issued a statement demanding that elected officials in impacted states block the use of these “ACC” clauses. Due to the denial of numerous claims related to Hurricane Katrina because of these clauses, advocacy groups have worked to remove them.
“We believe that additional clarity is needed and can be provided by the New York Department of Financial Services. We call on state regulators to take action to help New Yorkers whose fire- and wind-related insurance claims payments are at risk of denial due to an unfair and legally unclear clause buried in the fine print,” Robert Hunter, Director of the Consumer Federation of America[*]
Approximately 70% of New York residents living in flood zones do not have flood insurance. This type of insurance is costly, frequently only available through FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program, and many residents mistakenly believe they are covered by homeowner policies and federal disaster assistance.
In areas that are prone to flooding, FEMA requires homeowners with federally backed mortgages to carry flood insurance. This insurance is guaranteed by the government but provided by private insurers that make on average one billion dollars a year in premiums in exchange for selling and servicing these policies. Private insurers take on absolutely no risk as the program is backed by taxpayer dollars.
FEMA offers two categories of services for disaster victims: public assistance and individual assistance. Public assistance consists of repairs to infrastructure such as bridges, roads and hospitals. 75% of aid comes from the federal government and 25% from state government. According to a FEMA representative, municipalities must work out arrangements for funds through their state government.
FEMA funds for public assistance can be passed through public agencies, nonprofit organizations and local communities, including community boards and local governments. Organizations must apply for funds through FEMA project officers. There are two broad categories for repairs: emergency work (including debris removal) and long-term work that rebuilds infrastructure to previous standards.
Individual assistance programs include grants for temporary housing, grants to restore homes to temporarily livable conditions, and grants for major repair of homes. Many New York City residents report having been offered FEMA grants to cover personal housing costs due to displacement. Residents consistently report grants of $3000 for temporary living costs, although the program maxes out at $31,900, according to a representative from Staten Island Legal Defense Services.
The next tier of FEMA program grants is only accessible after the homeowner, renter or business applies for a Small Business Administration (SBA) loan. According to representatives from Staten Island Legal Defense Services, if the applicant qualifies for a loan, they are not likely to be provided further FEMA aid. If the applicant is denied a loan, they may qualify for a FEMA grant for home restoration and repair.
New York City residents are being offered three kinds of disaster loans through FEMA and the SBA: home disaster, business physical disaster, and economic injury disaster loans. Home disaster loans are offered for repair and replacement of damaged real estate and personal property. Renters are eligible for personal property losses including automobiles. Business physical disaster loans are made for repair or replacement of property owned by a business including real estate, inventory, supplies, machinery and equipment. Economic Injury loans are offered to businesses in need of working capital to meet financial obligations that they cannot meet as a result of the disaster.
According to the SBA fact sheet on disaster loans, loans are made based on “credit history.” A representative from the SBA clarified this as “creditworthiness” and stated that credit score would not be an overwhelming factor. According to the representative, 50% of applicants qualify for these direct loans. Direct loans are direct from the treasury and not commercial bank loans.
The fixed interest rates for these loans vary between 1.688% and 4.0% if the applicant does not have “credit available elsewhere.” This means that only in the case that an applicant could not qualify for credit through a commercial bank would favorable interest rates be offered. In the event that an applicant could qualify for credit at a commercial bank, then the range is from 3.375% to 6.0%. The SBA fact sheet states the difference in interest rate as required by law. The SBA does not explain how it evaluates whether an applicant could practically obtain credit elsewhere.
The loan terms are a maximum of thirty years for individuals and seven for businesses. Home loans are capped at $200,000 for repair of property and $40,000 for personal property replacement. Business and economic injury loans are capped at $2 million. Insured losses, boats and recreational vehicles are excluded, and antiques and collections are eligible to the extent of functional value only. Applicants are required to pledge any available collateral.
Businesses are also able to apply for loans through the partnership between New York City and Goldman Sachs. These loans cap at $25,000 and are set at 1% interest. No payment is required for six months but loans must be paid in full within twenty-four months.
Even a month after the storm, many New Yorkers are only beginning to apply to the SBA loan programs. The small business application is reported to be at least thirty pages long. Applicants are reporting that the forms are difficult to complete, because flooding destroyed much of the required paperwork. Furthermore, many need assistance in filling out the applications, which are not self-explanatory. Although FEMA representatives at a community meeting in Midland Beach, Staten Island, reported the turnaround time as seven to ten days, others report a two-week turnaround. After a decision is made on a loan, residents may then apply for second tier FEMA funds.
“Of course, like most businesses down here, we have to completely rebuild. That means gutting our space and starting from scratch. The cost of this endeavor will top $50,000—and as most of us have found, floods aren’t covered by our insurance. And there is no FEMA money for small businesses other than loans, and it’s hard to take on more debt and face those payments when you don’t know when you’ll be able to reopen,” Leisah Swenson, co-owner of Home/Made Restaurant in Red Hook
In spite of the reality of having a home or business destroyed, the SBA representative for Midland Beach, Staten Island, bragged that they lent over $6.8 billion for Katrina victims. Of course, the agency has been heavily criticized for its work with Katrina victims. In fact, 55% of applicants were denied loans, and only 60% of the approved money ever reached the applicants. Although the $6.8 billion number is contested and is probably closer to $6.1 billion, more serious allegations include economic and racial disparities among those who received any help at all. Since the basis for assistance is a loan program, predominantly white, wealthier areas received a significantly greater share of FEMA/SBA resources. As long as qualification for help after a disaster is based on financial status, there is no reason for this to change. Furthermore, it is common for coastal properties in flood zones to be substantially lower in cost than coastal properties on higher ground. This means that middle and lower income communities tend to suffer the most.
Although the terms of these SBA loans are outlined on a fact sheet, the SBA representative described them inaccurately at a community meeting. When members of the community asked how SBA loans would impact their FEMA applications, their questions were evaded. It was not stated clearly that filing an application for an SBA loan was a requirement in applying for FEMA aid.
Further, at the Midland Beach November 18 community meeting, neither the SBA nor FEMA representatives explained the loan terms or the likelihood of applicants receiving either grants or loans. The SBA loan program was presented in positive terms by an enthusiastic representative. The representative only stated the lowest available interest rate, and was only willing to answer questions privately. Both FEMA and SBA officials used “insider” language that seemed designed to confuse and that community members could not understand.
Although the offering of these loans is presented as benevolence on the part of FEMA, Sandy victims have little choice but to apply for them. Homeowners typically owe on homes that are now worthless. William Kruger puts it this way: “Our values have dropped significantly. My real estate agent, who sold me the house just five years ago, was always saying ‘Whenever you want to sell, just let me know and at worst you’ll break even.’ I called him the other day and he said ‘Not now—you can’t even give it away.’ So we’re basically stuck. A lot of people are in the same position. So they’re forced, basically, to rebuild whatever is left.” By only offering loans to already struggling homeowners, FEMA and the SBA shift the burden of disaster to individuals and send profit to the loan servicers. Although the vast majority of Americans believe that federal aid will be there for them if they are the victim of a disaster, in reality, the only available aid is the opportunity to take on more debt.
There is little real choice in taking on these loans, and they are granted based on opaque and questionable credit standards. With high unemployment rates, it’s easy to see how loan-based “aid” could precipitate a second round of crises in impacted areas, as many residents will be left on their own. Further, because the SBA holds real estate as collateral against these loans, they are often difficult, if not impossible to get out of. Since many homeowners were already strained by “underwater” property prior to the storm, and since properties have now depreciated beyond measurability, homeowners have no way out of these properties other than foreclosure. The only practical option is to take the chance on taking on more debt.
Who Will Pay For Post-hurricane Sandy Reconstruction?
The communities in New York City that were most impacted by the storm lie along the coastal regions of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, the Bronx and Queens. The communities are diverse and vary widely economically, ethnically and racially, with the lowest median income in Coney Island, Brooklyn and the highest in Midland Beach, Staten Island.
Housing in these communities ranges from the multi-family high- rise buildings of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) “projects” to single family beachfront dwellings. In addition to homes, there is a diverse array of businesses in the impacted areas ranging from large supermarket chains to small one-owner shops.
When we examine how the storm impacted these communities, we can see that the common complaints about FEMA’s response as both slow and inadequate are due to the agency’s focus on distributing the costs of disaster to individual victims based on and through their ability to take on debt, rather than distributing the costs across the public. The focus on lending moves money from the victims of disaster into the hands of the loan servicers who make $1 billion in profit annually off of these loans. All communities are reporting numerous problems ranging from electrical outages, with a domino effect of no heat or water, to total destruction of buildings to severe damage due to flooding resulting in hazardous mold growth. The city has not reported on potential toxins in the flood water, however many residents have raised concerns and there are numerous water treatment plants in the impacted areas.
Throughout the beachfront communities of New York City, residents have stated that they did not feel the warnings were adequate. Many hold the city government directly responsible for the number of casualties and loss of personal property. In spite of a mandatory evacuation order, many residents did not leave. Some were unable to leave due to physical restrictions. Others felt that they had no place to go. Others state that they did not understand the storm to be different from previous storms that hit the area, and that there was a “boy-who- cried-wolf” effect city officials failed to overcome.
When the specific needs and composition of individual communities are taken into consideration, the reasons that the federal approach to disaster aid falls short become clear. This section will highlight several of the most impacted communities and show why a one-size-fits-all approach that seeks to distribute the cost of disaster to individuals fails.
Midland Beach, Staten Island
Midland Beach is a middle class community of just over 14,000 residents in Staten Island, New York. Prior to the storm, 56% of home values were between $183,000 and $365,000 and 30% between $366,000 and $549,000, with the median at $385,000. Since 1990, homes saw over a 100% appreciation rate. Rentals average $1,245 per month. The neighborhood is one of the most diverse in America with 30.7% of residents of Italian ancestry, 20% of Irish ancestry and 9.3% of Puerto Rican ancestry. 3.3% of residents speak Russian in their homes. Over 16% of residents were born outside of the United States. 17.1% of children in Midland Beach live below the poverty line, which is a greater percentage than 58.1% of US neighborhoods. Median household income is $71,000. This tight-knit community had the highest concentration of Sandy- related deaths in the United States. The rising water of the storm surge reached as high as over fourteen feet with reports of the surge overtaking fifteen-foot barrier walls on Staten Island. According to Father Diaz of Saint Margaret Mary Church, 95% of his parish has been impacted by the storm.
The majority of those impacted had homes either red- or yellow-tagged by FEMA. A red tag indicates that the home should not be entered, and a yellow tag indicates that the home may be entered only at your own risk. Many of the homes have sustained severe structural damage. All of the homes have sustained substantial water damage, including debris and toxins left behind once the water receded. Residents are currently conducting mold remediation at their own expense and most frequently without professional help. Regardless of the status of the home, the burden of cleanup has been placed on the homeowner and volunteers.
Some community members expressed concern that they were unable to find out if their homes had been designated as being in a CBRA (“cobra”) zone. CBRA stands for Coastal Barrier Resources Act. This act, passed in 1982, prohibited indirect or direct federal dollars from expenditure in zones considered prone to flooding.
It took FEMA days to show up after the storm, provoking an angry admonition from Staten Island’s borough president. When they finally showed up, they provided very little of the resources most needed to initiate a process that might eventually return the community to normal. Instead of using their enormous resources to provide hot meals, they provided only freeze-dried food and bottled water. Instead of going where the people needed help, they stationed themselves in schools and parking lots, expecting the elderly and infirmed to travel to them.
While the residential community was clearly in need of resources such as physical help with the massive job of cleanup and ongoing financial support to begin the process of recovery, they were only offered debt.
Red Hook, Brooklyn
Red Hook is a diverse and gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn situated along the Hudson River with a population of about 10,228. In recent years, gentrification of Red Hook has taken hold with an IKEA and a Fairway gourmet food store opening their doors. For several years prior, upscale art galleries, restaurants and bars had opened in the neighborhood. Red Hook is also home to New York City’s largest housing project, which contains some 2,878 units. According to NYCHA, Red Hook Houses was among sixty-two projects affected by the storm. The neighborhood is not serviced by subways but connects to neighboring communities by NYC buses and water taxis.
The effects of the storm brought weeks of blackouts for residents and businesses and massive damage to homes, businesses and public spaces. People living in the high-rise project housing development were faced with pitch-black stairwells that reached as high as fourteen stories—especially hard on the elderly and infirmed. Extensive flooding took over the whole community with flood levels rising over seven feet in some places and closing the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel for weeks. NYCHA confirmed that 3,600 Red Hook Houses residents were without power, and over 4,000 residents had no heat and hot water.
“The water, said New York Water Taxi employee and neighborhood resident James Caldwell ‘went to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel intakes and all the way to the Gowanus.'” Along Van Brunt Street, the main retail strip, businesses were flooded and inventory destroyed. The rising real estate market of the mid 2000s brought numerous boutique small businesses into the neighborhood, but in recent years they have been hit with rising rents and decreased business activity.
The majority of those impacted by the storm were either small business owners or residents of Red Hook Houses. Residents complain that FEMA is more focused on local businesses than on residents.
“Angel Ylufo, who lives in a high-rise project housing building on Dwight Street, expressed frustration with the state and allocation of recovery efforts in Red Hook: ‘I’ve got no power, no water and can smell sewage in my building and there is definitely more attention to the local businesses than for us in the projects. I’m all for local business, but what about the rest of us citizens who are living here?'”[**]
However, local businesses aren’t thrilled either. Many are still waiting to see if their loan applications will be approved or not, but do not see taking on additional debt as a solution for the disaster. Instead, many have started crowd-source funding pages to raise money for repairs, stating that if the condition of reopening is debt, then they cannot afford to reopen.
Of course, the disparity between attention to residents and attention to business owners is the natural result of FEMA’s policy, which reveals itself as less focused on providing true relief to those suffering massive losses in their communities than on generating profits for the elite through debt. In this scenario, only those who are likely to be creditworthy are helped in any way at all.
Coney Island, Brooklyn
Coney Island is home to a sizable share of Brooklyn’s public housing and a large percentage of the population is housed in high-rise buildings. 79.7% of the area’s residents are renters. One of the poorer neighborhoods in Brooklyn, the household median income of $22,315 is nearly half that of the borough on the whole, and more than 40% of Coney Island’s children live below the federal poverty line. Home to a large population of retirement-age seniors, over 22.3% of Coney Island’s residents are sixty years of age or older, and a significant proportion of the population is composed of foreign language speakers of Chinese, Spanish, French and Russian. At the height of the storm surge, Coney Island was completely submerged in floodwaters as the surrounding bay and sea met. As elsewhere, FEMA and the Red Cross were incredibly slow in arriving, and while other neighborhoods have begun the long process of recovery, the process in Coney Island is anemic at best as residents continue to cope with inconsistent power, heat and hot water, even a month after the storm hit. Once the storm passed, a major need was for the elderly, disabled and ill to be identified and provided with basic necessities. Among many reports from the area, no such direct effort by city, state or federal agencies or even the Red Cross was noted in the weeks immediately following the storm. Many residents spent weeks in dark, cold apartments without food, water and prescribed medical treatments.
As with many low-income neighborhoods and areas where public housing is prevalent, much of the area has been underserved by supermarkets and drug stores. Many of the bodegas were flooded and looted in the wake of the storm, leaving residents without access to even a bare minimum of necessities like food, cleaning supplies, baby formula and diapers.
Boilers, electrical panels and laundry rooms in much of the area’s projects were housed in basements, and were destroyed by flooding. Many of them are now being heated and powered by mobile generators and external boilers. It will require a massive reconstruction effort to permanently restore heat and electricity. Reports of poor air quality and sickness are common due to fuel leaks and residents using stovetops to heat their homes.
In apartments on the ground floors of buildings that suffered flooding, residents sustained significant damage to appliances and personal possessions, and mold is increasingly an issue. Those who have insurance are hesitant to discard items that have yet to be documented for insurance purposes. The lengthy, confusing and intrusive loan application process FEMA requires as a precondition for aid is likely to provide a significant barrier to the majority of uninsured renters who’ve suffered personal property damage.
FEMA’s presence finally began to be visible in the community over a week after the storm hit, but even then their trailer was located in the historic far west end of Coney Island, far from the majority of NYCHA housing in which many elderly and disabled residents were trapped. Despite a significant population of Russian speakers, FEMA materials were not available in Russian.
The Rockaways, Queens
The eleven main communities that comprise the Rockaways—Arverne, Bayswater, Belle Harbor, Breezy Point, Far Rockaway, Hammels, Neponsit, Rockaway Beach, Rockaway Park, Roxbury and Seaside—are tremendously diverse and vary greatly in terms of income levels and ethnic makeup. Median incomes among the various communities range from the mid $25,000 range to the upper $50,000 dollar range. Communities of many ethnic ancestries are represented throughout the Rockaways, including significant populations of Irish, Italian, Puerto Rican, West Indian, Haitian and Jamaican descent. The area is widely known as a summer attraction, with the well-known beach Riis Park accessible by bus. The entirety of the Rockaways was hit hard, but different sections are the focus of FEMA’s resources. It is easy to observe that FEMA’s efforts are primarily in the higher-income area west of 116th Street, where repair to the beachfront has already begun. There is little to no activity to the east, where middle and lower income people of color live.
Again, this reproduction of inequality is a necessary and unjust effect of a federal disaster relief agency’s use of debt as its primary tool. Those who are viewed as already most resourced are able to get out of debt and recover, whereas those who are less resourced are either not offered any path to recovery or moved from the crisis of natural disaster to the crisis of debt that can’t be repaid.
Ironically, climate change has a disparate impact on middle and lower income communities. In particular, African Americans, who have been among those most impacted by this disaster, make a significantly lower impact on the climate than other groups. Climate disaster is likely to strike increasingly. As it stands, it is the middle and lower classes that pay dearly for these disasters, while producing enormous profits for the financial service industry.
Learning From Past Disasters
Only days after the storm, proposals for deregulation and privatization of areas affected by Sandy began to be discussed: FEMA should turn NYC’s most devastated neighborhoods into free-trade zones exempt from typical regulations and taxes; public work projects should be managed exclusively as for-profit and outsourced public-private partnerships; and pro-union rules should be thrown out in order to speed up reconstruction. Policies like these are typically too extreme or unpopular to be implemented democratically. It’s when major economic or environmental disaster provides a shock strong enough to disorient that the democratic process can be avoided and these policies get pushed into motion. While those who live in and around affected communities see destruction, suffering and loss, others have systematically come to regard such events as opportunities. Time and time again we see these moments of crisis exploited to shift the economic burden, reconfigure structures of government, and direct resources away from those who are most in need.
Case Study: Hurricane Katrina
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina provided a clear example of how unjust policies can play out in the aftermath of disaster. The indifference and neglect from all levels of government in response to the storm profoundly shocked the nation and the world. Overall, the relief effort revealed a widespread transfer of money and resources that moved from taxpayers to the federal government to corporations. Through the redevelopment of the city, new policies were put into place that exploited the victims of the hurricane a second time around.
By 2010 the population of New Orleans was 30% smaller than before the hurricane. Katrina destroyed nearly 51,700 housing rentals. More than 29,000 affordable-rent units vanished. It was estimated in 2007 that homelessness had roughly doubled to about 12,000 people. Over 5,000 families had lived in public housing before Katrina, but by 2008, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sought to replace public housing with mixed-income housing, using ineffective vouchers, often denied by landlords, to subsidize low-income families. HUD opposed a congressional proposal to replace the destroyed public housing units, even though it was the most economically viable alternative. In this process, entire public housing complexes that weren’t even damaged by Katrina were demolished. The city’s reconstruction was profitable to nearly all involved except for the actual disaster victims. The Department of Homeland Security, the umbrella organization that FEMA operated under, oversaw a free-for-all for large corporations like Halliburton and many others. Immediately following the storm, The Shaw Group won several no-bid contracts totaling $600 million from FEMA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Army Corps of Engineers. Due to a series of subcontracts that outsourced the work being done, much less money than what corporations received went directly into reconstruction and local communities.
Low-income residents were discouraged from returning to their neighborhoods—in part because they were often the last to get power, water and other services. Damaged schools were permanently closed, providing opportunities to replace them with privatized alternatives. Hospitals dedicated to the care of low-income patients were never reopened; instead, plans were made to replace them with higher-end, more profitable facilities. In New Orleans, specifically in the most impoverished areas, flooding and wind damage offered an opportunity to “solve problems” by getting rid of the affected population. Ultimately, as the communities of displaced individuals were selectively dismantled, there was less incentive for people to return.
The city of New Orleans fired all 7,500 of its teachers, further exploiting Katrina to rid itself of union entanglements. In addition to destroying the communities that had been built around these schools, the city again diverted tax money away from the common good towards private corporate interests by turning formerly public schools into charter schools. Though eventually a judge ruled that the firing of these teachers and other school employees was illegal, the damage had already been done. The level of corruption involved in Katrina disaster relief was also devastating for working Americans and exploited immigrants. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, immigrant workers from Latin America flooded the Gulf states to work for Halliburton and their subcontractors. Skilled Louisiana workers rebuilding U.S. military bases were pushed aside by subcontractors looking to make a quick buck off American taxpayers by hiring low- skilled, low-wage undocumented people. The National Committee of La Raza (NCLR) found multiple abuses by Halliburton subcontractors. On November 18, 2005, NCLR staff visited a “tent city” of Hispanic workers in Gulfport. They reported, “Workers repeatedly complained about contractors who hired them for long periods of time and then refused to pay them for their labor.” In New Orleans disenfranchised people were uprooted and moved like pawns with little or no opportunity to return to their homes for years after the storm. This separated people from their families and friends, relationships that were in many cases established over generations. These long-standing relationships that once offered solace, community and mutual aid were gone.
The “relief” distributed to Katrina victims in the form of SBA loans has been documented to be massively mismanaged and incredibly uneven. Low-interest loans that should have been approved weren’t. Applications were negligently deleted from SBA’s computer systems. The impossible deadlines set by the agency made the process so impossible for thousands of people that they just gave up on applying altogether. SBA employees themselves admitted vast disparities based in the agency’s system of loan distribution. According to the thorough investigation led by the Associated Press in 2010:
“‘The truth is that only the wealthy moved through the system easily,’ said Gale Martin a former SBA loan officer “If you were of a certain income, we funded you first, which is not the way the system is supposed to work.” Martin contended that contrary to the SBA mission to especially help people who didn’t always have the means to rebuild, applicants with higher credit scores and bigger incomes were cherry-picked for processing first because those files could be closed quicker.”
In terms of racial disparities, SBA approved 66 percent of loan applications in predominantly white, suburban areas but in contrast approved only 42.1 percent in adjacent areas with comparable median household incomes in predominantly black sections of the city. In the end, overall 55 percent of homeowners and businesses that applied for SBA loans were turned away. A mere 60% of the loan money approved by SBA ever even reached its applicants.
Very early on in the 2008 financial crisis, while Americans were still reeling from an unprecedented economic disaster, a decision was quickly made that the massive debts and losses of reckless banks and investors were to be paid for by the American public, while the debts and losses of average Americans—homeowners, pension fund beneficiaries, those who lost their jobs and those whose prospects were permanently diminished—were to be shouldered by those same individuals. Many would argue that such an arrangement was unfair, but decisions as to who bears the costs of a crisis—whether it’s a financial crash, or a hurricane—are often made as the crisis is unfolding, while those with the fewest resources and access to power are struggling to process what just happened. The result is rarely good for the 99%.
Here in New York, as our communities struggle to come to terms with the mass destruction, suffering and loss of life left behind by Hurricane Sandy, decisions are already being made as to who will bear the costs. Now tha t these costs have become clear, the question remains: Will they be borne by a billionaire mayor and his close friends in the real estate industry who rezoned and developed the coastline at an unprecedented pace, even as the Army Corps of Engineers ranked New York at the top of the list of cities most vulnerable to a storm surge? Will the federal government that refused to make the necessary infrastructure investments to protect us pick up the tab? Will the private insurers who accepted premiums year after year step up to pay for the damage they led us to believe they would cover? Or will those costs be borne by the fossil fuel companies and their lobbyists who have done everything in their power to make sure that radical changes to our atmosphere continue at a rapid pace, making all of us more vulnerable to natural disaster?
As usual, it seems likely that the costs will be borne by the unfortunate individuals who found themselves in the path of a disaster that’s been years in the making—in this case the city’s residents. Rather than being offered the aid needed to restore their homes, those whose houses were destroyed are being pushed by FEMA to take
on debts that will surely haunt them for the rest of their lives. Renters receive even less support in a system built to favor those who can take on debt. Residents of low-income housing, many of whom have been dealing with poor maintenance and deteriorating infrastructure in their buildings for years due to decreased federal spending and a revenue-strapped housing authority have needlessly suffered further due to federal and city loan-based relief efforts that don’t address their needs. Debt is not aid. It would be cruel to offer a drowning person a 50 lb. dumbbell. Asking a person or family that has just lost everything to now take on $50,000 of debt and a lifetime of interest payments is not significantly more generous or helpful. Federal, state and city governments must do better.
For any community, anywhere in the world, mutual aid is fundamentally important in the wake of disaster. Contrary to the popular conservative economic doctrine that says human beings are naturally motivated by self-interest, we strongly believe that when members of our community are suffering, nothing could be more unnatural than to sit back and watch.
But mutual aid is not a selfless act. It’s an act of solidarity, done with the understanding that all of us are living in an increasingly volatile climate and have been collectively forced into a predatory debt system just to secure basic necessities like housing, education and medical care. In such precarious conditions, forming communities that care for each other and act collectively to achieve change makes each of us more secure. And in a city with such extreme inequality as New York, it’s mutually beneficial to all middle- and low-income families to prevent the displacement of yet another community where we can afford to live.
In the wake of Sandy, the vast majority of post-storm economic assistance has been provided by volunteers, coordinated by several umbrella groups including Occupy Sandy, CAAAV, People’s Relief, Occupy Faith, Rebuild and Recover and others who came together almost immediately to take responsibility for providing manual labor, tools, food and supplies, as well as the organizational skills necessary to manage complex operational systems. Nonetheless, victims of Sandy are in desperate need of the resources that centralized government agencies are created to deliver. Surely federal, state and city governments who went to great efforts to nationally coordinate a series of well-planned evictions of encampments to protect protesters from deteriorating sanitary conditions can muster the resources to coordinate a mold-remediation campaign in communities where mold is quickly becoming a genuine public health hazard.
In every case we’ve reviewed, mutual aid networks were on the scene days if not weeks in advance of federal, state and city run efforts, delivering needed care and support that in many cases official relief efforts have yet to step up and provide. In Staten Island, for example, Occupy Sandy Relief has created a central distribution hub at the Church of Margaret Mary at 1128 Olympia Blvd. This hub provides volunteers, hot meals, cleaning supplies, blankets, heaters and a variety of tools necessary for demolition work. It also acts as the central hub of the community and facilitates community meetings. Residents clearly see mutual aid as the main source of economic support for their recovery, and as a method of resisting debt. It’s high time government agencies stepped up to provide meaningful assistance to these communities as well.
In the meantime, we must continue to use the principles of mutual aid as we rebuild our broken homes and neighborhoods. We cannot let profits be the force that determines the future of our communities. We must demand a democratic planning process that acknowledges the importance of the common good and our shared humanity.
- Mapping Hurricane Sandy’s Deadly Toll http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/17/nyregion/hurricane-sandy-map.html
- Sandy Slapped Bond Issuers, Too http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/business/muni-bond-issuers-too-need-help-after-sandy.html
- Heavy Weather: How Climate Destruction Harms Middle- and Lower-Income Americans http://www.americanprogress.org/press/release/2012/11/27/45022/release-heavy-weather-how-climate-destruction-harms-middle- and-lower-income-americans/
- Health Risks Among Those Living in Dwellings Without Heat Following Hurricane Sandy https://a816health29ssl.nyc.gov/sites/nychan/Lists/AlertUpdateAdvisoryDocuments/HAN%20unheated%20housing%20risk%20final_11282012.pdf
- Many Still Wait for Help in Storm Battered Communities http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWvwmudTzfo
- SBA’s Katrina Loans Criticized For Mismanagement, Bias, ‘No Compassion’ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/24/sbas-katrina-loans-critic_n_692940.html
- African Americans and Climate Change—An Unequal Burden http://rprogress.org/publications/2004/CBCF_REPORT_F.pdf
- Thriving on Adversity: Disclosing Corporate Mistreatment of Consumers Caught in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and Exploring the Consumer Movement’s Response to Crisis and Catastrophe http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpapers.ssrn.com%2Fsol3%2Fpapers.cfm%3Fabstract_id%3D892592&ei=JQ66UNP9NcOi2wWS3YDgAw&usg=AFQjCNGJyTk8I2yZ5lDI3GtBOeMMu1NsPA&sig2=9WpNtyBibCZIGozBLa7N2g
- After Superstorm Sandy, State Insurance Regulators Must Protect Consumers From Unjustified Out-of-Pocket Costs http://www.consumerfed.org/news/609
- The Shock Doctrine—The Rise of Disaster Capitalism: Naomi Klein in conversation with Roger D. Hodge | The New York Public Library http://www.nypl.org/audiovideo/shock-doctrine-rise-disaster-capitalism-naomi-klein-conversation-roger-d-hodge
- Sandy’s Unequal Impact http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-10-31/news/sandy-s-unequal-impact/
- In Public Housing After Hurricane Sandy, Fear, Misery and Heroism http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/nyregion/in-public-housing-after-hurricane-sandy-fear-misery-and- heroism.html?pagewanted=1&hp&_r=0
- Journalist Naomi Klein on Capitalism and Climate Change http://truth-out.org/news/item/12841-journalist-naomi-klein-on-capitalism-and-climate-change
- In All Probability: Climate Change and the Risk of More Storms Like Sandy http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/in-all-probability-climate-change-and-the-risk-of-more-storms-like- sandy/265402/
- Midland Beach Has Highest Concentration of Sandy-Related Deaths in US http://gothamist.com/2012/11/11/staten_islands_midland_beach_suffer.php
- 1 Beth Pinsker Gladstone, “Homeowners Dodge Sandy Deductibles, Face Other Costs,” November 1, 2012, Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/01/us-storm-sandy-hurricanedeductible-idUSBRE8A018F20121101
- 2 Wystan Ackerman, “Hurricane Sandy: Consumer Group Advocates for Blocking Use of Anti-Concurrent Causation Clause,” November 9, 2012, Robinson & Cole, LLP, http://www.propertyinsurancecoverageinsights.com/2012/11/09/hurricane-sandy-consumer-group-advocates-for-blocking-use-of-anti-concurrent-causation-clause/
- 3 Ibid.
