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- Category: Squadrons & HUs
- Last Updated: 10 November 2012
- Written by Gp Capt Kapil Bhargava
- Hits: 11922
Tactics and Combat Development and
Training Establishment (TACDE)
Tejas Tejaswi Namaham - I am the glory of the glorious
by Group Captain Kapil Bhargava (Retd)
One-to-one air combat was first seen in World War I. The early fighter pilots were gentlemen gladiators. They fired at each other with their revolvers and were perhaps a little sorry if they hit their opponent. With the advent of guns on aeroplanes, the combat became between aircraft. If the enemy were shot down, and hopefully bailed out, the victor would make sure that his adversary was basically safe before flying away to claim a kill. Since then aerial combat has become fast, furious and fatal. The major change came with fighter aircraft powered by jet engines.
Gloster Meteor of the Royal Air Force (RAF) was the first jet fighter to take part in World War II. It later also served in the Korean War (1951-53) especially with the Royal Australian Air Force. But by then it was considered inferior to MiG-15, though RAAF claimed three kills. It was relegated to ground attack roles. The RAAF pilots complained that they would have done much better against the MiG-15 if they had been trained for air combat rather than only for ground attacks. The other famous aircraft in that war was the first swept wing fighter of the world – the F-86 Sabre. Sabres did very well against the MiGs.
After the Korean War some, Sabres were stationed in the UK. It was usual for them to hassle the Meteors. They were in for a shock. While F-86s were superior to the Meteors and won most low altitude air battles, some RAF pilots managed to best them each time. Both aircraft types had poor performance at high altitudes. The RAF had developed tactics to engage Sabres around 20,000 feet. At that altitude Meteors had a small advantage, which was effectively exploited by well-trained British pilots. The Central Trials and Tactical Organisation (CTTO) carried out the research into aircraft capabilities, and tactics to be employed. Similarly, early trials on MiG-21 FL aircraft had helped develop a combat climb with full reheat thrust and a continuous 2.5G turn. The USSR Air Force claimed that no other contemporary fighter aircraft could keep up with it. The moral is clear: capabilities of aircraft must be investigated to the full. Pilots, and other supporting staff need to be trained to exploit them for defeating the enemy.
The Indian Air Force (IAF) started as an adjunct of the RAF. For almost four decades it followed the practices inherited from the UK. The RAF trained all our early fighter leaders and many pilot attack instructors (PAIs). The last IAF pilots attended the Day Fighter Leader School at West Raynham around 1957. Coincidentally this was the year in which Britain did its defence review. Secretary for Defence Duncan Sandys (pronounced Sands) conceived “The Way Forward” to provide UK with affordable defence. He believed that conventional warfare was outdated and only nuclear weapons would be needed for future wars. A corollary of his concepts was that air combat was no longer necessary. Only defence against missiles would be needed. Fighter Leader training soon stopped (as did CTTO’s work) and the avenue for training IAF leaders was also closed. For almost fifteen years no IAF pilots qualified as fighter leaders.
When in early 1950s IAF started an Armament Training Wing, it soon discovered that PAI training could just as well be carried out in India, and at a fantastically lower cost. Indigenous development of tactics and training of fighter leaders took a while to get going.
Operations in the 1971 War
Having fought a war with Pakistan in 1965, IAF was perhaps not satisfied with its air combat tactics. Repression and wholesale killing of East Pakistanis by the West Pakistan Army in 1970-71 resulted in an influx of ten million refugees into India, the highest displacement of a population ever (more than Rwanda, Burundi, Kosovo and Afghanistan, combined). It soon became clear that India would need to settle the problem on its own to repatriate the refugees. War clouds for the second Indo-Pak conflict began to gather fast.
After approving it in December 1970, IAF raised a Tactics & Combat Development & Training Squadron (T&C D&T Squadron). To a large extent this was the brainchild of Director Operations (Offensive), Gp Capt (later Air Marshal, now retired) Denzil Joseph Keelor – himself a hero of 1965 war. In August 71, T&C D&T Squadron started with sixteen officers and other supporting personnel on February 1 1971 at Adampur (near Jalandhar, Punjab). Its commanding officer was a West Raynham graduate Day Fighter Leader, Wing Commander AK Mukherjee. He had five pilots each for Mig-21 (Type 77) and Sukhoi-7 aircraft. Sqn Ldr OP Sharma was Flight Commander of the MiG flight. Its pilot’s list reads like a roll of honour of IAF: PS (Ben) Brar, Philip Rajkumar, VK (Frisky) Verma and Teshter J Master all became Air Marshals. Ben Brar and Frisky were AOC-in-Cs of Eastern and Central Air Commands respectively. Air Marshal (Retd) Rajkumar today heads the Aeronautical Development Agency, which is developing the LCA. Air Marshal TJ Master is the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Training Command. Sqn Ldr DK (Dice) Dhiman was in charge of the Su flight. His pilots included Vinod K Patney, Darshan Singh Basra - both as Air Marshals were AOC-in-Cs of Western and Southern Air Commands respectively. At the time of his retirement Vinod Patney was the highest decorated officer of IAF. Other Su pilots were Ratan Lal Bamzai and Gary Garewal. Squadron’s fighter controller RC (Bill) Mahadik is now an Air Marshal and Air Officer in charge Administration of IAF. The squadron settled down in Adampur into tents.
The Air Headquarters directive for the T&C D&T Squadron permitted it to explore operational capabilities of its aircraft without necessarily adhering to Air Staff Instructions or most other restrictions. Air Officer Commanding Adampur, Air Commodore Randhir Singh was not impressed. Squadron pilots used to say only half in jest that the AOC ran the RAF – Randhir’s Air Force. He did not agree that a squadron should be permitted such leeway in flying. For two months the squadron flew to develop tactics, such as two aircraft hi-lo attack and a bouncer, with No.1 and No. 26 Squadrons on the station. It then moved to Ambala. At this stage Gary left to join an operational squadron. Rajkumar went off to France to fulfil his ambition to become a test pilot.
Meanwhile the war over East Pakistan was creeping ever closer. Air Headquarters then decided to task the Squadron to undertake counter air missions at night when required. AOC-in-C Western Air Command, Air Marshal MM (Minoo) Engineer spoke to the Squadron and asked it to prepare for night counter air operations. He advised the pilots to practice and pace themselves to develop expertise in carrying out single aircraft counter air missions at night during moon as well as dark night phases.
Pacing themselves well, the pilots individually started night flying practice at 5 km height including aerobatics. Within four or five sorties they came progressively down to 200 metres above ground, still including some aerobatics. While flying low, Type 77’s altimeter would usually read minus 150 metres due to pitot-static pressure error. By mid-October, fully ops pilots were attached to the Squadron to augment its strength. These included SR (Deshu) Deshpande, NR (Natty) Nadkarni (both now retired Air Marshals) and CS (Doru) Doraiswami (now retired Air Vice Marshal). Pilots of both types did night flying practice including navigation on moonless nights. Soon enough they graduated to simulated night attacks over own radar units and airfields.
From early October 1971, pilots of the T&C D&T Squadron began simulated long-range attacks over own airfields at night. A typical sortie would imply low-level navigation from Ambala to Hindon (standing in for a forward base) where the aircraft would be refuelled. They would then attack Adampur before returning to Ambala. The routing was usually straight to the target for ease of navigation. Linear features such as canals, roads and railway lines were found to be good for time checks. Innovative aids were fabricated to create “head up displays” – a stopwatch and a torch were mounted at appropriate places. The map had to be held up to the torchlight and the stopwatch could be seen with the pilot’s head up and looking out. Pilots used to fly over the runway and then carry out a timed turn to line up with it and simulate bombing it. Apparently this technique worked rather well.
The Squadron carried out live attacks at Sidhwan Khas range near Halwara. It was obvious that shallow dive attacks would lead to bombs skipping off the target. Apart from firing rockets and guns, steep dive-bombing was practiced, especially for M-46 bombs. By November 1, the Squadron was ready for actual operations. With the war over East Pakistan imminent, in October itself, Punjab had night blackouts. This gave the Squadron realistic practice for night counter air missions even in moonless dark nights.
On December 3 1971, hostilities broke out with Pakistan Air Force (PAF) dropping bombs over Ambala (missing its runways), Amritsar (damaging the runway) and over other airfields. IAF reacted swiftly. Squadron pilots were divided into two groups so as to operate on alternate nights. Three MiG and Sukhois each were sent to Adampur by 19:30 hours the same night. With these aircraft solo night attacks were planned at ten-minute intervals on just one enemy airfield to damage it substantially. In case the airfield of departure was not available or damaged, returning aircraft were to land at one of three nearby airbases. These airfields were identified by the nicknames of three pilots; Dada Deshmukh, Popo Sahay and TO (Trevor) Osman. A one word R/T call would tell the returning pilot where to land: Dada, Popo or TO (Tee-oh).
The first night attack over Pakistan was launched on the night of December 3-4 and the next batch on December 5. Dice Dhiman, Doru, Bamzai, RG Kadam and other Su pilots attacked Sargodha and Chander. MiGs with OP Sharma, Ben Brar, Frisky Verma, Teshter Master, Deshu and Natty piloting them were launched against Risalwala, Rafiqy (Shorkot Road) and Chaklala. One night, Deshu en route for a solo night raid over Chaklala found that his compass was unserviceable. He flew towards the Himalayan foothills and followed the terrain contour to Pathankot where he landed safely. The really scary part of the mission was launch and recovery. Pilots would taxi by moonlight and ask for runway lights to be put on only after lining up and selecting full power with afterburner. For landing, controllers put on the lights only after pilots called short finals. However, out of desperation this call used to be given much earlier.
After midnight on December 6, Sqn Ldr CS Doraiswami had an exciting adventure in his refuelled and armed Su-7. At Amritsar, Doru was taxiing to line up for take off when the air defence radar network reported that a B-57 (PAF’s Canberra) was heading towards the airfield. He was asked to return to his pen. At this time the runway lights were off. Doru decided that he had no time to taxi back or find an empty pen. He decided to take off. At his request, the lights were put on for his departure. Even though these were switched off while he was still rolling, they and the flame of the afterburner obviously assisted the Pak bomber’s aim. Just as Doru got airborne, the B-57 dropped a pair of bombs behind him. The bombs exploded in the middle of the runway damaging both its lanes. Doru’s aircraft juddered due to the shock wave of the explosion. But he got away safely and completed his mission of attacking Sargodha. The runway was back in service before dawn sorties needed to be launched.
The single aircraft raids were done for 5 nights, only during moon phase. As the moon waned, night attacks were no longer feasible. Also it became obvious that these were not yielding enough results. IAF gave them up and by December 9, the Squadron was moved to Amritsar to operate only in daytime. During the night missions not a single aircraft was lost or damaged. But they had rather unnerved PAF Even when Pak Mirages tried to intercept the night raiders, they did not follow them down to lower heights. On two occasions, the Mirages were spotted well above silhouetted against the skyline. An article in International Defence Review concluded that a Russian AWACS was controlling the aircraft to facilitate night attacks. Apparently PAF also believed this. Perhaps the strange calls, Dada, Popo or TO, were mistaken for Russian code words. Even if these night attacks damaged some Pak runways, they were easily repairable in three or four hours. However, the raids surely prevented PAF personnel from sleeping peacefully through the nights.
Pilots of T&C D&T then did some interdiction missions even with the MiGs. The Squadron was tasked to give close support to the Army especially in the Chhamb sector, which was a main thrust of Pakistan. Usually Sukhois did ground attacks while MiGs escorted them. They hit areas west of Munnawar Tawi River, Shakargarh and other opportunity targets from Narowal to Pasrur. On a search and destroy mission with Doru and Vinod Patney in Sukhois and Ben and Teshter escorting them, the formation was bounced by four Sabres. In the ensuing combat, Ben’s aircraft got a bullet through its tail. While the Sabres were retreating after joining up, Teshter in pursuit was able to launch his Ka-13 missiles, one of which hit the wing of an F-86. The kill was not confirmed but later it was reported by a PAF combat unit that a Wing Commander had ejected around that time in the same area. In a daytime counter air mission Kadam, who was flying as Patney’s No.2 was shot down – the only casualty of the Squadron in the war. The 1971 War ended on December 14.with the surrender of 90,000 Pak Army personnel in East Pakistan. Thus Bangladesh was born.
For one year thereafter, T&C D&T Squadron explored various types of formations and tactics to be employed. Till December 1972, the main thrust of the trials was to learn relevant lessons from the 1971 War and eliminate shortcomings. The Squadron was officially named Tactics and Combat Development and Training Establishment but with its acronym as TACDE. Wg Cdr A Sridharan took over TACDE from Mukherjee as its Commandant and moved it to Jamnagar. Wg Cdr Allen Alley was posted in to head the Development Wing. The ongoing trials and explorations were formalised. The staff investigated various combinations of formations and bouncers. These included three aircraft vs two bouncers, four vs four combat, and even a ten aircraft melee of four attackers, two escorts and four bouncers. Strike sorties were also practiced extensively. Frisky Verma and Teshter Master especially investigated low speed handling of the MiG-21 down to zero on the air speed indicator. They found this to be safe if handled correctly, except with drop tanks. The Russian Pilots Instruction Manual had laid down the minimum speed for the aircraft as 400 kmph. But combat often required low speed handling. Mike McMahon (now an AOC-in C) and Owen D’Senna similarly explored the handling of the Sukhois. Vinay Kapila (now a retired Air Vice Marshal) also joined TACDE staff.
In September 1972 ad hoc courses were conducted for Flight Commanders of various operational squadrons. These were a great success and helped formulate training syllabi for formal courses to follow. Optimum flying techniques and tactics to be employed in each type of combat or attack were meticulously recorded. Extensive work went into preparing briefing notes and acquiring training aids. Two main documents were created: the Blue Book contained tactics to be employed and the Red Book had instructions for pilot attacks. Perhaps due to the aircrew flying day and night, wives of three TACDE pilots typed the two books - a voluntary yeoman service! On May 1, 1973 pilots of TACDE were officially authorised to instruct trainees to qualify as Fighter Combat and Fighter Strike Leaders (FCL and FSL).
Training for the FCL course began in June 1973.The first course had five pilots each from MiGs and Sukhois. They were all Flight Commanders of their own squadrons and were qualified PAIs. They were also senior to most of the staff. Sqn Ldr AY Tipnis (later Chief of Air Staff) won the trophy as the best fighter leader of the first course. Vinod Patney and P Rajkumar who had gone abroad on courses had to do the full training back in India to get their FCL qualifications.
In June 1974 Group Captain SK (Polly) Mehra took over as its Commandant. He eventually became Chief of Air Staff and retired as an Air Chief Marshal (in fact well ahead of ACM Tipnis). Jamnagar was the capital of the former ruling prince, His Highness the Jamsaheb of Nawanagar, SD Jadeja. He was an Honorary Wing Commander of IAF and always had a soft corner for the service. In February 1978, he presented a diamond-studded sword and a diamond-studded shield to TACDE. These are now awarded to the trainee standing first in the FCL course. During this period, Denzil Keelor took over as Commandant of TACDE and took it to greater heights Of the founding members of T&C C&T Squadron, only Frisky Verma became Commandant of TACDE and later its Commodore Commandant.
By July 1982, Su-7 aircraft were retired from IAF. The inventory of TACDE was modernised with new MiG-21 types: BIS, M and MF, and later with MiG-27. With IAF acquiring armed helicopters, a Helicopter Combat Orientation Course was conducted even though all instructors of TACDE were fighter pilots. It was judged to be a great success Today courses for Helicopter Combat Leader are regularly held under the guidance of type experienced directing staff. These courses instruct helicopter crews in air combat, manoeuvring and enhanced situational awareness. They are also taught how to instruct others after returning to their units. TACDE runs a special training capsule of Dissimilar Aircraft Combat Training (DACT) for the Indian Navy’s Sea Harriers. For these, and other training, concerned aircraft types are brought to TACDE for the required duration.
In an annual cycle, separate courses, mostly of five months duration, are now run for air combat, weapons delivery and to qualify as PAIs. By 1996 a six-week course for Master Fighter Controllers (MFC) was started. TACDE keeps up with advances in technology. Relevant tactics are constantly updated. Although Surface to Air Guided Weapons (SAGW) crews regularly took part in exercises, the debriefing at their conclusion was not always satisfactory. For the last ten years, SAGW crew along with their Combat Vehicles are integrated into the final six weeks of FCL and FSL courses. The very high quality of debriefing is a special feature of TACDE. Thus even SAGW crew get to realise exactly how a pilot fights a war and how to enhance their own proficiency.
With the acquisition of the Air Combat Manoeuvring Instrumentation (ACMI), monitoring and debriefing by the staff made a quantum jump in the quality of training. All TACDE’s own aircraft carry ACMI pods. It soon became possible to show and explain to each pilot his achievement, or lapses if any. Any doubts or confusion in the mind of a pupil for any phase of combat can be effectively cleared.
Over a period of seven days, at the end of each set of FCL, FSL and MFC courses, TACDE conducts Exercise Akraman (Invasion). Pupils get to apply all that they had learnt during the training. This trial by fire gives them confidence to undertake realistic missions with confidence if and when required.
Jamnagar is not an ideal place for long-term operation of fighter aircraft. With strong salt-laden sea breezes and occasional tornado like storms, aircraft and other precious equipment are always at risk. In June 2000, TACDE moved to Gwalior along with all its assets including ACMI. The transfer was executed with great proficiency and in record time. The move has helped in that the base also houses Mirage 2000 aircraft, IAF’s electronic warfare range and an all-aspect air-to-ground range. This gives TACDE the opportunity to practice very realistic air combat and strike missions.
|An Instructor at TACDE giving a lecture|
TACDE may soon be tasked to evaluate and develop combat tactics for the newly acquired Su-30 MKI aircraft with vectored thrust. With recent advances in simulation technology, including virtual reality, TACDE may include some combat and strike training on ground and make pupils practice the very sorties they have to fly in the air. An obvious saving in costs and enhanced safety would result from this
The directing staff for TACDE is chosen from the very best professionals from various fighter aircraft, helicopter types and radar controllers. They excel not only in combat but also in imparting instruction both in the air and the ground. It is their dedication and professionalism that has made TACDE a revered name in IAF.
Crest & Motto of TACDE
Pilots of T&C D&T Squadron designed their own unofficial badge to wear on overalls. After much deliberation they adopted a badge showing a MiG-21 and a Su-7 depicting air defence and ground attack, separated by a flash for controllers, and background colours of day and night. The motto, “Learn to Lead – Lead to Fight” was perhaps inspired by the Empire Test Pilots School (UK). Later a third command, “Fight to Win”, and a star for the instructors was added in the centre of the flash.
The official crest of TACDE designed by the then Commandant MS (Tiger aka Minhi) Bawa (who retired after becoming an AOC-in-C) has two crossed swords (to represent combat) on a blood red background (for the bloody battlefield) and a winged burning torch to symbolise air combat training, Its Sanskrit motto means "GLORY OF THE GLORIOUS". It is said that a leader not only leads but also creates more leaders. TACDE has already created many exceptional leaders and many future leaders of IAF shall surely continue to emerge from it.
The above article was written by Group Captain (Retd) Kapil Bhargava for INDIAN AVIATION Magazine. The same article was published in an abridged version in Air Forces Monthly. It is reproduced here with the permission of Gp Capt Bhargava.
|Name of the Commanding Officer||S. No.||From||To|
|Wg Cdr Arun Kanti Mukerjee VrC VM||4416 F(P)||1970-72|
|Wg Cdr Ayyappan Sridharan VM||4761 F(P)||1972-74|
|Gp Capt SK Mehra AVSM VM||1974-77|
|Gp Capt MS Bawa AVSM VM|
|Gp Capt Denzil Joseph Keelor VrC||4805 F(P)|
|Gp Capt KN Pillai AVSM|
|Gp Capt AP Shinde VrC VM||&nnbsp;|
|Gp Capt Vinod Kumar Verma VM||6528 F(P)|
|Gp Capt Jayendra Sukrutraj VrC VM|
|Gp Capt Ajit Bhavnani AVSM VM|
|Gp Capt Raghu Rajan||22-Jan-92||17-Apr-93|
|Gp Capt P S Bhangu AVSM VM||18-Apr-93||16-Jun-96|
|Gp Capt S Mukerjee SC VSM||12925 F(P)||17-Jul-96||29-Jul-98|
|Gp Capt KK Nohwar VM||30-Jul-98||22-Feb-01|
|Gp Capt Ravinath Gururaj Burli VM||14667 F(P)||23-Feb-01||24-Nov-02|
|Gp Capt B Suresh VM||25-Nov-02||Till Date|
Gallantry and Service Awardees of TACDE
|Wg Cdr A K Mukerjee||VrC||1971|
|Sgt P Sivan||VM||1971|
|Gp Capt S K Mehra VM||AVSM||1976|
|Sqn Ldr O J D'Sena||VM||1976|
|Sqn Ldr S K Mitroo||VM||1976|
|Gp Capt DJ Keelor VrC||KC||1976|
|Sqn Ldr Bharat Bhushan Soni VrC||VM||1982|
|Sqn Ldr S Damodaran||VSM||1982|
|Wg Cdr J D'Souza||VM||1984|
|Gp Capt A Bhavnani VM||AVSM||1991|
|Wg Cdr P S Bhangu||VM||1991|
|Wg Cdr A Chaudhary||VM||1993|
|Gp Capt P S Bhangu||AVSM||1996|
|Sqn Ldr V M Chaudhary||VSM||1996|
|Gp Capt S Mukherjee SC||VSM||1997|
|Wg Cdr A K Shrivastava||VSM||1997|
Aircraft Types operated by TACDE
|Other Types operated by the Squadron as trainer and hack aircraft: MiG-21U, Su-7 U, Mirage 2000|
Locations of the Squadron
|Locations Post 1947||From||To|
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Acute nerve injuries are very common and may be associated with different types of trauma. Injury to the peripheral nerve (nerves outside of the brain and spinal cord) may result from blunt force, fractures, crush injuries, stretch, penetrating or cut injuries. The nerves of the upper limb are the most commonly injured. The healing process from nerve injury can take from a few weeks to a few months. Both recovery and repair depends on the type of injury and the extent of damage.
The peripheral nerve is made up of axons and Schwann cells. It can have an outer insulating layer (myelinated type) or lack this insulation (unmyelinated type). The Schwann cells form a sheath over each axon in myelinated nerves and in the unmyelinated nerves Schwann cell-sheath covers a group of axons. The Schwann cell-sheathed axons are covered in a layer of connective tissue called endoneurium.
Several endoneurial tubes form a nerve fascicle. Each fascicle (bundle) of the nerve fiber is covered by a layer of tissue known as the perineurium. Numerous fascicles of nerve are covered by a layer called as epineurium. The nourishment to the nerve is obtained from the blood supply to the nerve. The blood supply to each of the nerves is provided by the system of blood vessels called vasa nervorum that runs in each nerve.
Types of Nerve Injury
Nerve injuries can be broadly grouped into three types :
Neuropraxia is the least severe type of nerve injury. It results in complete block of nerve transmission despite intact nerve fibers. Neither the axon nor the sheath are cut. Sudden stretching of nerves in fractures and dislocations can lead to neuropraxia. It can also occur with blunt injuries and sometimes after prolonged pressure on the nerve. Neuropraxia usually recover spontaneously over a few hours to few months.
In traction injuries and crush injuries, the nerve sheath may remain intact but the axons may be divided. This is referred to as axonotmesis. Axonotmesis can result in complete loss of muscle (motor) function, sensations and autonomic functions transmitted by the affected nerve. The recovery usually takes several months to years.
Partial or complete severance (cut) of the axons and the sheath is referred to as neurotmesis. It is the most severe form of nerve injury. However, a clean cut has scope for immediate repair and faster recovery.
Healing of Nerve Damage
There may be recovery of nerve injury over weeks and months if there is no severance (cut). However, recovery of a severed nerve may never occur. The nerve repair process involves degeneration of the nerve followed by regeneration. The degeneration of nerve is called Wallerian degeneration. The process involves phagocytosis of the damaged segment of the nerve beyond the site of nerve injury. The regeneration of the nerve is guided by the presence of some important growth factors or neurotropic substances like the nerve growth factor (NGF). Many other growth factors and cytokines are also believed to affect the process of degeneration-regeneration.
Following degeneration of the nerve, the nerve begins regeneration. The regeneration starts at the proximal end of nerve at the site of injury. It progresses slowly to the distal part of degenerated nerve. Regeneration occurs at a very slow rate. It occurs at a rate of 1mm/day. The recovery takes longer time if the distance to be covered by regeneration is long. A nerve damaged closer to the muscle that it innervates recovers much earlier than a nerve which is damaged further away from the muscle.
The regenerated nerves may end up with abnormal connections. It can result in abnormal movements or sensations. An injured nerve that supplies muscles can resume its function only if the re-innervation happens within 18 months after the injury.
Mechanisms of Nerve Injury
Nerve injury can result in a variety of ways. Some of the major mechanisms behind nerve injury are discussed below.
Mechanical injury resulting from a tourniquet or other causes of external pressure can lead to nerve compression and therefore injury. The nerve may also be compressed by adjacent structures or from trauma in the body. A Compression nerve injury can result from crush injuries, pressure from fractures, hematoma, blunt injury and in compartment syndrome where swelling of tissues in a closed muscular compartment resulting in compression of the nerve or its blood supply.
Laceration injury can result from blunt or penetrating injury. The nerve injuries causes irregular patterns of nerve damage. Nerve severance (cut) can occur but the severance is often not clean division as seen in cut injuries.
Penetrating injuries can result partial or complete severance of the nerves. It can result from wounds from stabbing or cut wounds from sharp objects.
Stretch injuries are common in fractures and dislocations. The injury results from the sudden stretch of the nerves during dislocation. Almost half of all shoulder dislocations lead to nerve injury but it is significantly less with other joint dislocations. A stretch injury to the peripheral nerves can also occur during certain surgical procedures.
Direct nerve injury can result from high-velocity trauma sustained in motor accidents and in ballistic injuries. A displaced bone fracture can also cause direct nerve injury. Violent traction can result in injury to the nerve and even lead to severance.
Signs and Symptoms of Injured Nerve
Acute nerve injury is characterized by loss of its normal function. This depends on the type of nerve injured – motor or sensory. Motor nerve injury affect motor function (muscle movement) while sensory nerve injury results in impairment of the senses. The muscular function impairment may be in the form of weakness or paralysis. The sensory impairment can present as loss of sensations, abnormal sensations (parasthesias) or pain.
The symptoms of nerve injury also depend on the nerve injured and the site of nerve injury. In many patients the injury may not present with such specific or clear signs and symptoms. Some of the symptoms may develop much later after the injury while other symptoms may completely recover in few hours.
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| 0.947388 | 1,276 | 3.546875 | 4 |
Wire ropes are one of the most heavily used components in a dragline. They are subjected to harsh conditions during the regular usage of a dragline in a mining operation. Hoist ropes are subjected to fatigue due to the cyclic nature of load handling as well as due to rope bending over the sheaves and the drum under load. This leads to wire breaks due to fatigue. Accumulation of a number of wire breaks close to each other can have a detrimental effect on the rope. Furthermore, to allow for the increasing demand for higher load capacity coupled with the inconvenience of having very large ropes, the factor of safety is often compromised, which increases the wear rate. Drag ropes are also subjected to heavy loads. More importantly, they are allowed to drag along the rough mine surface subjecting them to external physical abrasion. This makes the life of drag ropes one of the lowest among those used in a dragline. Suspension and IBS ropes are relatively uniformly loaded during their regular usage although they need to withstand dynamic load cycles as well as bending. Hence they tend to last for a number of years on average. The paper analyses the wear types and their severity of each of these rope applications, and suggests methods to determine rope wear rates and the resulting rope life. The paper further gives suggestions for good operating and maintenance practice that can extend the rope life and help reduce the large expenditure associated with every major rope change in a dragline.
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Quitzau, Maj-Britt (2004) Changing ideas of bodily cleanliness. Paper at: 6th International Summer Academy on Technology Studies. Urban Infrastructure in Transition: What can we learn from history?, Deutschlandsberg, Austria, July 11-17 2004.
The modern bathroom reflects Western ideas on the handling of bodily wastes, and consequently ideas of cleanliness. Taking a historical study as the point of departure, the purpose of this paper is to understand the extent to which the idea of cleanliness influences the possibility of converting the water closet to a more sustainable technology. An examination of historical changes demonstrates that our present ideas on cleanliness are distinct in their own way. It also demonstrates that our present ideas of cleanliness represent a drawing together of several loose ends, development towards which having been incoherent. Great variation has been apparent in practices surrounding, and the social importance of, cleanliness. People have lived in different ways and have had different ideas about how to behave. The Roman culture thought of bathing and relieving oneself as social duties. In the Middle Ages, uncleanliness ruled the day as people had a very natural and relaxed attitude to bodily waste. Following the urbanisation process, cleanliness was thought of as a step towards progress and a sanitational cure for epidemics in the cities. In more recent times, cleanliness became a project of orderliness and became institutionalised in society. The water closet is inextricably linked with our present ideas of cleanliness. This could impede a future conversion of the water closet, these ideas in several ways conflicting with the more sustainable toilet system. Nevertheless, it is also a point of this paper to illustrate that our present ideas of cleanliness are not self-evident. On the contrary, our ideas are contextually bound and might thus change, for instance, due to a strengthening of e.g. the environmental discourse.
|EPrint Type:||Conference paper, poster, etc.|
|Type of presentation:||Paper|
|Keywords:||transition, cleanliness, infrastructure, history|
|Subjects:||"Organics" in general|
|Research affiliation:||Denmark > SOAR - Research School for Organic Agriculture and Food Systems|
|Deposited By:||Quitzau, MSc. Maj-Britt|
|Deposited On:||30 Sep 2004|
|Last Modified:||12 Apr 2010 07:29|
Repository Staff Only: item control page
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Effective Methods for Teaching Paragraph Development, by Paul Limone
Guide Entry to 78.01.08:
This extensively detailed unit is, virtually, a handbook for developing student expertise in the construction of written paragraphs. The author states often that imitation is the beginning of real learning for students. coupled with regular exposure to appropriate paragraph models is constant reliance upon “fill-in forms” (plan sheets, expansion sheets, and so on) that can be completed success-fully only when students can supply grammatically acceptable pieces of information. The program is described in the three major sections of the unit. The narrative portion begins with an explanation of the interdisciplinary nature of writing instruction. It then lists various classroom rules to which students and teacher must always adhere. Also covered is the importance of the writing process itself: pre-writing, planning, constant revision. The second section expands from an activity sequence that begins with learning to express opinions and culminates with outlines on teaching the four basic prose types: argumentation, exposition, description, and narration. The final section is virtually a step-by-step procedure for teaching very specific skill lessons. Sample exercises include model paragraphs, plan sheets, expansion sheets, and much more. All of the material could be readily adapted for classes from middle to high school. Suggestions for advanced lessons on writing about several types of literature close out the unit. Every teacher in every discipline could pick up this particular unit and find a wealth of ideas that will improve the writing skills of both the teacher and the student.
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Produce without the Pesticides: Organic Gardening
6 of 9 in Series: The Essentials of Greening Your Lawn and Garden
Gardening organically means using no chemical fertilizers or pesticides; the only growing aides are sunlight, water (preferably from water-conserving sources such as rain barrels), and possibly some organic fertilizer. Fruit and vegetable gardening is great for the environment in a number of ways, but it’s even better if you employ organic gardening principles. Incorporating organic methods in your garden improves the produce you grow as well as the soil you grow it in.
Organic growing is about more than what’s not in the food, however. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program certifies as organic foods produced without using synthetic chemical pesticides or that come from animals that haven’t been given antibiotics or growth hormones. The program also emphasizes using renewable resources and conserving soil and water to enhance environmental quality for the future.
Organic gardening isn’t just about growing healthy plants, it’s about improving the health of the soil.
If your home’s previous occupants grew fruit and vegetables in the garden plot, it may contain a whole range of chemicals. It takes time to get those chemicals out of the soil so that your produce is organic — usually at least three years. To figure out where you’re starting from, it’s very important to obtain a soil test (contact your local agriculture extension office) to determine what your soil may be lacking.
Vegetable Gardening Guru has all sorts of tips for reclaiming your garden and making it organic, and you can talk to your local nursery or garden center staff about the types of plants and seeds you need for organic production.
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Super-Thin Membranes Clear the Way for Chip-Sized Pumps
Diagnostic Devices the Size of a Credit Card Are Now a Possibility
The ability to shrink laboratory-scale processes to automated chip-sized systems would revolutionize biotechnology and medicine. For example, inexpensive and highly portable devices that process blood samples to detect biological agents such as anthrax are needed by the U.S. military and for homeland security efforts. One of the challenges of "lab-on-a-chip" technology is the need for miniaturized pumps to move solutions through micro-channels. Electroosmotic pumps (EOPs), devices in which fluids appear to magically move through porous media in the presence of an electric field, are ideal because they can be readily miniaturized. EOPs however, require bulky, external power sources, which defeats the concept of portability. But a super-thin silicon membrane developed at the University of Rochester could now make it possible to drastically shrink the power source, paving the way for diagnostic devices the size of a credit card.
"Up until now, electroosmotic pumps have had to operate at a very high voltage—about 10 kilovolts," said James McGrath, associate professor of biomedical engineering. "Our device works in the range of one-quarter of a volt, which means it can be integrated into devices and powered with small batteries."
McGrath's research paper is being published this week by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
McGrath and his team use porous nanocrystalline silicon (pnc-Si) membranes that are microscopically thin—it takes more than one thousand stacked on top of each other to equal the width of a human hair. And that's what allows for a low-voltage system.
A porous membrane needs to be placed between two electrodes in order to create what's known as electroosmotic flow, which occurs when an electric field interacts with ions on a charged surface, causing fluids to move through channels. The membranes previously used in EOPs have resulted in a significant voltage drop between the electrodes, forcing engineers to begin with bulky, high-voltage power sources. The thin pnc Si membranes allow the electrodes to be placed much closer to each other, creating a much stronger electric field with a much smaller drop in voltage. As a result, a smaller power source is needed.
"Up until now, not everything associated with miniature pumps was miniaturized," said McGrath. "Our device opens the door for a tremendous number of applications."
Along with medical applications, it's been suggested that EOPs could be used to cool electronic devices. As electronic devices get smaller, components are packed more tightly, making it easier for the devices to overheat. With miniature power supplies, it may be possible to use EOPs to help cool laptops and other portable electronic devices.
McGrath said there's one other benefit to the silicon membranes. "Due to scalable fabrication methods, the nanocrystalline silicon membranes are inexpensive to make and can be easily integrated on silicon or silica-based microfluid chips."
About the University of Rochester
The University of Rochester (www.rochester.edu) is one of the nation's leading private universities. Located in Rochester, N.Y., the University gives students exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary study and close collaboration with faculty through its unique cluster-based curriculum. Its College of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering is complemented by the Eastman School of Music, Simon School of Business, Warner School of Education, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, Schools of Medicine and Nursing, and the Memorial Art Gallery.
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This section contains essential tools and background information for educators. Visit the For Facilitators section of this site for tips and information on how to use What's Race Got to Do with It? to spark dialogue and foster change. Visit the Resources section for links to more information on issues raised by the film.
- Engagement Games - experiential group activities with descriptions, instructions, and handouts, organized by level of risk.
- Follow-Up Action Steps - suggested activities for audience members to engage in after viewing the film.
- Side Trips on the Road to Diversity - answers to frequent remarks or objections that come up in racial equity discussions
- Glossary - definitions of common terms with links for further reading
- Key Readings - recommended background articles on issues raised by the film
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For seniors recently discharged from a hospital stay, research finds that simply walking around could help older adults lessen their chances of a return visit.
Outfitting 111 adults aged 65 and older with ankle-bound “step activity monitors,” researchers tracked seniors’ mobility during and immediately following hospital stays, then published their findings in The Journals of Gerontology.
The pager-sized device was able to count every step an individual took during hospitalization and for a week after discharge.
“We’re using activity here as a biomarker, similar to the way you might use blood pressure,” said the study’s lead author Steve R. Fisher, an assistant professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
Of the 111 adults surveyed, the study found 13 were readmitted within 30 days of discharge, or 11.7% of total participants.
There was also a significant association between the average amount of daily steps taken after discharge and 30-day readmission.
Average daily steps were the strongest predictor among known readmission risk factors, the study notes, as the least active participants post-discharge were more likely to be readmitted and have longer hospital stays.
“While we can’t say whether activity is a cause or effect in these cases, we can use it as a marker to tell us whether a person is at high risk and we need to intervene,” Fisher said.
Geriatricians want to reduce readmissions among the elderly because hospitalizations can sometimes endanger their health by reducing activity levels, researchers note.
Monitoring seniors’ mobility during and post-hospitalization can be a similar precaution for patients who suffer congestive heart failure, suggests Fisher, as these patients receive a follow-up call from a nurse during their first week home.
“This is the same kind of principle,” he writes. “We want to know how much people are moving around, because we want to know whether they’re going downhill.”
Written by Jason Oliva
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Good Kings of Israel and Judah: Josiah & Joash
Lesson Handout Pages (.pdf) or use as lesson text
Lesson Focus: Josiah
Josiah was a young man who was King of Judah. He honored God and repaired His temple. during the repairs, workers found an old book of the law of Moses. No one had read this book in a very long time. Josiah was eager to hear God's law, but when he heard it, he was scared. He realized that Judah had not obeyed many laws! He directed that the whole country begin obeying the laws at once. God was pleased with Josiah's eagerness to do all that God had said.Discussion: Was it Josiah's fault that the law had been ignored so long? No. Did he use that as an excuse to keep ignoring the law? No. He realized his responsibility to act upon what he learned. We, too, should act upon what we learn, when we learn it. We cannot blame others for not teaching us, or say that since our parents did not know it, we are not responsible. Josiah knew he was guilty of breaking God's law, even though he did not intentionally do it. And his response was repentence and obedience.
2 Kings 23:25 "Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, soul and might...nor did any like him arise after him."
Craft: Making Scrolls
Cut a piece of paper in half length-wise. Have students write in the middle. Make a scroll from the paper by wrapping the ends around craft sticks and rolling towards the center. Discuss how books were very different then.Lesson Focus: Joash
Joash's family was killed in an attempt to take over the kingdom, but he was hidden in the Temple until he was seven years old. Then he became king. Joash led an effort to rebuild God's Temple in Jerusalem. He placed a large chest outside for people to donate money for the work. He himself donated a large amount to start the work. People would add more money as they had it available. God has always expected His people to use their resources to accomplish spiritual work. And He expects it to be a regular, on-going part of our life. Not just a once-in-a-while, large donation. Everyone can help, even this seven year old boy.Worksheet:
http://www.msssbible.com/. Print on stiff paper and have students assemble to act out the donations made at the Temple.
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These images of Canada's Québec province were acquired by the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer on March 4, 2001. The region's forests are a mixture of coniferous and hardwood trees, and "sugar-shack" festivities are held at this time of year to celebrate the beginning of maple syrup production. The large river visible in the images is the northeast-flowing St. Lawrence. The city of Montréal is located near the lower left corner, and Québec City, at the upper right, is near the mouth of the partially ice-covered St. Lawrence Seaway.
Both spectral and angular information are retrieved for every scene observed by MISR. The left-hand image was acquired by the instrument's vertical-viewing (nadir) camera, and is a false-color spectral composite from the near-infrared, red, and blue bands. The right-hand image is a false-color angular composite using red band data from the 60-degree backward-viewing, nadir, and 60-degree forward-viewing cameras. In each case, the individual channels of data are displayed as red, green, and blue, respectively.
Much of the ground remains covered or partially covered with snow. Vegetation appears red in the left-hand image because of its high near-infrared brightness. In the multi-angle composite, vegetated areas appear in shades of green because they are brighter at nadir, possibly as a result of an underlying blanket of snow which is more visible from this direction. Enhanced forward scatter from the smooth water surface results in bluer hues, whereas urban areas look somewhat orange, possibly due to the effect of vertical structures which preferentially backscatter sunlight.
The data were acquired during Terra orbit 6441, and cover an area measuring 275 kilometers x 310 kilometers.
MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, DC. The Terra satellite is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology.
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| 0.951638 | 444 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Just as economists sometimes use the term "widget" as the ultimate substitute for "something" that is being measured, programmers tend to use the term "foo" (pronounced FOO) as a universal substitute for something real when discussing ideas or presenting examples. Suppose you are defining a template for any group of programmers to follow when creating a new user command, you might specify that the syntax for the command should be in the form:
Command foo (arg1, arg2)
where the "foo" would mean "the name you give to this command." In other words, "foo" is a nonsense kind of placeholder for some value that will be provided when using this template to define a real command. (And the "arg1" and "arg2" are arguments or information you would define that would be passed along with the command.) Because "foo" has no rational meaning of its own and because "foo" is conventionally used as such a placeholder, the idea will be clear to any programmer.
Foo or any such word used this way is formally known as a metasyntactic variable. Eric Raymond, probably the world's greatest authority on foo and other metasyntactic variables, also lists qux, waldo, fred, xyzzy, and thud among others that are occasionally used. Although foo is the canonical metasyntactic variable, Raymond notes that cultures outside the United States have their own preferences. Fred, barney, and wombat seem common in the U.K. Toto, tata, titi, and tutu reportedly are used by the French. Blarg and wibble are used in New Zealand.
The origin of foo seems wrapped in the mists of time, but Raymond observes (and we remember) that in Bill Holman's comic strip of the 1930-50 era, Smokey Stover, the letters "FOO" commonly appeared, unexplained and as a kind of running gag, on license plates, in picture frames, and on the backs of sandwich board signs.
Also see FUBAR.
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Public officials and pundits are still digesting the Supreme Court's Obamacare decision in NFIB v. Sebelius. Not yet discussed are the extraordinary implications for the size and role of government in a second Obama term in light of President Obama's new stump speech, as it is clear there is not a reliable majority on the Court to restrain government power by enforcing the limits imposed by the Constitution.
Most provisions in the Constitution fall into two categories. The first are authority provisions, explaining the structure and powers of government. The second are liberty provisions, declaring certain rights of the people.
The original Constitution had only the former, because the latter were regarded as superfluous. If something was not found in a specific authority clause, it was automatically illegal and beyond the purview of the federal government. Political backlash from the Anti-Federalists and others led to some states threatening to withhold ratification unless a Bill of Rights was promptly added. Likely our fourth president James Madison would have lost his first congressional race to our fifth president James Monroe had Mr. Madison not joined Mr. Monroe's call to add the Bill of Rights to the nascent Supreme Law.
Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of our Constitution is that it is a written document. It is written so that all can see what the powers of the national government are, and guaranteeing in the Tenth Amendment that all powers not specifically granted to the Constitution are reserved to the states or the people. This doctrine of enumerated powers is the cornerstone of our constitutional order and the federal system.
We wrote in our second book that if President Obama won a second term, Americans' liberties would only be as secure as the courts were faithful to properly exercise their power of judicial review to invalidate actions that violate the Constitution. Whether invalidating unconstitutional legislation passed by Congress or unconstitutional executive actions, the courts must not flinch when cases are properly brought to them.
Mr. Madison explained that "ambition must be made to counteract ambition" for checks and balances to work. Each branch must boldly discharge its constitutional duty. Part of the tragedy of the Obamacare decision is realizing that the current membership of the Supreme Court will not exercise robust judicial review.
It appears clear that Chief Justice John Roberts conducts judicial review rigorously only when the liberty clauses of the Constitution are implicated. For example, he invalidated government action when it violated the First Amendment's Free Speech Clause in Citizens United (campaign finance) and Religion Clauses in Hosanna-Tabor (the ministerial exception), invalidated a federal gun ban under the Second Amendment, and extended that right against state and local gun bans through the Fourteenth Amendment.
But Chief Justice Roberts shows extraordinary deference to the federal government when the actions of the president or Congress are challenged for exceeding federal powers under the authority clauses. First came U.S. v. Comstock (2010), where Justice Kennedy chided the liberal justices and Chief Justice Roberts in giving an exceedingly-broad reading to the Necessary and Proper Clause.
Part of the consternation from the Obamacare decision was seeing Chief Justice Roberts engage in linguistic gymnastics to ignore Congress' word choice in writing the statute and the president's televised vows, upholding the individual mandate as a tax despite 200 years of precedent that penalties are not taxes. He also saved half of a Medicaid expansion that coerces the states, and insisted on severing it to save the rest of what was now a misbegotten mutation of Congress' statute.
This reluctance to unapologetically apply judicial review when authority clauses -- rather than liberty clauses -- are implicated bodes ill for many current court challenges. There might not be five votes to succeed in challenges to Dodd-Frank, EPA's cap-and-trade rules, the FCC's internet-control rules, the recess-appointment challenges, and other power grabs.
Mr. Obama announced on July 6 in Ohio that this election is about a "clash of visions" about the role of government in our lives, arguing for massive entitlements and regulatory controls. If he wins, he will claim a mandate and take federal power to heights we've never seen. We can no longer be confident that the Supreme Court will stop him.
Liberty endures only when each branch fully and fearlessly checks and balances the other two branches. Abdicating judicial review empowers President Obama to subvert the Constitution with an imperial presidency, and fundamentally transform the United States to the detriment of future generations.
National-bestselling authors Ambassador Ken Blackwell and Breitbart News legal columnist Ken Klukowski are on faculty at Liberty University and discuss the constitutional role of the courts in Resurgent: How Constitutional Conservatism Can Save America.
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Hindus often think of karma as being only that which is bad. Actually, this law of action and reaction can be both good, bad and mixed, depending upon the intent and the action itself. Hindus also sometimes think that the Gods punish them for wrongdoings. But; the Gods don't punish; rather they help, guide and protect. The "punishment" that is sometimes experienced is simply the return of karmas created by ourselves. If devotees don't continue making good karmas, and persist in holding hard feelings one against another, then of course unhappiness is the result. It is the force of energy that is sent out into the world through thoughts, words and actions that creates the good, bad and mixed karmas.
Karma is an unfailing natural law, simply explained by this example: Give a beggar 10 rupees. You are not giving, you are investing in your future. Somehow 20 rupees will find its way back to you. He has given you the opportunity to give. When we give expecting to receive, the law will still work, but if we give 10 rupees, we get back 10 rupees. Unselfish giving doubles the return. Giving to a temple is different again; every 10 rupees given brings back 100 rupees in return. God pays a better interest. Giving is an investment in the future, it is not parting with something.
We Hindus know how the law of karma works and use it daily. To reverse the law of generous giving would be unwise, for if you take 10 rupees from someone, you will get twice as much taken from you at another time. Therefore, understanding the law of karma keeps us all very honest.
The dharma of the Hindu mother and father is to raise up their children to be the good citizens of tomorrow. It is their dharma to create and to live a happy home life: wife respecting the husband, and husband respecting and caring for her and the home. The Hindu dharma is to gain wealth, so as to care for and educate the children, to enjoy life, to build places of worship and to see that the religion, in its fullness, is passed on to the next generation.
How is this done? This is accomplished by protecting the children so that they only learn Hinduism during the first 12, 15, 20 years of their life. This, we see, is beginning to happen here in this great temple that you all are building in Pittsburgh. The fulfillment of dharma is fulfillment of Lord Siva's holy law. The foundation of Hinduism rests on the Vedas and Agamas. Scripture tells us that Lord Siva Himself was the author.
ON THE DANGERS OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS
It is very important that all Hindu children be raised in the Hindu tradition. The first impressions are the most lasting, and they are what the children have to deal with throughout their lives. This is because early impressions are locked in the memory pattern of their subconscious minds. For this reason children should not be sent to Catholic or Protestant schools. We know all of the excuses and have heard them so many times. "A better education, better discipline, and on and on." It is so pathetic and now it has almost become an intrinsic part of Indian culture.
The children are told, of course, to not listen to the priests, nuns and other children when they defame Hinduism. We have talked to the children and some said that they learned most about Christianity from the other children. The other children taught the child Catholicism and Protestantism. They also learned to disrespect the three pillars of Hinduism - they are taught to disrespect the temple, they are taught to disrespect the swamis, gurus and priests, and they are taught to disrespect and make fun of the scriptures. They grow up not knowing what to believe.
So, all of you parents who are wanting to practice dharma, send your children to public schools, but not to a Catholic or a Jewish or a Protestant school. Catholic (and they practice their sense of dharma too) would never send their children to a Hindu school, a Muslim school or a Jewish school. They would not do that. Why? Because they want their religion to be strong, they want their religion to grow. You must know that the Christian churches are spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to destroy Hinduism. So don't play into their hands by sacrificing your child to Christ for a little bit better education. You're paying a dearer price than you can afford. Your children trusted you when they came into your family to raise them properly. Don't sell them short. Your children are the most precious asset of your family and the most precious asset of this most beautiful temple, they are our citizens of tomorrow.
There are hundreds and thousands of native-born Americans who would love to come to temples like this, who would like to study Hinduism with you, who would even like to convert to Hinduism. Swami Vivekananda said that conversion into Hinduism from other religions is normal, that it has and should take place time and time again. We have brought hundreds of converts and adoptives fully into Hinduism, because they no longer believe in their former religion and want to follow the Hindu dharma. There are special sacraments to be performed for someone converting from one religion to another.