- 4 Eric Lipton, Felicity Barringer and Mary Williams Walsh, “Flood Insurance, Already Fragile, Faces New Stress,” November 12, 2012, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/nyregion/federal-flood-insurance-program-faces-new-stress.html
- 5 Mitch Weiss, “SBA’s Katrina Loans Criticized for Mismanagement, Bias, ‘No Compassion,'” August 24, 2010, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/24/sbas-katrina-loans-critic_n_692940.html
- 6 Ibid.
- 7 Ibid.
- 8 The Real News, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWvwmudTzfo
- 9 Ibid.
- 10 Neighborhoodscout.com, http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ny/staten-island/midland-beach/#overview
- 11 Ibid.
- 12 Ibid.
- 13 Ibid.
- 14 Ibid.
- 15 City-Data.com, http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/Midland-Beach-Staten-Island-NY.html
- 16 Christopher Robbins, “Midland Beach Has Highest Concentration of Sandy Related Deaths in U.S.,” November 11, 2012, The Gothamist, http://gothamist.com/2012/11/11/staten_islands_midland_beach_suffer.php
- 17 Crean, Sarah, “Hurricane Sandy and Red Hook,” November 12, 2012, The Gotham Gazette, http://www.gothamgazette.com/index.php/component/content/article/51-environment/1887-hurricane-sandy-and-red- hook
- 18 Zillow.com, http://www.zillow.com/local-info/NY-New-York/Coney-Island-homes/r_193974/
- 19 City-data.com, http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/Coney-Island-Brooklyn-NY.html
- 20 Neighborhoodscout.com, http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ny/brooklyn/coney-island/#desc
- 21 Ibid.
- 22 Daniel Marans and Sam Freel, “In Coney Island Public Housing, People’s Relief & Local Residents Fill Void Left by Government, November 14, 2012, Take Action News, http://takeactionnews.com/2012/11/14/in-coney-island-public- housing-occupy-sandy-filled-void-left-by-government
- 23 John del Signore, “Inside Coney Island’s Dark and Cold Public Housing, Where Rent’s Still Due at Month’s End,” November 13, 2012, The Gothamist, http://gothamist.com/2012/11/13/inside_the_dark_and_cold_public_hou.php#photo-1
- 24 Neighborhoodscout.com, www.neighborhoodscout.com/ny/queens/
- 25 David J. Weiss, Jackie Weldman and Mackenzie Bronson, “Heavy Weather: How Climate Destruction Harms Middle- and Lower-Income Americans,” Center for American Progress, Washington D.C.: CEPR (2012)
- 26 Naomi Klein, “Hurricane Sandy: Beware of America’s Disaster Capitalists,” November 6, 2012, The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/06/hurricane-sandy-americas-disaster-capitalists
- 27 Michelle Chen, “Vanishing City: Post-Katrina Redevelopment Excludes ‘Poor and Working-Class,'” February 5, 2008, The WIP, http://www.thewip.net/contributors/2008/02/vanishing_city_postkatrina_red.html
- 28 Daniel Wolff, “The Debt We Owe Katrina,” November 9, 2012, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/opinion/the-debt-we-owe-katrina.html
- 29 Michael Winter, “Judge: New Orleans teachers fired illegally after Katrina,” June 20, 2012, USA Today, http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/06/judge-new-orleans-teachers-fired-illegally-after- katrina/1#.ULXDmql9mlI
- 30 Ibid.
- 31 “5 Years Later, Katrina a Tale of Failed Loans,” August 24, 2010, Associated Press/CBSnews.com, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/24/national/main6800818.shtml
- 32 Wayne Barrett, “All Wet: Bloomberg’s Man Dan Doctoroff Has an Answer for Rising Seas: More Coastal Condos!,” March 13, 2007, Village Voice, http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/208333/
- 33 Andrew J. Hawkins, “Private Development Eyed in Public Housing,” September 24, 2012, Crain’s New York Business, http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20120924/REAL_ESTATE/120929953
- * “After Sandy, Anti-Concurrent Causation Clauses Scrutinized,” November 20, 2012, Claims Journal, http://www.claimsjournal.com/news/east/2012/11/20/217755.htm
- ** Ladan Cher, “Hurricane Sandy Spotlights Brooklyn Inequality: Thousands Still Without Basic Utilities as More Affluent Neighbors Recover,” November 7, 2012, Global Post, http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost- blogs/groundtruth/hurricane-sandy-spotlights-inequality-brooklyn-red-hook
- Adams, Vincanne, et al. “Aging Disaster: Mortality, Vulnerability, and Long-term Recovery Among Katrina Survivors.” Medical Anthropology 30.3 (2011): 247–270.
- Adams, Vincanne, Van Hattum, Taslim, and English, Diana. Chronic Disaster Syndrome: Displacement, Disaster Capitalism, and The Eviction of the Poor from New Orleans. American Ethnologist 36.4 (2009): 615-636.
- Arnold, Sarah. Comments of the Week: Our Readers on Hurricane Sandy. The Nation. November 2, 2012
- Baer, Hans A. Global Capitalism and Climate Change: The Need for an Alternative World System. AltaMira Press, 2012.
- Barrett, Laura. Avoiding Post-Sandy Disaster Capitalism: On Rebuilding the Right Way. Transportation Equity Network. November 2, 2012. Bello, Walden. Capitalism in an Apocalyptic Mood. Foreign Policy in Focus 20 (2008).
- Biel, Steven. American Disasters. New York, NY: New York University Press; (2001)
- Brodine, Maria T. “Struggling to Recover New Orleans: Creativity in the Gaps and Margins.” Visual Anthropology Review 27.1 (2011): 78–93.
- Campbell, Horace G. Africa: Hurricanes and Individualism—Lessons From Historic Sandy. All Africa. November 22, 2012.
- Carden, Art. Shock and Awe: Institutional Change, Neoliberalism, and Disaster Capitalism. Neoliberalism, and Disaster Capitalism. November 15, 2008.
- Collins, Timothy W., and Anthony M. Jimenez. “The Neoliberal Production of Vulnerability and Unequal Risk.” Cities, Nature and Development: The Politics and Production of Urban Vulnerabilities (2012): 49.
- Danielsson, Bernt and Goldstein, Ritt. Hurricane Sandy and Sick Building Syndrome. Counterpunch. October 31st, 2012.
- Del Signore, John. Mayor Bloomberg Wants $9.8 Billion Federal Handout to Recover From Hurricane Sandy. The Gothamist. November 26, 2012
- Dulebohn, James H. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. People and Strategy. 31. 4 (2008): 58.
- Dunn, Katherine. Caution, ‘Disaster Capitalism’ at Work. The Oregonian. (2007)
- Eidelson, Josh. Disaster Capitalism Doesn’t Work: Free-market Boosters Claim Relief is Best Left to the “Invisible Hand.” Bad idea, says a scholar of catastrophes. Salon. November 2, 2012.
- Ford, Glen. Occupy Movement Finds Mission Combating Disaster – and Disaster Capitalism. Black Agenda Report. (2012) Foster, John Bellamy, et al. The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010. Futrelle, David. Post-Sandy Price Gouging: Economically Sound, Ethically Dubious. Time. November 2, 2012.
- Gosztola, Kevin. CEO of Trade Association Defends Decision to Not Donate to Occupy Sandy. The Dissenter. November 16, 2012. Grgurich, John. How Superstorm Sandy May Help Some of America’s Biggest Banks. The Motley Fool. November 5, 2012.
- Gunewardena, Nandini; Schuller, Mark. Capitalizing on Catastrophe: Neoliberal Strategies in Disaster Reconstruction. Lanham: AltaMira Press, (2008)
- Haiven, Max. OccupySandy: Grassroots Relief from Disaster Capitalism. Dissent Voice. November 2, 2012.
- Hawken, Paul, Lovins, Amory B., and Lovins, L. Hunter. Natural capitalism: the Next Industrial Revolution. Earthscan Publications, (2010). Hurricane Sandy: Capitalism is the Disaster, People’s Power is the Answer. Workers’ World. November 4, 2012.
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- Johnson, Cedric, The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans. Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press; (2011)
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- Klein, Naomi. The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Bonobo Films. Oakland, CA : PM Press (2009).
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- Klein, Naomi; The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt. (2007).
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- Light After the Storm ± Local Churches Partner with Occupy Sandy in Grass Roots Relief Efforts. Info Shop News. November 17 2012.
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About Strike Debt
Debt is a tie that binds the 99%.
As individuals, families and communities, most of us are drowning in debt to Wall Street for the basic things we need to live, like housing, education and health care. Even those of us who do not have personal debt are affected by predatory lending. Our essential public services are cut because our cities and towns are held hostage by the same big banks that have been bailed out by our government in recent years.
We are not a loan. Strike Debt came from a coalition of Occupy groups looking to build popular resistance to all forms of debt imposed on us by the banks. Debt keeps us isolated, ashamed and afraid. We are building a movement to challenge this system while creating alternatives and supporting each other. We want an economy where our debts are to our friends, families and communities — and not to the 1%.
Debt resistance is just the beginning. Join us as we imagine and create a new world based on the common good, not Wall Street profits.
You are not a loan! You are not alone! Get involved in the ongoing research of this project and many others at strikedebt.org.
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1. (biology) the process of an individual organism growing organically; a purely biological unfolding of events involved in an organism changing gradually from a simple to a more complex level
he proposed an indicator of osseous development in children
2. The history of the individual development of an organism; the history of the evolution of the germ; the development of an individual organism, -- in distinction from phylogeny, or evolution of the tribe. Called also henogenesis, henogeny.
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A curie is a unit of radioactivity which has been replaced with the becquerel in most applications, because the becquerel fits in better with the system of standardized units which many nations have adopted. Curie are used to provide information about how radioactive a given isotope is, with this information being used to determine what kind of safety precautions should be followed around the isotope to avoid injury. Tools for converting between curie and becquerel measurements are readily available online.
When measuring radioactivity, people look at how many times per second an unstable nucleus gives off ionizing particles. The more particles emitted per second, the more radioactive the isotope is. Radioactivity, in other words is measured by disintegrations per second. The number of disintegrations per second varies in part on a time scale, and in part on the amount of the isotope present. Because the value can change over time, sometimes values are given within a particular time scale.
In the case of the curie, one curie equals the amount of an isotope needed to produce 37 billion disintegrations per second. Abbreviated as Ci, the higher the number, the more disintegrations happening every second, and the higher the radioactivity. Something with 1,000 Ci of a radioactive element, for example, is more dangerous than something with 100 Ci. Radioactive materials are commonly packaged with warnings indicating their radioactivity level so that people are aware of the risk involved.
The curie was based originally on the radioactivity of a single gram of radium, an element studied by Peter and Marie Curie. This was used as the baseline of the measurement for some time before researchers switched to declaring that the curie equaled 3.7 times 1010 disintegrations per second, a measurement roughly equivalent to that of radium. Under the international units system preferred by many researchers, the becquerel (Bq) is used. One becquerel equals one disintegration per second, or 2.7 times 10-11 curie. A curie, conversely, is 37 billion becquerel.
Prefixes may be added to this unit of measurement to convey orders of magnitude, as seen with kilocurie, millicurie, and microcurie. The same types of prefixes can be seen in use with the becquerel, for convenience, so that people do not have to write out a number like 100,000,000 becquerel (which equals 100 megabecquerel). Because the becquerel is such a small unit of radioactivity, it is common to see it listed with a prefix indicating a higher order of magnitude.
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A series of devastating earthquakes have struck Nepal over the weekend, causing loss of more than 2000 lives. The initial 7.8 magnitude quake, along with aftershocks as high as 6.7 magnitude, caused destruction and severe damage to the historic centre of Kathmandu and other heritage sites throughout the Kathmandu Valley. Quake-related damage has been reported throughout the region.
In the face of the escalating armed conflict and military intervention in Yemen and the ensuing growing humanitarian emergency, ICOMOS expresses its continuing deep concern for the protection of cultural property in Yemen at risk from the hostilities.
The cultural heritage of Yemen is a unique and irreplaceable witness of its rich and diverse history. Damage to it represents an irretrievable loss to the cultural heritage of all peoples in the world.
Yemen as one of the ancient centres of civilization of the Middle East and North Africa is home to some very significant ancient and Islamic sites.
This international colloquium, sponsored by the German Research Association (DFG), is held at the Technical University Dresden in association with ICOMOS. It will for the first time address the issues of Integrating Heritage Conservation and Flood Control Concepts along rivers and streams.
Increasingly frequent disasters involving high water have led to efforts in many parts of the world to enhance flood protection. Although the extensive structural measures that are often undertaken also protect historic sites, at times these very measures can impair a site’s special values.
Is it possible to reduce the damage to cultural heritage in the event of a natural disaster or an armed conflict?
Offered within the framework of the Disaster Risk Management programme, this hands-on training of ICCROM is aimed at preparing proactive cultural first-aiders who will have the ability to assess risks to cultural heritage and reduce the impact of such events.
6 and 7 October 2014
Casa das Artes
Recent disasters around the world have shown that, in addition to human losses, cultural heritage losses are also considerable. It is without question that minimizing human losses is the first and foremost priority when developing disaster mitigation strategies. Still, efforts must also be assigned to preserve cultural heritage given its fundamental role in every nation and community.
- Blue Shield Statement on Ukraine
- Election of ICOMOS-ICORP Bureau for 2014-2017
- Protection of Cultural Heritage in Idlib Governorate, Syria: ICOMOS-ICCROM e-learning course for Syrian cultural heritage professionals in times of armed conflict
- ICOMOS Statement on Crac des Chevaliers and the continuing destruction of the cultural heritage of Syria
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Andy Warhol, Oxidation Painting, 1978, ©AWF
About the Art:
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Andy Warhol focused for the first time on the exploration of abstraction. While paintings he made in the 1960s with repeated blocks of imagery forming a patterned surface—and even some early experiments in the 1950s suggest a certain abstraction—his abstract works in the late ’70s and ’80s have no discernable representational imagery. With these paintings, often created in large series that included mural-sized works, the artist dives into the beauty and mood of color and texture in a way he had not done before. Yet, Warhol’s delving into abstraction is not without coy references and plays between what’s real and what’s abstract. For example, the Shadows series are abstract paintings of what is ostensibly a “real” shadow.
In December 1977 Warhol began the Oxidations, iridescent canvases made up of coppery yellows, oranges and greens. Surprisingly, the only paint used by the artist in this very “painterly” work was the metallic copper background. Warhol invited friends and acquaintances to urinate onto a canvas covered in metallic paint in order to cause oxidation. The uric acid reacted with the copper in the paint, removing components of the pure metal to form mineral salts. Some colors developed immediately while others like blue and green formed later on top of the red or brown copper oxides. Warhol and his collaborators experimented with both pattern and coloration by using a variety of metallic background paints and by varying the maker’s fluid and food intake. Critics have made numerous comparisons between the Oxidation series and Jackson Pollack’s famous drip paintings from the 1940s and early 1950s.
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Guy R. McPherson is Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources
and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at University of Arizona.
Below are some (slighly edited) extracts from a post at Guy
McPherson's website: summary and update on climate change.
As described by the United Nations Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases in 1990, temperature rise “beyond 1 degree C may elicit rapid, unpredictable and non-linear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage”.
We’ve clearly triggered the types of positive feedbacks the United Nations warned about in 1990. Yet my colleagues and acquaintances think we can and will work our way out of this horrific mess with permaculture (which is not to denigrate permaculture, the principles of which are implemented at the mud hut). Reforestation doesn’t come close to overcoming combustion of fossil fuels, as pointed out in the 30 May 2013 issue of Nature Climate Change. Furthermore, forested ecosystems do not sequester additional carbon dioxide as it increases in the atmosphere, as disappointingly explained in the 6 August 2013 issue of New Phytologist.
Here’s the bottom line: On a planet 4 C hotter than baseline, all we can prepare for is human extinction (from Oliver Tickell’s 2008 synthesis in the Guardian).
John Davies concludes: “The world is probably at the start of a runaway Greenhouse Event which will end most human life on Earth before 2040.” He considers only atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, not the many self-reinforcing feedback loops described below.
Robin Westenra provides an assessment of these positive feedbacks at Seemorerocks on 14 July 2013. It’s worth a look.
Where we’re going
An increasing number of scientists agree that warming of 4 to 6 C causes a dead planet. And, they go on to say, we’ll be there by 2060.
Earth-system scientist Clive Hamilton concludes in his April 2013 book Earthmasters that “without [atmospheric sulphates associated with industrial activity] … Earth would be an extra 1.1 C warmer.” In other words, collapse takes us directly to 2 C within a matter of weeks.
Several other academic scientists have concluded, in the refereed journal literature no less, that the 2 C mark is essentially impossible (for example, see the review paper by Mark New and colleagues published in the 29 November 2010 issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A).
The German Institute for International and Security Affairs concluded 2 June 2013 that a 2 C rise in global-average temperature is no longer feasible (and Spiegel agrees, finally, in their 7 June 2013 issue), while the ultra-conservative International Energy Agency concludes that, “coal will nearly overtake oil as the dominant energy source by 2017 … without a major shift away from coal, average global temperatures could rise by 6 degrees Celsius by 2050, leading to devastating climate change.”
|Image from: The two epochs of Marcott, by Jos Hagelaars|
At the 11:20 mark of this video, climate scientist Paul Beckwith indicates Earth could warm by 6 C within a decade.
If you think his view is extreme, consider:
- the 5 C rise in global-average temperature 55 million years ago during a span of 13 years (reported in the 1 October 2013 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences); and also
- the reconstruction of regional and global temperature for the past 11,300 years published in Science in March 2013. One result is shown in the above figure.
How Do We Act in the Face of Climate Chaos?
Below is a video of a recent presentation by Guy McPherson.
Presentation by Guy McPherson in Boulder, Colorado on October 16, 2013.
Below are some extracts from the video, again slightly edited.
Malcolm Light in 2012 concluded, based on data from NOAA and NASA, that methane release had gone exponential and was leading to the demise of all life on Earth, not just human extinction, by the middle of the century.
So 3.5 C to 4 C is almost certainly a death sentence for all human beings on the planet, not because it'll be a warmer planet, but because the warming of the planet will remove all habitat for human beings. Ultimately we're human animals like other animals, we need habitat to survive.
Changes we see in three or four decades happen as a result of what we do today. There's a huge lag between our actions today in the consequences down the road in terms of the Earth's planetary systems.
Without plankton in the ocean, there goes roughly half the global food supply. The ability to lose land plants is growing rapidly and there goes the other half for the food supply for human beings. If we have up to 5 C by 2050, that'll certainly do the trick.
Why is this happening? It's civilization that drove us into population overshoot. We cannot go back anymore since 1939, since we invented nuclear armageddon. There's no going back. If we ceased the set of living arrangements at this point, the world's 400 or so nuclear power plants melt down catastrophically and we're all dead in a month. We cannot terminate industrial civilization until we decommission all nuclear power plants. It takes at least 20 years to decommission a nuclear power plant.
The bad news is that means that the world's four hundred or so nuclear power plants meltdown catastrophically in a short period of time. Fukushima represent a major threat to humanity. If they fail in moving the spent fuel rods next month, according to nuclear researcher Christina Consola, if one of those MOX fuel rods is exposed to the air, one of the 1565, it will kill 2.89 billion people on the planet in a matter of weeks, so nuclear catastrophe is right there on the horizon.
Action is the antidote to despair even if the action is hopeless. When a medical doctor knows that somebody has cancer, it's malpractice if they don't tell that. So I'm doing that. I think Bill McKibben and James Hansen and a whole bunch of climate scientists are guilty of malpractice. Because they know what I know. Almost every politician in the country knows what I know. All the leaders of the big banks know what I know. And they're lying to us.
I'm just presenting the information from other scientists here. I'm trying to the widest extent possible not to infuse my opinion in the situation. It's John Davies who on September 20, 2013, taking into account only carbon dioxide, says there will be few people left on the planet by 2040. It's Malcolm Light, writing in February 2012, who assesses the methane situation. And so on.
Yes, I agree with them, and that agreement is illustrated by me showing you that information.
I promote resistance against this omnicidal culture, not in the hope that it will save our species, but in the hope that it will save other species. Because as E.O. Wilson, biologist at Harvard, points out, it only takes 10 million years after a great extinction event, before you have a blossoming full rich planet again. That's what we're working toward. We're saving habitat for other species at this point.
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Accountants help make sure people are prepared for tax day, examining over tax forms, determining the amount of taxes owed. Accountants can help find inefficiencies in spending, as well as find places to save costs and improve revenue.
Accounts payable specialists are a type of accounting clerk who work for companies to make sure bills are paid. They produce records, bookkeeping and financial transactions that will be used by accountants and auditors at tax time.
Adjusters, also known as claims adjusters, work for insurance companies and examine property damage to determine how much an insurance company should compensate the claimant. The property can be anything from a house to a business or vehicle.
As a secretary or administrative assistant, you could be working anywhere: corporate settings, government agencies, legal and medical offices, schools, hospitals, you name it.
Agent is the broad term used to describe people who work on behalf of a company or individual, or have authority to make decisions for that company or individual.
Application developers work in teams to identify ideas and concepts for the general public, or a specific need brought to them by a customer. They are able to flesh out those ideas and create flow charts so that every part of the concept is thought out and accounted for.
Associates are usually members of a team of workers who collaborate to ensure that the clients’ needs are being met.
Even professionals need help sometimes, and that’s where you come in. Assistants in every field work under a professional make sure that he or she can focus on their primary duties.
Let me count the ways. Auditors, also knows as material recording clerks, work with company supply chains to make sure that inventory is on route, on shelves and well-stocked. Auditors are record keepers for materials, report creators and supply trackers.
The rustling of money is music to most people's ears, the responsibility of handling it is something else altogether. But if you can deal with the pressure of managing one of the most important assets in our culture, then being a bank teller is a pretty sweet job.
It's time to make some bills by writing bills. Billing specialists are administrative workers at banks and financial institutions that develop, write and send out bills to customers.
You know what the numbers mean. If you understand math, have a head for figures, and like to keep track of how everyone spends the company dime, you might be ready for a bookkeeping job.
Business intelligence analysts use data to figure out market and business trends for companies to increase profits and efficiency. They may work directly for a company or as a consultant.
Call center representatives are the people you speak with when you call your bank, order a new sweater from a catalog or make airline reservations.
Call center managers are in charge of a group of customer service representatives, who work from central call centers, and sometimes over email or live chat. Call center managers make sure that all employees are routinely meeting any goals set by management to resolve a quota of customer issues or answer a number of calls.
Working in a variety of different fields, consultants spend their time learning everything they can about a particular product or service, and work with customers to find out their needs and how the product or service will fit those needs.
Can you bring it all together? Coordinator is a broad term for a position that focuses on bringing together employees, products, clients and other resources for a company.
Copywriters create fresh written content for advertising, marketing and descriptive texts. Copywriters can write more creative text, like ad jingles, taglines, and other creative copy, or more research-based copy, like a job description on a website.
Corporate trainers work in offices to teach skills and knowledge to employees. They might work full time for the company or be hired as from a corporate training company for a short period of time.
Have a creative vision? Can you lead artists and writers but have a head for business? You might be ready for a creative director job.
Credit analysts work for banks and financial institutions and work with customers to determine their credit history, credit score and decide whether or not and how much credit they are approved for.
Data analysts translate numbers into plain English Every business collects data, whether it’s sales figures, market research, logistics, or transportation costs.
Data architects build build complex computer database systems for companies, either for the general public or for individual companies. They work with a team that looks at the needs of the database, the data that is available, and creates a blueprint for creating, testing and maintaining that database.
Every business collects data, whether it's sales figures, market research, logistics, medical records or transportation costs. A data coordinator's job is to organize that data in a way to help data analysts and companies make better business decisions.
Data entry specialists take information from different locations that is written down, such as cancelled checks, bills, reports, or other information, and enter it into an electronic data system for storage and analysis.
Database administrators (DBAs) are the gatekeepers of electronic data. They use computers and software to keep data safe, organized and properly stored. Database administrators give access to those who are authorized to see the data, and keep out the baddies.
Debt collectors help companies get paid. Their job is to track down people who owe money from overdue bills and negotiate payment.
If you lead, they'll follow. Director jobs typically lead large groups of employees that work directly under their guidance.
Are you ready to be the boss’ right hand? Executive assistants work with high-level executives at a company to provide top-level assistance.
Escrow officers, also known as loan officers, determine if people and businesses can qualify for a loan. Loan officers work for banks and financial institutions and look over gathered financial documents, to determine how much people and businesses make, how much they owe and credit rating.
File clerks keep files and documents organized for companies. File clerks work with both paper documents and electronic files, and do routine tasks like data entry, organization, cross-referencing, scanning, copying and retrieval.
Financial managers look at investment data, prepare financial documents and business reports, make sure all financial transactions are legal, look for investment opportunities and ways to maximize profits, and make financial recommendations to senior managers.
Financial analysts are fortune tellers, if you think about it. Financial analysts guide people and businesses in making investments.
Financial advisors, or personal financial advisors, help people get the most out of their money. They do this by giving advice on how to invest and save their money, as well as help them make smart tax and insurance choices.
General managers are in charge of the operations for a large areas within a company. General managers often oversee local managers and their employees, as well as a local office of employees.
Have a flair for art? Are you handy with a pencil? Stop doodling and start drawing a decent paycheck as a graphic designer
HRIS analysts are the IT arm of the human resources field. Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) are the databases, software and computer systems that companies use to maintain their human resources: payroll, time off, employee records, benefits, and more.
Human resource managers are the leaders of a company's human resources team. They coordinate the people who recruit and initially interview new employees.
Insurance agents call clients and potential clients to grow their customer base, meet with potential clients to get information about their needs and coverage, match insurance policies to their needs and explain the options to customers.
Underwriters receive insurance applications from insurance agents, and then use rigorous tests and software programs to get recommendations on coverage. Depending on the type of insurance, factors can include accident history, health, income, age, etc.
An IT consultant typically works for a consulting firm or independently. The consulting firm is hired or contracted by a company to come in and analyze their IT systems and structure.
Lawyers can specialize in a variety of different areas including bankruptcy, international, environmental or corporate law. In addition to lawyers working in specialized fields, a sizeable number of lawyers work for the government at every level.
Legal assistants are a lawyer’s right hand. They support lawyers at law firms and private practices by creating and maintaining legal files, doing research and writing the first draft of documents.
Legal secretaries work in law offices and perform secretarial tasks that are specific to the law field: writing legal documents, such as summonses, motions, subpoenas, etc.
Loan processors are the people who interview people looking to get loans. Also known as loan interviewers or loan clerks, loan processors collect and verify an applicant's personal information and financial records for the loan, pull together and prepare loan documents that are passed on at the closing of the loan, and generally keep the records in order for this financial transaction.
Mailroom clerks work in companies to distribute mail that comes in and out. They may sort mail by hand, or use a variety of mail sorting machines, depending on the volume and type of mail they have to deal with.
Marketing specialists, also known as market research analysts, help companies figure out what sells. They analyze market data on a local, regional or national level, and determine what people are buying, what gaps are in the market, what type of people buy what products, and what people are willing to spend on those products.
Also known as computer network architects, network engineers work with a company's computer network, using information technology to make network systems for all employees to use
Office clerks do a little bit of everything around the office. Depending on the job, office clerks might answer phones, filing, data processing, faxing, envelope stuffing and mailing, message delivery, running errands, sorting incoming mail and much more.
Office managers, also known as administrative service managers or the business office manager, are responsible for making sure that a company’s support staff is running smoothly.
Paralegals are responsible for assisting lawyers and legal teams for hearings, trials and other meetings by doing research, preparing arguments and gathering the appropriate documentation.
Payroll managers are in charge of paying employees, make sure that all checks and accounts are processed correctly, keep records and produce data for the accounting department, and make sure all procedures are accurate.
Payroll specialists collect the time data and payroll information for companies. Payroll specialists work in offices and and fill out spreadsheets and use other administrative software to make sure employees are paid for the hours that they work.
Project managers are the people in charge of a specific project or projects within a company. As the project manager, your job is to plan, budget, oversee and document all aspects of the specific project you are working on.
Procurement managers, also known as purchasing managers, work for large companies and are in charge of managing and coordinating procurement agents, buyers or purchasing agents, as well as working on the most complex purchases for the company.
Proofreaders read copy and transcripts and check to make sure there are no spelling, grammatical or typographical errors. They work for publishers, newspapers and other places that rely on perfect grammar in printing.
There are many different types of proposal writers, such as grant proposal writers who write requests for monetary grants in the nonprofit, arts or scientific field, financial proposal writers who create plans for clients of certain financial services.
QA analysts look at products, systems and materials to make sure there are no defects, and make sure that it is made to company standards. QA analysts work in many different fields, from the food industry to transportation, ensuring quality products leave the manufacturer on the way to consumers
In addition to being a greeter, receptionists also may answer phones, accept the mail and courier deliveries, help determine who gets access to the building or office, schedule meetings travel arrangements, do paperwork and perform administrative tasks.
Are you a good judge of character? You may have what it takes to be a recruiter.
Sales representatives sell retail products, goods and services to customers. Sales representatives work with customers to find what they want, create solutions and ensure a smooth sales process.
Are you always on time? Do you think you can keep a whole company running that way? Schedulers, sometimes known as logisticians, have their eye on the clock always.
Social media managers are the voice of companies on social and digital media sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Four Square, Instagram, etc. Ever liked a company on Facebook? That account is managed by a social media manager.
Every person with a job has to pay taxes, and every person who pays taxes dreads doing the paperwork. Enter the tax preparer.
Telemarketers contact people to solicit sales by reading scripts and describing products.
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The hectic front of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science hides an unseen back of the museum that is also bustling. Less than 1 percent of the museum's collections are on display at any given time, and the Department of Anthropology alone cares for more than 50,000 objects from every corner of the globe not normally available to the public. This lavishly illustrated book presents and celebrates the Denver Museum of Nature & Science's exceptional anthropology collections for the first time.The book presents 123 full-color images to highlight the museum's cultural treasures. Selected for their individual beauty, historic value, and cultural meaning, these objects connect different places, times, and people. From the mammoth hunters of the Plains to the first American pioneer settlers to the flourishing Hispanic and Asian diasporas in downtown Denver, the Rocky Mountain region has been home to a breathtaking array of cultures. Many objects tell this story of the Rocky Mountains' fascinating and complex past, whereas others serve to bring enigmatic corners of the globe to modern-day Denver.Crossroads of Culture serves as a behind-the-scenes tour of the museum's anthropology collections. All the royalties from this publication will benefit the collections of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science's Department of Anthropology.
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Rent Crossroads of Culture 1st edition today, or search our site for other textbooks by Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh. Every textbook comes with a 21-day "Any Reason" guarantee. Published by University Press of Colorado.
Need help ASAP? We have you covered with 24/7 instant online tutoring. Connect with one of our tutors now.
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Their findings could help scientists understand how the inner-core formed and how the outer-core acts as a 'geodynamo' which generates our planet's magnetic heat.
Study co-author Dr Jon Mound, from the University of Leeds, said: 'The origins of Earth's magnetic field remain a mystery to scientists.
'We can't go and collect samples from the centre of the Earth, so we have to rely on surface measurements and computer models to tell us what's happening in the core.'
Earth's inner-core is a ball of solid iron about the size of the moon. This ball is surrounded by a highly dynamic outer-core consisting mostly of a liquid iron-nickel alloy, a highly-viscous mantle and a solid crust that forms the surface where we live.
Over billions of years, Earth has cooled from the inside-out, causing the molten iron core to partly freeze and solidify.
The inner-core has subsequently been growing at the rate of around 1mm a year as iron crystals freeze and form a solid mass.
Dr Mound said: 'Our new model provides a fairly simple explanation to some of the measurements that have puzzled scientists for years.
'It suggests that the whole dynamics of Earth's core are in some way linked to plate tectonics, which isn't at all obvious from surface observations.
'If our model is verified it's a big step towards understanding how the inner-core formed, which in turn helps us understand how the core generates Earth's magnetic field.' Read More
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Questions Raised About Stimulants and Sudden Death
Rarity Makes Definitive Assessment Elusive
• Science Update
A study examining stimulant use among children and adolescents found an association between stimulants and sudden unexplained death in youth with no evidence of pre-existing heart disease. The finding draws attention to the potential risks of stimulant medication, according to the study's authors; an accompanying editorial notes that the rarity of sudden unexplained death and the lack of long-term data on the effectiveness of these medications for reducing other health risks make a full benefit/risk assessment difficult.
Stimulant medications are widely used to treat children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The medications help reduce hyperactivity and impulsivity and improve the ability of affected children to focus and learn. Research has shown that stimulants can also have effects on the cardiovascular system, for example, raising blood pressure and heart rate. There have also been reports of sudden deaths in children receiving the medications, prompting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to direct drug manufacturers to inform consumers of possible risks of stimulant medications in children and adolescents with known pre-existing heart problems. In order to assess the association between stimulants and risk of death in young people, the National Institute of Mental Health and the FDA jointly funded a study looking at records of children and adolescents who died suddenly and unexpectedly.
Madelyn Gould, Ph.D., and colleagues at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and the New York State Psychiatric Institute identified 564 children and adolescents who had died suddenly for unexplained reasons. These youth had no known structural heart defects or other co-existing physical disorders known or suspected to be associated with sudden death. Each of these young people was then matched with a comparison young person who had also died suddenly, but in a motor vehicle accident. Information from family, medical, and autopsy records were systematically reviewed. The results revealed that stimulants were used by 10 of the young people whose deaths were unexplained and by 2 who died in crashes. (The stimulant found in each case was methylphenidate [Ritalin]. This study examined deaths that occurred between 1985 and 1996, before mixed amphetamine preparations [Adderall] became commonly used).
Because sudden death is extremely rare in childhood, randomized controlled studies—the ideal approach to studying health effects in populations—cannot be conducted to investigate such events. The authors employed a case-control design in which child or adolescent with the condition of interest—in this case sudden unexplained death—was matched with someone who died suddenly as a passenger in a motor vehicle accident. Using this approach, the authors were able to control for many relevant factors other than those being studied, such as asthma and other conditions associated with sudden death, although it was not possible to control for all potentially confounding factors.
According to the authors, the results of this study draw attention to concerns that stimulant medications increase the risk of sudden unexplained death in children and adolescents. The accompanying editorial, by coauthors Benedetto Vitiello, M.D. and Kenneth Towbin, M.D., both at NIMH, points out that the study, though rigorous in its approach, could not provide information on whether ADHD itself could increase the risk of sudden death, given its association with high-risk behaviors such as substance abuse.
The editorial went on to note that while randomized prospective studies are not practical—given the large numbers of subjects needed to detect such rare events—additional case/control studies would still be informative. In addition, research to improve screening methods for heart conditions that raise the risk of sudden death is essential.
Finally, the editorial notes that "1) sudden unexplained death is a rare event, 2) this is only the first such study, 3) it relies on small numbers, and 4) it is not possible to quantify the risk beyond estimating that it is very small."
Gould, M.S., Walsh, T., Munfakh, J.L., Kleinman, M., Duan, N., Olfson, M., Greenhill, L, and Cooper, T. Sudden death and use of stimulant medications in youth. American Journal of Psychiatry AIA:1-10, 2009.
Vitiello, B. and Towbin, K. Stimulant treatment of ADHD and risk of sudden death in children. American Journal of Psychiatry AIA:1-10, 2009.
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Lupus: Everything You Need to Know by Robert G. Lahita, M.D., and Robert H. Phillips
Community Health Education Ctr General Collection (RC924.5.L85 L34 1998)
Reviewed by Afomia Tigist, Community Health Education Center Intern
Lupus is a very complex disease and it can sometimes be hard to diagnose. Lahita and Phillips explain that “it requires great effort to distinguish Lupus from other diseases or to establish any overlap syndromes” (Lupus 48). It is sometimes called “the great imitator” because it mimics the symptoms and signs of other diseases. There are three types of Lupus; systemic lupus, discoid lupus, and drug-induced lupus. This book breaks down each type of lupus, so that the reader can differentiate between the three types.
This book is set up in a question-answer format and it really covers everything about lupus. It starts out by describing lupus and what is happening in the body. It then goes into the diagnostic process and the different tests that help in the diagnosis. It discusses common symptoms and treatments of lupus. It is an easy to read book and it defines some of the scientific terms used in some of the definitions. This allows the reader to fully understand what lupus is and what changes occur in the body. This book covers so many commonly asked questions, and near the end answers questions about how lupus impacts everyday life.
This book was particularly designed for patients with lupus. This book can serve as a guide for patients and their families because it covers a lot of concerns and questions. Readers can run into questions they never thought about, and this better allows them to understand the disease. This book is a really good reference for people who want to know more about lupus
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The pecan tree, once threatened by the push to plant cotton, has helped feed everyone from Native Americans to astronauts.
By Sheryl Smith-Rodgers
Countless numbers of pecan trees thrive in the rich soils found along most Texas rivers. Years ago, though, our state tree (and favorite native nut) was nearly decimated.
To make way for cotton, early settlers cleared pecan trees (Carya illinoensis) by the groves. Some even cut down huge specimens just to harvest one nut crop. By 1904, worried lawmakers considered making the practice illegal. Two years later, Governor James Hogg — shortly before he died — asked that a pecan tree be planted at his grave. In his honor, the pecan was named the state tree in 1919.
Long before those settlers arrived, Indians subsisted on pecans in harsh winter months. Likewise, many animals — including squirrels, opossums, raccoons and birds — eat the nutrient-rich meat. And did you know that pecans were the first fresh food eaten in space? Astronauts aboard Apollo 13 in 1970 carried them in vacuum-sealed packages.
On the commercial side, Texas ranks among the nation’s top pecan producing states. Annual harvests average about 60 million pounds. Across the state, orchards grow both native species and improved varieties, which number more than 1,000.
As for the state’s champion pecan, the title belongs to an awesome tree in Parker County. According to the Texas Big Tree Registry, the tree — located on private property — stands 91 feet tall and measures 258 inches around its trunk.
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Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), also called sexually transmitted infections (STIs) or venereal diseases (VD), are common throughout the world. STDs, which are spread primarily through sexual contact, can be painful and debilitating and may lead to serious conditions, such as pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), prostatitis, infertility, and pregnancy complications. In severe cases, STIs can be life threatening.
There are more than 20 types of sexually transmitted diseases, including chlamydia, genital herpes, gonorrhea, syphilis, human papillomavirus (HPV; causes genital warts), trichomoniasis (called "trich"), and HIV/AIDS. Safer sex, STD testing, and prompt treatment for STDs can help reduce the spread of these infections.
Here are some questions to ask your doctor (e.g., urologist, gynecologist) if you think you may have a sexually transmitted disease. Print this page, check off the questions you would like answered, and take it with you to your medical appointment. By asking the right questions, you can learn more about how to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted infections and reduce your risk for serious STD complications.
Questions to Ask Your Doctor about STDs
- What are sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) or sexually transmitted infections (STIs)?
- Why do you suspect that I have a venereal disease?
- What does STD testing involve?
- I have STD symptoms that come and go. Should I be tested?
- Should I be tested for HIV/AIDS?
- When will the results of these diagnostic tests be available?
- Will someone contact me or should I call for the results of my STD testing? Telephone number to call: Date to call:
- Do you recommend that I avoid sexual activity until my test results are available? If not, what types of precautions can I take to reduce the risk for infecting my sexual partner?
- Should my partner also be tested for sexually transmitted diseases?
- What type(s) of STD do I have?
- Is this infection caused by bacteria, parasites, fungus, or a virus?
- How is this infection transmitted?
- Is this sexually transmitted disease treatable? Is it curable?
- Does having this sexually transmitted disease increase my risk for other health problems, including other STDs?
- Are there long-term risks or complications associated with this type of sexually transmitted disease? If so, what are these risks?
- What does treatment for this STD involve? Which medication(s) will be used to treat my condition?
- Why do you recommend this treatment?
- What are the benefits, risks, side effects, and possible complications associated with this STD treatment?
- How will this treatment be administered? How should I take the recommended medication(s)?
- How long will my course of treatment take?
- Are there steps I can take to help improve the effectiveness of my treatment and/or to help myself to feel better during treatment?
- What should I do if I experience severe side effects from the medication? Telephone number to call:
- Should I avoid sexual activity during treatment? If not, what types of precautions can I take to reduce the risk for infecting my sexual partner?
- How will you determine if treatment is working? Will I undergo additional STD testing?
- If this sexually transmitted infection is resistant to this STD medication, what other treatment options are available?
- Are there newer medications that might be helpful in treating my condition?
- If this STD is not curable, how can I reduce the risk for transmitting the disease to my future sexual partners?
- What types of sexual activity increase the risk for STDs?
- Can you recommend a local or online support group for people who have STDs?
- Can you recommend a local or online support group for sexual partners of people who have an STD?
- Can you recommend resources for more information about sexually transmitted diseases?
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Etowah Mounds is one of the final and perhaps the finest accomplishments of the ancient NativeAmerican moundbuilders of Georgia. This is one of the four most important Mississippian sites along with Moundville in Alabama, Spiro in Oklahoma, and Cahokia in Illinois.
|Above: Watch a short excerpt from the Lost Worlds: Georgia DVD. Buy the DVD or donate to help support future videos. Watch more videos at LostWorldsTV and sign up for our free newsletter to learn when new videos become available.|
The Etowah Mounds complex consists of six earthen Indian mounds all in the traditional Mississippian truncated pyramid shape. These Indian mounds were built between 950 A.D. and 1450 A.D. although major construction didn’t truly begin until around A.D. 1250. The Etowah Indian Mounds site is surrounded by a deep moat on three sides and the Etowah River on the fourth. A palisade wall stood just inside the moat adding further protection to the site. Just like our previous site, Ocmulgee Indian Mounds, the major structures are believed to have been built by Muskogee Creek Indians. Also like Ocmulgee Mounds, the site appears to have been inhabited by another group of people first who were later displaced. It is possible that after the massacre at Ocmulgee Mounds mentioned in the previous article, the surrounding Hitchiti Creek Indian tribes moved further north and inhabited the Etowah region before once again being forced out.
The largest structure at the Etowah Mounds site was the Great Temple Mound and it has the distinction of being the tallest Indian mound in Georgia. It rose 67 feet high (over seven stories tall) and was oriented to the cardinal points (as were the other Indian mounds at the site.)
The temple mound was probed with ground penetrating radar but nothing worth investigating was found and thus this Indian mound has never been fully excavated. Archaeologists did find evidence of at least one large structure on top of the Great Temple Mound. A log wall or fence surrounded the summit. Curiously, the summit is pentagonal in form.
The Lesser Temple Mound, or Mound B, is a more circular or oval Indian mound. It is possible this temple mound was originally square and later plowing by farmers in the 1800’s and 1900’s softened the edges to create the current rounded form. It also appears to have had a large structure on top. This Indian mound is approximately 30 feet tall.
|Zoom in to see the Etowah Mounds site. Click on the blue markers to learn more about individual features of the site.|
The Funeral Mound, on the other hand, has been completely excavated and some of North America’s most important Native American and Mississippian artifacts have been discovered there. Among these were ceremonial copper axes, copper-covered earspools, necklaces and pendants of shell and engraved shell gorgets. These shell gorgets were circular medallions worn around the neck made from large seashells and inscribed or carved with various designs. [View Gallery]
Many of these shell gorget designs belong to a complex known as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, once referred to as the Southern Cult or Southern Death Cult. It has been repeatedly noted that many of these Southeastern Ceremonial Complex designs have strong Mesoamerican influences such as the Long Nosed God and the Bird Man or Eagle Warrior. It should be remembered that if the Creek Indian Migration Legend is correct, the Muskogee Indian tribe did have its origin in west Mexico. Yet by the time of the major construction period at Etowah Mounds these people had not lived in Mexico for over 300 years. The original Mesoamerican ideas would have evolved in that amount of time and would have been influenced by the people they had come into contact with in the eastern woodlands. Thus ideas such as the Feathered Serpent remained but evolved into their own unique expression. Likewise for the Long Nosed God and the Bird Man/Eagle Warrior.
These symbols were also portrayed on copper breastplates worn by high status individuals. One such copper breastplate was found buried with an individual in Mound C, the burial mound. It shows a Bird Man or Eagle Warrior dancing. Amazingly, dancers at modern powwows can be seen performing dances that look remarkably similar to the dances portrayed in these copper designs.
The most important artifacts discovered at the Etowah Mounds site are undoubtedly the two carved marble statues of a man and woman. They are each about two feet tall and are in sitting positions. Early Spanish explorers noted that similar statues were part of an ancestor worship cult and were housed in Funerary Temples where offerings were made to them. These particular statues were discovered buried in their own grave at the base of Mound C. It appears that they were hastily buried without a lot of care since they were broken into pieces when discovered.
This hasty burial corresponds with another piece of archaeological evidence: the palisade wall appears to have burned down. Often times Native Americans would bury important objects when they came under attack in order to keep the items out of the hands of their enemies. It is probable that an attack serious enough to burn down the major defensive work of the massive Etowah Mounds site would have been the inspiration for such a hasty burial of these important objects. It is also possible that the attackers smashed the statues, thereby ritually killing them, and buried them to prevent them from ever being used again.[Continues…]
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|Sir Richard Baker|
Born: c. 1568
Birthplace: Sissinghurst, Kent, England
Location of death: London, England
Cause of death: unspecified
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Executive summary: Chronicle of the Kings of England
Author of the Chronicle of the Kings of England and other works, probably born at Sissinghurst in Kent, and entered Hart Hall, Oxford, as a commoner in 1584. He left the university without taking a degree, studied law in London and afterwards travelled in Europe. In 1593 he was chosen member of parliament for Arundel, in 1594 his university conferred upon him the degree of M.A., and in 1597 he was elected to parliament as the representative of East Grinstead. In 1603 he was knighted by King James I, in 1620 he acted as high sheriff at Oxfordshire where he owned some property, and soon afterwards he married Margaret, daughter of Sir George Mainwaring, of Ightfield, Shropshire. By making himself responsible for some debts of his wife's family, he was reduced to great poverty, which led to the seizure of his Oxfordshire property in 1625. Quite penniless, he took refuge in the Fleet prison in 1635, and was still in confinement when he died on the 18th of February 1644 (1645). He was buried in the church of St. Brid, Fleet Street, London.
During his imprisonment Baker spent his time mainly in writing. His chief work is the Chronicle of the Kings of England from the Time of the Romans' Government unto the Death of King James (1643, and many subsequent editions). It was translated into Dutch in 1649, and was continued down to 1658 by Edward Phillips, a nephew of John Milton. For many years the Chronicle was extremely popular, but owing to numerous inaccuracies its historical value is very slight. Baker also wrote Cato Variegatus or Catoes Morall Distichs, Translated and Paraphrased by Sir Richard Baker, Knight (London, 1636); Meditations on the Lord's Prayer (1637); Translation of New Epistles by Moonsieur D'Balzac (1638); Apologie for Laymen's Writing in Divinity, with a Short Meditation upon the Fall of Lucifer (1641); Motives for Prayer upon the seaven dayes of ye weeke (1642); a translation of Malvezzi's Discourses upon Cornelius Tacitus (1642), and Theatrum Redivivum, or The Theatre Vindicated, a reply to the Histrio-Mastix of William Prynne (1642). He also wrote Meditations upon several of the psalms of David, which have been collected and edited by A. B. Grosart (London, 1882).
Wife: Margaret (dau. of Sir George Mainwaring)
University: Hart Hall, Oxford University (no degree)
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Author: Florence Mukanga
The political history of Zimbabwe can be sub divided into three phases. These are the pre- colonial, colonial and post colonial eras. All these periods have had influences on cultural policy of Zimbabwe.
Through the first phase cultural policy was neither written nor comprehensive. In the pre-colonial era no such exercise would have been possible. The various ethnic groups that constituted small nations could not have been expected to write down their codes of conducts, and manner of preserving their cultural identity.
The second phase was the colonial period. For this period no comprehensive studies have been undertaken on the policy guidelines used by local authorities and central government during the colonial period to guide cultural practice in the pre-independent Zimbabwe and yet most of what exists today in term of structures of cultural governance, statues, institutions and infrastructure are what retained from Rhodesia. Although the colonial cultural policy action was comprehensive and documented in various fields of human endeavour such as education, social development (urban areas) economic and political spheres, there was no single document that outlined cultural policy. It can only be inferred piecemeal from various laws and regulations that impinge on cultural practice.
For instance the policy of denying that Africans built the Great Zimbabwe Monument was a fundamental cultural policy expressed in various forms most of which were not written but solidly legislated in such a manner that most of the institutions and facts about culture were in the hands of the Ministry responsible for police and law and order.
Most of the policies and legislation segregated the traditional African culture. Owen Seda (2004:136) observes that, ‘in colonial Rhodesia, cultural and social life had been marked by forced separation, prejudice and cultural polarisation.’ Kaarsholm affirms this by saying: In the narrowly exclusive Rhodesian colonial cosmology, dramatic and other cultural modes of expression of black Africans were firmly situated outside the boundaries of art or culture and relegated to the dark hinterlands of anthropology (1990, p.249)
A number of racially exclusive statutes were enacted to foster the system of segregating black arts and culture from those of the white people. These included National Galleries of Rhodesia Act (Chapter 312) 1974, the Welfare Organisations Act (Chapter 93) 1967 and The National Arts and Foundation Act which was derived from the Charter of the Arts Council of Great Britain (1967).The later operated in a similar way, ‗at arm’s length‘, with a National Board in the capital city and nine District Arts Councils based in smaller towns.
In 1980 Zimbabwe became independent. This marked a new era for the country in terms of cultural policy action, though the country inherited most of its pieces of legislation from the colonial era. The new government recognised the important role which arts and culture played during the liberation struggle. The new government was determined to redress the imbalances that had been created by the colonial government.The government came up with policies that were meant to bridge the gap that existed between black and white people’s arts and culture. These efforts were backed by pieces of legislation enacted to regulate the sector. In some cases it was just a matter of amending the old colonial legislation to accommodate black artists who were segregated before. The new legislation enacted includes the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe Act of 1985 and National Library and Documentation Act 11 of 1985.
Post Independence Experiences
Zimbabwe attended the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies held in Mexico City, 26 July - 6 August 1982. After this conference, one of the chief cultural officers in the Department of Culture who accompanied the Minister of Education and Culture to the World Conference Dr. Edward Ndlovu was tasked to lead the process of formulating the national cultural policy of Zimbabwe. This exercise was soon disrupted by the transfer of the culture function from the Ministry of Education to the then Ministry of Youth Sports, Culture and Recreation.
At the new ministry , the Department of Culture that was headed by the late Cuthbert Musiwa, soon faced serious challenges of fitting the culture function in a ministry that had forged very solid youth programmes which were significantly dovetailed with the youth programs of the ruling party’s political structures.
In the Ministry of Youth Sports and Culture, the scope of the task of formulating a national cultural policy was bogged down by the difficulties the Division of Culture faced when it tried to relate to other departments that had responsibilities for culture such as the Museums and Monuments Commission; the National Archives and the Censorship Board in the Ministry of Home Affairs; the audio visual services in the Ministry of Education; audio-visual industries and broadcasting institutions that were in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and traditional chiefs and the Chiefs Council that were in the Ministry of Local Government. Without a budget that could fund the hosting of consultative meetings, the Department of Culture found itself concerned with developing provincial and district structure that would enhance its status even if these replicated what other ministries with culture responsibilities had created - structures such as district and provincial arts councils, sports councils and youth councils did not only replicate grassroots structures but did not have budgets to fund their activities and secretariats of the structures at both district and provincial levels
In the absence of structures to relate to all institutions and departments that were responsible for some cultural functions, led to efforts of conceiving and formulating cultural policy document which were clearly not national and which could not be presented to Cabinet and other ministries with responsibilities for culture. Even the effort of prioritising the task of formulating a national cultural policy was not seen as a critical task of a department that was still trying to justify its existence and the value of culture.
When the culture function was returned back to the Ministry of Education through another cabinet reshuffle in early 1990s, the Department of Culture found itself spending a long period of trying to relate to new administrative structures that were dominantly focused on the education function and which at provincial level could not provide leadership to the provincial cultural officers who had moved back to the ministry. The return of the culture function to the Ministry of Education was seen by senior officers in education at the district and provincial level as indication that it was an insignificant function which could not be accommodate and whose return was to burden the all important education function. Just as there had been resistance to the introduction of cultural and sports education into the formal school curriculum , most of what the Division of Culture was advancing was not considered essential to achieve dominant objectives of education the ministry was expected to achieve.
During this period, the task of formulating the national cultural policy was led by the Department that was responsible for Cultural Institutions and Cultural Education. Unfortunately this department was pre-occupied with such ambitious national projects as the National Library and Documentation Services and the construction of 55 district cultural villages ,on the model of the Murewa Culture House, to justify the importance of the Division of Culture in general and the value of culture in particular. When funds to establish the National Library and Documentation Services and to install the audio-visual equipment for libraries and documentation centers which had been acquired through a bilateral agreement with France , did not materialize ,it seemed to indicate to many senior officers in the Ministry that the cultural function was not as an essential objective in the national development plan . This made it difficult for the Division of Culture to advocate for reasonable budgetary allocations for culture and for hiring qualified personnel that would handle the task of engaging other stakeholders outside the ministry in the formulation of a national cultural policy. The low priority of culture in the national development plans meant that the process of justifying the existence of the Division of Culture within the Ministry of Education had become the dominant pre-occupation rather than the coordination of all ministries with culture functions towards the development of a national cultural policy and a coherent implementation action plan.
In 1994, when a new Ministry of Sports Recreation and Culture was established, the efforts to initiate a broad -based dialogue for developing a national cultural policy were given a boost. My appointment as head of the ministry also assured some form of continuity in those efforts which had been initiated soon after 1982 UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies to formulate a comprehensive national cultural policy. These efforts were soon sidelined by the new Ministry’s dominant role in the hosting of All Africa Games and its leadership role in the development of programmes of SADC Arts and Culture Festivals and the SADC Information System (SACIS). However in spite of this and the consistent demand to justify its existence by taking on board projects that would receive publicity, the new ministry managed to initiate a strategy of facilitating cultural policy dialogues through round tables and collective action plans as well as regular contributions to the mass media about international organizations and initiatives of the SADC , OAU and UNESCO. This was driven by the hope that these discussions would build strong relations among all government department and parastatal institutions with responsibility for culture.
The UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies for Development held in Stockholm, Sweden in 1998 made the formulation of a comprehensive national cultural policy an urgent matter. Officials in the Division of Culture worked closely with the permanent secretary who had accompanied the minister of Education, Sports and Culture to the World Conference on Cultural Policies for Development, to create a base for a national consultation process in the development of a truly national cultural policy involving all the seven or so government departments and five parastatals that had some cultural functions. This period of hyper-activity in the cultural sector was motivated by the donor support through the SADC Arts and Culture Festivals which the ministry, its parastatals and national arts and culture associations help to initiate. Unfortunately this was also the period when the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) was being implemented and the Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture was targeted as the first ministry required to reduce its size of staff complement and programmes in order to reduce overall government expenditure.
Being the ministry with the largest number of civil servants, it was hope that rationalization of the ministry would bring about a drastic reduction in government expenditure. And yet structures that looked after education functions were all considered essential and not worth tempering with. This led the authorities responsible for downsizing the ministry to choose the abolition of the department of culture and sport as something easy to justify. The result of this exercise was the abolition of district and provincial structures of the Division of Sport and Culture as well the abolition of the Literature Bureau by virtue of having been assigned to the Division of Culture. The argument that was advanced was that the abolition of the Division was necessary because it was duplicating the functions of its parastatals- the National Arts Council, the National Gallery and the Sports and Recreation Commission. It was argued that issues of culture and sports policy would be the responsibility of the Division of Education Policy and Standards which were staffed by education officers. Even the draft national sport policy which was ready for presentation to Cabinet did not found in favour with both the board of the Sports and Recreation Commission and the senior education officers who had been considered appropriate to handle the formulation of sports and culture policies. It was not clear as to whether the boards of National Gallery, NLDS, National Arts Council and the Sports and Recreation Commission were expected to lead the exercise of national policy formulation.
Cultural Policy for Zimbabwe at last
When the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture finally got round ,in 2005 , to bringing together prominent individuals in the arts and culture sector and the senior education officers to produce a cultural policy for Zimbabwe, after rounds of meetings, there was no senior officer in the ministry responsible for culture except mass games display officers and those seconded from the education department to oversee the remaining cultural functions such the selection of artists for airport arrivals of dignitaries ; the identification and engagement of choirs at burials of heroes at the National Heroes Acres ; the hiring of artists for national celebrations and the production of mass games for the independence day celebrations. In this exercise no white paper was issued to invite or inform the nation about the national exercise of developing a national cultural policy. No public statements were made about the exercise and no invitations were made to national arts and culture associations and, institutions to make submissions in writing about issues they wanted the national cultural policy to address.