You've often heard that Hinduism is not a proselytizing religion, that Hinduism never convert others, that you have to be born a Hindu to be a Hindu, or be born a Hindu in India to be a Hindu. How ridiculous these notions are. We did a lot of research to find out who originated this kind of thinking. We made a note of every comment of this nature from many, many books and found that it was totally Christian propaganda. All the authors of all those statements discouraging Hindus from converting others were Christians. Whereas, all the authors of statements that Hindus do bring others into their faith were eminent Hindus. Why should a soul born in America who was an Indian Hindu in his last birth be denied his own religion, simply because of Christian propaganda?
Indian Hindus should not create closed groups and shun the Western-born devotees. Be open! Openness, love and trust are needed now. You have something of value and something that you really believe in - Hinduism. But the Indian Hindu does not want to share it with his American-born brothers and sisters. If Hinduism is not actually a proselytizing religion, then how could tens of millions of Americans of European origin get half converted to Hinduism? Now it is your turn, the turn of all the Hindu temple societies to bring these sincere seekers along into the fullness of this great religion and accept them in your hearts and minds. This is the American spirit. This is a duty for all Indian Hindus to perform.
ON LORD SIVA
Lord Siva, the God of all the Gods is with you this very minute. Put your hands on your heart. In between each heartbeat is God Siva's energy. Put your fingers on your pulse. In between each beat of the pulse is Cod Siva's cosmic energy. When you become excited, nervous, frustrated or are under stress, simply take your pulse and feel Siva's energy within you. Feeling the presence of Siva within you will bring peace.
Lord Siva is the Life of your life. He is the Breath of your breath, the Intelligence of your intelligence and the Boon Giver. What is the first boon that God Siva will gives to you? Intelligence. He will give you Intelligence, for he is the author of all wisdom and all knowledge. He will give you intelligence if you worship Him sincerely and without reservation. Yes! It is well worth worshipping Cod Siva, the Supreme God, creator of all the 33 million Gods of our religion, to receive intelligence in return. Along with His gift of intelligence comes the ability to apply knowledge. The application of knowledge is wisdom. The next time that you are frustrated, feel the quiet energy between your heartbeats and feel God Siva there. Get lost in Siva consciousness. We get lost in instinctive consciousness; we get lost in intellectual consciousness. We are missing out on something if we don't get lost in Siva consciousness. For God Siva is consciousness itself. Aum Namasivaya.
Article copyright Himalayan Academy.
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Air Strike 13 January 1993
Operation Southern Watch
On 13 January 1993 by the British, French and U.S. aircraft were sent to punish Saddam Hussein's defiance of United Nations and Persian Gulf coalition orders. More than 100 coalition aircraft, including some 80 strike aircraft, took part in the raid, which followed a January 6 ultimatum to Baghdad demanding removal of the missiles from the southern "no-fly" zone imposed at the time of the Persian Gulf war. American F-15s, F-16s, F-18s and F-117s took part in the raid, together with French Mirages and British Tornadoes. Additional support aircraft also participated. The aircraft operated from locations on the Arabian peninsula, from the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier, and from other undisclosed sites in the Persian Gulf. The planes bombed Iraqi radar and missile sites near Nasiriya, Samawa, Najaf and Al Amara. The sites are not near population centers. Only half the targetted Iraqi surface-to-air missiles sites were hit. The air strike was described by US officials as a limited assault meant to make a political rather than a military point.
- COALITION LAUNCHES LIMITED AIR STRIKE AGAINST IRAQ By Jacquelyn S. Porth USIA (01/13/93)
- AIR STRIKE ON IRAQI TARGETS "BIG SUCCESS," BUSH SAYS By Alexander M. Sullivan USIA (01/14/93)
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Mike's Prime Time Bike Ride
A Beginning Reading Lesson
By: Kelsey Pugh
Rationale: This lesson plan teaches children the long vowel correspondence i_e = /I/. In order to be able to read, children must learn to recognize the spelling that map pronunciations. In this lesson children will learn to recognize, spell, and read words containing the spelling i_e. They will learn a meaningful representation (Raise hand and salute as in Aye Aye, captain), they will spell and read words containing this spelling in a letterbox lesson, and read a decodable book that focuses on the correspondence i_e = /O/.
Materials: Graphic image of sailor saluting; cover up critter; white board or smartboard Elkonin boxes for modeling and individual Elkonin boxes for each student, letter manipulatives for each child and magnetic smartboard letters for teacher: p, r, i, z, e, c, b, k, p, l, m, s, t; list of spelling words on poster or whiteboard to read: prize, ice, bike, pipe, lime, sick, slime, stripe, stick; decodable text: Kite Day At Pine Lake and assessment worksheet.
1. Say: In order to become expert readers we need to learn the code that tells us how to pronounce words. We have already learned to read short vowel words with i, like sip, and today we are going to learn about long I and the silent e signal that is used to make I say its name, /I/. When I say /I/ I think of sailor saying "Aye Aye captain! [show graphic image]. Now let's look at the spelling /I/ that we'll learn today. One way to spell /I/ is with the letter i and a signal e at the end of the word to tell me I's name. [Write i_e on the board.] This blank line here means there is a consonant after i, and at the end of the word there is a little silent e signal.
2. Say: Before we learn about the spelling of /I/, we need to listen for it in some words. Notice how your mouth moves when you say it. The jaw moves down but the tongue relaxes in place. [Make a vocal gesture for /I/.] I'll show you first, remember to pay attention to the way my mouth moves: time. I heard the /I/ for aye-aye and I felt my tongue move to the back of my throat. Now I'm going to see if it's in pin. Hmm, I didn't hear the "aye-aye" and I did not feel my tongue move to the back of my throat. Now you try. If you hear /I/ raise your hand to your head as in Aye Aye captain. If you don't hear /I/ don't salute. Is it in pine, lips, spice, strike, house?
3. What if I want to spell the word prize? "Emily won a stuffed animal for a prize at the fair." Prize means something she won in this sentence, To spell prize in letterboxes, I need to know how many phonemes I have in the word so I stretch it out and count: /p/ /r/ /I/ /z/. I need 4 boxes. I heard that /I/ just before /z/ so I'm going to put i in the 3rd box and the silent e signal outside the last box. The word starts with /p/, so that's easy; I need a p. Now it's getting a little tricky so I'm going to say it slowly, /p/ /r/ /I/ /z/. I think I heard a growling r right after the p. The missing one is /z/. Now I will show you how I would read a tough word. [Display poster with swipeon the top and model reading the word.] I'm going to start with the i_e; that part says /I/. Now I'm going to put the beginning letters with it: s-w-i_e, /swI/. Now I'll put that chunk together with the last sound
/swI-p/. Oh, swipe, like "The cashier had to swipe my credit card"
4. Say: Now I'm going to have you spell the words in letterboxes. You'll start out with two boxes for ice. Ice is frozen water, "The ice kept my water cold". What should go in the first box? [Respond to children's answers]. What goes in the second box? What about the silent e, did you remember to put it outside the boxes? I'll check your spelling while I walk around the room. [observe progress] You'll need three letterboxes for the next word. Listen for the beginning sound to spell in the first box. Then listen for /I/ and don't forget to put the signal silent e at the end, outside of the boxes. Here's the word: bike; I enjoy riding my bike after school; bike. [Allow children to spell the remaining words: pipe, lime, sick, slime, stripe, and stick]
5. Say: Now I am going to let you read the words you've spelled. [Have children read words in unison. Afterwards, call on individuals to read one word on the list until everyone has had a turn.]
6. Say: You've done a great job and reading words with our new spelling for /I/: i_e. Now we are going to read a book called Kite Day at Pine Lake. Have you ever flown a kite? Well in this book, there are a few kids at the park flying kites and having so much fun, but one guy is sad. Bob is all left out because he doesn't have a kite of his own. I think they might be able to help him, but we'll have to read to find out what he can do. Let's pair up and take turns reading Kite Day at Pine Lake to find out what Bob does. [Children pair up and take turns reading alternate pages each while teacher walks around the room monitoring progress. After individual paired reading, the class rereads Kite Day at Pine Lake aloud together, and stops between page turns to discuss the plot.]
7. Say: Before we finish up with our lesson about one way to spell /I/= i_e, I want to see if you can recognize all of the /I/ pictures. On this worksheet is pictures, your job is to circle the pictures with /I/= i_e. [Collect worksheets to evaluate individual child progress.]
Kite Day at Pine Lake; by Sheila Cushman and Rona Kornblum, Illustrated by: Patti Briles; Educational Insights (1990)
Britney Cain, A Fine Vine: http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/invitations/cainbr.htm
Mike Locklier, Mike Likes Kites: http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/begin/locklierbr.html
Return to Doorways
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“I was driving just now and I passed a sign that said Secaucus was established in 1900,” said Robert Hassard with more than a little disappointment in his voice. “But this place goes back to 1673, 1676. This was an important little island.”
Hassard wants to make people aware of the forgotten history of Secaucus -- especially the story of its early owner, Edward Earle, who happens to be an ancestor of his.
Secaucus has a storied history dating back to the pre-Revolutionary War days, when it was surrounded by water on all sides.
“Edward Earle came to New Jersey and bought Secaucus, which means land of the snakes. That’s what the Indians called it,” said Hassard. “And he paid $2,000 Dutch, which was a lot of money in those days. He bought the whole island and set up a house on the western shore.”
Much of Hassard’s research comes from the hefty tome “History and Genealogy of the Earles of Secaucus,” written by Rev. Isaac Newton Earle “of the Secaucus Branch” and published in 1924.
Plantation owner Edward Earle bought the island of Secaucus in 1676 for two thousand Dutch dollars.
“There was politics going on in England,” explained Hassard. “They beheaded Charles I. And these guys were all from the royal family. So rather than get put in jail or whatever, they left England.”
From Barbados young Edward Earle moved to Maryland, where he bought a plantation and married a girl from around Baltimore. Then he received a message from a close friend, Major Kingsland, a wealthy landowner whom he probably met in Barbados.
“Kingsland owned the property from what’s known as Harrison all the way up through Lyndhurst in the Meadowlands,” said Hassard. “And he advised Edward Earle to come to New Jersey from Maryland. There was land available in Secaucus. An island.”
The isle of Secaucus
According to “History and Genealogy of the Earles,” Edward Earle moved in autumn of 1673 to the island of Secaucus, “surrounded by the Hackensack River to the north, west and south, and by Pinhorne Creek… and Crom-a-Kill Creek on the east.”
“It is a beautiful piece of upland,” the book describes, “rising out of the extensive marshes that lie west of the Hudson. This tract is perhaps seven miles long by about half a mile wide, and embraces about three thousand acres.”
The island was purportedly purchased from the Indians by Peter Stuyvesant in 1658 and sold on December 10, 1663 to two other men. In context, the British took New Amsterdam in 1664, renaming it New York, with the area west of the Hudson becoming the Province of New Jersey.
Edward Earle, on April 24, 1676, “bought the Island of Ci-ka-kus, in the Province of New Jersie, for 2000 Dutch Dollars, together with house, some stock, and eight or 10 Christian and Negro servants,” according to historical records quoted in the book.
Here Earle resumed his southern plantation ways, presumably growing tobacco and raising farm animals. “Edward’s house was on a small hill, maybe where the hospital is. There’s nothing left of it anymore,” said Hassard, who also holds copies of colonial maps from the 1600s.
Detailed on the maps are the properties, plantations, and land patents throughout the area, listing their Dutch or British owners, including those in Hoboken, the Village of West New York, and the “English Neighborhood” to the north.
“Earle sold to Judge William Pinhorne, March 26, 1679, for 500 pounds, one undivided half of the tract, also one half of the stock,” according to records quoted in the book. Included in the transaction were one two-story house, five tobacco houses, some livestock and “between thirty and forty hogs, foure Negro men, five Christian servants.”
The sale was likely made to secure Pinhorne’s influence in maintaining title to the land against other colonial claimants, since Pinhorne was a prominent politician at the time.
The two men jointly held the property until April 15, 1682, when they split it in half, with Earle taking the upper portion and Pinhorne the lower 1800 acres or so. “Pinhorne’s property went from, say, [Paterson] Plank Road or a little lower, right down to the mountain, the Snake Mountain,” said Hassard, referring to what is now Laurel Hill.
Edward Earle’s sole son, also named Edward, moved into a house probably located near where the library is today. Here he raised 12 children.
Edward Earle, Sr. died in early December 1711 at 84 years old. He was buried on the island of Secaucus on December 15.
“But nobody knows where, it’s all been paved over,” said Hassard. “The railroads came through, the highways, the buildings, and all the graveyard were paved over. You can’t even find the old cemeteries. I think, from what I can gather, he’s buried around the UPS building.”
The Earle family sold the property in 1792 to John Smith, who in turn sold it to Col. John Stevens of the Hoboken Stevens family in 1795.
Many of Earle’s descendants settled in Union City, where Robert Hassard was raised.
“My ancestors, Mary Earle and James Gardner, their son Robert was one of the first mayors of West Hoboken (now known as Union City),” said Hassard. “They married right after the American Revolution.”
Many of Earle’s descendants are buried in the old Grove Church Cemetery in North Bergen.
Art Schwartz may be reached at [email protected].
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|Friday 1 Jul||Saturday 2 Jul||Sunday 3 Jul||Monday 4 Jul|
The weather report, with its forecasts inserted between television programmes throughout the day, is an institution today on all screens, both TV and web.Since the first weather forecasts appeared on television in the 1940s, a variety of media have adapted the exercise in their own ways.
The origins of weather reporting date far back into antiquity: the first known work on meteorology was written around 3000 BCE in China by Nei Ching Su Wen. The word meteorology comes to us from ancient Greek, and was first used by Aristotle for the study of the Earth in general, not just the study of the atmosphere.
Although meteorology is a very old science, it wasn't until the mid-19th century that the first weather forecasts were produced and published in the press.
In 1854, Urban Le Verrier, director of the Paris observatory, decided to set up a vast network of weather stations covering the whole of Europe.The network consisted of 24 stations, 13 of which were interconnected by telegraph.
In 1860, Englishman Robert Fitzroy used the telegraph to gather daily meteorological data from all over the United Kingdom and plot the first weather charts.He made the first forecasts and published a weather report in the newspaper The Times from 1860.
Following the Second World War and during the 1950s, the development of computers led to the writing of computer programs capable of solving meteorological equations.This was the beginning of numerical weather forecasting.
At the same time, American researchers such as David Atlas were developing the first operational weather radars.
Today, weather reports can be consulted at any time of day on Internet. We are proud to present our analyses for you on our website.
Thank you for your visit, and come back soon!
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| 0.969706 | 373 | 3.375 | 3 |
This Section gives a brief overview of how the gravitational potential of an elliptical galaxy can be inferred from stellar-kinematic data. These data may include PN velocities, which individually sample the stellar line-of-sight velocity distributions L(v) (hereafter LOSVD) at their positions in the galaxy image, as well as ALS spectroscopy measurements of the first few moments of the LOSVD, at a set of 1D or 2D binned positions.
As is well known, velocity dispersion profile measurements (and streaming velocities, if the galaxy rotates) do not suffice to determine the distribution of mass with radius, due to the degeneracy with orbital anisotropy. With very extended measurements a constant M / L model can be ruled out (e.g., ), but the detailed M(r) still remains undetermined. Thus mass determination in elliptical galaxies always involves determining the orbital structure at the same time, and requires a lot of data. LOSVDs from absorption line profile shapes provide additional data with which the degeneracy between orbit structure and mass can largely be broken. Simple spherical models are useful to illustrate this : at large radii, radial orbits are seen side-on, resulting in a peaked LOSVD (positive Gauss-Hermite parameter h4), while tangential orbits lead to a flat-topped or double-humped LOSVD (h4 < 0). Similar considerations can be made for edge-on or face-on disks and spheroidal systems .
One may think of the LOSVDs constraining the anisotropy, after which the Jeans equations can be used to determine the mass distribution. However, the gravitational potential influences not only the widths, but also the shapes of the LOSVDs (see illustrations in ). Furthermore, eccentric orbits visit a range of galactic radii and may therefore broaden a LOSVD near their pericentres as well as leading to outer peaked profiles. Thus, in practice, the dynamical modelling to determine the orbital anisotropy and gravitational potential must be done globally, and is typically done in the following steps:
If the mass distribution and gravitational potential are known from analysis of, e.g., X-ray data, step (5) can be omitted. Because this eliminates the degeneracy with orbital anisotropy, considerably fewer data are then needed.
Such a scheme has been employed regularly to model spherical and axisymmetric galaxies [e.g., 4, 27], using mostly orbits ("Schwarzschild's method") and, more rarely, distribution function components. Discrete velocity data were modelled in [e.g., 5, 17]. The modelling techniques used to constrain black hole masses from nuclear kinematics and dark halo parameters from extended kinematics are very similar.
Line-profile shape parameter measurements are now available for many nearby ellipticals, but those reaching to ~ 2Re are still scarce [e.g., 28, 4]. Modelling of the outer mass profiles of ellipticals from such data has been done for some two dozen round galaxies in the spherical approximation, and for a few cases using axisymmetric three-integral models.
From recent SAURON integral field measurements it has become clear that the kinematics of many elliptical galaxies show features imcompatible with axisymmetry . This has motivated Verolme et al. to extend Schwarzschild's method to triaxial models , a development that has only recently become possible with the increase of available computing power. In parallel, adaptive N-body codes are being developed that use the algorithm of Syer & Tremaine for training N-body systems to adapt to a specified set of data constraints . These latter models have the additional advantage of simultaneously providing a check for the model's dynamical stability. One application has been to the rotating Galactic bar; work currently in progress is on axisymmetric and rotating triaxial galaxies.
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| 0.913117 | 821 | 2.53125 | 3 |
In 2000, the hot topic in the wastewater industry was prescreening for membrane bioreactors (MBRs). In order for this advanced technology to perform well in wastewater treatment, it was essential to stop hair and fibrous material from binding the membrane media within the cassettes. Having to remove such fine material was quite new in wastewater treatment. It made every screen manufacturer in the country lick its proverbial lips in anticipation of potential big business. Looking back, many pioneers may wish they had been a little more cautious in their approach.
In the 1980s and early ’90s, a 6-mm bar screen was considered “fine” and suitable to protect every treatment process in the marketplace. Little did the industry know that by the turn of the century, the debate would be focusing on “ultra-fine” screens for raw sewage. There was prodigious opportunity for large projects, especially in the southern U.S., considering the benefits of reusable water for irrigation.
It was a lot of work for MBR manufacturers to establish a best practice for the supply of fine screens. Various onsite testing helped establish screening protocols and performance specifications. One early experiment simply involved collecting bags of hair from local hairdressers, dyeing it all bright red and passing it through various screen bands. The MBR suppliers demanded a more precise evaluation, however, as well as measurable performance testing from potential screen manufacturers.
Leading companies, therefore, paid to have their screen products evaluated by United Kingdom Industry Research (UKWIR), based at the National Screen Evaluation Facility, which resulted in a screenings capture ratio for each model tested. This allowed direct comparison between different styles of screens. It became clear that some type of drum screen was necessary to ensure total capture of solids, because once debris is caught inside a cylinder, it truly is entrapped and cannot escape downstream. The problem with traditional drum screens, however, is that they are difficult to install in traditional concrete channels and generally need to sit in steel tanks and receive a pumped flow. The popularity of center-flow screens as an alternative to drum screens grew rapidly. These screens are basically elongated drum screens with a band of hinged panels that articulate around the top and bottom of the frame and elevate the screenings on a vertical plane. This style of screen can be installed easily in a regular channel and receive a gravity flow.
The debate always was energetic; however, a majority of the industry settled on a center-flow screen with 2-mm perforated panels. Most MBR manufacturers agreed that this would act as an effective barrier, preventing hair, fiber and stringy material from ragging the membrane cassettes. Imaginative methods of operation were introduced, allowing the screen band to mat, creating a blanket of material on the screening media. A slow band rotation was controlled by a variable-frequency drive, ensuring minimal disturbance of the blanket and more efficient screening.
Despite significant research and testing, many early 2-mm screen installations were unsuccessful. Some were even disastrous. The actuality of real-life applications was illuminating. It was clear that many screen systems were dramatically undersized and could not pass the rated peak flow. Formulae used to estimate flow on previous generations of screens were inaccurate on these new ultra-fine models. Selecting the appropriate screen model involves estimating the percentage of screen band open area that can be matted with screening while still allowing flow. Manufacturers underestimated the solids loading and applied insufficient blinding factors to the face of the screen band. The screens were overwhelmed, overworked and inevitably liable to break down.
Grit problems also had not been anticipated. The low approach velocities inherent to this type of screening encouraged these heavy abrasive particles to sink in front of and inside the screen band. In one particular case, two fine screens were installed in a 10-ft-wide-by-20-ft-long stainless steel tank that had a permanent 12-in. bed of grit in the bottom. The grit penetrated seals, getting between moving parts of the screens, wearing out chains, guides and drive sprockets, and tearing holes in the 2-mm perforated panels. It sounds like a horror story—and for the screen and MBR manufacturers, it was.
The screen market has learned from its mistakes and matured. Hydro-Dyne remains confident that center-flow technology has an important role in protecting MBR plants. The independent testing at UKWIR proved that its 93% screenings capture rate is the highest of any generic screen design. The goal is to successfully educate potential customers and consulting engineers considering MBR technology that the problems of the past have evolved into a strong solution for the future. A center-flow screen with 2-mm perforated panels, installed as a two-stage screening system and effective grit removal should be the standard, not just the preferred layout. The concept is gaining wider acceptance, although cynics remain.
The Shepherdstown Project
In 2010, Hydro-Dyne had the opportunity to put the theory to the test in Shepherdstown, W.V., when mandatory compliance with its Chesapeake Watershed Nutrient Removal Permit drove a wastewater system improvement project. A major upgrade was necessary, and the town decided to replace the existing conventional activated sludge plant with MBR. Fortunately, the customer and consulting engineer were aware that robust headworks were vital to the success of the project. In 2003, they replaced an aging macerator and emergency manual bar rack system with a fine screen, quickly realizing the benefits to the downstream treatment process. There were minimal rags in the aeration tanks and no blockages of the return activated sludge pumps.
The Shepherdstown project provided Hydro-Dyne with the opportunity to work with the Chapman Technical Group, the consulting engineering firm, to showcase a complete integrated headworks package custom designed to protect the MBR system. Shepherdstown’s average flow is 0.8 million gal per day (mgd), with a peak flow of 2.2 mgd. Space was at a premium, and the new building was just 23 ft wide by 35 ft long. The challenge was to deliver a traditional screen, a complete grit system including pump and classifier, two center-flow fine screens and conveyance to a screening washing and compaction system within these four walls.
The Triden, with a 3-mm laced link bar grid, was selected for the coarse screen. Its compact design only needed a 21-in.-wide channel. It has an estimated SCR of 65% with hooked elements designed to remove the bulk rags and plastics. Immediately downstream, a small, 7-ft-diameter Hydro-Dyne vortex grit trap was proposed to catch 95% of all grit particles greater than 200 μ at peak flow.
A self-priming grit pump transfers the grit to a stand-alone Hydro-Dyne Grit Screw Classifier. The flow exits the grit chamber and splits into two 42-in.-wide fine screen channels, each containing a Hydro-Flo screen with 2-mm ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene perforated panels. The upstream security allows them to truly be polishing screens, trapping the fibrous, stringy material still in the flow stream. The screenings from all three screens are sluiced to a single washing screw compactor, where they are thoroughly dewatered.
The Hydro-Flo screens needed to sit in deeper water than traditional screens. Any ultra-fine screen band naturally has a small open area to pass flow and is expected to see heavy matting. This means that the screens must be relatively large, with greater panel submergence to maintain acceptable velocities and head loss. Having input on the entire headworks design from the start allowed Hydro-Dyne to recommend the channel dimensions and influence the hydraulic profile. Without a 12-in. step down in the concrete after the grit chamber, it would have been difficult to install an effective 2-mm screen system.
Even a well-designed vortex grit trap will let some fine grit pass, which could potentially grind away at mechanical equipment. A center-flow screen is most vulnerable where abrasive material gets between the rotating band and the static frame. Simple neoprene flaps or brush seals failed to block grit in early designs. Hydro-Dyne developed a positive seal system in which the stainless steel frame interlocks with the guide link on the perimeter of the screen band, thereby creating a positive three-sided closure.
Hydro-Dyne will continue to monitor this installation closely. To date, the screen system is working well, and, crucially, so is the MBR. With new advanced treatment technologies entering the market regularly, ultra-fine screens are here to stay.
Protecting MBR systems with ultra-fine screens
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by Mike Adams – Natural News
(NaturalNews) If you have stomach problems or gastrointestinal problems, a new study led by Dr. Judy Carman may help explain why: pigs fed a diet of genetically engineered soy and corn showed a 267% increase in severe stomach inflammation compared to those fed non-GMO diets. In males, the difference was even more pronounced: a 400% increase. (For the record, most autistic children are males, and nearly all of them have severe intestinal inflammation.)
The study was conducted on 168 young pigs on an authentic farm environment and was carried out over a 23-week period by eight researchers across Australia and the USA. The lead researcher, Dr. Judy Carman, is from the Institute of Health and Environmental Research in Kensington Park, Australia. The study has now been published in the Journal of Organic Systems, a peer-reviewed science journal.
The study is the first to show what appears to be a direct connection between the ingestion of GMO animal feed and measurable damage to the stomachs of those animals. Tests also showed abnormally high uterine weights of animals fed the GMO diets, raising further questions about the possibility of GMOs causing reproductive organ damage.
Proponents of corporate-dominated GMO plant science quickly attacked the study, announcing that in their own minds, there is no such thing as any evidence linking GMOs to biological harm in any animals whatsoever. And they are determined to continue to believe that, even if it means selectively ignoring the increasingly profound and undeniable tidal wave of scientific studies that repeatedly show GMOs to be linked with severe organ damage, cancer tumors and premature death.
“Adverse effects… toxic effects… clear evidence”
Lead author of the study Dr. Judy Carman stated, “We found these adverse effects when we fed the animals a mixture of crops containing three GM genes and the GM proteins that these genes produce. Yet no food regulator anywhere in the world requires a safety assessment for the possible toxic effects of mixtures. Our results provide clear evidence that regulators need to safety assess GM crops containing mixtures of GM genes, regardless of whether those genes occur in the one GM plant or in a mixture of GM plants eaten in the same meal, even if regulators have already assessed GM plants containing single GM genes in the mixture.”
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Raised from the dead:
Doves Type in digital form.
The Doves Type legend is one of the most enduring in typographic history and probably the most infamous. It’s the story of a typeface and a bitter feud between the two partners of Hammersmith’s celebrated Doves Press, Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker, leading to the protracted disposal of their unique metal type into London’s River Thames. Starting in 1913 with the initial dumping of the punches and matrices, by the end of January 1917 an increasingly frail Cobden-Sanderson had made hundreds of clandestine trips under cover of darkness to Hammersmith Bridge and systematically thrown 12lb parcels of metal type into the murky depths below. As one person so aptly commented on Twitter recently, this notorious tale bears all the hallmarks of a story by Edgar Allan Poe.
One century later and a new chapter has been added with the release of Robert Green’s digital facsimile of the Doves Type, available to buy and download from Typespec. For those who are still unfamiliar with the historical background and the designer’s arduous journey to salvage this beautiful typeface from its watery grave I would urge you to check out the following short BBC News film by Tom Beal, made after the recovery of a portion of the type:
The original Doves Type was crafted by master punchcutter Edward Prince, based on drawings produced by Percy Tiffin of Nicolas Jenson’s pioneering 15th-century Venetian type. William Morris, founder of the Kelmscott Press, had actually developed his own ‘Golden’ type some years before The Doves Press came into being but Doves is held by experts as being more faithful to the original Venetian letterforms.
The Doves Type was commissioned in 1899 and created solely by Prince in 16 pt; it was used in all of the press’s publications including their iconic edition of the King James Bible. Each Doves Press book was beautifully bound and, notes Green, noticeably “stripped of decorative borders and illustration, the elegantly clear & legible type acting alone as visual siren-song.”
By 1908, despite successful Milton prints & the aforementioned Bible, the Press was in dire financial difficulty. Subscribers began melting away after Walker had effectively left in 1906 as the bitter & acrimonious dispute took hold between the partners. On finally dissolving their partnership in 1909, Cobden-Sanderson began attempts to wriggle out of an earlier promise that, should the partnership cease, Walker would receive a fount of type ‘for his own use’. Walker retaliated, issuing a writ insisting that the Press shut down completely and he receive 50% of remaining assets. In 1909, the Press’s only valuable asset was the type.
A compromise was reached, brokered by their exasperated friend Sir Sydney Cockerell, which allowed Cobden-Sanderson uncontrolled use of the type for as long as he lived, at which time it would pass to Emery Walker, if he did not die first.
The thought of ‘his’ typeface being used by anyone else, and in a manner beyond his control, prompted Cobden-Sanderson’s now infamous course of action. Only the Doves Press, run exclusively by him, could be bestowed the honour of printing his type. And so the mission to destroy it, beginning with the punches and matrices on Good Friday 1913, began. On an almost nightly basis from August 1916 the ailing septuagenarian dumped the type into the Thames, wrapped in paper parcels and tied with string; “bequeathed to the river” as he put it in his personal diary. Every piece of this beautiful typeface, more than a ton of metal, was destroyed in a prolonged ritual sacrifice.
Green’s quest to re-produce the Doves Type in digital form has been a true labour of love, a project he came close to shelving on several occasions due to the paucity of (affordable) source texts and occasional blind alleys he was inadvertently taken down. Much agonising took place over the general approach to the project, deciphering the complex geometries, then individual letterform dilemmas due to ink spread inconsistencies and anomalies in the punches and matrices. The end result isn’t so much a revival as a ‘digital facsimile’ of the original typeface, but most importantly he’s succeeded in doing justice to it.
The first release (2013) in OpenType format was an Imprint weight, complete with ligatures and detailing from the metal predecessor; Green wanted to be as true to the original as possible but there are concessions to modern day requirements in the form of Dollar & Euro currency symbols plus extended latin diacritics which didn’t feature first time around.
Doves Type® Regular, refined after recovery of the original metal type from the Thames, replaces the initial 2013 release and will be followed by a digital reworking of Edward Johnston’s decorative caps for the Doves Type. Go to the font download page for more details and to buy the font(s).
Click on a thumbnail below to browse a gallery of larger Doves Type images.
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Cookie Consent in the data freedom law
It is necessary to inform users of the presence, purpose and duration of the cookies placed in their browsers, and the means at their disposal to oppose it.
What is a cookie?
Cookies are tracers placed on Internet users’ hard drives by the web hosts of the visited website. They allow the website to identify a single user across multiple visits with a unique identifier. Cookies may be used for various purposes: building up a shopping cart, storing a website’s language settings, or targeting advertising by monitoring the user’s web-browsing.
Which cookies are exempt from the Cookie Consent rule?
France has exempted certain cookies from the cookie consent rule: for those cookies that are strictly necessary to offer the service sought after by the user you do not need to ask consent to user. Examples of such cookies are:
- the shopping cart cookie,
- authentication cookies,
- short lived session cookies,
- load balancer cookies,
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Asking users for consent for Analytics (tracking) Cookies
For all cookies that are not exempted from the Cookie Consent then you will need to:
- obtain consent from web users before placing or reading cookies and similar technologies,
- clearly inform web users of the different purposes for which the cookies and similar technologies will be used,
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You don’t need Cookie Consent with Piwik
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If you are using another analytics solution other than Piwik then you will need to ask users for consent. If you do not want to ask for consent then download and install Piwik or signup to a service offering Piwik hosted in the Cloud to get started.
If you are already using Piwik you need to do two simple things: (1) anonymise visitor IP addresses (at least two bytes) and (2) include the opt-out iframe solution in your website (learn more).
Note that these recommendations currently only apply in France, but because the law is European we can expect similar findings in other European countries.
CNIL recommends Piwik
We are proud that the CNIL has identified Piwik as the only tool that respects all privacy requirements set by the European Telecom law.
About the CNIL
The CNIL is an independent administrative body that operates in accordance with the French data protection legislation. The CNIL has been entrusted with the general duty to inform people of the rights that the data protection legislation allows them.
The role and responsabilities of the CNIL are:
- to protect citizens and their data
- to regulate and control processing of personal data
- to inspect the security of data processing systems and applications, and impose penalties
Piwik and Privacy
Future of Privacy at Piwik
Piwik is already the leader when it comes to respecting user privacy but we plan to continue improving privacy within the open analytics platform. For more information and specific ideas see Privacy enhancing issues in our issue tracker.
Learn more in these articles in French [fr] or English:
- [fr] Sites web, cookies et autres traceurs
- [fr] Comment me mettre en conformité avec la recommandation “Cookies” de la CNIL ?
- [fr] Recommandation sur les cookies : obligations pour les responsables de sites ?
- CNIL Starts Controlling Cookie Settings in October 2014
- CNIL recommends Piwik for compliance with data protection laws
To learn more about Piwik, please visit piwik.org,
Get in touch with the Piwik team: Contact information,
For professional support contact Professional Support for Piwik .
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The Time of Science and the Sufi Science of Time
Physics used to teach us that space is a kind of absolute container, separate from the flow of time. In this classical or Newtonian conception, objects traveled through or remained stationary in space, which itself was not subject to change or to internal variations. The three dimensions of space were the same, always and everywhere. Galileo's observation of the moons of Jupiter would eventually lead to the fundamental assertion, so damaging to the prevailing Christian or traditional cosmology of the time, that in fact the laws down here on earth and the laws up there in the heavens are the very same. Our "space" as we experience it on earth, according to its inviolable coordinates of width, height, and depth, or the famous x, y, and z of the Cartesian coordinate system exists uniformly throughout the universe and is governed by the same rules. With the dismissal of the ether (the fifth element the celestial spheres were thought to be made of) and the adoption of an atomist theory, the physical vision of the universe was one of billiard balls colliding in a uniform and static vacuum, with things like electromagnetism and thermal energy thrown into the mix.
In this conception, time was a measure and nothing more, and was itself assumed to be constant and unchanging. One used time in frequency and velocity values, but time itself had nothing essentially to do with the nature of space and certainly nothing to do with physical objects themselves. The great paradigm shift in physics came with Einstein's special theory of relativity, which was later to be expanded upon in his general theory of relativity. In addition to showing that there is no absolute frame of reference for physical measurements, the theory also demonstrated mathematically that what we ordinarily think of as space and time are actually intertwining realities – or two aspects of the same reality. How we move through space changes how we move through time, at least depending on the point of observation. If I travel from Earth for a period of time near the speed of light and then return, a much longer period of time will have elapsed from Earth's frame of reference than will have elapsed from my own frame of reference, in some sort of space vehicle for example. Time also changes depending on how close I am to a strong gravitational field. A clock in orbit high above the earth, for example, will run slightly slower than an identical clock on the surface of the earth.
Now, many books have been written in the last few decades claiming that the teachings of Eastern religions such as Buddhism and the finding of modern physics, specifically quantum mechanics and relativity theory, are really the same, and much is made of the spiritual significance of this new physics.2 Though it is a topic for another forum, I believe that the perceived intersection of physics and mysticism or religion results from a sublimation of certain hypothetical assumptions of physical data on the one hand, and a denaturing of the spiritual doctrines on the other. That is to say, certain interpretations of the physical data, such as the idea that the observer influences the state vector collapse, and the notion of multiple universes arising out of the actualization of the wave function of particles, are nothing more than philosophical struggles on the part of physicists and laymen to come to grips with the data. They are not demanded by the data themselves, which is why many physicists who agree on the same data have sometimes wildly different models for accounting for those data.3 On the religious side, one comes across pat explanations of spiritual doctrines taken out of their traditional context, and Buddhism is reduced to a group of clever insights about our mind and the nature of the world.
Thus I want to be careful of including the findings of physics in a paper on the experience of time and non-time at a conference on Ibn al-'Arabī. I may joyously proclaim that Ibn al-'Arabī told us in the thirteenth century what physicists claim to have discovered only a few decades ago, but what happens when the scientists change their minds? After all, despite what the popular literature and movies tell us, there are enormous lacunae in physics, and for all we know the spatio-temporal conception ushered in by Einstein may one day itself be overturned by something as radically different. To give you some examples, quantum mechanics works for very small things, and relativity works for very big things, but at a certain point in between, for medium sized things, the theories become incompatible. This was the problem with Newtonian or classical physics: for many purposes the theory worked just fine, but physicists were puzzled because it did not work for all observed phenomena. Thus Newtonian equations will correctly predict how a baseball will travel through space, but it took relativity to correctly account for the orbit of the planet Mercury. Our present idea of gravity and the mass of the universe should have the universe flying apart, but since it does not actually do so, physicists posit dark matter, which accounts for 98 percent of the mass of the universe. The problem is since we cannot see or measure this dark matter, we do not know what it is, or really if it is there.
So why start a discussion of time at an Ibn 'Arabī Society gathering with physics? Firstly, despite the fact that classical physics is part of history as far as scientists are concerned, its world view still dominates the consciousness of the age. It is what is most typically taught in high school textbooks, and its assumptions are built into popular language about the subject. The next time you hear someone say "fundamental building blocks of matter" know that such a notion is completely classical in its origin. All our notions of mass, force, and energy are usually classical conceptions, that is to say conceptions beginning from the bifurcation of the world into measurable and subjective knowledge by Descartes, then Galileo's uniformity of the universal laws, and finally Newton's brilliant synthesis. Moreover, these ideas, together with the advent of the heliocentric model, was a major force, perhaps the most important force, in sidelining Christianity in the Western world. First the Church abdicated its claim to having knowledge of the natural world, and while it spent the next few centuries in the domain of moral and spiritual questions, scientists gradually reduced the world to physical bits, reduced man to a hyper developed animal, reduced animals to complex arrangements of atoms, and reduced consciousness to complex patterns of synaptic activity in the brain. Meanwhile the philosophers and pseudo-philosophers of scientism were busy trying to convince themselves and everyone else that truth was provided only by quantitative measurement. The rest was quality, which fell on the side of subjective feeling, and as we all were supposed to know, feelings are really just complex instincts, which somehow result from the structure of the brain, resulting from the structure of DNA, resulting from the happenstance arrangement of atoms.
Relativity theory and quantum mechanics overturned classical mechanics, which had itself overturned Christian cosmology. The paradigm shift ushered in by such figures as Einstein, Max Planck, and Neils Bohr is important because it destroyed the destroyer. Heliocentrism was erased, because from the point of view of relativity it is nonsense to say that the earth "goes round" the sun, as it is to say that the sun goes round the earth, because there is no fixed frame of reference to say which is going around which. The sun's gravitational field is stronger than the earth's, but the earth does pull on the sun, and because there is no absolute frame of reference anymore, then certainly it is correct to say the sun goes around the earth. Geocentrism actually comes out slightly ahead, since it at least corresponds to our experience from our frame of reference. From the point of view of science, however, we have lost both geocentrism and heliocentrism.
As for universal laws, we find that things do not behave the same everywhere. For example a clock seems to run at a different speed high above the earth. Light does not always travel in a straight line, but seems to bend from different points of reference, because space itself seems to bend and take on all sorts of shapes depending on the objects in it.
Then we discover that atoms are not mere little balls. Rather, it seems the only way we can properly describe what seems to be happening on very small scales is through various kinds of mathematical form, very unlike a little ball. The only reason scientists talk about wave-particle duality is because the measurements they get look sometimes like a particle, sometimes like a wave, but they never have nor ever will see what causes those measurements. The relationships between the "atoms" is mathematically incredibly complex and is more like threads in a tapestry than balls flying through space, but of course they are neither. The problem is further complicated by Bell's theorem, which shows entities like electrons to be connected, as far as we can tell, instantaneously even at distances too great for a light-speed communication to take place. This is important because relativity theory states that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.
Thus the momentousness of heliocentrism, atomist theory, uniformity of spatial laws and time was shown to be not so momentous after all, but this is lost on popular thinking. Einstein certainly earned his own fame but did not manage to steal all of Newton's thunder. The most usual understanding of the natural world is still a classical one.
But I already cautioned myself about too great an enthusiasm for what the new physics teaches. Indeed it may be that the current paradigm is overturned, but it seems well-nigh impossible that any such a revolution will bring us closer to the classical conception that destroyed traditional cosmology in the West. We have already pushed the limits of what we can actually observe with our own senses, which is to say anything else we observe will be the effects of experiments together with the mathematical models based on the data of those experiments. Physicists' eyes are not more powerful than our own; their insight comes through the mathematical form they derive from the data. Such mathematical models are the very stuff of physical theory.
The significance of this is not that it elevates one theoretical model above another, but that it throws into sharp focus the fact that any model of what happens beyond the perceptible world is as good as any other from the point of view of science, so long as it correctly predicts the data. The problem with superstring theory, hidden variable theory, many-universe theory, is that they are all mathematical models based upon the exact same body of data, and they all predict the data equally well. These models are sometimes so wildly different that any pretense to some one great scientific conception of the universe must be seen as philosophical hubris. The precision of the data themselves and the success of the accompanying mathematics in predicting the behavior of the physical world on small and large scales – indeed the most successful scientific theory to date – paradoxically serves to undercut the assumption that the only real knowledge we can have of things is through scientific measurement. What we are measuring are things we can never perceive without a measurement. Classical mechanics usually dealt with ordinary scale objects. If the real knowledge we have of a baseball is the measurements we can make of it, we are still left with an object that at least corresponds to an object we actually experience, even if that experience is merely subjective or even meaningless from the point of view of science. An electron is an entity no one has, can, or ever will experience. Even if we never perceive a unicorn in fact, we could in principle.
The key reversal at play is the following: we measure quantum entities, but our knowledge of them is mediated completely by our ordinary experience of the world, by our pointer-readings, as Wittgenstein once remarked. I said that the new physics paradoxically undercuts classical bifurcation because it leaves us with the troubling proposition that our true scientific knowledge depends for its very survival upon the offices of our subjective, non-scientific experience. Actually, this was the case in classical mechanics as well, but the fact that quantum entities are wholly unlike ordinary entities makes the rigid bifurcation into a subjective world of quality and an objective world of quantity all the more absurd.4
The situation we are left with is this. The revolution of classical mechanics suffered a counter-revolution, the new physics, which neutralized the sting delivered by the heliocentric model, uniform space and time, and the classical atomist theory. Though this counter-revolution did not put traditional cosmology back in its place, it robbed the scientist of his ability to make absolute statements about what we can know. A man might be lulled into a kind of complacency about the baseball; perhaps the knowledge provided by scientific measurement is more true and reliable than his mere experience of the thing. This may not hold up to philosophical scrutiny, but overlap between the measured baseball and a baseball as one sees it gives the whole affair an air of respectability. But when the scientist tells us that true knowledge is measuring things that we cannot see, and that the scientist cannot see either, it begins to sound too strange to be believed. And of course, it is.
So unlike many of the popular ideas linking the new physics to traditional metaphysics, my assertion here is simply that science has exposed the fallacy of Cartesian bifurcation and the alleged supremacy of quantitative knowledge. Science has turned on itself, or more correctly, the data has betrayed philosophical scientism and exposed its limitations. We have quite literally come back to our senses.
If we actually pay attention to the difference between quantitative data and physical theory, we see that science has altogether lost the destructive power to make us denigrate our senses and the ideas we form from sensory experience. We know that what the scientist says about time is a model based on observations of the world, and that any number of such models possess equal validity, and all of them are subservient to the real experience of the human subject. Choosing one model above another is not a scientific decision, but a philosophical one.
Time, like space, is one of the most concrete aspects of our experience of the world. It is not an abstract entity such as an electron, but a reality so close and intimate that we stumble in defining it owing to its sheer obviousness. It is a mystery that baffles due to its clarity, not its obscurity. If a physicist says that time is not what we think but is actually this or that, we can agree in part and acknowledge that the reality may have aspects of which we are not aware. However, we always possess the powerful rejoinder that no matter what the data or theory, it has been formed on the basis of the physicist's ordinary human experience of time and observations taking place within that experience. Logically, it is impossible to negate the qualitative time of our own experience without undercutting the basis of the quantitative time derived through measurement, since no observation is possible without ordinary time and ordinary space. "Reification" is the problem we get when we put our theories of quantitative time above qualitative time in our hierarchy of knowledge. I may give a mathematical description of time utilizing perhaps a symbolic or allegorical use of geometric shapes, but then become trapped in my own provisional model. Even the word "linear" in linear time is a model. We make an analogy of some property of our experience of time to the properties of a physical line in space, i.e., being continuous and existing in two directions. But time is not a line, a line is a line. Having used the image of a line to enable us to talk about time in a scientifically useful way, we get trapped by an image which has taken on a life of its own, so to speak. Then anything other than linear time begins to seem absurd, a violation of time the way a loop is a violation of a line.
The Cartesian bifurcation which elevates quantitative measurement and theory while denigrating the real experience of qualities is ultimately absurd, because no model can repudiate the model-maker and continue to remain meaningful. It would mean that the model-maker's knowledge of what he is making a model of is dependent upon the knowledge provided by that very model itself. A bifurcationist physicist discerns a mathematical form in the data of the world, then says that this mathematical form is more true than the very perception he used to discern that mathematical form. If by this he meant that the world manifests laws present in the Intellect or Great Spirit, we could agree, since we perceive those laws by virtue of participating in that same intellect. But that is not an idea the philosophers of scientism would be willing to entertain.
Let me now leave off the space-time continuum of physics and come to the soul's qualitative and lived experience of these realities we call space and time. Space and time appear to us to be two modes of extension, or in simpler terms two ways in which things are spread out in relationship to each other. Spatially things are here and there, and temporally things are before and after. In another essay I discussed at length this notion of space and time as extension, and I do not wish to duplicate that discussion here.5 My purpose here is to establish a link between space and time that is not at all based on relativity theory, but arises from our living experience. Although in the classical conception which so often dominates our minds space and time are seen as two separate and unlike things, the truth is that time is impossible without space, and space is impossible without time. I do not make this assertion from the point of view of physical science, but from within the world of the metaphysics of Ibn al-'Arabī and similar metaphysical systems.
Let us first ask what the world would be like if there were only space, but no time. The first thing that we would notice is that change would become impossible. Think of a group of objects existing in space, and then think of them existing in a different arrangement. In order for them to go from the first arrangement to the second one, something has to happen. They have to at the very least traverse the distances necessary to arrive at the second arrangement, but how can they do that if there is only space and no time? Something has to ontologically link the two arrangements. Even if somehow they do not traverse the distance in between, the objects are still the same objects, and the only thing allowing us to call them the same objects in the two different arrangements is a reality that allows the objects to change but retain some kind of continuity. This connecting dimension is time.
Let us then ask what the world would be like if there were time but no space. Since there would be no spatial extension to observe, we would somehow have to measure time with our subjective experience in the absence of height, width, and depth. How would we know that there even was a course of time? Feelings have no dimension perhaps, but what about the rest of the soul? The images in our imagination, never mind the objects of the objective world, all have spatial extension, so we would have to disallow them in a world without space. That is to say, time implies a kind of inward space in the soul – a different kind of space to be sure – that makes it meaningful to speak of before and after, a referent that is constant in the face of change.
Let us as an exercise try to erase the words "space" and "time" from our minds and come back at the question. We notice that in life there are things that change and things that stay the same, and often the very same things seem to change and stay the same but in different respects. The baseball is the same baseball, both in the hand of the pitcher and in the glove of the catcher, but it is not wholly the same because some things about it are different, such as its location and its relationship to the things around it. We can talk about things that are constant and changing, or static and dynamic. (In Arabic the relevant terms are qārr and ghayr al-qārr.)
But I do not wish to encumber myself from the beginning with technical language. For now I simply have the "constant" and the "changing". I, too, am constant and changing. I am the same person but I am always becoming this or that, experiencing all sorts of colors and sounds and shapes in addition to my emotions, and yet the constant identity abides. In the statement, "I was sad, then I found my true love, and then I was happy," the then does not split the I into parts. It does not erase the identity.
Such paradoxes of the many in the one, and the one in the many, really form the basis of Ibn al-'Arabī's metaphysics, and make a good point of departure for an analysis of time and non-time. At the highest level, the mystery of the many and the one is the identity between the Ultimate Reality and the many things we usually think of as being real in and of themselves. The ontological status of things in relation to the ultimate reality is a question for metaphysics, but the mystery of the many and one also plays out in cosmology, meaning the study of the world in which the puzzles of constancy and change arise.
At the highest level of Akbarian thought, the manyness of the divine qualities is resolved in the unity of the supreme Self. This is not a unity of "before" and "after", where I might say that all qualities are happening right now; nor is it a unity of "here" and "there", where I might say that all qualities are in one place. Rather it is a unity of being, of identity. The Creator is not another being than the Just or the All-Merciful. They are unified in what they truly are, and mysteriously the world's illusory reality disappears in the face of this essential unity.
Now, Akbarians do not throw away manyness, but put it in its place, and from our point of view in the world the many divine qualities and their relationships to one another are of the greatest significance. The manyness of the qualities is unreal only for the supreme Self, but for us this manyness is as real as we are, so to speak. In fact, we depend on this manyness for whatever illusory reality we possess, because it is by virtue of the divine names and qualities and their relationships that the world comes to be. How, then, does this one in the many, many in the one, play out in the world?