The exercise did not take cognizance of the presence of those who had played a part in the cultural policy formulation exercises of the 80s and 90s who were still in the country; records of dialogues initiated after the World Conference on Cultural Policies for Development as well as concerns raised on the need for harmonizing cultural policies and legislation in the SADC. This process also excluded stakeholders in other sectors of culture such as the heritage sector -the departments and parastatals of the Ministry of Home Affairs , Local Government, Rural and Urban Development and Tourism as well those concerned with the audio visual industry- the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting ; the Ministry of Legal Affairs that was responsible for copyright issues, and the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education that was responsible for teacher education and UNESCO. This has been confirmed by the absence of records I of invitations to these ministries, department and parastatals to submit what they thought should be featured in the national cultural policy.
The first consolidated cultural policy of Zimbabwe was launched in 2004. In 2009 the Ministry of Education, Sport Arts and Culture, which was responsible for the arts initiated a fresh revision of the policy after making the following realisations:
From 2010 the ministry embarked on provincial consultative meetings across the country. Two researchers were appointed to consolidate views of stakeholders and contents of past policy documents with a view to produce a draft policy which was to be debated and finalised through wider consultations. The revised national heritage and culture policy is yet to be announced.
In 2013 there was also a determination to align the cultural policy with current situation (issues and priorities) for culture practitioners, producers and entrepreneurs and the national development policy framework – ZimAsset 2013 and other policies.
Reflections on the review process
This section was written by Stephen Chifunyise with additional input from Florence Mukanga- Majachani
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I’ve been getting some emails and tweets alerting me to photos that purport to show the debris trail of a meteor after it apparently plunged into the ocean off the coast of Perth, Australia. After looking at the pictures, I’m pretty sure this is not a meteor, but an airplane contrail.
First, the picture, from the Australian news site News.com.au:
It’s a lovely photo! It shows the ocean off to the west of Perth, a blue sky, and what appears to be some sort of cloud-like vapor or debris trail. That’s probably not just an average cloud: it’s very linear, and shows signs of being sheared apart by winds. Cirrus clouds can look like this, but generally aren’t all alone in a blue sky. There are other types of linear clouds (like alto- and cirrocumulus) but those tend to appear in parallel bands.
The cloud is also relatively low above the Earth’s surface. In another photo from news.com.au, you can see the faint shadow of the cloud on the sky – I have inset that here, with the brightness and contrast stretched. The arrows mark the shadow (the bright blobs are most likely internal reflections in the camera, and the dark spot a piece of dust or something like that on the lens). The picture was taken at sunset, so the Sun was low. The shadow of the trail is being cast on haze and other stuff floating in the air above the cloud. Clearly, the trail isn’t all that high above the Earth’s surface.
This doesn’t mean it’s not from a meteor, necessarily. A big rock plunging into the ocean might leave a trail (technically called a "train") like this. But I don’t think that’s what we’re seeing. A big rock burning up in the atmosphere would’ve been really conspicuous, and seen by lots of people – especially at sunset near a major city like Perth. I’d also expect the train to be much longer than this; big meteors start burning up about 100 kilometers (60 miles) over the Earth, so the train would arc across more of the sky.
And no one saw that? Also, there are no confirmations from anywhere else of an impact or even observations of this. So my skeptic sense is tingling hard.
Also? It just really really looks like a typical airplane contrail! We see these all the time. When a plane flies over the horizon it can leave a contrail looking exactly like this, with perspective making it look like it’s diving down into the ocean. It gets lit by the setting Sun, so it glows red, orange, or yellow. Thinking parsimoniously – using Occam’s razor and looking at probabilities here – what’s more likely: an airplane flying away from a big city, or a big rock burning up in our atmosphere that almost no one saw?
And I’ll save the best for last: as I was wrapping up writing this post I did a Google search to see if anything new popped up, and sure enough there’s an article with a witness saying he saw this cloud for a while before sunset, and it was clearly a contrail from an airplane. I don’t put a lot of stock in eyewitness testimony in general, but that fits everything else we know.
So it seems far, far more likely to me that what we’re seeing here is a contrail from an airplane being lit up in a lovely and spectacular way by the setting Sun, and not the smoky path of a bit of cosmic debris meeting its fate Down Under. That may not be as exciting, but it does help in a way: once you understand better what you’re seeing in the sky (or in this case, not seeing), then you’ll be in a better position to make a judgement if you do see something truly unusual. They may be rare, but spectacular meteors do sometimes flash across the sky. If you’re fortunate enough to ever see one, wouldn’t you rather be sure that’s what you’re seeing?
"Senator Bob" Smith was a US Senator of New Hampshire for 13 years, a NH Congressman for six years before that, and served on the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee for two years.
Which means exactly nothing when it comes to not buying into ridiculous conspiracy theories.
For evidence of this, I direct you to an OpEd "Senator Bob" wrote for the Orwellianly-named Accuracy in Media website where he claims that we still don’t have answers about a supposed missile launch off the coast of LA last year. It has all the usual hallmarks of a breathless conspiracy theory: a total of 16 rhetorical questions most of which have nothing to do with the actual topic, accusations of coverup at the highest levels, an off-handed mention that Obama might not be an American citizen (seriously), and a lot of self-aggrandizement.
All this over a contrail?
Yup. The deal is, last November a news helicopter pilot got some pictures of an airplane contrail over LA, and people — especially the media — went nuts covering it, speculating it was a secret missile launch. However, the evidence is overwhelmingly clear it was just a contrail, and in fact was clear to reality-based folks pretty much from the start. Of course, the media mistake Jupiter and Venus for UFOs, so I wouldn’t trust them very far.
But "Senator Bob" was an actual Senator! And he says stuff like this:
The truth is this. I do not know the truth, but I do bring my own credibility to this subject…
Senator, I think you misspelled "credulity". But at least he didn’t claim it was a chemtrail. Maybe that’s next week’s OpEd.
Anyway, the point here is that credentials mean nothing when out of context — his serving on the Armed Services Committee is meaningless when it comes to image analysis, for example — and not to belabor the obvious, but politicians are not always the best source of information on a topic. Or a lot of topics.
Just a quick note about that whole silly missile/contrail non-troversy that popped up last week: the website Contrail Science has a pretty good and quite lengthy writeup of the affair, complete with pretty convincing diagrams showing this was just an airplane. Interestingly, the author of that site concludes it was a different airline flight than the one I mentioned in my post the other day, but the bottom line is that this was certainly an airplane and not anything sinister.
I’ve talked about this before, both on the blog and at public lectures: the Internet is a two-edged sword when it comes to nonsense. It allows the spread of misinformation to be so rapid that there’s hardly a chance of getting corrections noticed before millions are infected… but it does make the inoculating knowledge easier to get out there as well.
We’ve seen this sort of thing before — remember the Texas fireball people thought was debris from two satellites that collided? — and we’ll see it again. We in the reality-based community must be vigilant to make sure the correct information gets out there. We can’t prevent misinformation from getting out, and we can’t even really stop it once it hits the street. But we can minimize it, and make sure there are repositories of knowledge to which we can refer others.
Tip o’ the tin foil beanie to Dan Durda.
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Overview of abortion:
unsolvable dilemma? :
Part 1 of 3:
Definition of terms. The main questions.
How often are abortions performed in the U.S.?
Definition of terms:
Most web sites that deal with abortion
do not pre-define their terms. This is important, because many conservative Christians and pro-lifers often
assign unique meanings to common words and terms that are not shared
by other people and groups. The three key terms that we use throughout this series of
"Life:" Any form of living animal or vegetable.
"Human life:" Any living cell or group of cells containing human DNA. A
spermatozoa, ovum, pre-embryo, embryo, fetus, newborn, infant, child, youth and adult are
different forms of human life. However, they are not all considered to
have equal value.
"Human person" This is a form of human life which is
considered to be a person whose life and health should be
protected. No consensus exists about when this state begins.
Many pro-lifers say it happens during the process of
conception, when a human life with a unique DNA is formed. Many pro-choicers say
that it happens later in gestation. One of many examples is when the fetus becomes sentient -- that is the higher functions of its brain turn on for the first time, and it becomes aware of its environment to some degree. Others believe that personhood only
begins when the fetus is half-emerged from its mother's body or after birth when the newborn is separated from her or his mother, and breathing on its own.
What are the main questions?:
There are two, different, very
controversial abortion questions:
- What is the best (or least awful) option in a specific situation? If a woman finds herself pregnant, and does not want to be, what is the best (or least
worst) solution for
her, the potential newborn that she is carrying, and all the other
people involved -- including her boyfriend or husband and their
families? Most agree that there are three options:
1) To take no action, have the baby, and raise it herself (hopefully
with support from others).
2) To take no action, give birth, and give the baby up for adoption.
3) To have an abortion and terminate the pregnancy.
- Should the state overrule the woman's or couple's decision? If a woman finds herself pregnant, discusses her options with
her physician, perhaps her spiritual counselor, and other
people involved, and decides to have an abortion,
under what conditions (if any) should the state override her decision? That is, should the state have a policy of
enforced parenthood for all or most pregnant women?
The first decision is a personal one, between the woman, her
physician and/or counselor. The second decision was answered by
the U.S. Supreme Court in its Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. Since that ruling,
women have had the right to obtain an
early abortion. She also has the right to have a later abortion if it is needed
for health reasons. It is
in this area of abortion access that there is a great deal of political activity,
at least in the U.S. Many states are passing laws which would criminalize almost
all abortions. Their apparent motivation is to force the U.S. Supreme Court to
reconsider Roe v. Wade and perhaps reverse their decision. There is also effort in some states to ban all abortions after 20 weeks gestation on the basis that some people believe fetuses can feel pain at this stage.
How often are abortions performed: In the United States?
Women choose to end about 20% of their pregnancies through
abortion. 1 This number has been gradually declining since
1979. This is similar to the Canadian figure, 2 but is
much lower than that of the former Soviet Union (~60%) and Romania (~ 78%) where
contraceptives remain in short supply. 3
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (CDC), a federal government agency, reported in late 2015 that during:
"... 2012, 699,202 legal induced abortions were reported to CDC from 49 reporting areas. The abortion rate for 2012 was 13.2 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years, and the abortion ratio was 210 abortions per 1,000 live births.
Compared with 2011, the total number and ratio of reported abortions for 2012 decreased 4%, and the abortion rate decreased 5%. Additionally, from 2003 to 2012, the number, rate, and ratio of reported abortions decreased 17%, 18%, and 14%, respectively. Given the large decreases in the total number, rate, and ratio of reported abortions from 2011 to 2012, in combination with decreases that occurred during 2008–2011, all three measures reached historic lows."
Most religious conservatives attribute these declines to new laws which are closing down clinics that supply abortions and make them more difficult to obtain. Most religious liberals and secularists point to increased comprehensive sex educations, the availability of emergency conception to prevent pregnancy, and financial matters.
More CDC data from 2012:
"... 91.4% of abortions were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation; a smaller number of abortions (7.2%) were performed at 14–20 weeks’ gestation, and even fewer (1.3%) were performed at ≥21 weeks’ gestation."
Abortions later than 20 or 21 weeks gestation are generally prohibited by state and provincial medical associations throughout North America, except for situations that threaten the life of the woman.
- American statistics are listed by Baptists for Life, Inc. at: http://www.bfl.org/stats
- Canadian statistics are listed by Action Life (Ottawa) Inc. at: http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/
- Bob Enyart is an extremely conservative talk show host. He has a "Bob
Enyart Live Abortion Clock" on his web site. It lists the total number of
legal abortions that have been performed since 1973. See: http://www.enyart.com/
- Carl Sagan, "Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at
the Brink of the Millennium: Chapter 15" Read
reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store Chapter 15 has been reprinted at: http://www.2think.org/
- S. Boyd, "Give us liberty: The approval of RU-486 isn't about
morals, it's about options," Salon.com at: http://www.salon.com/
(This may be a temporary posting)
- A.T. Hyman, "The 'A' Word." This is an essay on the legal
aspects of the abortion debate. See: http://members.aol.com/
- Nellie Gray, president of March for Life, at the 28th annual March
for Life, 2001-JAN-22.
- "Constitution Party supports statewide abortion ban,"
Stop Abortion in Ohio, undated, at: http://www.ohioabortionban.com/
- "Sanctity of Life," Platform, Constitution Party at: http://www.constitutionparty.com/
- Marci McDonald, "The Armageddon Factor," Random House Canada. Released 2010-MAY-11.
Copyright © 1996 to 2015 by Ontario Consultants on
Last updated 2015-DEC-04
Author: Bruce A Robinson
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Definition of clockwork
n. - The machinery of a clock, or machinery resembling that of a clock; machinery which produces regularity of movement. 2
The word "clockwork" uses 9 letters: C C K K L O O R W.
No direct anagrams for clockwork found in this word list.
Words formed by adding one letter before or after clockwork (in bold), or to cckkloorw in any order:
s - clockworks
All words formed from clockwork by changing one letter
Browse words starting with clockwork by next letter
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The golden colours and sweet flavours of pumpkin are wonderful in all kinds of autumnal dishes.
Pumpkins are a type of winter squash, a member of the cucurbita genus, whose summer cousins include zucchini. Some varieties originated in South America, and others in Central America. Native Americans consumed pumpkins as a medicine, as well as drying them for food and to weave into mats. Introduced to the American pilgrims by the Native Americans, pumpkins quickly found favour and were immortalised as one of the traditional foods of Thanksgiving. Europeans initially used pumpkins as cattle fodder, but today they are enjoyed throughout the world.
Like all orange-fleshed fruit and vegies, pumpkins contain a high level of betacarotene. This important antioxidant is converted to vitamin A by our bodies, and helps to prevent degenerative disease.
The usually ingenious French do little with pumpkins, other than turn them into soups and breads. Pumpkins are used more often in the Mediterranean and Middle East, as a filling for filo pies, or paired in soups and stews with pulses and aromatic spices. In Greece, pumpkins are made into preserves and pies. The Italians use pumpkins as a ravioli filling, or make them into gnocchi, while South East Asian cooks use the tender young leaves in stews and the flesh in soups and curries.
Queensland blue pumpkin:
A large (5-7kg) blueish-grey pumpkin with smooth, deeply ribbed skin and full-flavoured golden orange flesh. The baby blue (about 2kg) is a miniature version. The pureed flesh is a favourite for scones.
This buff-coloured, pearshaped pumpkin has dense, dry, sweet-tasting flesh, making it the most versatile type for cooking.
The jarrahdale closely resembles the Queensland blue, but is grey and not as deeply ribbed. It cuts easily, and has orange, sweet-tasting flesh.
This attractive, highly coloured yellow and orange ribbed pumpkin varies in colour between specimens. It is best stuffed with flavourful fillings then cooked.
Jap is short for Japanese pumpkin or kabocha, as it is known in Japan. There are many different varieties, such as kent. The green/grey skin is mottled yellow and brown and is easily cut. A nutty-flavoured pumpkin, it has yellowish/orange flesh that is soft and drier than most.It is also known as Kent pumpkin.
Golden nugget pumpkin:
This bright orange, diminutive pumpkin with golden-yellow flesh is easy to cut and best cooked with the skin on. Its appearance is its primary appeal.
Most pumpkins are grown on annual plants, which have long running vines and large, wide leaves. Like zucchini, the plants have both male and female flowers - the female flowers produce fruit, while the non-fruiting male flowers can be picked and cooked in a similar way to zucchini flowers.
Golden nugget and dumpling pumpkins are thin-walled types, with a large proportion of seeds; their small size makes them perfect for stuffing. For purees and mash, steaming is preferable to boiling (drain in a colander after cooking), which can make pumpkins overly wet, or for a more concentrated flavour, try roasting. Cooking methods that require relatively high heat levels produce particularly flavoursome results, as this caramelises pumpkins' natural sugars. Try char-grilling (thin wedges of butternut or jap pumpkins); stir-frying (golden nugget or butternut pumpkin); or roasting (all varieties - cut into wedges with the skin on, or peel and cut into large cubes). Cubes of butternut, jarrahdale or Queensland blue can be sautéed.
Buying and storing
In general, supermarkets only sell cut large pumpkins, while greengrocers offer both cut and whole. Cutting a large pumpkin can be difficult, so buying a readycut piece has its advantages - inspect cut surfaces for dryness before buying, and refrigerate pieces for up to 1 week. Whole pumpkins will last for months, if stored in a cool place (10-16°C).
The bulbous end of a butternut pumpkin contains a thin wall of flesh and seeds, while the neck-end contains only flesh. To prepare, cut in half at the junction of the two. Peel the neck end and cut into cubes, slices or semicircular pieces, then halve the base, scoop out the seeds, cut into wedges and peel.
Take care when cutting pumpkins. A serrated knife offers more grip than a flat blade when trying to cut the skin. Or cut into smaller pieces and use a paring knife.
All pumpkin seeds are edible and highly nutritious. For a snack, dry seeds on paper towels then toss 2 cups seeds with 2 tbs olive oil and sea salt (or tamari). Roast, stirring, until dry and golden.
Pumpkin goes well with coriander, sage, thyme and rosemary, crumbled blue cheese, ricotta or goat's cheese, shavings of parmesan, and cured meats. In sweet dishes, try pumpkin with brown sugar or maple syrup, grated lemon or orange rind, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and cloves.
Notebook: — May 2006 , Page 115
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Sponsored Link •
All too often, developers think that documenting their new creations just means writing a detailed technical description of what it does. In a sense, they're explaining things to themselves. But what you really need to do is explain things to someone who's coming across your stuff for the first time.
I recently completed an interesting self-imposed task: writing
package.html files for all of the packages in the JMX API (
Up until now, each package description looked like this:
Well, that's useful.
When the JMX API was a separate API, this was perhaps acceptable. If
were reading the documentation, you had probably gone to the trouble of
downloading and installing it. You already knew what it was and why you
were interested in it.
But now, the JMX API is going to be part of the standard J2SE
platform. So what's your reaction going to be if, out of
curiosity, you click on the
You'll see 66
interfaces, classes, and exceptions, and that one helpful sentence to
tell you what they are about. Then you'll go and look at something else.
In fact, all the information you need to know is present in that
HTML set and in the separate PDF specification document. But where do
start? It is not enough for the information to be present. It must be accessible.
Making information accessible means putting yourself in the position
of somebody who's learning about it for the first time. The key
In the case of the JMX API, the answer to the first question is
simple. They'll look at the package documentation for
first. So it better contain good answers to the other questions.
The new package summary begins with this text:
The Java Management Extensions (JMXTM) API is a standard API for management and monitoring. Typical uses include:
The JMX API can also be used as part of a solution for managing systems, networks, and so on.
The API includes remote access, so a remote management program can interact with a running application for these purposes.
The idea here is that, before launching into a detailed discussion
of what is in the API, we explain what the API is for. Maybe the person reading this
doesn't have a very clear idea of a management system is. Maybe they do
have a clear idea, but it doesn't correspond to what this API does. So
straight away we provide a quick summary. If you are just curious, or
if you want to know whether the API can address a specific problem you
have, or if you wonder which of your problems it might address, this
simple text should give you some idea.
The text is deliberately brief. The more you write, the less
people read. It uses bullet items, because people tend to look at those
first. The full text also includes many subheadings, for the same
The remaining text then takes the reader on a brief tour of the most important concepts and classes of the API. The information it includes was already present in the JMX specification. If you needed to know how to write a simple MBean, you could figure it out after studying the specification. But why should you be forced to do that? Everybody beginning to use this API will need to know this, so the new text includes examples. Examples of what the interfaces might be used for, and code extracts to show them in use.
It's hard to overstate the importance of examples. Everybody thinks
in terms of examples. Don't believe anyone who tells you they don't.
Yet so much API documentation is written as if it were sufficient just
to say what the interfaces do. As if the person writing the
specification were just beaming their understanding directly into the
reader's mind through the magic words of formal language. (Of course,
lots more API documentation doesn't even
say what the interfaces do, in any but the vaguest terms.)
Examples serve as a high-level specification. If I give an example
of the naming conventions that the JMX API parses for its Standard
MBeans, then that tells 99% of the users everything they need to know.
The full specification is still necessary to cover the details, but it
can be buried deeply in the documentation.
Examples give readers context. When they read the definition of an interface, they can see how it relates to the example. They can imagine modifying the example in various ways and see how the interface matches those changes.
Examples also act as a sanity check for API designers. If you can't
think of an example for your interface, then why is it there? If the
only example you can think of is incredibly far-fetched, couldn't you
redesign things so that a simpler example is possible? If you include a
code extract in your example, and it is complicated, then maybe that's
a sign that you should adjust the API so that simple examples are
simple to code. There were a couple of instances of this in the
examples I wrote for the JMX API, which will be useful next time that
API is revised.
In fact the Reference Implementation for the JMX API has always
contained examples. If you unpack it, you will find an examples
subdirectory. But don't expect people to look there. People will look
at the Javadoc, and they might
look at one or two introductory documents like READMEs, but for the
most part they won't go burrowing around in the directory structure.
Furthermore, the existing examples serve a slightly different
purpose. They are complete, self-contained programs that show the API
in action. This is useful too, but not for the person consulting the
API documentation. That person wants to see examples in the text they
are looking at. They don't want to have go and look somewhere else and
juggle two sources of information at once. And working examples contain
extraneous detail that distracts from the key points being communicated.
As a general rule, there should be one starting point for someone
working with the documentation. It should be an expected starting point
(ideally the top level of the generated HTML), and it should provide an
obvious path to the other information. The Javadoc tool already works
well in this respect. From the top-level HTML, there are links to the
classes and subpackages.
Those key questions again. Put yourself in the position of someone
who's encountering your stuff for the first time.
|Eamonn McManus is the technical lead of the JMX team at Sun Microsystems. As such he heads the technical work on JSR 3 (JMX API) and JSR 160 (JMX Remote API). In a previous life, he worked at the Open Software Foundation's Research Institute on the Mach microkernel and countless other things, including a TCP/IP stack written in Java. In an even previouser life, he worked on modem firmware in Z80 assembler. He is Irish, but lives and works in France and in French. His first name is pronounced Aymun (more or less) and is correctly written with an acute accent on the first letter, which however he long ago despaired of getting intact through computer systems.|
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A typical union member in Canada today is likely to be female and work in the public sector, a big change from the primarily male, blue-collar, industrial workforce that dominated the union movement well into the 1980s. The demographic makeup of the Canadian labour movement has undergone a slow but dramatic transformation over the course of the past three decades.
In fact, roughly one out of every five Canadian workers is employed in the broader public sector, working in public administration, health care, education, police and fire protection, public utilities, social services and municipal government. Of those, more than 70 per cent are union members. This compares to just 15.9 per cent of private sector workers in Canada who belong to unions.
Hamilton's blue-collar identity was forged through a long history of struggles in industrial workplaces, most notably in the 1946 Stelco strike. But in recent years, the ravages of deindustrialization have cut deeply into the number of private sector union members, while both employment and union membership in public sector workplaces has grown.
So, what does it mean to live in a "union town" like Hamilton when the unionized jobs are located primarily in the public sector?
In their defence of good jobs and expanded services, public sector unions are in fact promoting the public good.
While unions members in both the public and private sectors face similar workplace challenges, there are important differences too. Public sector unions tend to face greater "taxpayer" backlash, since the public purse is used to pay for the salaries and benefits of public sector workers. No-one is a disinterested bystander during a public sector strike.
As a result, public sector unions are often cast as acting in their self-interest rather than the public interest and are scolded when they seek to defend their collective agreements, particularly through strikes and other tactics that interrupt services that members of the public depend on. This dynamic was on display through 2012 and 2013, as teachers sought to defend their right to free collective bargaining by engaging in rotating strikes and withdrawing from extracurricular activities.
Public sector strikes are understandably contentious affairs since their implications stretch far beyond the workplace. When public sector union members exercise their right to strike they are not striking a capitalist business, but rather the government, school board, or social service agency and arguably, by extension, the public.
In addition, many public sector employers, such as hospitals, universities and colleges, are not themselves in direct control of their budgets and unions must negotiate with them rather than the governments who really hold the purse strings. But these issues often blind us to the fact that public sector workers have legitimate needs — for fair wages and working conditions. Moreover, in their defence of good jobs and expanded services, public sector unions are in fact promoting the public good.
Everyone is dependent on a well-functioning, well-financed public sector. For public sector workers, this is the source of a decent and secure livelihood. For citizens, the public sector is the mechanism we use to collectively provide services — like health care and education — that are so fundamental to our well-being, regardless of our individual income levels.
For employers, the public sector also provides things such as transportation infrastructure and workforce training that make profit-making possible. As such, the provision — and interruption — of public services matters to various groups, but in different ways and with different political dynamics. Given these distinct and sometimes contradictory interests, public sector unions' capacity to exert power is complicated.
Right-wing politicians would have us believe that austerity is the direct result of the wage demands of greedy public sector unions. This frame conveniently ignores both the role of the financial industry in precipitating the Great Recession of 2008 and the decades-long reduction in corporate tax rates that has shifted a greater burden onto working families.
Blaming political and economic problems on unionized public sector workers is not only misdirected, but also serves the interests of right-wing politicians and their corporate allies who, in the name of profit, seek to undermine support for public services and the public sector union members who provide them.
To overcome these divide-and-conquer strategies, and defend against further attacks on the rights of public sector workers, unions will require new strategic thinking and modes of action. That means more effectively connecting the interests of public sector workers with those of citizens, by linking contract demands to the enhancement of the quality and availability of public services.
Some are already leading the way: nurses, for example, have a long history of making the level and quality of patient care a central part of their bargaining demands. Similarly, social service workers have used their bargaining power to improve working conditions while simultaneously challenging service cuts to society's most vulnerable.
Given the centrality of public services to our quality of life, such connections between the interests of service providers and recipients need to be strengthened. In this way, public sector unions can work more effectively in common cause with those who desire a more just and equitable society.
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Physics Professor Zdzislaw Musielak has been awarded a three-year, $301,339 National Science Foundation grant to investigate Alfvén waves in the sun, a phenomenon vital to understanding Earth’s nearest star.
“The sun is the source of energy that sustains all life on Earth, but there is much that remains unknown about it,” says Dr. Musielak, a two-time winner of the international Humboldt Prize for his research into the sun and solar-type stars. “With this research, we hope to explore one of the great mysteries—what forces fuel the heat of the sun’s outer atmosphere and the basic physical processes for creating its magnetic influence on Earth and other planets.”
Alfvén waves are magnetic plasma waves named after Hannes Alfvén, who received a Nobel Prize in 1970. Their existence helps explain why the sun’s corona, or upper atmosphere, is hotter than the solar surface. Understanding Alfvén waves is also crucial to explaining the speed of solar winds, a stream of highly charge particles released into space by the sun.
Read more about the NSF grant to investigate Alfvén waves.
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The following are recommended books for parents and educators.
Meet Me in the Middle: Becoming an Accomplished Middle-Level Teacher
The author lays out a clear vision of what responsive middle level teaching should be. This is a book for all reasons - help for the novice teacher, support for the mid-career teacher wanting to improve her craft, and inspiration and confirmation for the later-career teacher as well. Part I creates a culture of learning, leading to Part II and many specific ideas on promoting higher student achievement through innovative and accomplished practice. Part III cycles back to the middle school context - effective teams, teacher-student advisories, outdoor adventures, and working with parents.
Overcoming Underachieving: An Action Guide to Helping Your Child Succeed in School
In Overcoming Underachieving two nationally recognized experts in children's school problems show you how to become your child's advocate, coach, and guide through the educational process. Using numerous case examples, they help you pinpoint your child's unique learning patterns and the problems that interfere with learning, behavior, and achievement. This information-packed book provides dozens of creative, parent-tested tools to help your child overcome difficulties with reading, math, handwriting, study skills, memorization, attention span, and many other problems that affect school success.
Self-Advocacy Skills for Students with Learning Disabilities
Filled with strategies, and resources, this book uses the author's groundbreaking research about successful adults with learning disabilities, to promote self-advocacy. This work is brimming with useful and practical information. It is easily understood and embraced by students with learning disabilities, their parents, guidance counselors, and stakeholders in the fields of both higher education and special education.
Socially ADDept: A Manual for Parents of Children with ADHD and/or Learning Disabilities
Socially ADDept helps parents teach the hidden rules of communication to children who are having social problems. The manual is in a workbook format and guides parents through each topic through a series of exercises and suggested dialogue. Some of the topics covered are how to handle teasing, use appropriate body language, comprehend jokes and sarcasm, and join groups effectively. Socially ADDept is easy to read and use.
The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander
It's a deadly triad: bullies who terrorize, bullied kids who are afraid to tell, bystanders who watch, participate, or look away, and adults who dismiss the incidents as a normal part of childhood. Drawing on her decades of work with youth, this practical book by bestselling parenting educator Barbara Coloroso explains the three kinds of bullying, the differences between boy and girl bullies, four abilities that protect your child from succumbing to bullying, seven steps to take if your child is a bully, how to help the bullied child heal and effectively discipline the bully, how to evaluate a school's antibullying policy and much more.
The Unwritten Rules of Friendship
This practical and compassionate guidebook enables parents to sharpen any child's social skills by pinpointing the child's particular social strengths and difficulties. Each chapter — from "The Shy Child" to "The Little Adult," from "The Short-Fused Child" to "The Sensitive Soul" — uses case studies that focus on the specific social conventions that certain children don't "get," and offers drills that parents and teachers can use to help children understand the unspoken underpinnings of social situations, the knowledge essential to building, sustaining, and repairing relationships.