There is no shortage of ideas that Ibn al-'Arabī and his school use to describe how the divine qualities give rise to the world. Some of the most important are emanation (fayd), self-disclosure (tajallī), identification (ta'ayyun). For this talk I want to use the symbolism of light, and the divine name "Light" or al-Nūr. Mystics and philosophers have often started with light, and its symbolism is so powerful because light is both what we see and what we see by. Light is both a means and an end. If we apply the symbolism of light to all knowledge, light is both what we know and how we know. It is, moreover, a symbol that Ibn al-'Arabī and his school often used as a metaphysical basis, the same way they could use the concepts of mercy and existence.
The Quran says, God is the Light of the heavens and the earth (24:35). The heavens and the earth are the realm of the constant and the changing, so let us say that God is the light of the constant and the changing, making God what we know the constant and the changing by. This leaves us to ask what the constant and the changing are. Each and every thing is, ultimately, a manifestation of a name of God. God knows His endless names, and this knowledge is the realm of the immutable identities, the al-a'yan al-thabitah. Each immutable identity is a special way in which God knows God, but God's knowledge of Himself is neither before and after nor here or there. It introduces neither distance nor duration between His names.
But if the identities are essences or forms in the knowledge of God that are separated neither by distances nor durations, how do we get to the situation where these identities, when they are in the world, do get separated by distance and duration? In God's knowledge the identities are immutable, but in the world they are what we are calling constant and changing. They are here and there, and they are before and after. The baseball is here, not over there. Or, the baseball is here now, but it was not here earlier. This does not happen in God's knowledge. The immutable identities are different but not apart. There is an immutable identity for the pitcher and an immutable identity for the catcher, but they exist eternally in God's act of knowing, fused but not confused, to borrow Meister Eckhart's language.
Akbarian cosmogenesis is a two-tiered emanation, or self-disclosure which first gives rise to the immutable identities in God's knowledge, and then externalizes or existentiates them in the world. There is a way in which these two identities, one manifest and the other unmanifest, are two different things, and another way in which they are simply the same thing viewed from two different points of view. When God's light illuminates the immutable identities – which we can reword and say when God as the Light meets with God as the Knower – the result is the world. In a sense the immutable identities are dark, because as independent beings they are nothing. They are only God's knowledge of Himself. The divine light is a gift that illuminates the identities and gives them their own reality. This light allows there to be something "other than God", this phrase "other than God" being Ibn al-'Arabī's definition of the world, because by being illuminated the identities can see each other, and see themselves, and by "see" I mean "know".
Now, in the world this light by which we are illuminated to each other is none other than the very realities of duration and distance. What we give the name "space" is a state of affairs where the forms of things exist in a kind of relationality to each other, separated and yet existing in the same domain and thus connected in a kind of continuum. What we give the name "time" is a state of affairs where forms exist in a different kind of relationality, where even a single given thing is able to be separated from its previous state and yet still be connected to those states by virtue of its being a single thing. Thus its states also exist in a kind of continuum. God's light in static mode is space, and His light in dynamic mode is time. The identities themselves are not space and time, for the identities are pure forms in the knowledge of God, but when God casts His light upon them they enter into the dance of spatial and temporal interaction we call the world. This light enables the realities of sound, color, shape, smell, feeling, number, mass, and energy to connect and manifest the forms. Light is the vessel, both in static and dynamic mode, upon which the identities journey in between the plenary darkness of God's knowledge on the one hand and the uninhabitable darkness of pure nothingness on the other.
This is one possible understanding of the divine saying where God says, "Do not curse time, for I am time." By cursing time, we are in reality cursing the light of God, which is identical with Himself. It is by God giving of Himself, of His light, that our existence as beings going through changing states is even possible. But it then follows that one could also say that God is space. Islamic metaphysics does not have, to my knowledge, a classification of space as it does of time. As I am sure will be widely discussed in this conference, there is a distinction made between sarmad, dahr, and zamān, or eternity, sempiternity, and ordinary time. But if what I am saying about the divine light is true, is it not equally true to say that God is space?
In the bodily world the divine light shines in a certain mode, far short of all the possibilities of divine illumination. The light is relatively dim, and though I see myself and others, I cannot see much, and the wholeness and connectedness of things is largely hidden in a darkness that is yet to be illuminated. The possibilities of this world are basically limited, at least in our ordinary experience, to the usual dimensions of space and time. Akbarian metaphysics teaches that the imaginational world, the world ontologically superior to the world of bodies, is more illuminated. In that world, the rules governing the constant and the changing, or distance and duration, are not the same. Remember that the imaginational world, like the world of bodies, is still a world of extension, which is to say that it is a world of manifested forms – of shapes, colors, duration, changing states. But because it is so luminous, the possibilities for the interaction of the constant and the changing are much greater. The forms in the imaginational world are indeed not limited by bodily space and time, though there is an imaginational space and an imaginational time. Recall the saying that the bodily world in relation to the imaginational world is like a ring tossed into a vast wilderness. Rūmī declares that there is a window between hearts, meaning that we are connected to each other at the level of our souls, both across space and across time. True believers can have dreams foretelling the future, and great saints can meet in spirit if not in body. These wonders do not take place by virtue of bodily existence, but by virtue of the imaginational world, the world of souls.
Not only do the conditions of space and time change from bodily to imaginational existence, but they change from this world to the next, from the dunyā to the ākhirah. This is what Dāwūd al-Qaysarī means when he says that there are some divine names whose governance of the world lasts for a certain duration. That is to say, there is a certain way in which the divine light manifests the forms in our ordinary earthly life, but at the end of the world the cycle of that kind of light, of that particular divine name, will come to a close. The hereafter will then be governed by another divine name, another kind of divine light. That which is impossible here will be possible there because the divine light will illuminate ever more possibilities for the interplay of forms and identities. Space itself will be greater and more infinite, time itself will be infused with greater barakah and potential for realizing the self-disclosures of God.
Thus far I have been discussing the ontological status of time together with space, because I think the two are inseparable insofar as they are two modes of the divine light as far as worldly existence is concerned. But what does the reality of time mean for the spiritual journey of the soul?
If we take Ibn al-'Arabī's metaphysics and cosmology to their logical conclusion, I believe we can say the following. God created us as a freely given gift, simply so that we who were not could be, that we who were nothing could be living beings. But at the same time God experiences all of our pains and our joys, our stupidity and our wisdom, our fear and our courage with us in a mysterious way. Recall the hadīth where God says, "I was sick, and you did not visit Me," (Muslim 4661) and the Quranic verse "Those who hurt God and His Messenger …" (33:57). Yet for God there is no pain, stupidity, or fear, because God is not confined to the moment of suffering. He knows the whole life. God does not move down the line with us as we do, although He lives what we live. God could never suffer as we suffer because for God there is no despair, no hopelessness. Hopelessness is the most human of sufferings.
For God, the pain is like the pain of separation we feel at the very moment we are running to meet our beloved. We are in fact separated, and the effect of running and the distance between us is a kind of suffering, but that suffering is totally redeemed by the hope we have, the certitude, that we have in the meeting with our beloved. The pain that God experiences with us is like the pain we experience while running to our beloved. It is not really a pain at all; it is a part of the fullness of the moment. God sees in our life, when we cannot, the abundance and perfection of our destiny in a way so perfectly complete that the so-called suffering is ever blessed and redeemed in the final reunion. We are not God, though, and so for us the experience of pain is not the same, but it is what it must be for a being God created for joy. When we become more like God, we suffer more in the way God "suffers", so to speak. We gradually experience and taste how death is just a flavor of life.
In us, God is always running to the beloved, He lives the separation in the total light of (re)union, death in the light of life, pain in the light of total bliss. We may think that we are just stamping our feet, out of breath, running to a horizon that never seems to come closer, but we are growing still.
To turn a nothing into a something like God is going to have to hurt sometimes, ripping open nothingness and pulling out a god-like being strand by strand, sinew by sinew, love by love, pain by pain, stupidity by stupidity … into bliss, wisdom, wholeness, and ever greater life.
Think of a pebble in the shoe of the running lover. If that lover had placed all his hope in a perfect shoe, a perfect foot to go in that perfect shoe with a perfect sock, all to create a perfect fit. If he longed for it and made it his great hope, a pebble in his shoe while he was running would crush him, reduce him to anger, despair, agony, humiliation.
But what does a true lover care about a pebble in his shoe? Does he even feel it? Would he care? Perhaps it would make for an even fonder memory of the reunion.
The Quran promises that "… in Paradise the believers shall neither fear nor grieve" (2:62), meaning that the light of God will so illuminate us that we shall see the beauty of all things past and of what may come. It is in the darkness and opacity of the past, the inability to grasp the greater harmony of what happens to us, that causes the pain of grief. In grief, we suffer from the past. In fear, we suffer from the future. When God's light shows us the way, we suffer from neither. The Quran does not deny the passage of time in Paradise, only the difficulties we experience on account of it in this world. Our memory is illuminated and causes us no more trouble, and our imagination, that faculty capable of reaching out to the future, can conceive of no cause for despair or hopelessness. The ignorance built into the darkness of the world simply cannot exist in the full light of God in Paradise. It is thus that the soul transcends time, not by leaving it but by conquering it.
Our destiny in this world is both static and dynamic, which is to say that we are a harmony of parts and of experiences, of aspects and states. We can understand easily that beauty in the spatial sense is the presence of unity in multiplicity, which is to say, of harmony in all its forms. Music is the classic example of dynamic harmony, of a harmony that not only exists statically in a chord for example, but also dynamically, in a progression of counterpoint and in the movements of a melody.
If the soul can conquer time and live in it in Paradise, what about here in this world? What enables us to wake up to the harmony of our destiny in this world and the next? Surely we must acknowledge that an awakening is called for, because we do grieve and fear, groping about in the dark while falling prey to unhappiness and despair. How can we become like God and experience reunion in separation? The Sufis indeed speak of taking on the divine qualities (al-ittisāf bi-sifātillāh), and this is done through the remembrance of God, the dhikr, in all its forms. It is through the dhikr that the light of God shines brighter and brighter upon the soul, transforming and purifying it. A Sufi shaykh has said that when the traveler looks back upon his life, he will see that dhikr as a kind of golden chain passing through all its states and experiences. This means that through the remembrance, practiced faithfully, the Sufi overcomes the vicissitudes of time.
And this brings us finally to the dimension of non-time, which from man's point of view, both in the spiritual life and in the hereafter, is the spirit, or the heart, or the intellect. The heart or spirit or intellect is the point in man where the divine light resides and can shine down into the soul. It is the mysterious divine spark, both created and uncreated, or as some would say, neither. The spiritual life is the wedding of the soul to the spirit, not the elimination of the soul. Remember that by virtue of being made in the image of God we all possess an intrinsic dimension of light ourselves. The illumination we receive is truly just an aspect of our own nature, as Ibn al-'Arabī says so clearly in the Fusūs. In the spiritual life, in the remembrance of God, the spirit or heart acts upon the soul, illuminating it, transforming it, untying its knots, turning it clear where it was once opaque. From the point of view of time, progress is made in tying together our temporal selves with our non-temporal selves so that the former can be transfigured by the latter. When the non-time or eternity of the spirit enters fully into the soul, the Sufi becomes ibn al-waqt, newly born in each moment. Wa Allāhu a'lam.
1. For a good general introduction to both special relativity and quantum mechanics, see Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters (New York, 2001).
2. Among the most popular of such books is Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics (Boston, 1999). Other titles include David Darling, Zen Physics: The Science of Death, the Logic of Reincarnation (San Francisco, 1996); Alan Wallace (ed.) Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground (New York, 2003); Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan, The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet (New York, 2001).
3. For example, the physicist David Bohm interpreted the data of physics as being consistent with a deeper level of reality, and in fact argued that a more profound wholeness is actually implied by the data. See for example his Wholeness and the Implicate Order (New York, 1980).
4. This point is argued fully in Wolfgang Smith's The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key (Hillsdale, NY, 2005). A collection of essays also dealing with the new physics can be found in his The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology (Oakton, VA, 2003), which touches on a wide assortment of questions relating to science and philosophy.
5. "On Beginning a New System of Islamic Philosophy," The Muslim World, 94:1 (January, 2004).
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What are the obstacles to global health? PATH president Chris Elias, MD, MPH, and others raised the question at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, where more than 2,000 business leaders, academics, scientists, policymakers, and members of civil society organizations and the media—in all, representing 90 countries—gathered to take up crucial global, regional, and industry issues. The meeting’s theme was Shaping the Global Agenda: the Shifting Power Equation.
Fighting low-profile diseases
Dr. Elias participated in the panel entitled “Fighting Low-Profile Diseases.” The panel discussed obstacles that prevent relief from low-profile but devastating diseases—such as malaria—faced by millions of people in developing countries. Other panel members were Michael Kremer, Harvard professor; Ann Veneman, executive director of UNICEF; and Tachi Yamada, president of the global health program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
About the World Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum is an independent, international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional, and industry agendas. The Forum is composed of more than 1,000 member and partner companies and organizations, each of whom contribute their expertise and resources.
World Economic Forum summits bring together decision-makers to address the world's most crucial issues. These events enable members and constituents to discuss global and regional issues by sharing firsthand information and insights.
Posted February 20, 2007.
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Getting Useable Knowledge From Research Into Your Hands: Practical Use of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
What is a front-line service provider to do, knowing that current research can have a profound impact on programming and the future directions of organizations in general? You might ask yourself: where do I find current research information? How do I identify the important information to take away from a particular article or report? How do I know how one study relates to another? Who has the time to do all this searching, reading and synthesizing anyway?
The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews can be your answer.
What Is the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews?
The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (the Cochrane Reviews) is an online collection of high-quality, health-related research-based evidence that is currently free to use and easy to access. Cochrane Reviews, published online four times per year, is the major product of an international not-for-profit organization called The Cochrane Collaboration (see box).
The Cochrane Reviews database is available free of charge to all Canadians until at least January 31, 2010. At this time, we do not know if the free trial period will be extended. If after this date you can't access the database, please contact CATIE for assistance.
What Is Contained in the Cochrane Reviews?
The Cochrane Reviews is a database of systematic reviews.
A Systematic Review -- a highly useful decision-making tool -- is a summary of a number of research studies that are focussed on a single question or health-related topic. A systematic review identifies a program (intervention) for a specific health-related issue, and determines whether or not this program "works." An example of an intervention is a program designed to increase condom use among young women for HIV prevention purposes through educational workshops. To determine if this type of intervention "works," authors locate, appraise and synthesize evidence from as many research projects that study this topic as possible. By summarizing conclusions about effectiveness, the end product is one detailed research paper that outlines the most rigorous research on the topic -- a single source for research evidence on one topic vs multiple individual research papers. Eureka!
Systematic reviews can be incredible tools to support decision-making and program planning. They effectively summarize large amounts of information, including conclusions about a program (or "intervention").
What Kind of Information Do Cochrane Reviews Have About HIV?
The Cochrane Reviews has a large amount of research-based evidence on the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. You can browse Cochrane Reviews by topic, one of which is HIV/AIDS. Reviews are divided into four subtopics for easy searching:
Canadian people living with HIV can use the information that Cochrane Reviews contains about HIV to help them make health-related decisions. Canadian service providers and policy makers can use systematic reviews to help them make decisions about what types of health care or HIV programming to provide.
How Do I Access the Cochrane Reviews?
The entire Cochrane Library, of which Cochrane Reviews is a part, is now available to Canadians for free until at least January 31, 2010. The free trial period may be extended beyond this date, but at this time we do not know if this will happen. The pilot has been made possible by the contributions from subscribers, hospitals, academic and government libraries, The Canadian Health Libraries Association, the Canadian Cochrane Network and Centre, and the Canadian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information.
In addition to the free access trial for all Canadians, certain regions of Canada have negotiated ongoing free access beyond the free trial through various library and government projects:
New Brunswick: Free access through New Brunswick Public Library Service
Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Yukon: Free access through the Pan-Northern Agreement and the Indian and Inuit Branch of Health Canada
Nova Scotia: Free access through Public Libraries of Nova Scotia
Saskatchewan: Free access through provincial libraries
If you can't access the Cochrane Reviews database though any of these methods, please contact CATIE for assistance.
How Do I Search the Cochrane Reviews for Relevant HIV Research Evidence?
You can search for relevant systematic reviews to inform your decision making and program planning in a number of ways:
There is also a more traditional search box -- like that you would use to search www.google.ca -- where you can enter specific search terms, such as "HIV prevention."
Examples of HIV-Related Systematic Reviews Found in the Cochrane Reviews
The Cochrane Reviews contain over 95 systematic reviews related to HIV prevention, care, treatment or support. Many of these reviews will be relevant to Canadian HIV service providers. Some examples of HIV-related reviews found in the Cochrane Reviews are:
Sex-related HIV risk reduction:
Drug-related HIV risk reduction:
Take Advantage of Free Access Today!
The Cochrane Reviews is a useful tool that can be used to inform decision making and program planning. Why not take advantage of the free access to the Cochrane Reviews while it lasts to find what information is available that may help you in your day-to-day work?
Lauren Plews is currently the Information Specialist at CATIE. A certified bookworm, Lauren earned her Masters of Science in Information with a specialization in Library Sciences from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Before coming to CATIE, she worked in a Public Library and also assisted faculty and researchers at the School of Rehabilitation Science at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.
This article was provided by Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange. It is a part of the publication Prevention in Focus: Spotlight on Programming and Research. Visit CATIE's Web site to find out more about their activities, publications and services.
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adding your comment, please read TheBody.com's Comment Policy.)
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|Name: _________________________||Period: ___________________|
This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. What word describes almost all sergeant-majors?
2. How many days ago did the soldiers have to relieve the front line?
3. When the men enlisted, what did many of them do for the first time before going to the barracks?
(c) Have sex.
4. What do the men find prepared for them on the way to the front?
(b) An American unit.
(d) A victory celebration.
5. What are there rumors of?
(a) An offensive.
(b) A spy.
(c) Volunteer duty.
(d) A new British weapon.
Short Answer Questions
1. What do the men have to watch out for while riding back in the lorries?
2. According to Kat, why does a trained dog snap at a piece of meat?
3. What does Baumer grab for the men's dinner?
4. Who is coming to the front?
5. What name do the men call the British?
Short Essay Questions
1. What is Kat's special talent? What does he do for the men?
2. How do the men get their revenge on Himmelstoss?
3. What did Kantorek do to the men?
4. Katczinsky recites the rhyme "Give 'em all the same grub and all the same pay / And the war would be over and done in a day". What do you think this means?
5. How did Baumer narrowly escape death in the dug-outs?
6. What is Kropp's opinion of what life will be like when the men return home? What does it tell the reader about the effect of war upon a man?
7. How did the men break Himmelstoss' power over them?
8. Do you think that it is immoral for Müller to want Kemmerich's boots?
9. How does Haie Westhus feel about the difference between military and civilian life?
10. How was Himmelstoss disgraced?
This section contains 885 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page)
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World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Jordan : Palestinians
|Publisher||Minority Rights Group International|
|Cite as||Minority Rights Group International, World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Jordan : Palestinians, 2008, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/49749cfcc.html [accessed 27 June 2016]|
|Disclaimer||This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.|
There are around three million Palestinians in Jordan, located overwhelmingly in the north-western part of the country, principally in the environs of Amman, Zarqa and Irbid.
A portion of the Palestinian population found themselves in Transjordan in 1946, when the country annexed part of Palestine. The vast majority are of 1948 refugee origin, and Palestinians' attitudes toward Jordan have been ambivalent from the outset, since, although Jordan defended the West Bank in 1948, it had also already reached a secret understanding with the Zionists on incorporation of this area.
Following the loss of the West Bank in 1967 (and the influx of another 300,000 displaced, most of whom were already refugees), Palestinians flocked to the guerrilla fedayeen movement. In 1970, fearing the collapse of his authority, King Hussein sent his troops against strongholds of the Syrian-backed guerrilla movement, principally in Amman and Irbid. Palestinians were ruthlessly suppressed and suspected militants expelled. It has left a permanent scar on relations.
In 1974 the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was recognized as sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and Hussein immediately reduced Palestinian participation in the administration of the state. Pressure on Palestinians to choose between two identities has always been a problem, but it intensified during the first intifada (see Palestine) when Jordan relinquished its formal ties with the West Bank in 1988.
Jordan was dependent on remittances from (overwhelmingly Palestinian) migrants in the Gulf, until their 1991 expulsion from Kuwait and some other Gulf States. This lead to an influx of over 250,000 returnees and resulted in 30 per cent unemployment.
Citizenship for Palestinians in Jordan is a complicated issue. Although most Palestinians have Jordanian citizenship and many have integrated, Jordan still considers them refugees with a right of return to Palestine. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) reported in 2006 that over 1.8 million Palestinians were registered as refugees and displaced persons in Jordan. Around 150,000 Palestinians, mostly from Gaza but also those who remained in the West Bank after 1967 and only later came to Jordan, are denied citizenship. The government issues temporary passports to these Palestinians unless they already have travel documents from the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinians have been underrepresented in government, and not just due to matters of citizenship. The government, which maintains concerns about political and religious radicalism among Palestinians, designed voting districts for the Chamber of Deputies in the 1993 election law in such a way as to dilute urban and thus Palestinian representation. Islamist parties, and their largely Palestinian constituents, boycotted 1997 elections in protest against the skewed apportionment of seats to the monarchy's rural base of (non-Palestinian) supporters.
It is too early to say whether a resolution of the Palestine-Israel dispute will resolve Palestinian ambivalence toward Jordan. While many Palestinians, particularly wealthier ones, have settled down successfully and happily as Jordanians, in refugee camps and low-income areas, ambivalence and discontent are greatest. According to UNRWA, as of December 2006, 65 per cent of 1.8 million registered Palestinian refugees in Jordan were still living in ten official and three unofficial camps.
Although Palestinians constitute around half of the population, they remain vastly under-represented in Jordanian government. Nine of the 55 Senators appointed by the king are Palestinian, and in the 110-seat Chamber of Deputies, Palestinians have only 18 seats. Of Jordan's 12 governates, none are led by Palestinians.
Discrimination against Palestinians in private and state-sector employment remains common and a quota system limits the number of university admissions for Palestinian youth.
Government security operations disproportionately target Palestinians, especially operations conducted in the name of fighting terror. Amnesty International reported in July 2006 that Jordanian security services were more likely to torture detainees if they were Palestinian.
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Media vita in morte sumus — in the midst of life we are in death. This antiphon is attributed to the Benedictine monk Notker I of Saint Gall, who died in 912. Legend has it that the musician and poet wrote it when he saw construction workers building a bridge hover over an abyss. Most likely, however, the hymn is much older and originated in France around 750. It expresses an important Christian idea that was understood for many centuries and that we have sacrificed on the altar of modern culture — that death is about life.
Different from Notker, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote: “At death, the world does not alter but comes to an end” (Tractatus logico-philosophicus 6.431), which implies that “death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death” (6.4311). This modern position is the opposite of the Christian view, which has always seen death not as the end of life because, in the words of the Latin Requiem Mass, vita mutatur, non tollitur — life alters, it is not taken away. If eternal life does not start at death but continues the life we have led on this earth, death is indeed in the midst of life, and temporal life ought to prepare for death. But do we still understand this? More precisely, do we still live death?
Today the Church celebrates All Saints’ Day, or in an older language, All Hallows’ Day. Tomorrow it will celebrate All Souls’ Day. The first solemnity commemorates all saints known and unknown, and the second reminds us of the departed faithful who have not yet been purified and reached heaven. All Saints is an old feast going back to the fourth century, and since the seventh century has been celebrated in all of Christendom.
But we are about to lose its meaning, and one of the reasons is Halloween. As a billion-dollar secular event for children, Halloween now has absolutely nothing to do with remembrance of the dead and celebration of the saints. One may, of course, brush Halloween off as just another show we put on for the kids, and there may indeed be little harm in that. But in the mind of the people, it largely overshadows, and has perhaps supplanted, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. Once upon a time, All Souls was about placing candles on the graves of family members and about praying for their release from purgatory. Is it still?
Both All Saints and All Souls are important occasions for reflecting on death and its location in the midst of life. The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed places our own lives in a continuity of generations that is the fabric of culture. All Saints makes us conscious of those who have given examples of great virtue, not least the many whose lives were crowned by their deaths. There are few things more indispensable to believers; indeed, there are few topics more central to Western civilization. The ars moriendi was not only for Cicero at the center of his philosophy; according to Plato’s Apology and Phaidon, Socrates, in considering the death sentence passed against him and after drinking the cup of hemlock, didn’t regard death as a problem but was concerned with whether one has led a good life.
We have lost the art of dying, which we should develop throughout our lives. We have pushed any thought of death far away from us, and when faced with the inevitable, we have sanitized it. Most people no longer enjoy the dignity and comfort of dying in their homes surrounded by a family that is willing to listen and to share, to appreciate and give thanks, and thus to celebrate the life of the dying person. We leave death to the professionals.