Understanding Your Child's Puzzling Behavior
When should you seek professional help for your child's behavioral, social, or learning challenges? Understanding Your Child's Puzzling Behavior is the ultimate resource for assessing your child's behavior, learning when to intervene, and knowing how to seek further help for a struggling child. Whether a child is dealing with performance issues, anxiety, noncompliance, angry outbursts, or a host of other difficulties, this book offers a step-by-step method that walks parents through the often-complex process of treating a child's problems.
Proceeds from the sale of books purchased from our recommended books section can help support LD OnLine.
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Herb of the Month
Botanical Name: Ocimum Sanctum.
English Name : Holi Basil
Basil is a many branched, erect stout and aromatic herb. It
grows up to the height of about 75cms and is hairy all over. The plant has tender leaves, usually smooth, up to 2.5cm
in length. The herb is bitter and pungent. This herb has been
known from as early as Vedic period .The holy basil is native
to India. It reached Western Europe in the 16th
Century .It has now widely grown throughout the world.
The plant has many
medicinal properties. The leaves are a nervine tonic and also
sharpen memory. They promote the removal of the catarrhal
matter and phlegm from the bronchial tube. The leaves
strengthen the stomach and induce copious perspiration. The
seed of the plant are mucilaginous.
Anxiety & Stress :
leaves are regarded as an adaptogen or anti-stress agent.
Recent studies have shown that the leaves afford significant
protection against stress. Even healthy persons can chew 12
leaves of basil, twice a day, to prevent stress. It purifies
blood and helps prevent several common elements.
Cold & Fever:
leaves of basil are specific for many fevers. During the rainy
season, when malaria and dengue fever are widely prevalent,
tender leaves, boiled with tea, act as preventive against
theses diseases. in case of acute fevers, a decoction of the
leaves boiled with powdered cardamom in half a liter of water
and mixed with sugar and milk brings down the temperature.
of tulsi leaves can be used to bring down fever. Extract
of tulsi leaves in fresh water should be given every 2 to
3 hours. In between one can keep giving sips of cold
water. In children, it is every effective in bringing down
an important constituent of many Ayurvedic cough syrups
and expectorants. It helps to mobilize mucus in bronchitis
and asthma. Chewing tulsi leaves relieves cold and flu.
boiled with basil leaves can be taken as drink in case of sore
throat. This water can also be used as a gargle.
herb is useful in the treatment of respiratory system
disorder. A decoction of the leaves, with honey and ginger is
an effective remedy for bronchitis, asthma, influenza, cough
and cold. A decoction of the leaves, cloves and common salt
also gives immediate relief in case of influenza. They should
be boiled in half a liter of water till only half the water is
left and add then taken.
has strengthening effect on the kidney. In case of renal stone
the juice of basil leaves and honey, if taken regularly for 6
months it will expel them via the urinary tract.
has a beneficial effect in cardiac disease and the weakness
resulting from them. It reduces the level of blood
pediatric problems like cough cold, fever, diarrhea and
vomiting respond favorably to the juice of basil leaves. If
pustules of chicken pox delay their appearance, basil leaves
taken with saffron will hasten them.
leaves are quit effective for the ulcer and infections in the
mouth. A few leaves chewed will cure these conditions.
herb is a prophylactic or preventive and curative for insect
stings or bites. A teaspoonful of the juice of the leaves is
taken and a repeated after a few hours. Fresh juice must also
be applied to the affected parts. A paste of fresh roots is
also effective in case of bites of insects and leeches.
locally, basil juice is beneficial in the treatment of
ringworm and other skin diseases. It has also been tried
successfully by some naturopaths I the treatment of leucoderma.
juice is an effective remedy for sore eyes and
night-blindness, which is generally caused by deficiency of
vitamin a. Two drops of black basil juice should be put into
the eyes daily at bedtimes.
herb is useful in teeth disorders. Its leaves, dried in the
sun and powdered, can be used for brushing teeth. It can also
be mixed with mustered oil to make a paste and used as
toothpaste. This is very good for maintaining dental health,
counter acting bad breath and for massaging the gums. It is
also useful in pyorrhea and other teeth disorders.
makes a good medicine for headache. A decoction of the leaves can
be given for this disorder. Pounded leaves mixed with
sandalwood paste can also be applied on the forehead for
getting relief from heat, headache, and for providing coolness
Tulsi, mint can help
prevent cancer :
Commonly found Indian
herb Tulsi and Mint can be used to fight cancer, says a
researcher at Jaipur. The cancer-fighting properties of tulsi,
which is grown in many Indian homes, and Pudina (Mint) have
been discovered by a team of 10 students at the University of
Ayurvedic Supplements that contains
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David L. Bigler
Utah History Encyclopedia
The first emigrants to cross Utah with wagons came in 1841, six years before the Mormon pioneers, this party numbered thirty-two men and one woman, who carried a baby daughter in one arm and led a horse with the other. Nancy Kelsey, barely eighteen years old and the first white woman ever to see Great Salt Lake, was later remembered for her "heroism, patience and kindness."
Named in part after its captain, John Bartleson, the party had numbered more than sixty when it assembled in May 1841 at Sapling Grove, near Westport, Missouri, for the journey to John Marsh's California ranch at the foot of Mount Diablo in present-day Contra Costa County. Its most active organizer was twenty-one-year-old John Bidwell, who kept a daily diary of the journey.
Moving west, the emigrants traveled over the emerging Oregon Trail with Father De Smet and a Jesuit party guided by the renowned mountain man, Thomas "Broken Hand" Fitzpatrick. At Soda Springs, in present Caribou County, Idaho, about half of the original party decided to play it safe and continue on to Oregon.
The more resolute members, holding to their original destination, headed nine wagons south down Bear River "with no guide, no compass, nothing but the sun to direct them" toward the present border of Utah. Their track never became a trail and has long since disappeared, but as traced by historian Roy Tea using the Bidwell and Johns journals, the emigrants crossed the 42nd parallel into Utah on 16 August and camped near present-day Clarkston.
Intending to rest in Cache Valley while several men sought directions at Fort Hall, the party mistakenly crossed the low range just north of the Gates of the Bear to arrive in the Great Salt Lake Valley near present Fielding. After fording the Malad River opposite Plymouth, they continued south through the future towns of Garland and Tremonton until, desperate for water, they headed east to strike the Bear River, just south of Corinne.
The party then headed northwest, intersecting its own trail, to skirt the north end of the Great Salt Lake, find the Mary's River (now the Humboldt), which, it was then believed, flowed from the lake to the Sacramento River, and follow it to California. They crossed Promontory Mountain on the route of the later transcontinental railroad and passed just north of Kelton to rest at Ten Mile Spring near the base of the Raft River Mountains.
Crossing Park Valley to the south of the present town, they came on 11 September to Owl Spring, just north of Lucin, where Kentuckian Benjamin Kelsey abandoned his wagons and put his wife and baby on horseback. Two days later, the emigrants were the first of many to arrive at Pilot Peak on the Utah-Nevada border and find relief at the freshwater springs at its base.
On the line of modern Interstate 80, the party crossed Silver Zone Pass and abandoned its remaining wagons at Relief Springs in Gosiute Valley, east of Wells, where the wagons were found in 1846 by Hastings Cutoff emigrants. The rest of the journey was a race with starvation which all barely won on November 4 when they arrived, destitute and almost naked, at Marsh's Los Medanos Rancho. Some members of the Bartleson-Bidwell company later gained renown, including Bidwell and noted trails captain Joseph B. Chiles. Known for her courage and optimism, Nancy Kelsey, the first white woman ever to see Utah, died in California at age seventy-three.
See: Charles Hopper, "Narrative of Charles Hopper, A California Pioneer of 1841," Utah Historical Quarterly 3 (1930); Charles Kelly, Salt Desert Trails (1930); Roderick J. Korns, "West from Fort Bridger," Utah Historical Quarterly 19 (1951); David E. Miller, First Wagon Train to Cross Utah, 1841," Utah Historical Quarterly 30 (1962); Dale L. Morgan, The Great Salt Lake (1947).
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The theme of this year's International Women's Day is a pledge to end violence and abuse against women. And the statistics are sobering.
UN research has revealed that about 603 million women worldwide currently face the risk domestic violence. Close to 70 per cent of women face such abuses at some point in their lives. Indeed, violence against women causes more deaths and injury among the global female population (aged 15 to 44) than cancer, malaria, road traffic accidents and war.
With such a serious subject on the agenda, it might seem frivolous to 'celebrate' IWD. But opinion is divided. For many, this is a political day, designed to highlight the struggles faced by women worldwide. For others, it's a sentimental occasion, in the same league as Mother’s Day. Some nations have long-held traditions to uphold, while others arrange a series of original events each year.
Here’s a taster of what’s happening around the globe today.
In Russia, International Women’s Day is traditionally celebrated at home. Families will enjoy a special meal and men buy gifts for their female relatives, friends and colleagues – red roses are a favourite, if not original, choice. In some cases enlightened men offer to undertake all household duties for the day, from child care to washing up and cooking.This is a non working day for all Russians; so many offices celebrate with small parties and gifts the day before. Older people tend not to partake in IWD - indeed, 14 per cent of the population didn't celebrate it at all in 2010.
Women make up around 46 per cent of the Chinese workforce. And, as such, IWD is a holiday for women only. Many are given a half day off work and receive gifts from their employers, such as cinema tickets. The same is true in Macedonia, Madagascar, Montenegro and Kyrgyztan.
The 'Join me on the Bridge' campaign began on IWD in 2010, when women from Rwanda and the Congo met on a bridge. The idea was to symbolically join their countries at the scene of the mass exodus from the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Each group of women carried half a banner which, when they met, read 'women are building bridges of peace'. Since then, the movement has inspired women in many countries to meet on bridges on IWD. Last year, saw over 75,000 people in 70 countries take part; from those who have suffered war and genocide to victims of gender inequality. This year, groups will meet on bridges from The Bahamas to Amsterdam.
In Romania, the day is the direct equivalent of Mother's Day, with children giving gifts to their grandmothers, mothers and school teachers. Female friends celebrate by holding women-only dinners and parties – the perfect excuse for a girls’ night in.
The number of women and girls in Cambodian prisons has soared over the past five years and the system is dangerously overcrowded – at more than 170 per cent of capacity.
The female inmates often suffer as a result, with no special dispensation made for pregnant women or mothers – who are often forced to take their children to prison with them. A report in 2011 found that the system budgets only $0.70 for each inmate – covering the costs of food, water, electricity, clothing and medical care.
For the past two years, Cambodian human rights organisation LICADHO has drawn attention to their plight, by delivering food and essential supplies to female prisoners in prisons on IWD and holding special events for the inmates, such as traditional dancing and games.
IWD can also be a time for men to stand up and speak out against violence towards women. In 2002, there were over 500 recorded acid attacks on women in Bangladesh. The Acid Survivors Foundation (an NGO) organised a men-only demonstration on IWD against this shocking practice. A staggering 5,000 men attended and support has grown ever since - with male film stars and cricket players publicly declaring their support. The IWD protest has become a regular event - and in 2012 there were fewer than 100 acid attacks on women in Bangladesh.
In Italy, women receive flowers - yellow mimosas are traditional (also the flower of choice in Albania). These are intended as a symbol of respect and an expression of solidarity with oppressed women all over the world.
In Italy, yellow mimosas are given to ladies on IWD. But, they maybe wouldn't be that impressed if they received them from Silvio Berlusconi.
Uganda celebrates IWD through sporting endeavours. The National Lady Rugby Team will be giving demonstrations at a day-long festival. While the ‘Run for Safe Motherhood’ marathon raises funds for hospital maternity wards.
The arts are on the agenda today in Fiji. The Fiji Women's Rights Movement is launching a year-long theatre programme for girls, aimed at encouraging them to speak up. The organisation hopes that by teaching young women to express their opinions at an early age, they will go on to become confident and articulate advocates for womens' rights in adulthood.
India is holding International Women's Week. The extended celebrations include music, performance art and a contest to crown India's top female blogger. But there's also a serious message, with free health checks for women; free gynaecological advice and the 'Foot March' - a peaceful protest walk which culminates in the gifting of sewing machines to widows and poor young women in need, to help them stand on their own two feet.
Girl Rising is a groundbreaking new film by Richard Robbins. It tells the stories of nine unknown girls from nine countries trying to get an education; was penned by nine writers and is narrated by nine of the world's most high-profile women, including Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Cate Blancett, Freida Pinto and Alicia Keys. With special screenings for its launch in IWD, the film aims to raise awareness around the power of educating girls.
Aside from this, probably the most globally recognised and influential celebration of IWD in North America is the commission of a special Google doodle for the day - hopefully created by one of the company's two female doodle designers.
And at home?
In Glasgow, local women's groups are awarded grants. Manchester is holding the International Women's Day Awards to honour local women in under represented sectors such as the sciences. And in Scotland, 380 women from all walks of life will meet to hold a debate at the Scottish Parliament. London's South Bank, meanwhile, is playing host to the annual Women of the World Festival: five days of workshops, talks, concerts, debates and performances designed to celebrate the achievements of women, recognise emerging talent and discuss the difficulties still faced by women across the world.
Get the latest from Claire on Twitter: @clairecohen1
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An inflammation of the esophagus resulting from regurgitation of gastric contents into the esophagus. Gastroesophageal reflux is a normal condition that occurs during the walking hours, especially after meals. However, in symptomatic people, the reflux is related to an incompetent lower esophageal sphincter, a band of muscle fibers that closes off the esophagus from the stomach.
Acidic or alkaline gastric contents return to the esophagus through the lower esophageal sphincter and cause the symptoms. Conditions associated with incompetent esophageal sphincters are pregnancy, hiatus hernia, obesity, recurrent or persistent vomiting, and nasogastric tubes.
Indications are heartburn, a burning pain under the sternum, increased by bending, stooping, or eating, relieved by milk or antacids, more frequent or worse at night, belching, regurgitation of food, nausea and vomiting, vomiting blood , hoarseness or change in voice , a sore throat, difficulty swallowing, a cough or wheezing, weight loss (unintentional)
General measures include : weight reduction , avoiding lying down after meals, sleeping with the head of the bed elevated, taking medication with plenty of water, avoiding dietary fat, chocolate, caffeine, peppermint (they may cause lower esophageal pressure),avoiding alcohol and tobacco.
In homoeopathy medicine like Nux vomica , Lycopodium, Robinea, Carbo veg, Bismuth are used for the treatment. The proper analysis of the case with the qualified homoeopathic physician will give the better results
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Listen to today's episode of StarDate on the web the same day it airs in high-quality streaming audio without any extra ads or announcements. Choose a $8 one-month pass, or listen every day for a year for just $30.
You are here
More Moon and Mars
Mars is a world of giants. Its dusty orange surface is dotted by some of the biggest volcanic mountains in the solar system. They built up over thousands of years as molten rock gently bubbled to the surface.
Three of the five largest volcanoes are in a region known as Tharsis, while a fourth — the tallest of all — is just on its edge. All of these mountains are miles taller than Mount Everest. Yet for the most part, their slopes are gentle.
The biggest of the bunch is Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the solar system. It’s more than 13 miles high, and covers an area bigger than most American states. The crater at its summit is so wide that if you stood at its rim, you couldn’t see the other side. And although most of its slope is gentle, its edge is marked by tall, sharp cliffs.
The volcanoes grew so tall and wide because the lava that poured out of them was fairly thin and runny. It spread out easily, covering large areas of the surface. Many volcanoes on Earth are built by thicker lava, which hardens quickly. That allows pressure to build up from below, eventually causing an explosion.
Today, the Martian volcanoes all appear to be dormant and perhaps extinct — they haven’t staged any large-scale activity in a long time. Yet they continue to tower above the dusty plains of Mars.
Look for Mars to the upper left of the Moon as they rise late this evening. The planet looks like a bright orange star.
Script by Damond Benningfield, Copyright 2011
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Federal Building, Dominion Public Building
Former Dominion Public Building
Ancien édifice du Dominion
Links and documents
1934/01/01 to 1936/01/01
Listed on the Canadian Register:
Statement of Significance
Description of Historic Place
The dignified Dominion Public Building occupies a prominent wedge-shaped site in downtown Moncton. The symmetrical, four-storey, stone facade feature horizontal massing and classical details which are often on an exaggerated scale to achieve a monumental effect. Two-storey high round windows create a greater than actual impression of height. The designation is confined to the footprint of the building.
The Dominion Public Building is a Recognized Federal Heritage Building because of its historical associations, and its architectural and environmental values.
The Dominion Public Building is associated with the expansion and consolidation of federal services throughout Canada through the construction of purpose-built office structures. The federal government reinforced its presence in the community by erecting a large formal stone building that also stimulated the local economy at the onset of the Depression.
The Dominion Public Building is a very good example of the Beaux-Arts style, the preferred style for many large public buildings of the early 20th century. In this structure, Beaux Arts techniques and Classical motifs successfully combine to produce an imposing formal building that clearly announces its government affiliation. The building is one of the more distinguished late Beaux Arts designs produced by Public Works in the 1930s.
The importance of the Dominion Public Building reinforces the commercial centre of downtown Moncton and serves as a bridge between the 19th century commercial blocks of Main Street and the newer strip development to the other side. The building is a conspicuous landmark reinforcing the densest area of urban Moncton.
Dominion Public Building, 1081 main Street, Moncton, New Brunswick. Heritage Character Statement 84-035
Federal Building (Dominion Public Building; G.O.C.B.), 1075-81 Main Street, Moncton, New Brunswick. Heritage Character Statement 84-035
The following character-defining elements of the Dominion Public Building should be respected, for example:
Its Beaux Arts style and good quality materials and craftsmanship, for example:
-The monumental, symmetrical, four-storey facade featuring horizontal massing, a flat roof and double-door main entrance approached by a fan-like flight of steps.
-The classical features such as the pedimented main entrance with the national coat of arms carved in the tympanum.
-A large round-headed window flanked by substantial Doric pilasters and decorative balcony with a inset clock above.
-The long rusticated walls of the lower storey lined with uniform round-headed windows with radiating voussoirs, and the two-storey high windows in the upper level.
-The office entrances situated at the farther ends of the walls facing the street.
-The impressively appointed public lobby through the main entrance with its high ceilings, and bronze, glass and marble fittings.
The manner in which the Dominion Public Building reinforces the commercial centre of downtown Moncton and is a prominent local landmark as evidenced by:
-Its impressive architectural contribution to the streetscape serving as a bridge between the 19th century commercial blocks of Main Street and the newer strip development to the other side.
-Its size, formality and profile in the provision of government services.
Government of Canada
Treasury Board Heritage Buildings Policy
Recognized Federal Heritage Building
Theme - Category and Type
Function - Category and Type
- Office or office building
Architect / Designer
Location of Supporting Documentation
National Historic Sites Directorate, Documentation Centre, 5th Floor, Room 89, 25 Eddy Street, Gatineau, Quebec
Cross-Reference to Collection
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Manitoba History: The Sacking of Peter Fidler’s Brandon House, 1816
by C. Stuart Houston and Mary I. Houston
Manitoba History, Number 16, Autumn 1988
This article was published originally in Manitoba History by the Manitoba Historical Society on the above date. We make it available here as a free, public service.
Please direct all inquiries to [email protected].
The two main fur companies in the North West were virtually at war with one another for seven years before their merger in 1821. The smaller Hudson’s Bay Company had the benefit of a legitimate charter to trade first in the entire area draining into Hudson Bay. The employees were predominantly Orkneymen, literate, conservative and law-abiding. The Northwest Company had the advantage of larger numbers. Fewer of their employees were literate but they were adventuresome, sometimes reckless men.
The advent of Lord Selkirk’s 116,000 square-mile Red River Settlement in 1811-12 had the support of the Hudson’s Bay Company but was actively and increasingly opposed by the North West Company. The settlers felt they had first call on any buffalo killed within Selkirk’s land grant. The “Pemmican War” of 1814 began when Sheriff Spencer, accompanied by Mr. Howse of the HBC Brandon House across the river, broke into the North West House, La Souris, on the Assiniboine River, and took four hundred bags of pemmican. Further pemmican, needed as food on their journey to Montreal, was seized from the North West fur trade brigades when they passed through the settlement center at The Forks, where the Assiniboine joined the Red River. Determined to force the abandonment of the Red River Colony, the North West people in turn arrested Howse for burglary and took Sheriff Spencer as a prisoner with them to Montreal. In 1815 Governor Miles Macdonell surrendered and one hundred forty of the settlers left for Upper Canada. After their crops were trodden and their buildings burned, all but three of the remaining sixty settlers retreated to Norway House. This was not the end of the Red River Colony, for Colin Robertson of the HBC came from Montreal with one hundred voyageurs, retrieved the sixty settlers, and reestablished them at The Forks, augmented by the arrival of another eighty settlers from Britain. Two of the cannons, seized by the NWC, were recovered.
For a brief period, the momentum was with the HBC, who in 1816 rashly seized and captured the NWC post at Pembina, and later the NWC Fort Gibraltar at The Forks. This continuing conflict eventually led to the massacre of Hudson’s Bay Company Governor Semple and twenty of his men at Seven Oaks on 19 June 1816.
Two other scrimmages between the two companies which led up to the events at Seven Oaks are recorded in Peter Fidler’s Brandon House Journal for 1815-1816 in the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives. Peter Fidler, a remarkably capable map maker, explorer and fur trader, was then in charge of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Brandon House, seventeen miles down river from the present site of Brandon.
Among Fidler’s many accomplishments are several of interest to naturalists. His journal from Cumberland House in 1797 provided the first unmistakable description of the Channel Catfish in the northwest. When rediscovered recently, this corroborated the published 1820s specimen collected there by Dr. John Richardson, the locality of which had been doubted by ichthyologists for over 150 years because there were no modern records northwest of Winnipeg. In the winter of 1820 Fidler provided the first accurate description of the 9- or 10-year cycle of the Snowshoe Hare and the Lynx, occurring synchronously with each other.
Fidler’s journal, which begins on 16 July 1815, first tells of the annual trip by canoe from Jack River (Norway House) to York Factory on Hudson Bay. Fidler arrived there on 25 August, three days before the Hudson’s Bay Company’s supply ship, the Prince of Wales, brought both Robert Semple, the new “Governor General of all the Hudson’s Bay Company Territories,” and the fifth annual contingent of Selkirk settlers bound for the Red River. Some of the Hudson’s Bay Company men quickly took advantage of the arrival of European women. George Ross married one of them on 30 August and another was married the next day.
Robert Semple, “requiring the exertions of a man of Abilities and Experience,” appointed Peter Fidler on 5 September to convey the Red River settlers inland without delay. It was Semple’s initial plan to winter at Hudson House, on the Saskatchewan River southwest of present Prince Albert, “as being the most central place we have for the Northern & Southern places.” Semple’s plans changed when, on 31 October at the southern end of Lake Winnipeg, he learned of recent strife between the two fur companies. Colin Robertson “had made Mr. Duncan Cameron the NW proprietor at the Forks prisoner with Seraphim La Mar & kept them 3 or 4 days.”
Four days later, Semple and Fidler reached the Forks, at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers. They were followed by the Selkirk settlers the next day. Here they learned that Hudson’s Bay Company houses at Riviere Qu’Appelle had recently been “burnt down” by the opposition company. The new Selkirk settlers received even more threatening news. “Mr. Fraser a ½ breed with orders to our people to immediately desist from building, but for them all to retire to Brandon House, or if they all did not leave the place in 24 Hours the Canadians would blow them to pieces ...”
Largely because of the threatened hostilities, on 7 November two boat-loads of Selkirk Settlers were sent south to Fort Daer on the Red River at the present site of Pembina, immediately south of the 49th parallel. (Fort Daer, built in 1812 by the first group of Red River settlers, had been named for Lord Selkirk, Baron Daer.) The next day there were “still 24 Colonists left here of all ages who could not be persuaded to embark.” Another marriage in November united Michael Boyle, boat builder, to a Miss Kennedy.
Governor Semple, because of the various threats, changed his plans and decided to spend the winter at the Forks. On 28 November he appointed Fidler to “go and remain at Brandon House.”
When Fidler arrived at Brandon House on 9 December, the men located there were: Peter Fidler; James Inkster, cooper; Thomas Fidler, writer; Thomas Favel, interpreter; John Lyons, hunter; Robert Clouston, blacksmith; James Anderson, tailor; James Moore; John Flett; Dan Donovan; Harry Gear; Rod Cunningham; Angus McIver; and John Kipling, Senior.
The Indians were a constant threat. On 26 January 1816 Jack Favel and Tom Kipling arrived at Brandon House from Fort Daer, “11 days on their journey not knowing the straight road.” They brought letters from Messrs McLeod, Pritchard and St. Germain [presumably Pierre Lemaire St. Germain from Montreal, perhaps the only member of the St. Germain clan at that time able to write],
relating a shocking massacre of 31 Bungies [Saulteaux Indians] out of 34 within 15 miles of Turtle River, by a large party of the Sioux Indians ... The Bungies being killed early in the morning of the 20th December last, those 3 who escaped turned back two Days after to the Tents & found their murdered & scalped country people except 2 or 3 women who it is supposed the Sioux had taken away alive many of their country people they found half roasted and several had their limbs cut off, and some with knives still sticking in their throats.
However, provisions were plentiful that winter; between 15 February and 18 March Fidler’s men and the Indians trading at Brandon House collected 28,828 pounds of meat.
Affairs between the two companies were heating up. On 23 March, Fidler learned that
Mr Robertson & 12 men had on the 17th inst about 8 PM entered into the Canadian House at the Forks [Fort Gibraltar] and made all Prisoners, viz. Duncan Cameron, Serephim La Mar & the Canadian Master who then happened to be there from Winnipeg river ... There were about 14 Canadians at the time at the NW Housea letter was sent by Mr Robertson to Cameron & whilst the NW men unlocked the Gates & opened them, our men rushed in with charged bayonets and on Tuesday the 19th about noon the Canadian Northern Express arrived there and Mr Robertson seized it & I believe opened many letters it contained & read some of them were full of the NW intentions of Destroying the Colony this spring, aided by the half breeds ...
The Hudson’s Bay men, although outnumbered, seemed to believe that offense was the best defense. On 27 March Anthony McDonald arrived at Brandon House from Fort Daer and related that on 19 March “Messrs McDonell, Pritchard, White & McLeod had made prisoner in the Canadian House there of [Peter] Bostonais Pangman, the Master.”
Events at Brandon House took an ominous turn on 4 May when Bostonais and two men on horseback arrived at the North West Company trading post, La Souris, across the Assiniboine from Brandon House. Fidler noted the bad news in his journal: “Bostonais...was lately a prisoner at the Forks. I suppose he is liberated on parole. This man has great influence with the half breeds.” Two days later Bostonais, Moostoose & Boudrais’ sonwent on horseback to Riviere Qu’Appelle.
On 11 May at 5:00 a.m., “a Batteaux of ours with 3 men, 51 Bags Pemmican, 40 Packs Buffalo robes, arrived from Charlton House.” This boat had left the Hudson’s Bay Company post of Carlton on the Upper Assiniboine River near present Pelly on 29 April. [The better known Carlton House was on the North Saskatchean River]. It brought a letter from James Sutherland, written from near the junction of the Qu’Appelle with the Assiniboine, as follows:
8 o’clock AM, when we were attacked by about 50 Canadians & half breeds; this is the narrowest part of the river ... Two boats that was ahead of mine was disarmed & the men made prisoners ... when I landed there was upwards of 30 Guns pointed at me ... This has solely occurred through Mr Robertson having liberated Bostonais who arrived the night previous to the attack.
The Hudson’s Bay men taken prisoner were Brian Gilligan, Thomas McDermid, Patrick Maroney, Michael Kilkenny, George McKenzie, John Forbes, Hugh Fraser, Donald McKay, James Bruin, Thomas Kirkness, William Duncan, John Flett, Duncan McDonald, Angus McIver, Dan Donovan, Nick Kilbride, Andrew Sinclair, James Sandison, Martin Jourdan, Alexander McDonell, and Robert Sutherland, who had been in charge of Fort Qu’Appelle.
On 21 May, “Mr Sutherland sent Mr. Finlayson over to the French House to ask liberty to go down to the Forks and after long hesitation they said those from Qu’Appelle might go, but to take no property from this belonging to this House.”
Real trouble for Fidler began at “112 past noon” on 1 June when “about 48 Half Breeds, Canadians, Freemen & Indians came all riding on horseback with their Flag flying blue about 4 feet square & a figure of 8 horizontally in the middle.” They turned and rode full speed into the yard.
Source: Archives of Manitoba
Cuthbert Grant then came up to me in the yard & demanded of me to deliver to him all the keys of our Stores, Warehouses, &c. I of course would not deliver them up. They then rushed into the House and broke open the warehouse Door first, plundered the Warehouse of every article it contained, tore up part of the cellar floor, & cut out the parchment windows, without saying for what this was done or by whose authority. Alexr McDonell, Seraphim, Bostonais & Allan McDonell were at their House looking on the whole time. They then broke open the Store Door & Barn Door & carried away almost everything there except the Pack of Furs & some empty kegs. They also plundered every person in the house of part of their private property & took away every horse belonging to the Company & European Servants. Those horses that Jno Lyons, T. Favill & Hal Bird [? - both names nearly illegible] had they let alone; all these men were armed with a Gun each, a pike at the end of a pole, some bows & arrows, swords &c.
There were only 3 European servants here which could make no effectual resistance & our half breeds would not lift a Gun, since last spring when at the Forks, the NW in the name of their half breeds wrote them a letter saying that if they lifted arms against them, they would massacre the whole of them. Thomas McKay was the principal person in breaking open our warehouse Door & Fraser the Barn Door. They also broke into the Smiths shop, and took away most of the articles it contained, and searched private room & bed places in the Houses & James Inkster has lost private property to above 40 sterling value in England & all the others considerablemyself was the next sufferer to a large amount. They carried on this plunder till 3 P.M. when they all went across the River to the NW Ho taking all the property in our Boat, and whey they got across they began again their Indian war whoop & war songs to a Drum one of them beat, and fired off many of their Guns, the few Indians tenting at our House durst not offer any resistance to the NW Banditti, some of the Indians not only shed tears but cryed bitterly aloud to see us plundered of our property & otherwise ill treated by the NW Co peopleduring the time they were plundering the Houses some of the NW Party forced over to their House Thomas Fidler & Papin the Smith, the latter they shut up alone in their Ice House & tyed his hands to make him tell where we had hidden our ammunition, Tobacco & as they were as Cuthbert Grant informed me told by Mr Jno Rd McKay at Riviere Qu’Appelle that 2 men had gone down with Mr Sutherland to fetch up to that place a Keg of rum, a roll of Tobacco & 1 Keg of Powder besides Ball; and finding little of these articles in their first Plunder, they knew we must then have hidden itwhich we did immediately on hearing from Riviere Qu’Appelle of the Provisions being all seized.
Thomas Fidler they knocked about in McDonells room & in his presence, and told him that if he did not inform where the above things were hidden they would murder him, at last he was obliged to tell them to save his life where one roll Tobacco was hid and the same large band came over again, with the most horrid threats many of them being now almost quite drunk, to render them desperate & told us that if we did not immediately discover where the Goods were hid they would murder us & Burn down all the Houses.James Inkster was also very badly used by them, till he was at last obliged to tell them where the things were hidden to save his life.they also used me very ill and threatened to tye me to the Gates & keep me there two days if I would not tell but they could not induce me to inform them. In their search for the Roll of Tobacco, they found the other one which happened to be laid up near it, so that they got everything we had laid up & now are without a single load of ammunition or pipe of Tobacco or anything else either to pro-cure provisions or trade anything from the Natives.This 2d visit they also carried away a deal more private property, and some of them was for setting fire to the Houses, particularly Primo, so that we all put out the little we had left & remained on the Plains amongst the Crees & Stone Indians who very much felt for our distress & afterward erected shelter to keep us from the Weather & to remain out in the Plains till the NW hired Banditti go away, as we feared they might burn us in the Houses in the Night.They took away the Selkirk boat & oars we had remaining to carry down our Furs & Provisions; they also took away our small crossing Boat & scarcely left us an ax to cut wood with.They found several Indian Tents in our store which they cut to pieces. They came over the 2d time at 6 1/2 PM and left it again at 7 1/2 PM carrying away with them the Keys of our last Gates. They forced Thomas Fidler over to the NW Ho & Made him sign a paper not to bear arms against the NW Co when they left us the first time the Banditti forced over to their House every person except myself, saying McDonell wanted themthey remained at the NW Ho about 1 hr & no one speaking to them they all returned here.Bostonais told that it was Mr. Robertson’s fault that they had plundered our Housesfor taking their Fort at the Forks.3 Canadian [NW Co] Batteaux arrived from Riviere Qu’Appelle, water shoal & they are all deeply laden that much of the Property will he damaged, the Batteaux always almost touching the Ground & making them leaky.
On Sunday 2 June:
... Several of the Canadians & half Breeds visited our House twice this day& carried away my Thermometers ... we keep the Gates shut & fast to keep out the Indian children; The Banditti most part of last night was drumming and singing. There were only 5 Indians along with the Canadian Servants when they plundered our House, but they behaved much better than the rest of the Band taking nothing but merely lookers on. They have not left us a scrap of Dry provisions or Fat here, everything is carried off, this day they broke one of the Glass windows.Mr [Pierre Chrysologue] Pambrun [HB Co] arrived last night at dusk & [they] marched him into the French House, between two rows of armed men, and some of them, he said, kicked him as he passed them. This day he was allowed to come over to see us guarded by Thomas McKay. He says that James Bird Junr got his liberty to return back to our House above after keeping him some time. Mr Pambrun has a very bad leg a deep foul ulcer & increasing fast & we have no medicine.he says that a great deal of Pemmican is spoiled & some thrown away by being constantly wet coming down. dressed his leg the best we could.
On 3 June, Fidler wrote a letter to Governor Semple to tell him:
what had happened here & the probable intentions of the NW with respect to the Forks & gave to the Indian who lately brought me letters from the Forks.& he concealed it, and will remain at the NW House some days, to avoid suspicion& then carry it down. Mr. Fraser and a large party of NW Co men came overhe told me to carry away all our Furs & insisted on my giving him a copy of the contents of the several Packages by McDonells orders which I gave him and they took them all away & broke many 10 gallon kegs from England & took away all the Iron hoops, & in the afternoon old DeChamps broke open our Hay yard door & carried away our hay. Several others followed his examplehe & his 2 sons are the most violent of the whole.They hoisted our Flag at the Canadian House & the half breed one over it, singing Indian Songs, drumming & Dancing which is enough to vex anyone to see such things, but we cannot help our selves. I believe & what I learn from Mr. Pambrun that the 1/2 breeds are nearly master of McDonellor at least he is obliged to wink at their proceedings not to make them leave him till his intended plans are put into execution or done but the person who assembles them is surely accountable for their conduct.
Heavy Thunder, Lightning & rain on Saturday night, we are all living out in the Plain along with the Indians. Furnished the Indians with 3 pairs of shoes who carries my letter to the Governor. The NW pulled down one stockade of our garden.
On 4 June, the Canadians carried away more hay and:
leave the Garden gates always open. The half Breeds dancing in 2 Tents made into one on our side of the river close to our House. The old Cooper Alard from Fort Dauphin is also a very conspicuous character & does much mischief as well as the DeChamps & Cottona Bellgard son Serephin & 7 men crossed the river & went up it in search of a man they sent for a horse 7 miles off 3 days ago,which was left there [?] & they could not find himwe afterwards learnt that our Indians tenting at our House had killed him several more of the Banditti within our House this day.
On 5 June:
The tube of my large 3 1/2 foot Achromatic Telescope was taken away by the Banditti 1st Inst & this day I got it from a Stone Indian. Mr Pambrun came over on a visit guarded as usual his leg is in a very bad state. Wrote a few lines to Mr Robertson open for medicines to be fetched up by a Canadian as Alex McDonell will not allow him to go down to the Surgeon [Dr E James White]he says the NW has sent to Mannitobaw [Lake] for a Keg of Rum to treat the 1/2 breeds with, they were obliged to employ these Ignorant people to do their dirty work as the Canadian Servant very few would do what they wished them. The High Spirits taken from us was 2 gallons belonging The Co & 2 gallons to John Lyons. They soon finished it on Saturday nightMcDonell told Mr Pambrun that he had seen nothing belonging to us as yet but that all was put securely by & would be returned when matters were made up at the Forks.he desired Mr Pambrun yesterday to take a walk with Fraser, but he soon returned & found McDonell giving away our Tobacco by fathoms to his people, tho’ just before he told Mr Pambrun everything would be returned, but I am certain that the greater part of the smaller articles will never be returned as those who took them will keep them.Several more Canadians & half breeds in our Houses climbing over the stockades & always doing some injury to the Buildings every time they come.
The Canadians are pitching & repairing the Batteaux & Canoes16 Batteaux4 canoes & the Selkirk Boat, our small one we have not seen these 2 days[.] we suppose they have put her adrift ... Several 1/2 breeds over here Singing, Dancing & Drumming all day and till late last nighta very disagreeable sight ... The Canadians pulled down about 30 yards of our garden fence & carried away & put into the Bottom of their Batteaux and loaded them ready to start.
On 7 June ... Alexr McDonell sent for all the Indians tenting at our House and gave them about 112 yard of Tobacco each & nothing more and a very severe speech all against the English delivered by Bostonais & at 4 112 PM he want away by land ...
On Saturday 8 June, in the afternoon Fidler and his men moved back into Brandon House,“most of the windows broken or cut to pieces and nothing left to repair them againeverything having been carried off by the NWC.” One week later, on 15 June, he departed for the Red River Colony. His journal for this period is not extant, but he must have travelled slowly, and arrived at the colony after it had been deserted for the second time. A few weeks later he was helping the fleeing settlers at Norway House.
In spite of his gruelling experiences at Brandon House, Peter Fidler continued his mapping and exploring activities. In 1817 he surveyed river lots for the Red River colony, in its third resurgence, with Lord Selkirk himself present. In 1818 Fidler journeyed from Red River to Marten’s Fall on the Albany River, making astronomical, geographical and mineralogical observations enroute. He was again in charge of Brandon House in 1818-19, and then took charge of Fort Dauphin in September 1819. At this quiet post, off the beaten track, he spent his last three years, until he died at on 17 December 1822, prematurely old at age 53 years.
The Hudson’s Bay Archives, Provincial Archives of Manitoba, kindly gave permission to publish this material. Mrs. Shirlee Anne Smith and Michael Moosberger checked the typescript against the original journal and Mrs. Smith offered helpful criticism of an earlier draft.
1. C. S. Houston, To the Arctic by Canoe, 1819-21, the Journal and Paintings of Robert Hood (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1974), pp. xxiv-xxv.
2. J. M. Gray, Lord Selkirk of Red River (London: MacMillan, 1963), pp. 67-148.
3. A. S. Morton, A History of the Canadian West to 1870-71 (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1939), pp. 576-577.
4. H.B.C.A., B.22/a/19. Brandon House, Assiniboine River, Lat. 49°, 42’, 1815-1816, by Peter Fidler.
5. J. G. McGregor, Peter Fidler: Canada’s Forgotten Surveyor, 1769-1822 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1966).
6. H.B.C.A., B.49/a/28, Cumberland House, 1797-98, by Peter Fidler, fo.6d,7.
7. F. M. Atton, “Early records of the Channel Catfish, Ictalurus punctatus, in Cumberland Lake, Saskatchewan,” Canadian Field-Naturalist (October-December 1965), 538-540.
8. John Richardson, Fauna Boreali-Americana, of the Zoology of the Northern Parts of British America. Part Third, the Fish (London: Richard Bentley, 1835), pp. 135-136.
9. W. B. Scott and E. J. Crossman, Freshwater Fishes of Canada (Ottawa: Fisheries Research Board, Bulletin 184, 1979), pp. 604-610.
10. L. B. Keith, Wildlife’s Ten-year Cycle (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1963), p. 6.
11. A. Cooke and C. Holland, The Exploration of Northern Canada, 500 to 1920, a Chronology (Toronto: Arctic History Press, 1978), p. 136; J. M. Gray, Lord Selkirk of Red River (London: Macmillan, 1963), p. 111.
12. Letter from Robert Semple to Peter Fidler, York Factory, 5th September 1815, in B.22/1/19.
13. Letter from James Sutherland, Riviere Qu’Appelle [undated], in B.22/1/19.
14. MacGregor, Peter Fidler, pp. 216-255.
Page revised: 23 May 2011
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Two security organizations have released online tools that let Windows users check for possible infections by Gauss, the newly-revealed cyber surveillance malware thought to have been government- built.
Two security organizations have released online tools that let Windows users check for possible infections by Gauss, the newly-revealed cyber surveillance malware thought to have been built by one or more governments.
Kaspersky Lab and the Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySys) at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics each published Gauss detection tools today.
Gauss, Kaspersky said yesterday, is a sophisticated threat that monitors financial transactions with Middle Eastern banks, perhaps as part of a wider investigation into the funding of terrorist groups. Kaspersky believes that Gauss was built by or under the auspices of a government, in large part because of coding practices that resemble those used in Flame, an advanced spying and data-stealing toolkit that targeted Iranian computers.
Flame, which was uncovered three months ago but may have been operating since mid-2008, was notable for its ability to fake the Windows Update service, then use that to infect up-to-date Windows PCs.
Kaspersky has rejected the idea that Gauss is a run-of-the-mill money-stealing Trojan.
Both CrySys and Kaspersky sniff out Gauss by looking for a custom-built font, dubbed "Palida Narrow," that the malware adds to infected machines.
CrySys has played a prominent role in analyzing some of the malware that Kaspersky argued is linked to Gauss, including "Duqu," which is believed to have been crafted by the same team that built Stuxnet, the worm used to sabotage Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment program several years ago.
It's not yet clear why Gauss inserts the Palida Narrow font into infected PCs, or what purpose the new font serves. Some have speculated that it may hint at the use of a yet-undiscovered "zero-day" exploit of an unpatched vulnerability in word processing software, such as Microsoft Word.
Yesterday, Kaspersky senior researcher Roel Schouwenberg acknowledged that there are many facets of Gauss that remain mysterious, including whether it, like Stuxnet, relied on one or more unpatched bugs -- "zero days" in security speak -- to compromise personal computers.
Because one payload that Gauss installs is heavily encrypted, Kaspersky and other security firms cannot yet analyze it, and so cannot say whether it exploits unpatched vulnerabilities.
Kaspersky's Gauss infection-detection tool sniffs for the mysterious custom font that the malware installs.
"But I wouldn't be surprised that there is a zero-day [exploit] in that payload," Schouwenberg said in a Thursday interview.
Many antivirus programs, including those from Kaspersky and Symantec, also detect Gauss through their traditional signature-based software.
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed. His email address is [email protected].
Read more about cyberwarfare in Computerworld's Cyberwarfare Topic Center.
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Regular cannabis use may be as dangerous as smoking in the long term, claims a UK drug expert.
Professor John Henry, a toxicologist at Imperial College London, says he fears that deaths attributable to cannabis could soar.
There are currently an estimated 3.2 million people in the Britain who smoke cannabis regularly, compared with 13 million tobacco smokers.
Smoking tobacco is believed to cause approximately 120,000 “excess deaths” a year through heart disease, lung cancers and other illnesses.
However, there is no firm evidence of the long-term risks of smoking cannabis.
Studies are clouded by the fact that many cannabis users also smoke tobacco, and it is hard to conduct large-scale studies of individuals who admit using illegal drugs.
The government intends to “downgrade” cannabis from a class “B” to a class “C” drug.
This means that while possession of small quantities of cannabis remains illegal, it is not an “arrestable” offence unless there are aggravating factors, such as use of cannabis near children.
He wrote: “It may be argued that the extrapolation from small numbers of individual studies to potential large scale effects amounts to scaremongering.
“For example, one could calculate that if cigarettes cause an annual excess of 120,000 deaths among 13 million smokers, the corresponding figure for deaths among 3.2 million cannabis smokers would be 30,000, assuming equality of effect.
“Even if the number of deaths attributable to cannabis turned out to be a fraction of that figure, smoking cannabis would still be a major public health hazard.”
It is not yet clear whether the high number of younger people who smoke cannabis regularly will continue the habit into middle and later life.
If not, then their risk of premature death would theoretically be greatly reduced, just as a smoker can radically reduce his or her risk of lung cancer by giving up before middle age.
However, some studies suggest that even though cannabis use involves fewer “cigarettes”, users tend to draw more heavily on them, increasing the potential damage from each “joint”.
Professor Henry said that both cannabis and tobacco released approximately 4,000 chemicals when burned - most of them identical.
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Finding meaning in the introductory science course
Developed by: Karl Wirth, Peter Lea, Suzanne O'Connell, Ji-Sook Han, Dave Gosselin, John Ottenhoff
Developed at the at the 2008 workshop, The Role of Metacognition in Teaching Geoscience.
For population: non-majors in an introductory science course
Description of the tactic:
We're interested in assessing students' valuing of science and their ability to make meaning within the field of science. The tactic would involve having 'wrappers' around various concepts and activities–reflective writing that calls for students (1) to first assess their knowledge and interest relating to a scientific problem or phenomenon (prior knowledge) and (2) to re-assess their understanding, interest, and connections at the end of the content unit. The goal is to help students think about their motivations, goals, and values in learning in this course.
How and why this tactic is particularly useful for the given population:
One of the biggest challenges is to get non-science majors to find authentic engagement and meaning in required science courses. This tactic not only helps students engage–and think about their levels of engagement–but provides a strong foundation for future science courses. This tactic helps move science from the theoretical to the personal.
Example of how the population would use this tactic:
Start a unit on water resources by asking for reflective writing focused on the student's interest in the Platte River and knowledge of issues related to the topic. Follow the unit with reflective writing on the same questions. Our assessment would depend upon some kind of rubric for recognizing features such as 'valuing,' appropriately citing authority, connecting external authorities with personal knowledge and beliefs; in short, we want to see evidence of meaning making in each unit and to track gains in meaning making over the course. We would hope to see, for example, that a student could move from writing that the Platte River is of little concern because he/she is from California, to understanding how water resources affect everyone.
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I haven't wandered into FHF much recently, but since this is a topic of interest to me...
mtDNA does typically do a pretty good job, in part because it evolves relatively rapidly, so you can get a well resolved tree, but also because it usually isn't experiencing the types of selection that can really screw up phylogenetic analyses. For example, say two closely related species (but NOT sister species, other species are more closely related to both) both experience directional selection for increased body size. If you use a gene involved in that increased body size to try to estimate the phylogeny, they may well have similar mutations due to similar selection for larger body size. Thus, its possible that you recover an inaccurate phylogeny with those two larger species as sister taxa because they experiences similar selective pressures for larger body size. There are also some genes, such as Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC), where there is strong 'balancing selection' - selection for variability (MHC is involved in immune response, so individuals with lots of different MHC alleles are better able to fight off infection than individuals with a bunch of copies of the same MHC alleles). Balancing selection can also really screw up analyses, and result in a big comb phylogeny with little support for relationships. The patterns caused by balancing or direction selection really screw with analyses, and it can be really difficult to detect them and account for them, hence why genes that are either selectively neutral or under weak purifying selection (i.e. mutations that would change the protein being coded for are selected against) tend to be a lot better for estimating phylogeny - we can model how neutral sequence evolves really well, and other kinds of selection can really mess things up. Anyhow, getting back to mtDNA, because it doesn't typically experience the types of selection that can screw up phylogenies. That being said, it's still a single locus, a single estimate of the relationships, so it's got the issues of incomplete lineage sorting that Squam explained.
I disagree. Most of the commonly used mitochondrial markers are coding loci and are unquestionably under selection... and it isn't just directional or diversifying selection that can cause problems, purifying selection can also screw up phylogenetic analyses. AFAIK, few people--if any--make an effort in phylogenetic studies to quantify how strong that selection is, so I don't think saying that it is typically weak and therefore unproblematic is warranted. Purifying selection's main effect is to limit the available character space--most of the possible sequences are not available because they would not yield a functioning protein. As available character space goes down, the likelihood of homoplasy--and thus poor phylogenetic inference--increases. The inverse is true for mutation rates; as mutation rates go up, the likelihood of homoplasy increases. Commonly-used mtDNA markers have both small available character space and high mutation rates. Among sufficiently closely related terminals, this is probably not a significant problem; for deeper nodes, it's a big problem.
There are also cases, not super common, but it does happen that mitochondrial genomes introgress from one species to another following a hybridization event. Again, this movement of mitochondrial genomes from one species to another is relatively uncommon, so it's definitely not something that should be latched onto without strong additional data, such as from multiple nuclear loci, but it is something that happens. So, we're moving more and more away from mtDNA only studies, and relying more and more on multiple loci, and using methods that account for the possible differences between gene trees to estimate the species-level phylogeny (i.e. the 'species tree' methods Squam mentioned).
I don't think this is nearly as rare as people think it is. It isn't reported too frequently--but then, datasets involving strong nuclear and mitochondrial topologies that would allow us to see this kind of anomalous pattern in mtDNA are still uncommon (and downright rare
in the herp world), so the safest statement would probably be that we know it occurs but do not have enough data to allow us to confidently infer that it is either rare or common.
Anyway, when you do have discordance between, say, the mtDNA and morphology (such as between mtDNA and coloration in the eastern Pantherophis), I think it depends heavily what the other data is. If it's a character that likely evolves fairly rapidly and is likely to change a lot, like coloration, I'd rely more heavily on the mtDNA, but if it's something that is unlikely to change much, such as the structure of a bone or the place where some muscle attached, discordance with mtDNA would probably raise my eyebrows and get me thinking in more detail about what's going on. So, for example, the eastern Pantherophis, their color pattern probably evolves fairly rapidly.
OTOH, mtDNA also
evolves rapidly; that isn't really a difference here. AFAICT, the main unique problem of rapidly evolving morphological characters is: generally smaller available character space (purifying selection dramatically reduces character space compared to randomly evolving loci, but even if variation is largely limited to third codons we're still talking about a much greater range of possible sequences than, e.g., the 4-5 basic kinds of coloration in Pantherophis obsoletus
). When directional selection is likely (which does seem to be the case in Pantherophis obsoletus
) this is an additional problem, as directional selection (at least when observed in the phenotype; it's less clear when we're talking about genotypes, as there may be a whole slew of different possible mutations that can lead independently to a single observed change in phenotype, making directional selection on a phenotype may be much less likely to result in homoplasy in nucleotide sequences) is more likely to actively create homoplasy rather than merely increasing the likelihood of chance homoplasy.
Sampling gaps are always a pain, and it's difficult to tell if you've got a gradient from one mtDNA lineage to another, or if you'll end up with a nice clear boundary between the two with better sampling. It's certainly a sign that more sampling is necessary to tease apart what exactly is happening, but when you have two well supported clades that are as deeply divergent as in the case of the getula complex (I didn't see a table with the divergence in the getula paper, but they estimate, using a fossil calibration, that they diverged about 4 Mya, so they're pretty divergent, probably something on the order of 6-10%), it's more likely that there with better sampling, you'll see a relatively clean boundary between the two, possibly a hybrid zone, or even a nice clean boundary with no evidence of hybridization. When they're that divergent, I find it unlikely that it would be a gradient from one mtDNA lineage to the other, and I think most evidence from squamates supports this.
There are two cases (references at the end of this post) I know of in which people have looked closely at contact zones after putative species were defined based on mtDNA topologies. In both cases there were not
nice clean divisions between the putative species, but instead mtDNA haplotypes from each species were extensively mixed within populations. I haven't been reading the recent herp literature much, so maybe there are now cases in which those mtDNA boundaries do hold up on closer examination... but the only studies I've seen indicate the opposite.
It's also not entirely clear that we should expect the degree of introgression in contact zones to scale with mtDNA divergence. MtDNA sequence variation at the commonly-used markers would not, in itself, be expected to have any influence on reproductive isolation. We have to assume that it is correlated with other changes in the genome that do
influence reproductive isolation. That seems like a reasonable guess, but I'm not sure it's much more than that or that we can justify a particular percent-divergence cutoff.
Directly addressing a couple of Cole's questions:
Cole Grover wrote:
1. Couldn't/shouldn't a discordance of mtDNA data (such as that from Cytochrome b) with other available data (geographical, morphological, ecological, and even other biochemical data) just as easily signal why it should not be relyed upon so heavily as signal the "wrong-ness" of all other data? (Yes, I know "not all data are created equal") The example given in question 4 would apply here, too, though I could dig up other examples if needed.
Discordance doesn't necessarily mean any particular source of information is "wrong"... but when dealing with very closely-related individuals, it does suggest that these individuals all belong to the same species. Independent sorting of different characters is what we should expect within a species. It should not (at least, not without various mitigating circumstances--e.g., incomplete lineage sorting) be occurring in a set of distinct species, and all else equal should be taken as evidence against the hypothesis that we are in fact looking at distinct species.
4. How about when members of the same population don't cluster togther in an mtDNA phylogeny? Couldn't/Shouldn't that signal that the "preferred tree" ought not to be preferred? (an example here is http://www.naherpetology.org/pdf_files/711.pdf
). I guess my question boils down to what is the null in in these situations? Shouldn't the default be to reject the discordant or incomplete data set?
My answer here is about the same as above--if members of the same population contain divergent mtDNA haplotypes, that is not
evidence that there is something wrong with the mtDNA tree. All else equal, our assumption should be that the mtDNA topology is correctly telling us to reject the hypothesis that we're dealing with distinct species rather than variation within a single species.
The authors of that paper basically get it right:
Bryson et al. wrote:
Our results suggest that the current recognition of L. mexicana and L. triangulum may be incongruent with the evolutionary history of these two groups.
Probably Lampropeltis alterna
and Lampropeltis ruthveni
should be included in that statement (which may have been their intent; it's not entirely clear in a quick reading if they mean just Lampropeltis mexicana
in the narrow sense, or the L. mexicana
group, including L. alterna
and L. ruthveni
). However, the authors are understandably (although, for mtDNA studies, unusually
) reluctant to make taxonomic changes from a single locus topology and give the standard "more research is needed":
Further research using nuclear markers to assess gene flow among these lineages will be necessary to determine if the currently recognized taxa do represent species and if the mtDNA data are indeed in error.
Gibbs, H. L., S. J. Corey, G. Blouin-Demers, K. A. Prior, and P. J. Weatherhead, 2006. Hybridization between mtDNA-defined phylogeographic lineages of black ratsnakes (Pantherophis spp.). Molecular Ecology 15:3755-3767
Leache, A. D. and C. J. Cole, 2007. Hybridization between multiple fence lizard lineages in an ecotone: locally discordant variation in mitochondrial DNA, chromosomes, and morphology. Molecular Ecology 16:1035-1054
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Popcorn packed with antioxidants, hidden health benefits
Pass the popcorn. A new study confirms that the hull of popcorn has some good nutritional qualities — assuming it's not smothered in butter, oil and salt.
Researchers at the University of Scranton (Pa.) ran a lab analysis on the content in several types and brands of popcorn and found that the crunchy hull is rich in polyphenols — antioxidants that prevent damage to cells. Polyphenols also may have disease-fighting properties.
"The hull is where the most nutritional goodies (polyphenols) are — not the white fluffy part," says chemistry professor Joe Vinson, senior author of the study, which was partially funded by a popcorn company. Vinson also has studied chocolate, coffee, spices and cereals. The popcorn findings were presented Sunday at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Diego.
Vinson says polyphenols are concentrated in hulls because popcorn doesn't have a lot of water and because it's 100% whole grain. Some other foods that have polyphenols, such as fruits and vegetables, contain a lot more water.
Not by popcorn alone
Popcorn is usually minimally processed, he says. "We know whole grains are good for us in fighting a number of chronic diseases, but we don't know why yet. People thought it was just the fiber that made popcorn a healthful choice, but in my opinion, it's the combination of fiber and polyphenols."
Fruits and vegetables also contain polyphenols, along with vitamins and minerals not found in popcorn, he says. "I don't want people to think they can just eat popcorn to get all the polyphenols they need. I don't want them to think of popcorn as an alternative to fruits and vegetables."
Researchers are still investigating the effect of polyphenols on the body, Vinson says. "Just measuring something in the food is easy to do. It creates some information, but the proof in the pudding is what happens in the body."
Kantha Shelke, a spokeswoman for the Institute of Food Technologists and a food chemist in Chicago who has studied popcorn, says the latest findings confirm other research on the subject. "Popcorn has an antioxidant called ferulic acid that's also found in beans, corn, rice, wheat, barley and many other grains," she says. "Ferulic acid exhibits a wide range of therapeutic effects against cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular and neuro-degenerative diseases (Alzheimer's) largely because of its strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity."
Still, there's no guarantee that the polyphenols are in the body long enough to have an effect, she says. "It's possible that popcorn goes through the body really fast. If the polyphenols reside largely in the hull, which is principally insoluble fiber and not digested, they are not sitting in our digestive system for an extended period of time, and we may not absorb all the antioxidants," Shelke says. "The hull may be loaded with nutrients that go right through us. The hull acts like a Roto-Rooter."
Some nutritionists are skeptical about overselling the health benefits of popcorn, especially given that it's often drenched in salt and high-fat butter and oil.
Bonnie Liebman, director of nutrition for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group that has analyzed the calories in movie-theater popcorn, says a small unbuttered popcorn at the movies typically has more than 650 calories; a large has 1,200.
"What's more, the evidence that polyphenols might lower the risk of disease is still preliminary," Liebman says. "Considering that two out of three American adults and one out of three children are overweight or obese, the best advice is to snack on fresh fruit or vegetables and to ignore the snack counter at the movies."
Shelke says movie popcorn gets a bad name because of the stuff people put on it.
"There's nothing wrong with eating popcorn with a little oil or a little butter within a balanced diet," she says. "Popcorn drenched in butter or oil is bad. Sprinkled or sprayed and consumed in moderation is good for both the body and the soul.
"I go to the movies for the movie and the popcorn. I comfort myself that my popcorn also provided me with a whopping dose of fiber."