This may be a relief for relatives, particularly for younger ones, but it also keeps them unprepared for their own departure. Much greater piety is displayed in the Attic steles on display at the National Archeological Museum in Athens. These tombstones always depict two persons — one departing toward death and the other remaining behind. In the faces of the latter one can read the perennial questions: Where do you go? Will we ever meet again? By portraying death as the hinge between generations, they symbolize continuity.
St. Francis of Assisi is reported to have died singing God’s praise. St. Thomas More gave his executioner a piece of gold. Mozart died over the writing of his unfinished Requiem, reaching as far as the passage Lacrimosa dies illa (“that tearful day”) in the Dies irae. Blessed Karl of Habsburg, the last Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, and last King of Jerusalem, on his deathbed in exile in Madeira summoned his son Otto to show him, in the former monarch’s own words, “how one dies as a Catholic and as an Emperor.”
Testimonies to the art of dying are abundant — hagiographies are indeed full of them. But do we still want to listen and learn? Even though some of us may have retained it, as a culture we have lost the art of dying that even the pagan Greeks knew well. This is what the two feastdays should be about. Instead, even theology too often ignores — or worse, trivializes — death by relegating it from dogmatic theology to a matter of merely pastoral concern. No longer do “progressive” theologians speak about the last things — death, judgment, heaven, and hell. And yet these things lie at the center of our humanity.
Reevangelizing our culture also means rediscovering these two solemnities and their true meaning. Both feasts together place death again where it belongs — not at the margin but in the midst of our lives. Eschatology is mystery and yet reality, and it is a centerpiece of our culture. The Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who was himself a rather tenuous Catholic, gave this thought expression in his poem Schlußstück (“Final Piece”), with clear reference to the old antiphon:
Der Tod ist groß.
Wir sind die Seinen
Wenn wir uns mitten im Leben meinen,
wagt er zu weinen
mitten in uns.
Death is great. / We are in his keep / Laughing galore. / When we deem ourselves deep / In life he dares weep / Deep in our core.
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By Fred W. Wright Jr.
People who are bilingual have a greater resistance to the development of Alzheimer's disease, according to a recent study from York University in Toronto. The report also said being bilingual may be a weapon against the deterioration seen during aging.
The study determined that learning a second language, even later in life, delays the decline of important brain function. A set of cognitive processes known as "the executive control system" — which allows people to think in complex ways and controls the allocation of attention — is enhanced in people who are actively bilingual throughout their lives.
We asked Dr. Amanda G. Smith, medical director at the University of South Florida Health Byrd Alzheimer's Institute and an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine, some questions about it.
Is the theory accurate?
There has long been a "use it or lose it" theory associated with Alzheimer's. People with higher educational levels and who do more mental activity throughout their lives tend to have lower rates of Alzheimer's or get it a few years later than those who don't. This recent study reflects a similar concept. The more you use your brain, the better chance you have at preserving your brain function.
The report suggests that learning a second language, even in later life, can be beneficial in terms of delaying the onset of Alzheimer's.
The national Alzheimer's Association (alz.org) has a whole section of its website dedicated to "maintaining your brain." In it, they offer a number of suggestions on how to prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer's based on data from large studies. One of the things they focus on is mentally stimulating activity. These include reading, puzzles, playing instruments, learning languages and a variety of other things. While there is not specific data as to whether one activity is better than another, it stands to reason that the more complicated the activity is, the more protective it may be.
I like to use the analogy of going to the gym. If someone goes only a few times a year, they won't have the same health benefits as someone who goes every day. Additionally, one doesn't go to the gym and just do biceps curls and leave. You work out your shoulders, your legs, your abdomen. So just doing one activity like sudoku every day might help, but it won't be as helpful as doing a variety of activities that stimulate different areas of the brain.
Do you have any anecdotes or statistics from your work in this respect?
Not specifically with regard to this. In working with bilingual people who have Alzheimer's, they often will forget their second language first and revert to using more of their native language.
Are some languages better to learn in this respect than others? Easier?
The more challenging to learn and different it is (from) one's native language, the more protective it may be, though I don't know that there is data that shows that for sure. One might assume that learning a language with completely different characters like some of the Asian languages, or ones with different characters that read from right to left instead of left to right, like Hebrew or Arabic, may be best in terms of brain activity. The more often one switches back and forth, the more stimulation it provides. Speaking a foreign language only a few times a year is probably not as beneficial as someone who does it every day.
Are there any other late-in-life skills that might apply here? What about learning how to play a musical instrument? If so, is a piano better than a violin? Is a flute better than a bass fiddle?
I don't think that one instrument is necessarily better than the other. If one is learning to read music, that is almost like learning another language. Playing an instrument also has a physical activity component to it as well. If one already plays a string instrument like the violin, learning the guitar might not be as challenging as learning to play piano.
Is any field of study — language, music, academic — a useful tool against the deterioration of the brain if taken up late in life? Is there a preferred "late in life" age to start such endeavors, or can a 90-year-old person's brain benefit as much as a 55-year-old's?
With Alzheimer's, the main brain changes include accumulation of amyloid plaque that is building up for 15 or so years before the first symptoms of forgetfulness appear. Age is the biggest risk factor. So, the benefit is probably more robust the earlier it is started. But it is never too late to try!
Fred W. Wright Jr. is a Pinellas County freelance writer. He can be reached at [email protected].
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Voice: Form and Functionby Barbara A. Fox, Manuel Arce-Arenales, Egbert J. Bakker, Ann Cooreman
The volume's central concern is grammatical voice, traditionally known as diathesis, and its classical manifestations as Active, Middle, and Passive. While numerous problems in the meaning, syntax, and morphology of these categories in Indo-European remain unsolved, their counterparts in more exotic languages have raised still further questions. What discourse functions and diachronic events unite 'voice' as a recognizable phenomenon across languages? How are they typically grammaticalized? What stages do children go through in learning them? How does 'voice' link up with ergativity and with other categories and constructions such as the Inverse and the Antipassive?
The authors in this volume have different perspectives on these problems: they discuss voice, e.g., from a typological-universal view, in relation to language acquisition and to ergativity, and from diachronic and cross-linguistic perspectives.
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Because small vampire squids occupy deeper water than larger squids, spawning probably occurs in very deep water. It is most likely that males transfer spermatophores to the female from their funnel. The female vampire squid is larger than the male and discharges the fertilized eggs directly into the water. Mature eggs are fairly large at 3-4mm in diameter and are found free-floating in small masses in deep water.
(Grzimek 1972, Young 1999)
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Australian Weather Calendar
|Chris Meier, Chris Bull and Matt Gould help assemble the satellite ground station outside of Darwin.||Imagery of atmospheric water vapour from the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite.|
February: Beyond the familiar weather satellite images
BUREAU of Meteorology technical officer Chris Bull recently helped construct a fully automated unmanned satellite ground station at Central Plains in the Northern Territory. He now helps maintain its tracking antenna, processing computers, communications equipment and backup power.
The $2 million station – sited 65 km southeast of Darwin to minimise electronic interference – draws data from the new generation of meteorological and earth-observing satellites, which offer far more information than the weather satellite images seen in the media. These data, together with more conventional observations, support national meteorological observations and services and have many applications.
For instance, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer (MODIS) is used to support weather forecasting, detect volcanic eruptions, estimate vegetation cover, measure sea-surface temperature and detect bushfires. Each day the Bureau uses about 250,000 satellite observations from 22 instruments on 12 satellites.
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May 13, 1861. In 10 days, Virginia voters would decide whether to ratify an ordinance to sever ties with the Union, drafted a month earlier during a secession convention in Richmond. An ad hoc delegation from 27 western Virginia counties assembled at Wheeling in the far northwestern corner of the state. There, the 436 delegates now gathered in Washington Hall, Wheeling’s Masonic building, debated whether the northwest—that area west of the Alleghenies and north of the Big Kanawha River—would agree to secede.
The most radical delegates wanted to break away from the Old Dominion and form a new Union-loyal state, an unprecedented course that would cut the region loose from its moorings to sail an uncharted sea with no guarantee of safe harbor. A banner above 65 delegates from Wood County, along the Ohio River, read, “New Virginia, now or never.” Urging on the “now or never” crowd was John S. Carlile of Clarksburg, 35 miles south of the Pennsylvania line. He had believed for a decade western Virginia should shake loose from the east.
Moderates advocated merely drafting resolutions condemning secession and detailing a history of wrongs the government at Richmond had inflicted on the west. Carlile reminded them that Richmond had already called for Confederate militia to be raised in the northwest. “No people who contented themselves with paper resolves, while bayonets were bristling all around them…ever maintained their freedom,” he thundered.
Waitman T. Willey, an attorney from Morgantown—just below the Pennsylvania border—cautioned that forming a new state would be considered “triple treason: treason against the United States, treason against Virginia, and treason against the Confederate States of America.”
Two days later the delegates, most of whom were not yet ready to give up on Virginia, declared the ordinance of secession null and void. They returned home to work for its defeat, but if secession passed they would ask their counties to formally elect delegates to a second Wheeling convention, one likely to produce more than “paper resolves.”
Differences in topography and culture between the two regions of Virginia had long caused political conflict. Western rivers flowed north and west, strengthening ties of commerce and culture with Pennsylvania and Ohio rather than with Tidewater Virginia. Between 1831 and 1853, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad cut its way from Harpers Ferry to Wheeling, opening trade between northwestern Virginia and Baltimore, not Richmond. Easterners complained the railroad had “abolitionized” the west.
The biggest bones of contention were slavery and legislative representation. Each Virginia county got two representatives in the House of Delegates. That gave control to the east, where there were far more counties. Eastern Virginia also enjoyed the majority of senatorial districts. Suffrage was exclusive to property owners, and absentee land speculators owned much of the west.
Many easterners felt the rugged west was fit only for half-wild barbarians. They agreed with Benjamin Watkins Leigh, a politician from south of Richmond, who sniffed, “What real share, so far as mind is concerned, could the peasantry of the West be supposed to take in the affairs of the state?”
The east’s sprawling plantations employed extensive slave labor. The small farms of the mountains did not, so slaves in the west were primarily found on larger farms along river valleys and in Kanawha County’s salt and coal mines. Western farmers, craftsmen and laborers believed slave labor only denied them opportunities and depressed wages.
By 1829, the howls for their own state from the west’s “yokels” grew loud enough to force a constitutional convention. Base legislative representation on white population, they demanded—the west’s white population had swollen nearly 370 percent between 1790 and 1829, while the east’s had declined. Disconnect voting rights from property ownership. While we’re at it, let’s abolish the viva voce system so voters don’t have to speak their choices aloud, and let’s establish free public schools for all white children.
Easterners were aghast. Separate voting from land ownership? That was “the most crying injustice ever attempted in any land,” Leigh said, against property rights. Secret voting? No good could come from that. Free schools in the west to be supported by the east, which bore the brunt of the tax burden—absurd!
The 1829-30 convention changed little beyond modestly expanding suffrage. Increasingly, the west perceived Richmond as the place where its tax money went and where laws were written to benefit the eastern aristocracy.
The growing rift was obvious, even to outsiders. After South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun raised the specter of disunion in 1850, a secession movement began in eastern Virginia—prompting Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts to appeal to the loyalty of western Virginians. “What man in his senses would suppose that you would remain a part and parcel of Virginia a month after Virginia ceased to be part and parcel of the United States?” he observed in a Fourth of July speech in 1851.
“West Virginia belongs to the Mississippi Valley,” declared Henry Winter Davis, an American Party congressman from Maryland, who predicted, “Virginia can never withdraw from the existing confederacy undivided.”
In this atmosphere, eastern Virginians finally heeded the west’s longstanding demands for a new constitutional convention, and acquiesced to a number of reforms. The governor and other state and local officials would henceforth be chosen by direct vote of all white males over 21, regardless of property ownership. In the first direct election, Virginians—for the first and only time—chose a westerner as governor: Joseph Johnson, a slaveowner from Harrison County, the place John S. Carlile called home.
The two houses of the Legislature were given equal power, with apportionment for the House based on white population; the west got 83 delegates, the east 69. The east got 30 Senate districts to the west’s 20.
“Huzzah, three cheers and a tiger!” should have echoed through the mountains after those victories, but the new constitution also changed tax laws. White men would pay a head tax, merchants were taxed via a licensing system, and all property would be taxed at average market value—except slaves. Slaveowners would pay no taxes on slaves younger than 12. All other slaves would be taxed at a fixed amount equal to the tax on $300 worth of land. Land was taxed at a lower rate than other kinds of property, such as livestock; tying the tax on slaves to the equivalent of $300 worth of land meant that a western farmer’s cows were taxed at 40 cents per $100 of value, while the tax on slaves, most of whom were in the east, was just 11 cents per $100.
The east still paid more taxes than the west, but taxing slaves at market value would have pumped lifeblood into Virginia’s anemic, debt-ridden treasury. The market price was soaring due to demand in the Deep South, but slave property valued at $234 million brought taxes of only $326,000 into the state’s coffers. Taxing slaves as other property was taxed might have paid for infrastructure westerners wanted, such as more railroads. The new tax system nullified their satisfaction with the other constitutional changes.
The fraying rope binding Virginia’s two regions unraveled rapidly after seven other Southern states seceded from the Union, beginning in December 1860. Within days, the Clarksburg Guard warned that if the Virginia Legislature called for a secession convention, westerners should take steps “for forming a new State in the Union.”
On New Year’s Day, pro-Unionists meeting in Parkersburg concluded, “The doctrine of secession has no warrant in the Constitution.” At a similar meeting in Wellsburg, another Ohio River town, attendees declared, “No ties bind us to Eastern Virginia but the unjust laws they have made. In no way are we, nor ever can be, of them.” On the other hand, the rabidly pro-South, pro-slavery Kanawha Valley Star salivated over the prospect of Kanawha coal being sold without paying the federal government a 24 percent tariff, if Virginia seceded.
A convention to address secession met in Richmond on February 14, 1861. One member—Waitman T. Willey, who would soon warn westerners about triple treason—reminded delegates that for nearly 400 miles, western Virginia bordered two of the North’s most militarily powerful states, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Secession almost certainly meant war, which would turn northwestern Virginia’s valleys into slaughter pens. “How would we stand in a Southern Confederacy? Why, sir, we would be swept by the enemy from the face of the earth before the news of an attack could reach our eastern friends.”
On April 17, after the attack on Fort Sumter and President Abraham Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion, the Richmond convention passed articles of secession—pending approval by the state’s voters on May 23. Mobs roamed Richmond’s streets, trampling the U.S. flag, dangling nooses from trees near western delegates’ lodgings and hanging one delegate in effigy. Most westerners fled home.
Beyond the mountains, secession was most popular wherever the most slaves were found, which was primarily the southern and eastern sections. Anti-secession feeling was strongest in the northwest, where industry was taking root. The previous July 4, Wheeling’s Republican-leaning newspaper, the Intelligencer, noted a Lincoln-Hamlin election banner floated over a house there “as proudly on a Virginia breeze as it would on the winds of New Hampshire.” But opinion was divided everywhere. At Fairmont in the northwest, pro-secessionists stormed a Union meeting, resulting in a free-for-all with at least 80 fist-swinging combatants on each side.
Without waiting for the May referendum, Governor John Letcher ordered the seizure of federal property throughout Virginia. Wheeling Mayor Andrew Sweeney, ordered to secure the custom house, post office and all public buildings and documents in that city, informed the governor, “I have seized them in the name of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, whose property they are.”
Statewide, secession was approved 125,950 to 29,373, but results from more than 30 counties were never counted. The Intelligencer printed voting results that showed the northwest rejected secession by nearly 5 to 1. The Kanawha Valley Star reported seven southern counties approved secession while five rejected it. In some places, anyone voting against secession risked being lynched; the system of casting votes verbally made their feelings public knowledge.
The Second Wheeling Convention convened on June 11. After two days it moved from Washington Hall to the custom house/post office Mayor Sweeney had secured in defiance of Governor Letcher. Representatives from 32 counties were prepared to create a new state, but Article IV of the U.S. Constitution required the parent state’s approval. They therefore annulled the Richmond government, saying it had usurped the people’s power by, among other things, canceling elections that had been scheduled for early March to select the state’s representatives to the U.S. Congress, and by placing Virginia’s military under the control of the president of the Confederate states before the May 23 referendum on secession. They organized the Restored Government of Virginia with Fairmont attorney Francis H. Pierpont as governor and crossed their fingers, hoping Washington would validate their actions. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a case stemming from Rhode Island’s 1842 Dorr Rebellion, had given Congress and the president the power to decide which of two competing governments within a state was the legitimate one.
Delegates saw hopeful signs. When the postal service cut off mail to seceding states, it made an exception for northwestern Virginia. More important, after Virginians approved secession, Lincoln’s War Department took the leash off Ohio and Indiana volunteers, who crossed the Ohio River and joined forces with the 1st Virginia Infantry (Union) that had been forming on Wheeling Island. In the pre-dawn hours of June 3, they surprised and drove off a small Confederate force at Philippi in the first inland battle of the war. (See America’s Civil War, May 2011.) On July 11, at Rich Mountain, the Federals won again, securing the northwest. Soon blue uniforms walked the streets of Harpers Ferry, and by September Confederate forces would be pushed out of the Big Kanawha Valley.
Ominously, however, U.S. Attorney General Edward Bates warned the Wheeling government, “The formation of a new State out of Western Virginia is an original act of revolution….Any attempt to carry it out involves a plain breech of both the Constitutions of Virginia and of the Nation.”
Regardless, Pierpont’s government continued its hazardous voyage. To establish a state treasury, he and delegate Peter Van Winkle arranged a $10,000 loan from Wheeling banks on their personal endorsement, and he sent the 7th Ohio Infantry to seize $27,000 in gold from a bank in Weston, appropriated by the Richmond government for constructing the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.
The Restored Government selected two new U.S. senators—Carlile and Willey—who were presented to the Senate on July 13 by Democratic Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee. Delaware’s Democratic Senator James Bayard Jr., who would be forced from office in 1864 for refusing to take a loyalty oath, protested. Even if Virginia were in a state of rebellion, creating a new state out of an existing one would be authorizing insurrection, he declared. John P. Hale, a Free Soiler from New Hampshire, disagreed. Admitting the new senators would recognize the loyal Virginians who clung to the Union and the Constitution.
An objection that Carlile and Willey had been elected two days before the Senate expelled their predecessors, James Mason and Robert M.T. Hunter, was short-lived. Mason and Hunter had resigned months earlier to join the Confederacy, and as Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois argued, it was customary to elect senators before a vacancy occurred. Ultimately, a reduced Senate, with most of its Southern members long gone, voted 35–5 to admit Carlile and Willey.
At Wheeling, the convention pondered boundaries for the new state and what its name would be. On August 20, a committee recommended 39 counties and the name Kanawha. Eleven counties were added later to provide a defensive barrier along the mountains against Confederate invasion and in the lower Shenandoah Valley to protect the B&O.
Western Virginia voters ratified the proposed new state 18,408 to 781 on October 24, 1862, despite the low turnout. Many men were away fighting for one side or the other, and some Southern sympathizers, like former Governor Joseph Johnson, had moved to Confederate Virginia. Union soldiers were posted at polling places, and a loyalty oath was required to vote. Some opponents of the new state claimed they were kept captive in their homes on election day.
Even those favoring a new state didn’t like the name Kanawha, associated only with the region of Kanawha County and the Big Kanawha and Little Kanawha rivers. When a convention opened in Wheeling on November 26 to write a constitution, it rejected Kanawha, New Virginia, Western Virginia, Allegheny and Augusta before settling on West Virginia.
Two weeks into the constitutional convention, the hydra of slavery lifted its serpent heads. The 1860 census showed nearly 430,000 whites and fewer than 13,000 slaves in West Virginia’s counties, compared to some 400,000 whites and nearly 410,000 slaves east of the mountains—but western slaveowners were not prepared to relinquish their human property.
“The Wheeling Constitutional Convention is becoming, with us, an enigma. What it will finally do we think is beyond the reach of mortal ken. We believe, however, that there is enough conservatism in that body to keep out the everlasting negro clause,” opined Clarksburg’s National Telegraph. “We regard it as the imperative duty of all legislative bodies to protect the rights of all, and the interests of every man in his property of whatever kind it may be….Negroes, according to the laws of Virginia are property, and no just legislation can reach them except by way of remuneration to the owners. This would be implicit and impractical at present. Let the Convention quietly give the negro the go by.”
Accordingly, the constitution voters ratified on April 24, 1862, said nothing about slaves already living in West Virginia but barred “persons of color, slave or free” from entering the state for permanent residence.
On June 23, the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Territories reported a bill recommending West Virginia statehood. John S. Carlile was on that committee. He had been itching for a new state since 1850, but he suddenly performed a double backflip and landed in the camp of those trying to prevent West Virginia’s statehood. He amended the bill to emancipate all children of slaves in the state after July 4, 1863, and tacked on 13 pro-Confederate Shenandoah Valley counties, changes guaranteed to abort statehood.
He never gave a reason for changing his stance, but it killed his political future. Delegates from Wheeling rushed to Washington and convinced the Territories chairman, radical abolitionist Benjamin Wade of Ohio, to drop the amendments.
The slavery issue remained a stumbling block. “There might not be many slaves,” Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner said, “but it takes very little slavery to make a slave state with all the virus of slavery.” He regarded the West Virginia statehood question as perhaps the greatest ever put before the Senate, encompassing the issues of slavery, states’ rights and the prosecution of the war.
To mollify abolitionists in the Senate, Willey proposed an amendment to West Virginia’s constitution: freedom at birth for all children of slaves born after July 4, 1863, and gradual emancipation for slaves under age 25. Though older slaves remained in bondage, the Senate narrowly approved statehood 23–17.
The House postponed consideration until December 9, when the usual arguments ensued: West Virginia statehood was just a punitive measure to chastise Virginia; not even a third of the Old Dominion’s population and less than one-fourth of its 160 counties had given their assent; it was a mockery to say Virginia had consented to the division.
Ohio’s John A. Bingham said Virginia had reduced itself to the status of a territory by its treason, eliminating the constitutional arguments, and the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dorr Rebellion case gave Congress the power to decide which government of Virginia was the legitimate one.
Pennsylvania’s Thaddeus Stevens didn’t believe the Constitution gave Congress the right to admit West Virginia but said he would vote to do so anyway, “under an absolute power which the laws of war give us.”
Constitutional wrangling aside, there were practical considerations. The people of every mountainous area of Dixie had opposed secession; rejecting West Virginia would tell these loyalists they could expect no succor from the federal government if they, too, attempted to break away from the Confederacy. Furthermore, West Virginia offered timber, salt, coal and oil, and thousands of its sons were already under arms in the Union cause.
Chugging through the debates were the trains of the B&O, carrying men, animals and war materiel along the only contiguous link between the East Coast and the Midwest. Its president, John W. Garrett, whom Lincoln called “the right arm of the Federal Government,” was urging Congress to keep his railroad safely in Union hands by accepting West Virginia.
The House approved statehood 96–55, but one more tall hurdle remained: Abraham Lincoln. If he refused to sign the bill, there was virtually no chance of getting it through both houses of Congress a second time.
On December 23, the president asked his Cabinet two questions: Was admitting West Virginia constitutional? Was it expedient?
They split down the middle. William Seward, Salmon P. Chase and Edwin Stanton approved, Seward stating, “The first duty of the United States is protection to loyalty wherever it is found.” Montgomery Blair, Gideon Welles and Edward Bates found the proposal neither constitutional nor expedient. Bates called it “a mere abuse…hardly valid under the flimsy forms of law.”
Christmas came and went. Time was running out. Then, on New Year’s Eve, Lincoln signed the statehood bill, contingent on West Virginia’s voters approving Willey’s gradual emancipation amendment. “It is said that the admission of West-Virginia is secession, and tolerated only because it is our secession. Well, if we call it by that name, there is still difference enough between secession against the constitution, and secession in favor of the constitution,” he reasoned.
Voters overwhelmingly approved the state’s amended constitution on March 26; in April, Lincoln authorized West Virginia to become the 35th state on June 20, 1863. At the end of April, Confederate cavalry under William “Grumble” Jones and John D. Imboden galloped out of the Shenandoah Valley on a two-pronged raid that spread terror through the western counties.
Jones’ men took Pierpont’s library from his home in Fairmont and burned it in the streets. They destroyed bridges, damaged railroads and carried out history’s first military raid on an oil field, sending some 150,000 barrels’ worth floating down the Little Kanawha in flames—but they couldn’t halt statehood.
The sun was shining in Wheeling on June 20. In front of the Linsly Institute, which would serve as the state capitol for the next seven years, Governor Arthur I. Boreman and other state officials were sworn in atop a platform draped in red, white and blue. With the new West Virginia government in place, Pierpont relocated the Restored Government of Virginia to Alexandria and later to Richmond to administer Union-controlled territory east of the mountains.
On February 3, 1865, the state legislature abolished slavery. It set up a system of free public schools without regard to race, but a later constitution, adopted after former Confederates regained the right to vote and hold office, segregated schools.