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| 0.968893 | 906 | 2.828125 | 3 |
In 1959, three years before independence from Belgium, the majority ethnic group, the Hutus, overthrew the ruling Tutsi king. Over the next several years, thousands of Tutsis were killed, and some 150,000 driven into exile in neighboring countries. The children of these exiles later formed a rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and began a civil war in 1990. The war, along with several political and economic upheavals, exacerbated ethnic tensions, culminating in April 1994 in a state-orchestrated genocide, in which Rwandans killed up to a million of their fellow citizens, including approximately three-quarters of the Tutsi population. The genocide ended later that same year when the predominantly Tutsi RPF, operating out of Uganda and northern Rwanda, defeated the national army and Hutu militias, and established an RPF-led government of national unity. Approximately 2 million Hutu refugees - many fearing Tutsi retribution - fled to neighboring Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zaire. Since then, most of the refugees have returned to Rwanda, but several thousand remained in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC; the former Zaire) and formed an extremist insurgency bent on retaking Rwanda, much as the RPF tried in 1990. Rwanda held its first local elections in 1999 and its first post-genocide presidential and legislative elections in 2003. Rwanda in 2009 staged a joint military operation with the Congolese Army in DRC to rout out the Hutu extremist insurgency there and Kigali and Kinshasa restored diplomatic relations. Rwanda also joined the Commonwealth in late 2009.
(Taken from CIA World Factbook, more information here: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rw.html)
- Land Area: 26, 340 sq Km ( roughly the size of Massachusetts)
- Capital: Kigali
- Average Temperature: 24 - 27 Celsius
- Terrain: Mostly grassy uplands and hills; relief in mountainous with altitude declining from West to East.
- Vegetation: Dense equatorial forest in the Northwest to Savannah in the East.
Natural resources: Tin, Gold, and Natural Gas
Main Exports: Coffee and tea
- Population: 8 million (54% female, 46% male)
- Life expectancy: 50 female, 48 male
-Religion: Catholic (majority), Protestant, Muslim, Traditional
- Language: Kinyarwanda, English, French, Swahili
- President: Major General Paul Kigame
- Prime Minister: Bernard Makuza
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| 0.925401 | 551 | 3.59375 | 4 |
Oldest Fossils of Large Seaweeds, Worm-like Animals Tell Story of Ancient Oxygen
Geobiologists uncover Davy Jones Locker of fossils near small village in south China
Almost 600 million years ago, before the rapid evolution of life forms known as the Cambrian explosion, a community of seaweeds and worm-like animals lived in a quiet deep-water niche near what is now Lantian, a small village in south China.
Then they simply died, leaving some 3,000 nearly pristine fossils preserved between beds of black shale deposited in oxygen-free and unbreathable waters.
Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Virginia Tech in the United States and Northwest University in Xi'an, China report the discovery of the fossils in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
In addition to ancient versions of algae and worms, the Lantian biota--named for its location--included macrofossils with complex and puzzling structures.
In all, scientists have identified some 15 species at the site.
The fossils suggest that structural diversification of macroscopic eukaryotes--the earliest versions of organisms with complex cell structures--may have occurred only tens of millions of years after the Snowball Earth event that ended 635 million years ago.
Snowball Earth proposes that the Earth's surface became almost, or completely, frozen at least once during the planet's history.
The presence of macroscopic eukaryotes in the highly organic-rich black shale suggests that, despite the overall oxygen-free conditions, brief oxygenation of the oceans did come and go, according to H. Richard Lane, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research.
"So there are two questions," says Shuhai Xiao, a geobiologist at Virginia Tech. "Why did this community evolve when, and where, it did?
"It is clearly different in terms of the number of species compared to biota preserved in older rocks. There are more species here, and they are more complex and larger than what evolved before."
The rocks were formed shortly after the largest ice age ever, says Xiao, when much of the global ocean was frozen.
By 635 million years ago, the snowball Earth event ended and the oceans were clear of ice. Perhaps, Xiao says, "that prepared the ground for the evolution of complex eukaryotes."
The team examined the black shale rocks because, although they were laid down in less than optimal waters for oxygen-dependent organisms, "they are known to be able to preserve fossils very well," says Shuhai.
"In most cases, dead organisms were washed in and preserved in black shales. In this case, we discovered fossils that were preserved in pristine condition--some seaweeds still rooted--where they had lived."
The conclusion that the environment would have been poisonous is derived from geochemical data, "but the bedding surfaces where these fossils were found represent moments of geologic time during which oxygen was available and conditions were favorable," says Xiao.
"They are very brief moments to a geologist, but long enough for the oxygen-demanding organisms to colonize the Lantian basin and capture the rare opportunities."
The research team suggests that the Lantian basin was largely without oxygen, but was punctuated by brief oxic episodes that were populated by complex new life forms.
Those life forms were subsequently killed and preserved when the oxygen disappeared.
"Such brief intervals need high-resolution sampling for geochemical analysis to capture the dynamic and complex nature of oxygen history in the Ediacaran Period," says lead paper author Xunlai Yuan. The Ediacaran Period is the last geological period immediately preceding the Cambrian Period.
Proving that hypothesis awaits further study.
The rocks in the study region are deposited in layered beds. The nature of the rock changes subtly, and there are finer and finer layers that can be recognized within each bed.
"We will need to sample each layer to see whether there is any difference in oxygen contents between layers with fossils and those without," says co-author Chuanming Zhou.
The paper is by Xunlai Yuan and Zhe Chen of Chinese Academy of Sciences; Shuhai Xiao of Virginia Tech; Chuanming Zhou, also of Chinese Academy of Sciences; and Hong Hua of Northwest University in Xi'an.
The research was also supported by Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, NASA Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program, and a Guggenheim fellowship to Xiao.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2016, its budget is $7.5 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives more than 48,000 competitive proposals for funding and makes about 12,000 new funding awards. NSF also awards about $626 million in professional and service contracts yearly.
Useful NSF Web Sites:
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| 0.963238 | 1,068 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Given Dirichlet boundary conditions on the perimeter of a circle, Laplace's equation can be solved for the value of the surface in the interior of the circle. This Demonstration does so for a particularly simple boundary condition given by cycles of a sine wave.
Let a circular membrane have a Dirichlet condition everywhere on the boundary, where the condition is for . The formal solution is
(P. Franklin, An Introduction to Fourier Methods and the Laplace Transformation, New York: Dover, 1958 p. 158). Solutions to Laplace's equation are called harmonic functions. One of the properties of harmonic functions is that they will not attain any local minima or maxima inside the boundary; thus the minima and maxima are on the boundaries, as defined by the Dirichlet conditions. Another property is that the solution at any point has a value that is the average of the values over the area of a circle defined with at its center.
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By Joe F. Bodenstein
An intellectual artist, with talent for languages: Harriet Ellen Siderowna von Rathlef-Keilmann. Photographed in Berlin around 1927/1928.
© EKS-Archiv/Marco-VR, Bonn
Berlin (bpb) The life and work of the sculptor Harriet Ellen Siderowna von Rathlef-Keilmann is both a suspenseful and dramatic fate of a female artist in the 20th century. She was born in Riga on December 20, 1886 according to the Julian Calendar (the old style). After the russian November revolution of 1917, the Gregorian Calendar was introduced and with it the birthdate was moved to January 3, 1987 (the new style). After a life full of changes, the artist died on May 1, 1933 in Berlin, due to complications with her appendix.
The Berlin art historian Robert Alexander René Dupuis has been now for a long time on the search trail to discover more information about this talented, as well as beautiful woman. The purpose is a monograph about the life and work of this sculptor, said Dupuis in an interview with Prometheus. But this research is not simple. Nearly the whole work of the artist has been destroyed or lost due to the war and the political upheavals. For this reason, any information about this sculptor would be welcome, by e-mail to [email protected]
Harriet Ellen Siderowna Keilmann grew up in a wealthy Jewish family with literary background in Litonia, which was till 1897 a province of the Czarist Russia. Litonia consisted of Kurland, Semgallen and Estland.
Already since her early youth she had an artistic vocation clearly in mind. Already at the age of 21 years she participated in art exhibitions in the Baltic Art Society in Riga. In 1913 she took part in an exhibition in Haus der Frau ("House of Women") in Leipzig. At the breakout of the First World War her husband Harald von Rathlef, who was a leutenant in the Regiment of the Alexander Hussars, was sent to the front in Finland. She stayed with her children living with her youngest brother in Russia. After years of insecurity, Rathlef-Keilmann managed to escape with her family on December 28, 1918 from Riga to Berlin. That way she was able to escape the consequences of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Already in 1919 she studied at the Weimar Art University, and was student in the art class of Prof. Richard Engelmann. In 1922 she got a divorce from her husband, because she saw no future with him for her artistic carreer. The following decade till her death was filled with activities, urges to create and social and cultural engagements.
Before that she received, on the recommendation of Walter Gropius, a tuition-free place at the school. But since her Professor Engelmann, together with some other old professors withdrew from the Bauhaus, she also left with them. In the year 1923 she went to Berlin-Charlottenburg. She moved there into an attic atelier of a large house with a garden, in the Kantstrasse 77. This place became her starting point for her new artistic work, with taking part in exhibitions in many cities.
The art historian Dupuis found out during his researches among others this: "Rathlef-Keilmann was also known for her unselfish engagement on the behalf of the alleged Czar's daughter Anastasia Nikolajewska Romanowa, after whom she looked from 1925 to 1927, as arranged by the interreligious philantropic circle around the Catholic theologian Dr. Carl Sonnenschein." Anastasia surfaced in Berlin, and eventually spent the rest of her life in the USA fighting for recognition as the Czar's daughter.
Yet the artistic work of Rathlef-Keilmann did not suffer on account of all her other engagements. This is proven by the list of names, places and institutions, which have been collected for the archives. So the name of Harriet Ellen von Rathlef-Keilmann surfaces among others in various connections with: Alfred Flechtheim, Käthe Kollwitz, Ernst Barlach, Moissey Kogan, Domgalerie Köln, Folckwang Museum in Essen, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld, the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, and others.The scultor belonged to those artists, who from the start refused the National Socialism and the politics of Adof Hitler.
The sculptor Rathlef-Keilmann in her last atelier in Berlin, at the address 'An der Apostelkirche 14', in the year 1932.
The last special exhibition of Rathlef-Keilmann took place in January 1933 in the Gallery Neumann-Nierendorf in Berlin. In the spring of 1933 she took part with her sculptures in an exhibition of the Society of Berlin Women Artists, and was a member of the jury at an art fair exhibition. Due to the political developments, she resigned from the Society of Berlin Women Artists. She wanted to emigrate from Germany, in order to avoid possible persecution by the National Socialist regime. After the sudden death of the artist, her studio was closed down and her works were sold in an auction. Some parts of her expressionistic sculptures and graphics were allowed to be given as presents to her artist friends and personal friends.
Copyright 2003 West-Art, Prometheus 90/2004
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Soon after the outbreak of hostilities between Great Britain and her colonies in 1775, the Second Continental Congress began discussing the creation of a navy, but it was not until October 13, 1775, that it officially approved the formation of the Continental navy. On November 28, 1775, the Continental Congress adopted the "Rules and Regulations of the Navy of the United States," drafted by John Adams, who based the document on the regulations of the British navy for discipline and punishment. However, the Continental navy's rules were less severe in punishment than the British rules.
At first, the navy came under the supervision of the naval committee, but a marine committee composed of one person from each colony replaced the naval committee in January 1776. The marine committee was too unwieldy for efficient administration, and in November 1776 the Navy Board for the Middle Department, composed of three men, superseded it. In April 1777 Congress authorized a second naval board, based in Boston, for the eastern department. As the war continued, these organizations also appeared inefficient, and Congress established the fivemember Board of Admiralty in October 1779 to oversee the navy. This organization, too, ran into problems, and in accordance with other administrative reforms by Congress, the navy was placed under a single executive, the secretary of marine, in 1781. However, no one would accept this position, and it fell by default to the minister of finance, Robert Morris. By the time Morris left the government in 1784, the navy had all but ceased to exist.
The administrative instability of the Continental navy reflected the numerous problems that confronted it. In many ways it was impractical for the Continental Congress to even try to organize a navy since nothing it could do would seriously challenge the hundreds of ships in the British navy. Moreover, Revolutionary efforts at sea took on a variety of forms, ranging from George Washington's ad hoc commissioning of ships to attack British supply lines in 1775; the creation of 11 state navies (only Delaware and New Jersey did not form their own navies); and, most important, the extensive privateering that occurred during the war. Taken altogether, these efforts were a drain on financial and manpower resources that could have gone to the Continental navy. The navy administration compounded their difficulties by often relying on patronage for appointments. The most senior captain of the navy in 1775 was Esek Hopkins, brother and business partner of navy board member Stephen Hopkins.
The Continental navy had a mixed record during the Revolutionary War (1775-83). Its first major expedition was led by Esek Hopkins, who ignored his orders and raided New Providence in the Bahamas instead of clearing Chesapeake Bay of the British and cruising along the southern coast to relieve the area of British naval raids. After Hopkins sailed to New England and avoided a battle with a British warship, he was severely criticized and eventually forced to leave the navy. The officers in the navy seemed to be constantly arguing over rank and seniority (as did officers in the Continental army) to the point where it adversely affected naval operations. However, a few captains stood out for their daring exploits and captures of British shipping. John Paul Jones was the most famous of these, especially after his victory aboard the Bon Homme Richard over the HMS Serapis on September 23, 1779. But Jones, like most other officers in the Continental navy, was often embroiled in controversy, and many of the men aboard his ships detested their autocratic captain.
Typical of the Continental navy's difficulties was the fate of its ambitious building program for 13 frigates, authorized on December 13, 1775. Because of poor planning and difficulties in getting building materials, construction of the ships was delayed. Only seven of the frigates got to sea, and by 1781 all seven had been captured by the British; the six uncompleted vessels had to be destroyed in their shipyards to prevent their seizure by the British. By the end of the war, about 60 vessels of various sizes had been commissioned into the Continental navy, which had captured about 200 British merchant and naval vessels. By comparison, there were at least 2,000 privateers commissioned that had captured about 2,200 British vessels.
In 1783 there were only a few ships left in the Continental navy. All but the USS Alliance were sold as soon as hostilities had ceased. Some members of Congress wanted to keep the Alliance to fend off pirates and possibly deal with the Barbary states, but without any money to support a navy, Congress had to accept the inevitable and sold the ship for $26,000 on August 1, 1785 ending the history of the Continental navy.
1) Gardner W. Allen, A Naval History of the American Revolution, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913)
2) Nathan Miller, The U.S. Navy: A History, 3rd ed. (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1997)
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Matching verbs to collective nouns
Collective nouns are nouns which stand for a group or collection of people or things. They include words such as audience, committee, police, crew, family, government, group, and team.
Most collective nouns can be treated as singular or plural, with either a singular or plural verb:
√ The whole family was at the table. [singular verb]
√ The whole family were at the table. [plural verb]
There are a few collective nouns which are always used with a plural verb, the commonest of which are police and people:
√ She’s happy with the way the police have handled the case.
X She’s happy with the way the police has handled the case.
If you aren’t sure whether to use a singular or a plural verb with a collective noun, look it up. Most dictionaries will tell you which is correct.
Back to Grammar tips
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Forced distribution is a form of comparative evaluation in which an evaluator rates subordinates according to a specified distribution. Unlike ranking methods, forced distribution is frequently applied to several rather than only one component of job performance. Use of the forced distribution method is demonstrated by a manager who is told that he or she must rate subordinates according to the following distribution: 10 percent low; 20 percent below average; 40 percent average; 20 percent above average; and 10 percent high. In a group of 20 employees, two would have to be placed in the low category, four in the below-average category, eight in the average, four above average, and two would be placed in the highest category. The proportions of forced distribution can vary. For example, a supervisor could be required to place employees into top, middle, and bottom thirds of a distribution. Forced distribution is primarily used to eliminate rating errors such as leniency and central tendency, but the method itself can cause rating errors because it forces discriminations between employees even where job performance is quite similar. For example, even if all employees in a unit are doing a good job, the forced distribution approach dictates that a certain number be placed at the bottom of a graded continuum. For this reason, raters and ratees do not readily accept this method, especially in small groups or when group members are all of high ability. 3. Advantages and disadvantages of forced Ranking
• They force reluctant managers to make difficult decisions and identify the most and least talented members of the work group. • They create and sustain a high performance culture in which the workforce continuously improves.
• They increase unhealthy cut-throat competitiveness;
• They discourage collaboration and teamwork;
• They harm morale;
• They are legally suspect giving rise to age discrimination...
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This case study results from the final draft of the Graduate Geographic Information Systems taught by GeoPoint. We proposed to study a landscape using Landscape Ecology plugin (LecoS) in QGIS 2.01 Dufour. The study was conduted in a region of central Portugal, Municipality of Coimbra, with an total area of 31940ha and it has geographic coordinates 40°12‘11.84” North, 8°24‘37.15” West. Because the new administrative reorganization this municipality are divided into 18 parishes, which are mostly urban areas (Figure 1).
The characterization of a landscape is conducted using quantitative indices designed by landscape metrics. These indices are then used to describe the structural characteristics of landscape, to document the change and their relationship with the occurrence of several species or group of species (Turner et al, 2001;. Olsen et al, 2007;. Fidalgo et al. , 2009). The number of metrics is extremely large and can be calculated at the landscape level, class and stain (Turner et al, 2001;. Fidalgo et al, 2009.). Metrics can be calculated from the Corine Land Cover, Land use (COS 90 and COS2006) or maps of Land cover produced by us. According to Martin Jung (2012), the Landscape Ecology Stistics (Lecos) is a module of QGIS used to calculate landscape metrics in raster layers. The result can be available in CSV format.
Landscape metrics was calculated using the Corine Land Cover (CLC) of the years 1990 and 2006. For this purpose it was necessary to transform the coverages in raster format with cell size 50x50 meters. We use r.to.raster tool the Grass Gis module that were present in processing toolbox and the CLC classification level used it´s the first. After transform coverages we calculate the metrics in Landscape Ecology plugin (LecoS) using the graphical modeler (Figure 2).
We calculate land cover area, Landscape Proportion, edge density, Number of patches, Greatest patch area, Smallest patch area , Mean patch distance and the Effective mesh size (Table 1). Measures of diversity of the landscape were calculated the Shannon index, Uniformity and the Simpson index.
From analysis of the landscape metrics calculated it was found that there was an increase in the degree of human disturbance and therefore a greater fragmentation of uses between 1990 and 2006. The number of patches of “Forest Semi Natural areas” and “Agricultural areas” decreased between 1990 and 2006 (Table 1). This metric can give us some indication of ecological processes increasing or decreasing relationships between populations and habitats (Viana and Aranha, 2008). Also of note is the average distance between spots, one measure that allows us to understand the degree of landscape fragmentation, the decline of “Forest and Semi Natural areas” 1990 to 2006 at the expense of increased “Artificial areas” (Table 1).
From 1990 to 2006 diversity increased, however it is known that this result is directly related to the transfer between land cover, in particular loss of “Agricultural areas” and “Forest and Semi Natural areas”. The same happened with uniformity.
It was possible to determine the landscape metrics using the LecoS plugin noting that the study area presents problems of fragmentation due to the high degree of human disturbance. QGIS proved to be quite intuitive and very practical in the calculation of landscape metrics in the absence of any constraint. It is indeed a robust and viable compared to proprietary software solution. In the future we intend to apply this method to areas that have problems with invasive species to study their behavior in the landscape.
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The Canterbury Tales: The Second Nun's Tale Wisdom and Knowledge Quotes
How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Line). We used the line numbering found on Librarius's online edition.
Cecile may eek be seyd, in this manere,
'Wantynge of blyndnesse,' for hir grete light
Of sapience, and for hire thewes cleere.
(99 – 101)
The narrator's explication of Cecilia's name establishes the themes that will be prominent in her tale. Here, the narrator introduces Cecilia as wise ("for hir grete light of sapience"), and makes the connection between vision ("wantynge of blyndnesse") and wisdom, a connection that will reappear in the tale itself.
Right so men goostly, in this mayden free,
Seyen of feith the magnanymytee,
And eek the cleernesse hool of sapience,
And sondry werkes, brighte of excellence.
(109 – 112)
Here the narrator compares Cecilia's spiritual faculties to the "sonne and moone and sterres" that people can see in the heavens (108). This comparison again connects wisdom to light, and through light and 'cleernesse,' to vision.
Valerian, corrected as God wolde,
(162 – 163)
In portraying Valerian as "corrected," the narrator positions Cecilia as a teacher figure. Just as a teacher corrects a student's papers, Cecilia corrects her husband. At the same time, it implies that this 'correction' originates with God – it occurs "as God wolde."
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Please welcome my guest blogger, Anna Olswanger. I “met” her when I read a review of Greenhorn and her picture book stopped me in my tracks. It’s powerful story about the Holocaust that really reverberated. I literally could not stop thinking about that little boy and his tin box for days. I added it immediately to my 34 Haunting Holocaust Books for Kids list.
It doesn’t surprise me that Anna notices the little details in life around her. Her story today is about the little House Finch birds that come to her bird feeder that she notices from her window during writing breaks from her computer. She notes with concern that they are sick.
I looked it up:
House Finch Eye Disease
What does conjunctivitis look like?
Infected birds have red, swollen, watery, or crusty eyes; in extreme cases the eyes become swollen shut or crusted over, and the birds become essentially blind. If the infected birds die, it is usually not directly from the conjunctivitis, but rather from starvation, exposure, or predation as a result of not being able to see. Some infected birds do recover.
It’s strange that conjuctivitis which kids commonly get is a very infection disease but really a nuisance more than anything, but for a House Finch, it can be lethal.
Here’s her story and my prayers that her House Finch friend is ok!
The house finch sat on the feeder outside my window and coughed. She was brown, a female. I read about her red, swollen eyes on the Web and discovered she had a respiratory disease that had infected her eyes. In extreme cases, the eyes of these birds would become swollen shut and the birds would become blind. They would die from starvation or predation because they couldn’t see.
Some of the other house finches who came to my feeder also had the disease. Another female house finch once sat on my kitchen window ledge, alone, and breathed with difficulty. She sounded as though she were wheezing. Then one day, she was gone. A male, a beautiful orange-red bird with slightly red, swollen eyes hopped around on the window ledge to find bits of nyjer seed, never up to the feeder. And then one day, he was gone, too.
One after another, in the late fall, first the finches who were healthy, and then the finches who had eye disease, were gone. Now it was this last little house finch, alone on my feeder. She came during the day and sat on top of the feeder and watched until the sparrows left. She landed on the feeder and ate her fill. She swung her head out and back, out and back, looking to see if a sparrow were coming. If a sparrow landed on the window ledge, she immediately hopped off the feeder. She didn’t like being chased away.
She came back regularly the half hour before sunset. I loved watching her sit on the top of the feeder, her eyes closed from the disease but sitting there, as though she were basking in the slanted afternoon sunshine. I loved the curve of her little chest. She was tiny, smaller than the other house finches, much smaller than the sparrows. She was no match for them physically, but she knew how to be patient. She sat in a nearby tree and waited until they flew away for the night, and then she would come. I would hear her squeak before she came. That was my alert. I loved knowing she was getting her fill of seed.
The last few days, I had been putting herbs in her drinking water. She would eat at the feeder, hop down to the cup of water on the window ledge, sip, and fly back up to the feeder. I was convinced that her eyes were healing. Her eyes had been constantly closed, but now they were open, less red. I thought she might stay, grow more healthy, that I would be able to watch her throughout the winter.
But then she was gone, too.
I didn’t get to tell her good-bye. I didn’t get to tell her that one human had noticed her, that she had drawn me from my desk and computer, enticed me to look out the window at the trees and at the sky between the trees, to listen for her squeaking voice, to care about the fate of one tiny bird, and to discover that every creature, however small, wanted to live.
I didn’t get to tell her any of that.
Maybe she didn’t die. Maybe she flew to a warmer area with the other house finches. Maybe she will be back next year.
Maybe then I will be able to tell my little house finch good-bye.
Greenhorn by Anna Olswanger
In Anna Olswanger’s Greenhorn, a young Holocaust survivor arrives at a New York yeshiva in 1946 where he will study and live. His only possession is a small box that he never lets out of his sight. Daniel, the young survivor, rarely talks, but the narrator, a stutterer who bears the taunts of the other boys, comes to consider Daniel his friend.
The mystery of what’s in the box propels this short work, but it’s the complex relationships of the schoolboys that reveals the larger human story. In the end, Aaron, the stutterer, finds his voice and a friend in Daniel, and their bond offers hope for a future life of dreams realized, one in which Daniel is able to let go of his box.
Greenhorn is a powerful story that gives human dimension to the Holocaust. It poignantly underscores our flawed humanity and speaks to the healing value of friendship. Families will want to read Greenhorn together.
Shlemiel Crooks by Anna Olswanger
Shlemiel Crooks is the story of Reb Elias and the thieves who try to steal his Passover wine. Based on a true story about Anna’s great-grandfather Elias Olschwanger, Shlemiel Crooks is an imaginative introduction to the history of Passover, as Pharaoh and a town of Jewish immigrants play tug-of-war with wine made from grapes left over from the Exodus from Egypt. In Yiddish-inflected English, punctuated by colorful curses, the language of a Jewish community of another time comes alive for readers of all ages. Shlemiel Crooks is a Sydney Taylor Honor Book and PJ Library Book.
image of House Finch from All About Birds
To examine Greenhorn or Shlemiel Crooks more closely at Amazon, please click on image of book.
I am an Amazon affiliate which means if you buy anything through my blog, I get a very small kickback at no cost to you. I use this money to pay for postage and handling for my giveaways.
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visual dictionary of Southwestern style
Don’t know your parapets from your portales? Pueblo style from Contemporary Southwest? Let our Visual Dictionary of Southwestern style help you come to terms with regional design.
Architectural StylesPueblo Revival architecture usually includes elements of Spanish Colonial and Mission Revival architecture styles. Its characteristics include earth-colored stucco walls with an adobelike appearance, rounded corners at intersections, brick flooring, flat roofs drained by canales (jutting water spouts), rows of vigas (beams that protrude through exterior walls and provide structural support for the roof), casement windows, usually recessed, with roughly hewn lintels, and stepped-back rooflines that imitate Pueblo architecture.
Spanish Colonial architecture is typified by adobe walls, a one-story building around an enclosed courtyard, and a long, narrow porch (portal) either facing the street or facing the patio. Flat roofs are drained by canales extruding through a parapet. Windows that face the street often are protected with ornamental grillwork, and doors to the various rooms open onto a covered portal or patio.
Territorial style was associated with New Mexico from the time it became a territory of the United States, in 1848, until about 1900. (New Mexico achieved statehood in 1912.) A one-story house built around a courtyard typically would have a flat roof with parapets and exterior walls of adobe coated with adobe plaster or stucco. Sidelights, a stack of small vertical windows, commonly flanked entry doors, and bricks trimmed doors and windows. Brick coping atop the exterior walls protected them from water damage, a constant worry with adobe construction. Pedimented lintels, or lintels with a triangular crown, recalled the Greek Revival style, as did the milled posts and beams that replaced the logs used as vigas and posts in Spanish Colonial homes.
The term Contemporary Southwest covers a broad range of styles reflecting regional influences. It can incorporate Pueblo style cues with modern surface treatments, larger volumes, and refined straight-lined geometry—for instance, a flat roof but squared parapets, earth-tone or vibrantly colored stucco finishes, extensive use of glass, wood or steel vigas, and deep portales. The masters of Contemporary Southwest architecture in New Mexico tend to emphasize design that responds to climate and site, uses materials honestly so they become design elements themselves, and breaks down the barriers between inside and out.
Architectural Elements & Design Features
Adobe is made from mud, basically. Silty soil composed largely of clay and sand is mixed with water, poured into forms to make bricks, and left in the sun to dry. Additives such as straw, manure, and asphalt emulsion strengthen the mixture, which in the old days was also used as a plaster. Nowadays, several coats of cement plaster cover the bricks on exterior walls to improve resistance to the elements.
A banco is a built-in plastered bench, typically in front of kiva fireplaces, along low walls, and under windows.
Canales are drain spouts, often decorative and made with wood or wood lined with sheet metal or roofing tar, that protrude through the roof parapet.
Casa is the Spanish word for “home.” (It has nothing to do with magazines, except in our case.) A casita is a small, usually Southwest style cottage, either freestanding or attached to the main house.
Coping is a decorative and functional treatment to the top part of a wall, often made of kiln-fired bricks in Territorial style New Mexico architecture, originally to prevent erosion of adobe walls.
Corbels are large wooden brackets, in New Mexico often shaped and carved to be both functional and decorative, that support ceiling beams (vigas) and lintels.
A cornice is the ornamental molding, usually of wood or plaster, that runs around the walls of a room just below the ceiling or roof top.
An horno is a freestanding, chimney-less bread oven used by the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest. Like many elements of Southwestern style, the functional horno has become a vestigial ornament used to accent the patio or courtyard of suburban homes.
The kiva fireplace is a classic icon of Santa Fe style. This small semicircular fireplace, usually built into a corner, was apparently named for the round, flat-roofed ceremonial rooms of Indian pueblos. These fireplaces have indoor and outdoor variations, often with an attached bench (banco) that makes a cozy place for fire gazing.
Latillas are relatively straight, slender saplings (1½ to 2 inches in diameter), stripped of bark and laid across the log roof beams, or vigas, as decking. Latillas are laid perpendicularly between the vigas or diagonally to form a herringbone pattern.
Lintels are headers, or horizontal supports, above windows, doors, or other wall openings. Often rough-hewn wooden beams, lintels are left exposed as a design element and often feature designs hand-carved into the wood. The post-and-lintel system (two vertical posts supporting a horizontal beam) is one of the oldest means for constructing an entranceway.
Nichos, or wall niches, are recesses, usually arched or rectangular, in adobe style houses used to display religious objects, small sculptures, photographs, shrines, or small objets d’art.