The Supreme Court turned back Virginia’s postwar attempts to reclaim its lost territory, but debate about the legitimacy of the state’s creation has never ended. West Virginians summed up their opinion with the words on their state seal—Montani Semper Liberi: Mountaineers are always free.
Gerald D. Swick is the author of Historic Photos of West Virginia and a weekly newspaper column of West Virginia history. His work has appeared in Wonderful West Virginia, Blue Ridge Country and Lincoln Lore.
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Isn't it true that Eli Whitney's slave, and not Whitney, invented the cotton gin?
He said to his slave that he would give him his freedom if he made a machine that made cotton. He made the machine but Whitney did not keep that promise and now they say that his master made it. Is it true?
2 Answers | Add Yours
There is certainly no documented proof that a slave invented the cotton gin that Eli Whitney is credited for having patented. It is possible that Whitney got the idea from a slave, or at least from a device that had previously been in use.
Whitney has been charged with borrowing the idea for the cotton gin from a simple comb like device that slaves used to clean the cotton. Whitney is said to have merely enlarged upon the idea of the comb to create the cotton gin, which works very much like an oversized comb culling the seeds and debris from the cotton. So, while historians have accepted the theory that Eli Whitney's cotton gin idea came from an African slave, this claim remains impossible to prove. The Cotton Gin patent # is 72X.
Under American law, slaves were not allowed to patent a device under their own name.
Whitney also received assistance from his partner, Phineas Miller, as well as financial support from his employer, Catherine Green. According to one source, Whitney spent several months in near seclusion working on the project.
There is no way of knowing if this claim is true, at least not given what we have in the way of evidence.
There are those who claim that a particular female slave had the idea first and that Whitney got it from her (she was not his slave as he did not have any slaves). There are also those who say that the gin was a technology that was well known at the time and that Whitney was just the one who got the patent.
There's no real way to know because there is no way to prove who "invented" anything or where they got the idea when the time in question is so long in the past.
To make up your mind, you have to think about how things can be proven and about how believable various claims are. You have to think about what motives people have for making various claims. Unfortunately, what ends up happening is that people decide what they think is true based on what they WANT TO THINK is true. This makes it very hard to know whom to believe.
We’ve answered 327,522 questions. We can answer yours, too.Ask a question
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New to coding, have a few questions
Posted 23 November 2013 - 11:52 AM
Posted 23 November 2013 - 01:05 PM Edited by Rawra, 23 November 2013 - 01:06 PM.
1.Yes C++ is suitable, although I would personally recommend to start with C and after being comfortable with it, to have a look at C++.
2. Have you coded before? If not, there's not just some 'draw model' command. You use an API (correct word?) such as OpenGL or DirectX, set up the rendering data and then call it as part of your main loop.
3. Whatever you want
4. The API can take care of that for you when you create your textures.
I'm guessing you have little or no experience coding? If so, I personally don't think you should just rush into graphics immediately (I tried it ages ago with something called DarkGDK or w.e, and didn't know what I was doing). First you need to actually be able to code and then throw graphics on top of it.
For C/++, I'd recommend C++ Primer by Stephen Prata
For DirectX, Introduction to 3D Game Programming Direct X 9/10/11 by Frank Luna
Although, if you're wanting to just make a quick game, perhaps GameMaker or Adobe Flash are more suitable
Posted 23 November 2013 - 02:20 PM
Thanks for the quick, detailed response.
Is C the same as C#?
I made an old crappy Flash game in College, but that was a long time ago.
I'm really looking to use C so I can start developing my knowledge on an in-depth language. Some people recommend Java, I'm unsure.
Posted 23 November 2013 - 02:48 PM
C isn't the same as C#, and C# is Object-Oriented (although I haven't used it before).
But I don't think you can go wrong with learning C first. It's quite simple (http://www.cprogramm...c-tutorial.html shows the main things to go through, which is quite few)
Posted 26 November 2013 - 03:05 PM
If you want to learn to actually program, start with C. Keep in mind that you won't be ready to work with graphics for a long time.
If your goal is to make simple platformers as quickly as possible, you can try Flash, Unity, or Torque.
Posted 18 December 2013 - 11:07 PM Edited by trip, 18 December 2013 - 11:15 PM.
I've been writing crappy ass games since about '79.
Since you have VS installed just pick up the XNA libraries(free) and go hog wild writing full on games in c#. You can even write for the 360 with VS and XNA.
I have sh*t tons of 2d based game code I'd be more then willing to let you have.
moved to the laptop to grab the xna link for ya.
Posted 19 December 2013 - 07:20 PM
Just remember man, games are a labor of love. Nobody's ever gonna be happy, you're never gonna be happy, it's never going to be good enough, it's going to take too long, you're gonna give up a dozen times, but in 5 years, you'll be in the top 1% of coders. I gave up on video games after a year and reading several articles about how poorly they're treated in the industry, and packed up my C/C++ books and got a job doing PHP. Soulless work, but it pays the bills a hell of a lot better than dinking around with games.
I wish you all the best. Every good game coder needs a scripter, an artist, and if you're lucky, a muse. Don't try to do it alone man.
- Cyron43 likes this
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Transformations in Coastal Mapping: 1987 - 2007
One of the missions of NOAA's National Geodetic Survey is to survey coastal regions and provide the nation with accurate, consistent, up-to-date national shoreline. The national shoreline provides the critical baseline data for demarcating America's marine territorial limits, including its Exclusive Economic Zone, and for the geographic reference needed to manage coastal resources, make nautical charts, and many other uses.
- Controlling the Imagery
- Photography and the Coast
- Mapping and Delivering the Shoreline
Since the late 1920s, collecting and using high-resolution aerial photography to define the nation’s 95,000-mile shoreline has been a responsibility of NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey (NGS) and its predecessor, the Coast and Geodetic Survey.
This aerial photo was taken in March 1986, as part of a coastal mapping project in the vicinity of Drum Point in the Chesapeake Bay. Click image for larger view.
The primary aerial photographic product is a 9x9-inch color photograph. Other types of photographs include black and white (or panchromatic), false-color infrared, and black-and-white infrared. Aerial photographic surveys are conducted on varying time cycles, depending on the amount of change caused by human or natural forces.
Photography is acquired when weather conditions, sun angle, and water levels are optimal to ensure that photographs will be suitable for a variety of purposes using standard photogrammetric techniques.
Aerial photographs are the primary source for creating coastal survey maps and digital map feature files. These maps and files, in turn, provide data for producing NOAA nautical charts. Data showing the accurate location of the shoreline is also used as a source to define the boundaries between private, state, and federal ownership and jurisdictions, including the territorial sea and the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone.
These photographs have many other uses as well, including coastal management, waterfront development, natural resource identification, water depth measurements, topographic mapping, seabed characteristic mapping, and location of features or obstructions to ensure the safety of marine and air navigation.
The article looks at some of the technological advances and operational changes that have transformed the way that NOAA maps the shoreline of the United States.
Aerial imagery provides an excellent view of the landscape, but to be used for the most accurate mapping, the imagery must be tied in to the reference system of the map. In the past, this was achieved using ground control points. With the advent of the global positioning system (GPS) and new positioning techniques, imagery can be controlled directly, without any need for costly ground control surveys.
The Way It Was…
The coordinates of the photo control panels were determined by NGS surveyors on the ground, using traditional surveying equipment and techniques. Click image for larger view.
Twenty years ago, GPS was in its infancy. After the failed launch of three out of 10 satellites, the system included only seven functioning satellites. Future launches were delayed until 1989 due to the grounding of all space shuttles after the Challenger disaster.
The methods for using GPS to accurately position a fast-moving platform, such as an airplane, were still being developed. At that time, all aerial photography for mapping had to be controlled using ground control points. These were locations on the ground in the project area that were visible in the photographs and had known positions or coordinates (latitude, longitude, and height) on the Earth. The ground control points were usually marked with large white cloth panels of various designs to make them easy to identify and measure in the photographs.
Photo control panels could be set up to mark an existing geodetic control point, or the panels could be laid out in any convenient location suitable for controlling the aerial photos and their coordinates determined by a new geodetic survey.
The Way It Is…
Today, GPS has grown into a system of 30 satellites orbiting the Earth and transmitting signals that can be used by a receiver on the ground (or in an airplane) to triangulate its position. The coordinates determined from GPS are very accurate (down to a few meters), but the standard positioning techniques are not accurate enough for controlling aerial mapping photography.
GPS satellites orbit about 20,000 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. Each satellite carries an extremely accurate atomic clock and transmits continuous, precisely timed signals, which can be picked up by receivers on the surface. A receiver needs signals from at least four satellites to determine its latitude, longitude, and height.
In the late 1980s, while working for NGS, Dr. Benjamin Remondi led the development of a groundbreaking technique for processing the signals from GPS satellites called “On-the-Fly Kinematic surveying.” Using this technique, the position of the camera when an aerial photo is taken can be determined to an accuracy of only a few centimeters — even from an airplane traveling over 100 meters every second! Today, all aerial imagery for coastal mapping is positioned using airborne kinematic GPS techniques
Much of the coastal mapping imagery that NOAA collects today also includes precise inertial data. These are measurements made by very advanced gyroscopes and accelerometers attached to the aerial camera. The inertial data is processed in combination with the GPS data to determine the precise orientation (tilt and heading) of the camera, as well as its position.
Differential GPS positioning uses two receivers picking up signals from the same set of satellites. Click image for larger view and full caption.
Even though airborne GPS is accurate enough to position the imagery by itself, a few ground control points are usually still used to help improve the final accuracy and to provide an independent check of the GPS positioning.
Since the 1930s, aerial photography has been the primary source for delineating the shoreline within NOAA’s Coastal Mapping Program. NOAA’s archive of over 500,000 aerial photographs provides a unique long-term record of coastal areas throughout the nation.
The Way It Was…
This aerial mapping camera was used by NGS in the 1960s and 1970s for coastal mapping. Later it was transferred to the Aeronautical Charting Office for their Flight Edit program.
In the late 1980s, film cameras were the only source of imagery. NGS owned and used three mapping cameras. These old cameras were not compatible with the emerging GPS technology. Also, film from these cameras took about a month to be developed, printed, and indexed before it could be used for mapping.
The digital sensors available at the time were generally used for land and resource studies, not for high-precision mapping. They simply did not have the high resolution needed to support large-scale mapping.
The Way It Is…
Today, aerial imagery used for mapping the coast comes from many different sources. In addition to the standard 9x9-inch film photography that NGS has been using for decades, we now use imagery from airborne digital cameras and from space-based high resolution sensors on commercial satellites. Even though the standard photography is originally collected on film, it is almost always converted to digital format (i.e., scanned) before being used for mapping.
A modern aerial mapping film camera, purchased in 1990, and still used by NGS today.
In 1990, NGS purchased a new film camera. This new camera included the ability to send a signal pulse to the aircraft’s GPS receiver each time a picture was taken, enabling precise positioning of each photo. In 1992, the new camera was modified to allow for customizable film labeling and improved image motion compensation. Now, in 2007, this camera is the only film camera still being used by NGS for coastal mapping.
In 2002, NGS borrowed, and eventually purchased, a digital camera. The Applanix Digital Sensor System (DSS) does not use film at all, but records images digitally using a light sensitive chip. The camera also includes built-in positioning and orientation sensors. All of the image and navigation data from the DSS are recorded on a removable hard drive, which can be sent to the office for processing or be processed on a portable computer right in the field.
The DSS has primarily been used for collecting emergency response imagery, due to the need for rapid turnaround after a disaster. For example, after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, NGS made the post-storm imagery available on the Internet within 24 hours of its acquisition.
NGS’s new digital camera, shown mounted in the floor of a NOAA airplane, was recently upgraded with a new lens, sensor chip, and a mount that automatically adjusts the azimuth (heading) of the camera during the flight.
The past decade has seen the introduction of commercial satellites capable of providing very high resolution images of the Earth. In 2000, NGS began using this new source of imagery to evaluate port areas for shoreline changes. If the evaluation indicated significant changes between the charted shoreline and the new imagery, then a regular coastal mapping project would be planned to update the charts in that area.
Recently, NGS has been updating certain types of charted features directly from the satellite imagery.
The natural and human-made environments along the U.S. coastline are continually changing. One of the primary missions of NGS is to map the shoreline and associated natural and cultural features, in order to keep NOAA nautical charts up-to-date. NGS makes all of its shoreline mapping data freely available to the public over the Internet.
The Way It Was…
By 1987, NGS had moved away from the old analog mapping systems, which used purely mechanical stereoscopic plotters. These plotters were replaced with several specially designed analytical plotters. These were optical-mechanical instruments that worked with computers to measure and calculate all the parameters needed to position and orient photographs.
A mechanical (analog) stereoscopic plotter is a precision instrument designed to accurately simulate the projection of a stereomodel formed by two overlapping photographs. Click image for larger view.
Analytical techniques were used to correct for, or minimize, all known errors and distortions in the photographs. The cartographer would use the instrument to trace the features in the photographs, and the system would record the coordinates and information about the mapped features.
At the time, all software and file transfer formats were developed for internal use. Mapping data were delivered to the Nautical Charting Division on floppy disk and used in their new computerized system to revise nautical charts. Shoreline data were only used within NOAA and were generally not made available to the public or outside agencies except by special arrangement.
The Way It Is…
An analytical plotter does not form an optical or mechanical stereomodel of overlapping photographs; rather, it mathematically computes, in real time, the model coordinates of photographs and transmits this data to a computer-driven plotting device or records it in a digital database.
In 1995, NGS began investigating the use of softcopy photogrammetric systems for coastal mapping. These systems are called “softcopy” because they operate only with digital images (i.e., scans of photographs or images from digital sensors), rather than with “hardcopy” film or glass photographic transparencies. Today, NGS uses softcopy photogrammetry for all of its coastal mapping projects.
Softcopy photogrammetric workstations use the same computational methods as the analytical plotter systems and have the same highly accurate mapping capability. However, the softcopy systems do not suffer from the physical limitations and high maintenance costs of optical-mechanical instruments. Furthermore, the vendors of softcopy systems continually improve their software to allow for a very high degree of automation in the mapping process, greatly improving production rates.
A softcopy workstation typically consists of a high-end desktop computer running specialized photogrammetric software with plenty of disk space for data storage, a three-dimensional pointing device (usually a trackball or special mouse), and a stereo display system for viewing the digital images in three dimensions.
Today, all of the shoreline data produced by NGS are distributed to both internal users and to the public through the NOAA Shoreline Data Explorer (NSDE) Web site. The NSDE allows users to view and download all of the data in the NGS Shoreline Database.
On the Web site, the user can search for coastal mapping projects by using an interactive map or by entering a project name, description of an area (e.g., “New Orleans”), or the state where an area is located. The shoreline features are displayed, using various colors and symbols, as separate data layers, which can be turned on and off individually.
The NOAA Shoreline Data Explorer can be accessed through the NGS Web site and allows users to view and download new and historic shoreline data. Click image for larger view.
The shoreline can be downloaded as shapefiles (a common format for Geographic Information Systems), including either a whole project, or just the area and layers that the user has displayed on the screen. Standard metadata, which describes important information about the project, is included for viewing or downloading as well.
Over the past 20 years, technological advances and operational changes have transformed the way NOAA maps the shoreline of the United States. In the past, all of the shoreline maps were produced by NOAA personnel, using analog and analytical mapping techniques, primarily for internal use. NOAA now manages the majority of its mapping projects through contracts with private mapping firms, uses advanced digital mapping technology, and distributes the data to a broad community of users.
From the collection of the imagery used to map the coast, to the delivery of the final products, and all the work in between, NOAA is fully embracing the digital age.
Contributed by Tim Blackford, NOAA’s National Ocean Service
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The Viking Kings
Sweyn, known as Tiugeskaeg, or Forkbeard due to his long, cleft beard, was the son of Harald Bluetooth and was born around 960. Harald Bluetooth (Danish Harald Blåtand) was King of Denmark between 940 and 985 AD. The identity of his mother is not known with certainty, he may have been Harald's illegitimate son by Aesa, (according to the Jomsvikinga Saga) though more probably his mother was Queen Gunild. Sweyn succeeded his father as King of Denmark in 986.
He was married twice, firstly to Gunhilda, the daughter of Mjeczislas, Duke of Poland and secondly to Sigrid the Haughty, the widow of Eric VI, King of Sweden.
The young Sweyn's first military expedition, in which he was allied to the famous Viking, Palnatoke, was against his father, Harald Bluetooth, who was killed in the conflict. He later lead a large Viking fleet to English shores, which failed in its intended attempt to capture London. Eric Sersel, King of Sweden took advantage of Sweyn's absence in England and occupied Denmark. Sweyn recovered Denmark on the death of Eric in in 994.
At the battle of Svolder in 1000, Sweyn in alliance with the Swedes, defeated and killed King Olaf I Trygvessön of Norway and divided his kingdom. Sweyn repudiated his first wife Gunild, daughter of Duke Mieszko of Poland, by whom he had two sons and married King Eric's widow, Sigrid, known as the Haughty. Sigrid was the beautiful but vengeful daughter of Skogul-Tosti, a powerful Swedish nobleman. The marriage produced five daughters.
Sigrid had previously received a proposal from Olaf Trygvasson, King of Norway , which she refused as it would have required that she convert to Christianity. She proudly told him "I will not part from the faith which my forefathers have kept before me." Olaf is reported to have angrily struck her in the face, whereupon Sigrid responded "This may some day be thy death." After her marriage to Sweyn, she was instrumental in creating a coalition of his enemies to bring about his downfall.
After his first expedition to England, Sweyn was resorted to extracting payment by blackmail as opposed to ravaging English shores. King Ethelred II the Redeless, the weak and ineffectual King of England, had ordered a general massacre of Danes in England on St. Brices Day, 1002, which included men, women and children, none were spared from the savage slaughter.
Sweyn swore on the bragging cup to be avenged on Ethelred and landed in England, at Sandwich in 1003, ravaging much of the south of the country, he then proceeded to the Humber. Northumbria surrendered to him, he then proceeded to Winchester and on to London.
The Londoners put up a stout resistance, King Ethelred and Thorkell the Tall, a Viking leader who had defected to him, were in the city. Sweyn then proceeded west to Bath, where the western thanes submitted to him. The Londoners fearing an awful revenge would be exacted on them if they resisted any further, followed their example and at last submitted.
Ethelred fled to the Isle of Wight and later joined his wife and children in Normandy, where they had taken refuge with her nephew, Duke Richard. Sweyn was declared King on Christmas Day, 1013. Some of the English provinces refused to pay homage to the Dane, who had no dynastic right and claimed the throne by right of conquest. He was never crowned.
England's first Danish King died suddenly of an apoplexy, on 3rd February, 1014, while threatening the Abbey of Bury St. Edmund's. He had reigned for less than a year. Ethelred was re-called by the Witan, causing Sweyn's son, Canute to flee. Sweyn was buried in England, but his body was later removed to Roeskild Cathedral in Denmark. He was succeeded as King of Denmark by his older son, Harold II.
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Download a printable copy here
Community mobility is an important part of well-being; it is often central to a person's autonomy and independence. Limited access to the community because driving is no longer a safe option can lead to depression, isolation, decreased participation in meaningful activities, decreased ability to care for one's self, and diminished wellness (Dickerson et al., 2007). Occupational therapy practitioners work closely with physicians, licensing authorities, and other community stakeholders to help older adults drive safely for as long as possible, and to provide a continuum of services if the adult needs to transition to driving cessation (Carr, Schwartzberg, Manning, & Sempek, 2010).
Occupational therapy practitioners are experts in addressing essential and everyday instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) such as the demands of work, home management and leisure tasks, and community mobility. Occupational therapists evaluate the person's performance skills and barriers to performance and compare these to the demands of driving (e.g., range of motion for reaching and steering, flexibility for turning one's head to park, scanning the environment for pedestrians, making quick actions and decisions in response to the unexpected), then determine appropriate adaptations and education to allow the person to drive safely.
Therapists also assess the critical subskills of performance—cognitive, visual, perceptual, psychosocial, and motor—to tailor intervention plans to meet the individual's specific goals. Occupational therapy practitioners have the education and training to understand the impact of medical conditions and the aging process on driving performance and the person's ability to use alternative community mobility options, so they can anticipate and prepare for potential future changes.
By focusing on the person's strengths as well as any physical or cognitive challenges, occupational therapists can evaluate an individual's overall ability to operate a motor vehicle safely and recommend assistive devices or behavioral changes to limit risks. They help older adults to develop a plan that allows them to continue participating in valued activities, whether as a driver or by using alternate transportation options. Occupational therapists can offer services along a continuum to best meet driving and mobility needs, which may vary with changes in the individual's abilities and/or medical status.
Research demonstrates that an occupational therapy assessment of IADLs can identify those older adults who may be at risk of injury to themselves or others or who have reduced access to transportation as driver or passenger by understanding each individual's difficulties with vision, perception, cognition, and/or motor performance and its impact on safety (Dickerson, Reistetter, Schold Davis, & Monohan, 2010). Recognizing the multidisciplinary nature of this practice area, driving and community mobility programs incorporate pathways of referral to additional services, which can include more clinical and equipment assessment and on-road testing, sometimes through joint arrangements with driving programs. All occupational therapists are able to identify physical, sensory, cognitive, and perceptual impairments that may have a negative impact on driving and community mobility.
Occupational therapists with specialized training in driver rehabilitation may administer comprehensive driving evaluations, which include both a clinical and an on-the-road component. The driving evaluation allows the therapist to make detailed recommendations about strategies, equipment, and training to improve driving safety and overall community mobility.
Interventions to allow the person to drive safely may include a number of skill-building, behavioral, and adaptive approaches, including:
- Training in things like how to use prescribed hand controls when neuropathies affect the lower extremities
- Recommending adaptive equipment, such as wider mirrors to compensate for age-related changes (e.g., decreased neck mobility) and allow continued driving
- Planning trips to drive only during daylight hours, on well-known routes, during off-peak hours, etc.
- Counseling to establish a graduated driving transition plan
Interventions to maintain community mobility if driving is no longer an option may include the following:
- Identifying alternative transportation options to continue community participation
- Addressing the requirements of transportation options with the individual (e.g., Can the person walk to the bus stop? Step high enough to board the bus? Understand the route schedule? Wait unaccompanied?)
- Providing resources, such as paratransit options and requirements; or names of grocery stores, places of worship, etc. that offer transportation services
Occupational therapy practitioners focus on helping people participate in the activities (occupations) they want and need to do. Some of these activities take place outside of the home (e.g., getting groceries, seeing physicians, socializing, volunteering, working), so practitioners address the physical, cognitive, environmental, or other barriers that may make safe driving or community mobility a challenge. Addressing community involvement through transportation helps older adults maintain independence, which reduces the amount of additional care and services they require.
Carr, D. B., Schwartzberg, J. G., Manning L., & Sempek, J. (2010). Physician's guide to assessing and counseling older drivers (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Dickerson, A. E., Reistetter, T., Schold Davis, E., & Monohan, M. (2011). Evaluating driving as a valued instrumental activity of daily living. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 65, 64–75. doi:10.5014/ajot.2011.09052
Dickerson, A. E., Molnar, L., Eby, D., Adler, G., Bedar, M., Berg-Weger, M., …Trujillo, L. (2007). Transportation and aging: A research agenda for advancing safe mobility. The Gerontologist, 47, 578–590.
For more information: The American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) offers a Web site dedicated to providing the public and health professionals with useful, timely information about older-driver safety and related resources. To learn more, visit AOTA's Driver Safety Web page.
Developed by Anne Dickerson, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA, and Elin Schold Davis, OTR/L, CDRS, for the American Occupational Therapy Association. Copyright © 2012 by the American Occupational Therapy Association. This material may be copied and distributed for personal or educational uses without written consent. For all other uses, contact [email protected].
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Details about Introduction to Environmental Economics:
Accessible to students with little or no background in the subject, Introduction to Environmental Economics, Second Edition, features an exceptionally clear writing style, a global approach, and wide-ranging theoretical coverage.
The first part of the book carefully explains core economic concepts, while the second part shows how these concepts are used to develop policy responses to several of today's most vital environmental issues including climate change, water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.
Ideal for upper-level undergraduate courses in environmental economics, the text incorporates a variety of case studies drawn from around the world and assesses different economic theories in the context of environmental issues.
New to this Edition
* Four new chapters on the economics of natural resource use, incentives for the environment, the economics of water quality, and the economics of waste
* Substantially revised chapters on the economics of climate change and on biodiversity
* New pedagogical features including questions and definitions
* A Companion Website offering exercises and links for students and PowerPoint-based lecture slides, solutions to text exercises, and graphs from the book for instructors
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Rent Introduction to Environmental Economics 2nd edition today, or search our site for other textbooks by Nick Hanley. Every textbook comes with a 21-day "Any Reason" guarantee. Published by Oxford University Press.