A parapet is a low wall extending above the roofline in Pueblo style architecture. In modern design, a parapet often masks a slightly pitched roof, which prevents the leaky flat roof syndrome of older Pueblo architecture.
A portal is an attached, covered porch supported by posts with corbels and beams. It makes an excellent spot for a siesta or sunset watching.
A pueblo (Spanish for “village”) often refers to a communal dwelling built by the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest. The buildings were—and still are, in many cases—constructed of stone or adobe. The structures can tower up to five stories high and contain many individual family units.
Vigas are large (6- to 12-plus inches in diameter) usually peeled round logs used as ceiling beams regularly spaced across the width of the room. In traditional Southwestern architecture, the exposed interior vigas, along with latillas, decking, or even plaster, form a strong design element at the ceiling. A classic feature of Santa Fe style, they often are exposed outside, too, protruding through the exterior walls.
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Fabrizio Tamburini (left) is an old friend - I have known him since 1976, when we both used to attend the gatherings of the newborn Associazione Astrofili Veneziani, at the Lido of Venice. The love for astronomy had brought us together, but we took different paths in our scientific activities. Fabrizio remained maybe more faithful to his old love for the universe, and is now a well-known and respected astrophysicist, who studies original ideas in the physics of photon propagation and more. I repeatedly invited him to write about his research here, but so far he has not accepted, mainly for lack of time... But I am sure he will soon. In the meantime, he will be talking at TEDx Bologna on October 15th on his theory of photon vortices. Anyway, back to neutrinos.
The recent result by Opera which hints at a possible superluminal motion of neutrinos produced by CERN and shot underground to the Gran Sasso mine in central Italy raised Tamburini's interest. Together with Marco Laveder, a colleague of the Physics Department of Padova University, Tamburini recently wrote an interesting paper where he explains that Einstein's Relativity Theory needs not be put in discussion by the measurement: rather, the fact that neutrinos could exhibit an apparent superluminal motion is inherent in the theory written as far back as 1932 by Ettore Majorana, the talented and mysterious Italian physicist who disappeared shortly thereafter -probably to live in South America under false identity.
Tamburini and Laveder's paper (which you can download from the arxiv) explains how a fictitious "imaginary mass" term in the solution of Majorana equations for neutrino propagation may be responsible for the observed faster-than-light travel of neutrinos in a dense medium.
Specifically, the authors start from the hypothesis that the observed superluminal speed of neutrinos may be caused by matter effects, and they work out the effective imaginary mass which corresponds to each of the experimental measurements.
What I find interesting is that Tamburini and Laveder do not stop at discussing the theoretical interpretation of the alleged superluminal motion, but put their hypothesis to the test by comparing known measurements of neutrino velocity on a graph, where the imaginary mass is computed from the momentum of neutrinos and the distance traveled in a dense medium. The data show a very linear behaviour, which may constitute an explanation of the Opera effect:
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Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), also referred to as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) or ME/CFS, is a complex, chronic illness that affects about 1 million Americans. Women are two to four times more likely than men to be diagnosed with ME/CFS. People with ME/CFS experience a range of symptoms that makes it hard to do the daily tasks that most of us do without thinking — like dressing or bathing. Currently, there are no Food and Drug Administration-approved treatments specific for ME/CFS. Usually, treatments focus on relieving the symptoms.
ME/CFS is a complex, debilitating illness. ME/CFS may be diagnosed after six months or more of extreme fatigue that is not improved by bed rest and that may get worse after activities that use physical or mental energy.
Symptoms affect different parts of the body and can include unrefreshing sleep, weakness, muscle and joint pain, problems with concentration or memory, and headaches. Symptoms may be mild to severe. They may come and go, or they may last for weeks, months, or years. They also can happen over time or come on suddenly.
No one knows for sure what causes ME/CFS. Many people say it started after a flu-like illness or other infection, such as a cold or stomach bug. It also can follow infection with the Epstein-Barr virus (the virus that causes mononucleosis or "mono"). Some people with ME/CFS report that it started after a time of great physical stress, such as following surgery.
Allergies and sensitivities to foods, odors, chemicals, medications, and sound
Numbness, tingling, or burning sensations in the face, hands, or feet
Symptoms of ME/CFS vary widely from person to person and may be serious or mild. Most symptoms are invisible to others, which can make it hard for friends, family members, and the public to understand the challenges a person with ME/CFS faces. If you think you may have ME/CFS, talk to your doctor.
Because many symptoms of ME/CFS are also symptoms of other illnesses or side effects of medicine, your doctor will need to do physical exams and tests to help determine if you have ME/CFS. There are no standard lab tests to diagnose ME/CFS.
If you think you may have ME/CFS, see your doctor. Your doctor may:
Ask you about your physical and mental health.
Do a physical exam.
Order lab tests based on your symptoms, such as urine and blood tests, which will tell your doctor if something other than ME/CFS might be causing your symptoms.
Order tests that check for problems found in people with ME/CFS.
Classify you as having ME/CFS if:
You have the main symptoms of ME/CFS, including extreme fatigue or exhaustion that does not go away and that prevents you from doing the things you want and need to do for you and your family; exhaustion that comes after mental or physical exercise; sleep problems; and pain.
You have had the extreme fatigue and other symptoms for 6 months or longer (3 months or longer for children and adolescents).
You and your doctor cannot find another explanation for your symptoms.
The process to make a final diagnosis of ME/CFS can take a long time, so try to be patient. It is usually best to develop a relationship — and follow up often — with one doctor so that he or she can get to know you and see how you respond to treatment over time.
While these tests are being done, talk to your doctor about ways to ease your symptoms. Your doctor may also need to learn more about ME/CFS to help you. If you feel your doctor has doubts about it being a "real" illness, share this document and the links to resources found at the end. If disbelief or doubts continue, consider seeing another doctor for a second opinion (PDF, 262 KB). Contact a local university medical school, research center, or one of the resources listed below for help find¬ing a doctor who treats people with ME/CFS.
Right now, there is no cure or FDA-approved treatments for ME/CFS. But, there are things you and your doctor can do to help ease your symptoms. Because the symptoms of ME/CFS vary from person to person, the management plan you discuss with your doctor may look very different from the plan of another person with ME/CFS.
Some people say that complementary or alternative medicine has helped their ME/CFS symptoms. Keep in mind that many alternative treatments, dietary supplements, and herbal remedies claim to cure ME/CFS, but some might do more harm than good. Talk to your doctor before trying alternative therapies to be sure they're safe.
Talking about your feelings with a friend or family member can help. Sometimes it also helps to talk with people who are going through the same thing. Consider joining an ME/CFS support group. See the "ME/CFS Organizations" section at the end of this fact sheet for a list of organizations that offer additional information on ME/CFS and can help you find ME/CFS support groups.
Research shows that about half of people with ME/CFS work part-time or full-time jobs. For some people with ME/CFS, the ability to work is possible thanks to a supportive employer and certain workplace accommodations, including a flexible schedule, a quiet comfortable place to rest, and memory aids.
If you're uninsured or have been denied coverage in the past for ME/CFS, the Health Insurance Marketplace may be able to provide you with access to affordable coverage. With health insurance plans in the Marketplace, you can no longer be refused coverage just because you have a pre-existing health condition. Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) also can't refuse to cover you or charge you more because of a health condition. They also can't charge women more than men. Learn more about the Affordable Care Act and the Health Insurance Marketplace at Healthcare.gov.
Today, we have a better understanding of ME/CFS, but researchers are still searching for the cause(s). ME/CFS is sometimes seen in members of the same family, perhaps because of a genetic link. Researchers are also testing a variety of treatments for ME/CFS, including anti-viral medications and medications that affect the immune system.
Researchers also are looking at ways to help health care providers identify and diagnose ME/CFS more quickly. HHS currently supports a study led by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to recommend improved and updated criteria to help physicians make a diagnosis of ME/CFS. The IOM's recommendations may also guide future research.
For more information…
For more information on ME/CFS, call the OWH Helpline at 800-994-9662 or contact the following organizations:
All material on this page is free of copyright restrictions and may be copied, reproduced, or duplicated without permission of the Office on Women's Health in the Department of Health and Human Services. Citation of the source is appreciated.
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History Of Farc
FARC stands for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and it is a Marxist and Leninist group when it comes to the values. It is considered as a guerilla group in Colombia which contributing in a major way to the Colombian armed conflict.
FARC is actually a self proclaimed army and they have carried out revolutionary wars against Agrarian and Bolivarian groups. They claim that they represent the poor people who struggle against the wealthier classes in Colombia, and it strongly opposes the monopolization of the natural resources to any multinational corporations. It is a kind of paramilitary force which opposes violence by the government.
In Colombia, the entire twentieth century marked some of the fiercest battles that were full of blood and gore. Several innocent people and even the rich and prominent were murdered or kill mercilessly. Everyone was falling prey to the outfits and the guerillas. There were people who were land hungry, and the poor started depending and supporting the guerillas. They were not willing to help to identify the guerilla outfits because of the help they were getting from these outfits. Even poor people were supplied with arms and ammunition to fight against the government.
In the year 1953, an anti communist military general name Gustavo Rojas Pinilla took over the control of the country after being supported by all parties in Colombia. Once Pinilla took over the reins, he declared amnesty to the armed guerillas and the peasants. This move was welcome not just by the peasants, but also by the various political groups within the country. However, between the period of 1970 and 1982, the FARC grew from being an army of 500 odd people to more than 3,000 people.
Today, the FARC is still a major force to reckon with in Colombia, and it has been staging several high profile kidnappings and also wars against the Colombian government. However, the government of Colombia is constantly holding peace talks with the FARC in order to bring about some semblance of peace in the rural areas.
More Articles :
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- Your Town
Notice the bees, film discusses honeybee population decline
It’s springtime, have you heard the honeybees buzzing and pollinating the plants, what are they trying to say? To further examine the complexity of bees, the crucial need for bees to sustain life, and the decline in the honeybee population, Food Partnership Council (FPC) hosted the fifth film in its food film series, “Queen of the Sun: What are the Bees Telling us,” May 16. With commentary from a unique cast of beekeepers from across the world, notable authors and activists, the film documents the changing culture of beekeeping as the increase in industrialized and monocultural farms have negatively affected the population of honeybees.
According to the documentary, there is a global crisis, evidence in the changing nature of honeybee colonies and agricultural society as a whole. The film introduced audiences to the phenomenon “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD), where the honey is there, the queen is there, but the bees are gone. World renowned biodynamic bee farmer, Gunther Hauk believes the disappearance of honeybees are telling human beings that they are in crisis and something needs to be done.
The history of beekeeping dates back to 10,000 years, but in 1923 Austrian Philosopher, Scientist, Rudolf Steiner predicted that in 80 to 100 years, mechanization would destroy the culture of beekeeping, and his predictions came true.
With the rise of mechanization and monocultural farms, the film explained that the bees are shipped to such farms from across the world to act as pollinators to these crops. Not only do these foreign bees bring outside diseases, but with only one type of crop prevalent on these farms, the bees are fed high fructose corn syrup and other artificial sweeteners to supplement their diet for strength. As a result, the bees' immune system is weakened and the ecosystem becomes distorted.
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO's) and the use of pesticides may also be the cause of CCD, as the film described these effects on the bee's abilities to learn and navigate their way back to the hive.
The film explained the deep connection between the queen bee and the sun, as the bee flies 600 feet into the air and is mated with up to 12 drones. Upon her return she has over 1 million sperm to lay approximately 1,000-2,000 eggs per day.
However, with the increase in bee breading, a monoculture of bees are forming, which is also weakening the genetic biology of the bee.
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Fracture and Dislocation of Metacarpal Bones, Metacarpophalangeal Joints, Phalanges, and Interphalangeal Joints
Charles D. Newton
- Anatomy of the Region
- Surgical Approaches
- Fractures of the Metacarpal Bones
- Luxation of Metacarpophalangeal Joints
- Fractures of Phalanges
- Interphalangeal Joint Luxations
Fracture or luxation of the forepaw is a result of direct trauma, such as being dropped from a height or having a paw caught in a door, or of twisting trauma of a digit. While these present as rather common problems, they are often difficult to treat.
ANATOMY OF THE REGION
The dog and cat have five metacarpal bones. Metacarpal bones II and V are relatively similar in size, and metacarpal bones III and IV are similar in size, although longer than II and V. Metacarpal I is much smaller than bones II and V. The four major metacarpals are arranged with a caudal convexity that probably allows the upper paw to absorb the shock of foot strike.
The metacarpophalangeal joints are typical condylar joints, possessing a medial and lateral collateral ligament and a synovial joint capsule. These joints also possess two elongated palmar sesamoid bones, and one small round dorsal sesamoid, dorsally over the joint. Metacarpophalangeal joint I has only one sesamoid, which is palmar.
The proximal interphalangeal joints and the distal interphalangeal joints are also condylar joints. Each has a medial and lateral collateral ligament and a synovial joint capsule. There are no sesamoids around these joints.
Digit I in the dog and cat has only two phalanges. The remaining digits II to V have three: a proximal or first phalanx, a middle or second phalanx, and a distal or third phalanx. The third phalanx possesses an ungual process over which the nail grows.
Surgical approaches to the metacarpus and paw require a thorough understanding of the regional anatomy. Most bones or joints are approached using an incision directly over the desired area. Deeper dissection requires identification and retraction of extensor tendons and the arteries and veins of the region.
Palmar approaches to the paw are very difficult because the metacarpal and digital pads overlie the bones and joints. Dissection through or under the pads is not encouraged.
FRACTURES OF THE METACARPAL BONES
Metacarpal bone fractures are seen most commonly in young puppies or kittens that have been stepped on or dropped. The fracture or fractures can be incomplete, complete, two-part fractures, or comminuted fractures and may involve one or more bones.
Animals present carrying the affected limb. Palpably, there is soft tissue swelling and pain over the fracture or fractures. Crepitus may be palpable if more than one bone is involved. Gross deformity of the paw will be evident if bones II to V are fractured.
Radiography will confirm the number and kind of fractures present and the degree of deformity.
ASSOCIATED SOFT TISSUE INJURIES
Very few problems occur when metacarpal bones fracture. Sharp ends of bone in a mature animal may lacerate tendons or vessels, but this occurs only rarely.
REDUCTION AND FIXATION
Incomplete fractures of one or more metacarpals are treated in external fixation. The splint or cast should immobilize the carpus completely to be effective. Complete fracture of one or two bones can be properly treated in external fixation. If three or four metacarpals are fractured and displacement is present, external fixation is a poor choice. When multiple bones are fractured, the splint or cast cannot maintain reduction properly, and while union will probably occur, the recovery will be prolonged and deformity likely. Nonunion of metacarpal bones can occur when splints are used for three or four fractured bones.
Internal fixation is used for comminuted single metacarpal fractures or in animals in whom three or four bones are fractured. In multiple bone fractures the fixation can be used for all fractured bones or for metacarpals II and V only (Fig. 26-1). in the latter case it is assumed that by rigidly fixing bones II and V, bones III and IV will align and become stable enough to unite.
Internal fixation may be accomplished with small plates (Fig. 26-2), intramedullary pins or wires, or orthopaedic wire used with intramedullary fixations Intramedullary pins are introduced dorsal to the metacarpophalangeal joint and driven proximally. The exposed pin must be bent carefully in order not to interfere with joint function. Coaptation is often necessary following surgery, since the small diameter of the pins used for fixation may allow bending during weight bearing. Coaptation should be used until there is radiographic evidence of bony union.
FIG. 26-1 Dorsopalmar (A) radiograph demonstrates complete fracture of metacarpal bones II, III, IV, and V in an immature dog. Dorsopalmar (B ) and medial-lateral (C) radiographs demonstrate union 5 weeks following intramedullary fixation of metacarpal bones II and V
FIG. 26-2 Dorsopalmar (A) and medial-lateral (B.) radiographs demonstrate a complete fracture of metacarpal bone V in a racing greyhound. Dorsopalmar (C) and medial-lateral (D) radiographs demonstrate bony union 2 months following fixation using a seven hole semitubular bone plate. (Courtesy of Dr. Jon Dee)
Any method of fixation, open or closed, may fail and result in nonunion. Most metacarpal nonunions are painful and require subsequent surgery.
Proliferative callus associated with union or nonunion may incorporate flexor or extensor tendons and result in digital malfunction. This latter problem may also be painful. Overall, metacarpal fractures are treated very successfully and uneventfully. Most animals have excellent results and return to normal.
LUXATION OF METACARPOPHALANGEAL JOINTS
Luxation of the metacarpophalangeal joint is rare. Most dislocations occur in a palmar direction, resulting in the entire digit being held more prominently dorsal. Clinically the animal presents with pain, discomfort, and obvious deformity. Owing to the three other normal digits the dog may bear some weight but will be lame. Radiography confirms the luxation (Fig. 26-3).
Treatment of metacarpophalangeal luxation is difficult. Some dogs will return to near normal quickly and walk on the luxated joint, which is ideal, since most luxations treated by closed reduction tend to recur and are not properly immobilized in a splint or cast. Surgical repair of the torn capsule or ligaments is possible but difficult.(1)* Internal fixation of the joint with a small pin, transfixation pin, or orthopaedic wire reconstruction results in perceptible abnormality to the animal and lameness. Arthrodesis of the joint is probably the most reasonable approach. If all else fails to make the animal comfortable, digital amputation is indicated (Chapter 48).
FIG. 26-3 Dorsopalmar radiograph demonstrates complete luxation of metacarpophalangeal joint V in a racing greyhound. (Courtesy of Dr. Jon Dee)
* Dee JF: Personal communication, 1981.
FRACTURES OF PHALANGES
Most phalangeal fractures are single and occur when the paw is stepped on.
Most animals are capable of walking but demonstrate considerable lameness. Palpation will reveal a warm, swollen, painful digit. Crepitus may or may not be present.
Radiography is helpful in determining how to treat the fracture, since it can clearly demonstrate the shape of the fracture. It is often necessary to separate the affected digit and radiograph it independently to avoid superimposition of the other phalanges.
REDUCTION AND FIXATION
Most phalangeal fractures are aligned manually and immobilized in a splint or cast. Although most fractures heal, it must be remembered that it is very difficult to immobilize all the involved joints, especially when the animal is weight bearing. Therefore, delayed unions and proliferative callus are common (Fig. 26-4).
FIG. 26-4 Medial-lateral radiograph of a fractured second phalanx in a dog. Delayed union and a proliferative callus are evident 2 months following fracture. No form of fixation had been used.
Occasionally, owing to the size of the animal or the shape of a fracture, internal fixation may be desired. Oblique fractures are fixed using cortical interfragmentary lag screws or orthopaedic wire sutures. If intramedullary fixation is desired, the pins must be inserted in such a way as not to interfere with normal joint motion.(3) Small plates are occasionally used (Fig. 26-5). Internal fixation in phalangeal fractures uses very small implants; therefore, postoperative external fixation for 4 to 6 weeks is still necessary.
FIG. 26-5 Medial-lateral radiograph demonstrates use of a three hole bone plate for fixation of a fracture of the first phalanx in a racing greyhound. (Courtesy of Dr. Jon Dee)
As with metacarpal fractures, nonunions or proliferative callus may result in pain to the animal or in incorporation of flexor tendons. Most animals, however, have excellent results with external fixation of phalangeal fractures and experience no complications.
INTERPHALANGEAL JOINT LUXATIONS
Luxation of the proximal or distal interphalangeal joints is rare and when it occurs tends to be in racing greyhounds or field trial dogs.
In most instances the joint luxates dorsally and results in a very prominent "knocked-up" appearance. Palpation demonstrates a swollen, painful joint and the obvious deformity of the luxation. Dogs will favor the foot but bear weight. Radiographs are used to confirm that no fractures are present (Figs. 26-6 and 26-7).
FIG. 26-6 Dorsopalmar (A) and medial-lateral (B.) radiographs demonstrate palmar and lateral dislocation of the proximal interphalangeal joint in digit III of a racing greyhound. (Courtesy of Dr. Jon Dee)
FIG. 26-7 Dorsopalmar radiograph demonstrates complete dislocation of the distal interphalangeal joint in digit IV of a racing greyhound. (Courtesy of Dr. Jon Dee)
REDUCTION AND FIXATION
CLOSED REDUCTION AND FIXATION
Closed reduction with splints or casts fails. It is impossible to properly maintain the joint in a reduced position. Nonathletic animals may adapt and walk well with the luxation.
OPEN REDUCTION AND FIXATION
Attempts at internal fixation using wires have been made; however, most are unsuccessful. Attempts to repair torn capsule or collateral ligaments have been reported,(2) but such procedures are difficult. The treatment of choice is interphalangeal arthrodesis. The joint must be aligned carefully to allow normal position. Even this procedure often fails under stress, with weight bearing causing a high rate of metal failure. Amputation of the affected digit is often the only successful method of treatment.
The main complication of interphalangeal joint luxation is fixation failure. In an athletic dog amputation is best. Pet animals have a good prognosis even if no treatment is given. Most dogs will continue to favor the limb but will walk and function at a near normal level.
2. Early TD, Dee JF: Trauma to the carpus, tarsus, and phalanges of dogs and cats. vet Clin North Am 10:717, 1980
3. Wind A: Fractures of the metacarpal (metatarsal) bones. J Am Anim Hosp Assoc 43:346, 1976
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Many camps have firm policies about the use of technology by campers and staff for the discreet periods they are at camp. These policies often stipulate no cell phones, no handheld gaming devices, no blackberries, no iPads, no laptops.
Initially, kids can mildly panic at the idea of being unplugged at camp. Dr. Larry Rosen, professor of psychology at California State University, Domenguez Hills and author of Me, My Space and I: Parenting the Net Generation, indicates that kids' uber engagement with technology is "a compulsion" with a need to constantly check, play and be in contact with their device(s) of choice. Technology is an intimate part of their everyday experience, for good and for ill. This is a fact. But my experience is that kids adapt well once they're in the camp environment.
Camp provides a brief interlude during which kids can discover that they really can be OK without their technology. The concrete experience of being face-to-face with each other and engaged in activities that pull them into life provides the support many kids need to detox from their technology. Early bird swims, dangling from a ropes course, sitting in a dining hall belting out camp songs and evening bonfires are exactly the tonic to help kids disconnect from electric power and connect to the power of nature, friends and community.
Look, we all know technology is an amazing thing. It provides emotional, social and intellectual experiences that have the ability to enhance kids' lives in many ways. And hey, the advent of "bunk notes," an ingenious use of email to help parents send "letters" to their kids while they are at camp, circumventing snail mail, so kids actually get their letters while they are at camp, is terrific. But studies report that technology is also contributing to nasty problems including Internet addiction, narcissism, anxiety and depression in our kids. Not to mention the rats nest of problems presented by cyber-bullying.
So, if your kids have been "forced" into a tech-free zone this summer, why not help them ride that wave into the fall? I'm not suggesting a total boycott of all things tech, but rather that you have a real conversation with your child or teenager about the pros and cons of technology. Ask them if they noticed anything different about their life experience when they didn't have access to their devices. What did they miss about it? What didn't they miss about it? Be open to hearing what they say and see if together you can come up with ways that they can stay connected to the positive aspects of technology without re-enslaving themselves to it.
Follow Annabelle Fell on Twitter: www.twitter.com/annabellefell
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Sonnet 130 Theme of Literature and Writing
The theme of "Literature and Writing" is sort of flying under the radar in this poem, but we think it's important. The whole point of this poem is to gently mock the clichéd love poems written by other authors. The speaker isn't actually making fun of his own lover so much as he is pointing out how ridiculous poetic comparisons can become. In that sense, this is a poem about other poems as much as it is about a particular woman with frizzy black hair.
Questions About Literature and Writing
- How critical do you think the speaker of this poem is being of other poets? Does he seem to be gently making fun of standard love poetry or is he really attacking it?
- Do you think there's a place for sappy love poetry? Is it fair to criticize something that was never really designed to be realistic?
- Try a quick exercise – write out the serious, "normal" version of this poem (or just try to imagine it). What would it look like without all the negative comparisons? For example: "My mistress' eyes are like the sun/ Her lips are as red as coral, etc." What do you think about this new poem?
- Can you think of a poem or a song or a movie that you love because it's really unrealistic, and shows a kind of love that could never exist in the world?
Chew on This
As he gently mocks traditional love poems, the speaker manages to maintain a light tone. This playfulness makes it easier for him to turn the subject back to true love and finish the poem on a sweet and cheerful note.
Although it is meant to be a parody of romantic poetry, Sonnet 130 misses the fun of those other poems. By ignoring the playful nature of those exaggerated comparisons, our speaker ends up being the one who sounds like he isn't getting the joke.
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The Jules Verne Train or "Train Time Machine" or simply the "Time Train", labeled "ELB" on each side after its creator, was the culmination of Emmett Brown's previous experience with building the DeLorean time machine and working with the steam locomotive that pushed it to 88 mph. It was a time machine itself that ran off of steam rather than gasoline, built from after 1885 to 1895. When Doc succeeded in its first temporal displacement test, he and his family traveled to 2015 or beyond to give it a hover conversion.
The flux capacitor was still included in this design, in the place of the lamp at the front of the locomotive Unlike the DeLorean, the external components of the Time Train were symmetrical on both sides of the vehicle, possibly representing a more sophisticated grasp of the time travel technology on Doc's part, despite being constructed from more primitive materials.
On October 27, 1985, when Doc met up with Marty McFly and Jennifer Parker, he chose the most likely place that they might be at that given time, the site of the DeLorean's destruction. Interestingly, before the Time Train appeared, it triggered the bells and gates on the nearby railroad crossing as if another train was coming. This could mean that this time machine is so powerful that enables a connection with its destination time even before arriving to that point of the time.
Although the events of Back to the Future Part III take place in 1885, the locomotive which pushed the DeLorean to 88 mph was an 1897 model Rogers 4-6-0 mixed traffic engine. The Time Train is a locomotive of the same design as the one that pushed the DeLorean to 88 mph in 1885. However, the two trains cannot be the same locomotive due to the explosion that destroyed the first train, leaving little of the train on the valley floor. The time train had to have been built from another train either purchased by Emmett Brown or by him stealing one; the former being more likely since the upper class clothing of the Brown family indicated he had become rich enough to purchase a locomotive of that type.
The train uses technology from the hoverboard that was left behind when Marty left 1885 for 1985. The frictionless dynamo from the hoverboard was able to store multiples of the 1.21 jigowatts that were necessary for time travel. The original flux capacitor built for the train consisted of a wooden box, metal that was arranged as a "Y", and six incandescent light bulbs arranged in a pattern of three on each side of the box. The original time circuits consisted of three mechanical clocks, where the hour, minute and second hands would display where the time machine currently was, where it had been, and where it was going to go.
On June 12, 1893, the Brown family attempted to travel in the Jules Verne train to 1985. Doc had paid a group of railroad workers to lay down fifty yards of track, as he calculated that the distance would be enough to reach 88 mph, since he had improved the performance of the presto logs. The trip failed however, as the train didn't achieve temporal displacement, and crashed.
After seeing a Steam tricycle driver driving a Serpollet steam tricycle, Doc decided to use one as a time machine. He used the flux capacitor and the time circuits from the prototype Jules Verne Train. He then donned a diving suit to protect himself from the the stresses of space-time and the temperature variation. He successfully traveled to 2035, where he had planned to pick up everything he needed to complete the Jules Verne Train.
Behind the scenes
- While designing the look for the train, production designer Rick Carter became inspired by the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which seemed an obvious choice considering Doc and Clara's love for the works of Jules Verne. The full-size mock-up of the Time Train still stands at Universal Studios Orlando, even though the ride has since closed.
- In Back to the Future: The Animated Series, the flux capacitor of the train is located on the inside as shown in the episode "Witchcraft".
- A replica of the locomotive (excluding the tender) stood outside the building of Back to the Future: The Ride prior to its closure.
- In the episode 'Put on your thinking caps, kids! It's time for Mr. Wisdom!', the train had a rope that could be fired from the smoke box door. This was used to latch onto the back of the DeLorean, which Walter Wisdom had stolen.
- Back to the Future Part III
- Back to the Future: The Animated Series
- Back to the Future: The Card Game
- Back to the Future: The Game
- Back to the Future: The Game - Episode 3: Citizen Brown (Mentioned only)
- Back to the Future: The Game - Episode 4: Double Visions (Mentioned only)
- LEGO Dimensions
- Back to the Future: The Official Book of the Complete Movie Trilogy
- A Matter of Time: The Unauthorized Back to the Future Lexicon
Notes and references
- ↑ In Back to the Future: Untold Tales and Alternate Timelines 5, it is revealed that Doc had improved his presto logs to attempt to get the train up to 88 mph.
- ↑ Although in Back to the Future: The Animated Series, it is located inside the cab to the right of the controls.
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| 0.969476 | 1,129 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Aliphatic hydrocarbons with one triple bond between carbons are called alkynes. They follow the naming convention of the alkanes except that the suffix -yne is used instead of -ane. For alkynes above propyne the position of the double bond must be specified in the name.
The simplest of the alkyne
series, it is commonly called acetyline. It is often used as a fuel
for welding torches sinces it produces a large amount of heat upon combustion. Oxyacetylene welding uses compressed acetylene and compressed oxygen for mixing in the torch flame.
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| 0.913077 | 119 | 3.234375 | 3 |
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