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The Iraq War Begins in 2003 — Today in History
Every generation has a few moments in history which are pivotal enough that we will never forget where we were when they happened. For many of us, the declaration of war on Iraq is one of those moments, and today is the tenth anniversary of that world-changing day.
On March 19, 2003, America (joined by coalition forces) officially declared war on Iraq, joined by coalition forces. Every television in America tuned in to hear U.S. President George W. Bush speak these words:
“At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.”
The grave danger that the President spoke of was the belief that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was either in possession of or in the process of building weapons of mass destruction. To this day, no WMDs have ever been found in Iraq.
After Iraq’s major cities were captured and secured, and the regime believe to be defeated, President Bush declared the end of “major combat operations” on May 1, 2003, less than two months after the operations began. Despite the announced victory over Iraq’s conventional military forces, the insurgency’s guerrilla warfare efforts have continued, killing thousands of soldiers, insurgents and civilians.
Hussein went into hiding soon after the American attacks began, communicating with his people through occasional audio recordings, and was eventually found and captured inside of a small hole in the ground.
During his time in hiding, the Iraqi people elected a 275-member National Assembly, and a new constitution was ratified in October 2006. One month after the constitution was ratified, Hussein was tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity. He was executed on December 30, 2006.
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From: Arizona State University
Posted: Tuesday, October 16, 2001
TUCSON, Ariz. -- University of Arizona space scientists are inviting the public to join them on campus at a special open house at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) 6 p.m. - 9 p.m. next Tuesday, Oct. 23, as the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft arrives at Mars.
The State of Arizona has a lot riding on the mission -- namely two of the three primary science instruments, said LPL director Michael Drake.
Drake chairs NASA's Solar System Exploration Subcommittee, the chief U.S. advisory committee for planetary exploration. Tuesday will be an important moment in the history of Mars exploration, Drake told UA students last Friday. Not only will scientists see the planet as never before, Odyssey will help target where future rovers and landers should go in missions leading to a 2013 Mars sample-return mission, he said.
UA planetary sciences Professor William V. Boynton heads the Gamma Ray Spectrometer (GRS) on the Odyssey spacecraft. The GRS will for the first time map the amount and distribution of chemical elements that make up the martian surface.
Scientists led by Arizona State University's Philip R. Christensen and NASA Johnson Space Center scientists, respectively, have a thermal emission imaging experiment and a radiation environment experiment on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft.
Boynton and his team will be at the Tuesday evening open house in LPL's 3rd-floor atrium to answer questions as events unfold.
Odyssey will begin the difficult and risky orbit-entry maneuver at 7:30 p.m. Tucson time, when the spacecraft fires its main engine to slow its velocity so it can be captured by the planet's gravity. Then the spacecraft will disappear behind Mars, unable to communicate with Earth for the next 20 minutes. When Odyssey re-emerges, it will transmit a radio signal back to the NASA Deep Space Network on Earth. The network will relay that very welcome signal to the LPL in Tucson at around 7:50 p.m.
David A. Kring, director of the NASA/UA Space Imagery Center and organizer of the open house, said exhibits will highlight recent Mars mission discoveries and research by several UA professors involved, including Victor Baker, Boynton, Kring, Alfred McEwen, Robert Strom and Peter Smith. Kring also has arranged tours of the Space Imagery Center and the "Mars Garden," where UA teams test their Mars mission instruments.
LPL is in the Kuiper Space Sciences Building, located east of the Flandrau Science Center on the mall. Parking is available in lots across the mall next to the Optical Sciences Center, and at the Second Street garage north of the Administration Building.
The GRS during its 917 Earth-day-long geological mission will map the amounts of the chemical elements over the entire surface of Mars -- including hydrogen, most likely in the form of water ice, buried up to a meter (more than 3 feet) beneath the martian dust.
It is research that Boynton was ready to begin with his GRS experiment on Mars Observer in 1993, when the spacecraft vanished as it arrived at the Red Planet.
Gamma rays are induced by cosmic rays from space and occur along with natural radioactivity in rocks and soil. Different chemical elements emit gamma rays at specific "signature" energies. The GRS will measure the energies of gamma rays emitted from Mars' surface, mapping the amount and distribution of chemical elements over the planet.
The GRS is actually a suite of three instruments that include a gamma sensor head and two neutron detectors.
Boynton and his team designed and built the GRS at their university laboratories in Tucson. William Feldman of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Igor Mitrofanov of Russia's Space Institute designed and built the neutron detectors.
The GRS neutron spectrometers were turned on soon after the Odyssey spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral on April 7, 2001. Scientists opened the gamma sensor head door at the end of June and collected data to calibrate the instrument, then closed the door at the end of August to prepare for next week's Mars Orbital Insertion.
All three parts of the GRS are performing well, "up to our expectations," team members say.
After Odyssey is safely in Mars' orbit, mission managers will begin "aerobraking," a technique that uses friction of Mars' upper atmosphere to slow the spacecraft still further, smoothing its initially elliptical orbit into the circular orbit required to do science. Aerobraking is a 76-day process, and transition to science orbit takes another approximately 14 days, UA team members say.
If everything goes as planned, the GRS neutron spectrometers will begin mapping hydrogen in the planet's surface and carbon dioxide at the poles around mid-January 2002, they add.
The GRS is scheduled to begin mapping other elements in the martian surface 200 days after Mars orbit insertion. This operation is contingent on sun angle, temperature and detector performance. Team members say they are hoping to start this data collection earlier, perhaps as early as March 2002.
Boynton and his team of scientists, engineers, graduate students and undergraduate students will run GRS science operations from the UA campus. Scientists from other research institutions across the United States and from several other nations are involved. The 2001 Mars Odyssey project overall is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Boynton's team has more details on the mission at their website, http://grs.lpl.arizona.edu. (EDITORS: The NASA/UA Space Imagery Center will also hold open house from 1 p.m. - 4 p.m. next Saturday, October 20. In addition to the exhibits and tours described above, UA Regents' Professor Victor Baker will talk at 1 p.m. on "Water on Mars," and UA Professor Alfred McEwen will talk at 1:30 p.m. on "Ongoing Mars Global Surveyor Mission." Kids, their parents and teachers are especially invited to Saturday's event.
(VIDEO: NASA-generated Beta-footage on the 2001 Mars Odyssey Mission will be available Friday afternoon, Oct. 19, from Vern Lamplot in UA News Services, 621-1877. For photo opportunities as exhibits are installed later this week, contact David Kring at 621-2024.)
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|Year : 2007 | Volume
| Issue : 1 | Page : 67-68
Low anemia prevalence among adolescents of an urban hilly community
S Goel1, BP Gupta2
1 Deptt. of Community Medicine, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh-160012, India
2 Deptt. of Community Medicine, I.G. Medical College, Shimla, H.P., India
|Date of Web Publication||6-Aug-2009|
Deptt. of Community Medicine, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh-160012
Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None
|How to cite this article:|
Goel S, Gupta B P. Low anemia prevalence among adolescents of an urban hilly community. Indian J Community Med 2007;32:67-8
During adolescence, more than 20% of the total growth in stature and upto 50% of adult bone mass are achieved. Adolescent girls need additional requirements of iron upto 15% to compensate the physiological blood loss during menstruation. Stunted and undernourished girls are more likely to have complications during pregnancy and give birth to low birth weight babies.
In view of the above, present study was carried out to find out the magnitude of anemia in adolescents in an urban community of Shimla and to ascertain the factors influencing anemia.
| Material and Methods|| |
A school based cross-sectional study was conducted through a pretested, semi structured interview schedule in Boileaugang, an urban field practice area of Dept. of Community Medicine, Indira Gandhi Medical College, Shimla during June 2002 to January 2003. All (870) students of eleventh and twelfth class of four senior secondary schools aged 10-19 years were included in the study. The students were asked about their age, dietary habits, water and food hygiene, history of worm infestation, menstrual problems (in females), and symptoms of anemia viz. headache, fatigue, dyspnoea, blurring of vision, parasthesia, syncopal attacks. All the students were then clinically examined for the signs of anemia. Later 10% of students were selected by systematic random sampling technique and tested for anemia using Sahli's hemoglobinorneter. WHO definition of anemia in adolescents was used (hemoglobin level below 12gm% in girls and 13gm% in boys .
Clinical case definition for anemia used in the study was pallor in palpebral conjunctiva and hard palate . A group of five experts from field of medicine and pediatrics examined each student for pallor and diagnose a case as anemia after reaching consensus. For grading personal hygiene, a scoring system was devised based on regular bath, trimming of nails, cleaning of hairs, washing of hands before meals, cleanliness of clothes/footwear, presence of lice and skin diseases. For dietary history, the diet taken by adolescents during the last one week was ascertained. Inadequacy of green leafy vegetables, pulses and meat were calculated when the respondents had not taken either of these during the last one week. Chi square test was applied for the purpose of analysis. Informed consent of the head of the institution was taken.
| Results|| |
A total of 870 adolescents (480 males and 390 females) participated in the study. Anemia was diagnosed clinically in 62 (12.9%) males and 52 (13.3%) females with an overall prevalence of 13.1 %. Mean age of adolescent boys suffering from anemia was 15.3 years while of girls was 15.1 years. The prevalence of anemia in both males and females were highest in 10-13 year age group and it decreased with increase in age. Almost equal prevalence of anemia was found in males. A total of 48 (77.4%) anemic males and 33 (63.5%) anemic females had poor personal hygiene. It was also observed that, 95 (23%) anemic males had history of worm infestation as compared to 378 (77%) non-anemic males (p<0.001).
Among females, 44 (84.6%) anemic subjects had history of worm infestation as compared to 147(43.8%) non-anemic females (p<0.001). The relationship of poor diet (i.e. inadequacy of green leafy vegetables, pulses) with anemia was found to be statistically significant (p<0.001), although, the relationship of anemia with meat intake was found to be insignificant. It was also seen that, 30 (53.6%) anemic females had menstrual problems like menorrhagia, polymenorrhea, or irregular menstrual cycle cycles as compared to 22 (6.6%) non-anemic females (p<0.05). The signs and symptoms viz. Headache, fatigue, dyspnoea, parasthesia and syncopal attacks were significantly (p<0.05) more prevalent in anemic subjects in both males and females. Blurring of vision was not significantly associated (p=0.21) with anemia. [Table 1] Based on hemoglobin estimation by Sahli's hemoglobinometer in 87 randomly selected adolescents, the prevalence of anemia was 14.9% (15.5% in males and 14.3% in females).
| Discussion|| |
Various studies conducted in India , and other developing countries , have shown a high prevalence of anemia in adolescents i.e. between 25 to 88%. Agha eta16 conducted a study in adolescents residing in Islamabad showed a prevalence of anemia in 17% males and 18% females. Similarly, a low prevalence of 20% was observed in a study by Abalkhail etal in Saudi Arabia . Low prevalence of anemia among adolescents is unique to this study.
Some studies reported higher prevalence of anemia in girls as compared to boys. Similar finding was observed in our study (14.3% males vs. 15.5% females by Sahli's hemoglobinometer method). Few studies have shown that mean hemoglobin level among adolescents increased with increase in age and the prevalence of anemia decreases with age. Similar findings were observed in our study. In the study, worm infestation was significantly associated with anemia. Various studies have also shown that continued presence of worms in a population of adolescents with rapid growth needs, may contribute significantly to blood loss in intestine with resultant anemia.
Few studies , have shown that menstruating girls were more at a risk of being anemic than non-menstruating girls. In our study, the prevalence of anemia was significantly higher in the group of females that had menstrual problems like menorrhgia, polymenorrhea and irregular menstrual cycles. In our study, anemia was significantly associated with lower intake of green-leafy vegetables, and, pulses. This is in conformity with other studies . In the study, it was shown that, consumption of vegetables, milk and meat resulted in lower prevalence of anemia among adolescent girls and more vegetarians were anemic as compared to non-vegetarians.
The low prevalence of anemia among adolescents reported in our study needs further evaluation. This remains to be seen whether it was due to the higher altitude where chance of anemia are reported to be lesser . However, NFHS II had reported a prevalence of 40.5% among women and 56% among adolescents in Himachal Pradesh . So further comparative studies (hilly versus plain areas) on prevalence of anemia among adolescents may be planned.
| References|| |
|1.||Tech. Report Series. World Health Organization (WHO) 1968; No.405 |
|2.||National Consultation on Control of Nutritional Anemia in India. 16-17th October 1997, Govt. of India, Dept. of Family Welfare (Maternal Health Division), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Nirman Bhawan, New Delhi, 1998 |
|3.||Verma M, Chhatwal J, Kaur G. Prevalence of Anemia Among Urban School Children of Punjab. Indian Pediatr, 1998 ; 35(12):1181-6. |
|4.||Das DK, Biswas R. Nutritional Status of Adolescent Girls in a Rural Area of North 24 Parganas District, West Bengal. Ind J Public Health 2005; 49:18-21 |
|5.||Shah BK, Gupta P. Anemia in Adolescent Girls: A Preliminary Report from Semi-Urban Nepal. Indian Pediatr., 2002; 39(12): 1126-30 |
|6.||Agha F, Sadaruddin A, Khan RA, Ghafoor A. Iron Deficiency in Adolescents. J Pak Med Assoc., 1992; 42(1): 3-5. |
|7.||Abalkhail B, Shawky S. Prevalence of Daily Breakfast Intake, Iron Deficiency Anemia and Awareness of Being Anemic Among Saudi School Students. Int J Food Sci Nutr.,2002; 53(6): 519-28. |
|8.||Chakma T, Rao PV, Tiwari RS. Prevalence of Anaemia and Worm Infestation in Tribal Areas of Madhya Pradesh. J Indian Med Assoc.,2000; 98(9): 570-1. |
|9.||Reeves J T, Leon-Velarde F. Chronic Mountain Sickness: Recent Studies of the Relationship Between Hemoglobin Concentration and Oxygen Transport. High Alt Med Biol. 2004; 5: 147-55. |
|10.||NFHS II. Nutrition and Prevalence of Anemia in Adolescence. National Family Health Survey II India, Main Report. International Institute For Population Science, Mumbai 2000. |
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What is it?
These weeds are common in a wide range of states, and are easily recognized. Of this list, five are common to all states; they are marked with an asterisk.
- Black Nightshade (Solanum americanum)
- Creeping Buttercup (Ranunculus repens)
- Curly Dock (Rumex crispus)
- Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)
- Ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea)
- Henbit (Lamium amplexicaule)
- Lambs quarters* (Chenopodium album)
- Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)
- Pennsylvania Smartweed* (Persicaria pensylvanica)
- Purslane (Portulaca oleracea)
- Ragweed* (Ambrosia spp.)
- Redroot Pigweed* (Amaranthus retroflexus)
- Thistle (Cirsium arvense)
- Wild Mustard (Sinapis arvense)
- Wild Onion (Allium canadense)
Sources of imported weeds
- Transplants from other gardeners or nurseries
- Bird Feeders
- Rodents: squirrels, chipmunks, mice
Many weeds have cultivated cousins, further complicating identification. Note the close similarities between the photographs below.
Canadian Thistle Seedlings
Oriental Poppy early growth
Mugwort / wild chrysanthemum
So how do you go about identifying that strange plant growing amongst your precious perennials?
- Online sources often have photograph of seedlings. These are especially helpful because they have an interactive search function.
- County extension offices and/or state agricultural offices often publish weed identification brochures.
- The Weed Finder brochure from Ortho is available free from most places selling their products.
- University of Minnesota Extension publishes "Annual Broadleaf Weed Seedling Identification" (Extension Publication 89, North Central Region).
- Cooperative Extension Service University of Georgia publishes "Common Weed Seedlings", which includes color photographs of weed seedlings, as well as details.
- Many libraries have excellent references and publications relevant to your area.
- The USDA website has a wealth of information.
The biggest question for any gardener is: How Do I Get Rid of It?!
Understanding how the weed reproduces or spreads is important in identifying how to control it. Perennial weeds are particularly hard to control. The afore-mentioned weed ID resources will include this type of information, but here are some things to note:
- Simple root systems succumb easily to foliar herbicides.
- Taproots can break, and new plant will grow from piece left behind.
- Plants that spread by stolons can intermingle with desirable plants, making use of systemic herbicide dangerous.
- Pre-emergent herbicides can eliminate the problem for the following year.
Vigilance is required to stay ahead of the weeds, especially during quality growing weather. When those first green sprouts appear in the wrong place, do your homework. Summer is for other activities than weed-pulling!
I have found the following sites helpful.
University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Online
Horticulture & Home Pest News Online, Iowa State University Department of Horticulture
Weed Identifier Online. Illinois Council on Food and Agriculture Research
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Garden of Remembrance:
The Queen laid a wreath in tribute to those killed fighting for Irish independence. The Garden, which opened in Easter 1966 to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, is dedicated to "the memory of all those who gave their lives in the cause of Irish freedom”.
The Queen had a private viewing of the Book of Kells, a ninth century gospel manuscript. The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth was founded in 1592 by Elizabeth I, who is still toasted nightly in the college. The Queen viewed the Royal Charter of Queen Elizabeth I for Trinity College Dublin, which was signed in the year it was founded.
Aras an Uachtarain, the presidential residence:
The Queen was met by President Mary McAleese at her residence in Phoenix Park, in a ceremonial welcome. It dates back to 1751 and is used to house the viceroys who oversaw British rule in Ireland and Queen Victoria and George V stayed there. The Queen signed the visitor's book in its lavish state ballroom, which dates from 1802.
The Queen helped plant an Irish oak sapling in the vast park outside the president's official residence, which is a short distance from a giant redwood planted by Queen Victoria in 1861.
The Charles Stewart Parnell monument:
The Queen passed the statue in O'Connell Street, which is in memory founder of the Irish Parliamentary Party battle for home rule for Ireland.
The Queen also passed the GPO, a short distance away. In the 1916 Rising seven signatories to Ireland's Proclamation of Independence, backed by the 1,000 strong Irish Citizen Army, launched a revolution against British rule beginning with the takeover of the GPO. It is the sight where the Proclamation was read out.
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At the courthouse in Hillsboro, a small Southern town, Bertram Cates is behind bars, awaiting trial for teaching his students about Darwin’s theory of evolution. Rachel Brown, a friend and fellow teacher who also is the daughter of the town’s minister, visits Cates. She brings Cates some clean clothes and urges him to plead guilty and throw himself at the mercy of the court. Cates remains firm in his resolve.
Hillsboro erupts with excitement as prominent lawyers and journalists arrive for the trial. E. K. Hornbeck, a critic for the Baltimore Herald, surveys the scene and makes wisecracks. The Bible-thumping politician Matthew Harrison Brady, who leads the prosecution, arrives to a warm welcome from the townspeople and a picnic in his honor. Brady meets with Reverend Brown, District Attorney Tom Davenport, and the mayor. Brady also holds a confidential discussion with Rachel about her friendship with Cates. Rachel leaves the discussion feeling that she has betrayed her friend.
Hornbeck informs the crowd that the prominent litigator Henry Drummond will represent the defense. The mayor names Brady an honorary colonel in the state militia. Reverend Brown and the mayor discuss how they might prevent Drummond from entering Hillsboro. When the crowd disperses, Rachel and Hornbeck discuss Hornbeck’s columns, which portray Cates as a hero. Around sunset, Hornbeck greets Drummond, who has just arrived in town.
A few days later, Drummond, Brady, Davenport, and the judge conduct jury selection. They accept the illiterate Mr. Bannister. Brady makes a joke about Drummond’s bright purple suspenders, but Drummond turns the tables by revealing that he bought the suspenders in Brady’s Nebraska hometown. As jury selection continues, Brady rejects Mr. Dunlap, a fervent supporter of Brady. Drummond mockingly objects to Brady’s honorary title of “colonel,” so the judge grants Drummond the same title to even the score. Brady and Drummond accept Sillers, a feed store employee, as a juror. Drummond, who argues that the evolutionist movement should be given the same amount of attention as the fundamentalist movement, notes that the townspeople have erected a sign commanding “Read Your Bible!” in the town square and have advertised prayer meetings. Frustrated by Drummond’s demands, the judge declares the court in recess.
A crowd of admirers surrounds Brady as he leaves the courtroom, but no one dares to come near Drummond. Before Drummond leaves the courtroom, Rachel expresses to him her concerns about the trial. Cates relates the hardships he has endured since his arrest. Drummond, who empathizes with Cates’s struggle and isolation, offers Cates the opportunity to change his plea on one condition: that Cates truly believes he has done wrong. Cates decides to persevere for his cause. Rachel, however, informs them that Brady has asked her to testify against Cates. A frantic Cates returns to his cell, concerned about the details of personal conversations that Rachel might betray. Drummond reassures Rachel that Brady is less powerful than she believes. Assuring her that Cates is fighting for a worthy cause, Drummond compliments Rachel on her strength in loving Cates.
On the courthouse lawn, Brady leads a group of reporters to a prayer meeting that Reverend Brown is about to conduct. Brady tells the reporters about his former friendship with Drummond. Brown begins the prayer meeting with a quick recitation of the creation story presented in Genesis. He proceeds to incite the crowd into a frenzy. The climax of Reverend Brown’s rant is an incantation to bring the fires of hell down on Cates. When Rachel protests, her father requests the same curse for her. Brady, disturbed by Brown’s zeal, interrupts and reminds the preacher of the Christian doctrine of forgiveness. Brady calls the prayer meeting to an end and then speaks to Drummond about their old ties and how they have drifted apart.
Two days later, in the courtroom, Brady questions thirteen-year-old Howard Blair about Cates’s teaching. Howard confirms that Cates taught him that humans descended from “Old World Monkeys” and that his teachings on creation omitted any reference to God. Cross-examining Howard, Drummond asks the boy about evolutionary theory. The prosecution objects, but Drummond claims he is trying to establish the basic human right to think. The prosecution and the judge counter that the trial is not about the right to think. Drummond asks Howard whether evolutionary theory has harmed him, and the question confuses the boy. Drummond asks Howard if he believes what Cates taught him. Howard says he hasn’t made up his mind. Drummond then asks the boy what he thinks of modern technological advances that are not mentioned in the Bible. Howard is again confused, and Brady objects. Drummond rails against Brady’s absolute notions of right and wrong. Drummond asks Howard if he understands what is being discussed. When the boy says no, he is dismissed.
The prosecution calls Rachel to the stand. To explain why Cates stopped attending church, Rachel tells the story of Tommy Stebbins. An intellectually curious boy, Stebbins was one of Cates’s favorite students. When Stebbins drowned in a local river, Rachel’s father preached that the boy would suffer eternal damnation because his parents never had him baptized. Upset both by the death of the boy and the preacher’s reaction, Cates stopped going to church. Brady asks Rachel further questions about her discussion of Cates’s ideas, but Rachel falters and becomes visibly upset. The prosecution rests its case.
Drummond attempts to call several expert scientists to testify about evolutionary theory, but the judge says that their testimony is inadmissible. Drummond shifts gears and calls Brady to the stand as an expert on the Bible. Asking Brady several questions about Biblical passages that defy the tenets of modern science, Drummond catches Brady off balance and gains the support of the crowd. As Drummond exposes contradiction after contradiction in Brady’s views, Brady becomes hysterical and begins to shout names from the Bible. Davenport objects, and the judge adjourns the court.
The next day, just before the jury reads its verdict, Cates and Drummond discuss Cates’s chances. A radio reporter enters the courtroom to set up his equipment. The mayor takes the judge aside and tells him that political forces in the state are growing worried about media coverage of the trial. The mayor implicitly tells the judge to pass a light sentence. The jury hands their verdict to the judge, who declares Cates guilty and fines him $100. The prosecution objects to the light sentence. Drummond demands an appeal, and the judge grants him thirty days to prepare it.
The judge adjourns the court. Brady tries to read some prepared remarks, but the spectators in the courtroom begin to leave. Brady tries to deliver the speech to the radio reporter, but the reporter says that the station producer has cut him off. Brady has a mental breakdown and must be carried out of the courtroom as he deliriously recites what sounds like a presidential campaign victory speech. Hornbeck mocks Brady, while Cates expresses concern for him.
Meeker, the bailiff, tells Cates that Hornbeck and the Baltimore Herald have posted $500 for Cates’s bail. Rachel tells Cates that she has decided to leave her father and that she has overcome her fear of thinking for herself. Word arrives that Brady has died of a “busted belly,” and Cates, Rachel, and Drummond decide to leave together on the train out of town that evening.
For the question of how Brady dies, he doesn't exactly die from a busted belly, he dies from a heart attack. Hornbeck just says that because Brady loved to eat a lot of food. His heart attack happened because Cates had a small punishment for this law.
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Watery discharge: a norm or an early sign of disease?
Though not scary like green discharge, a heavy watery discharge can cause a lot of trouble. With constant exposure of the skin to moisture, there are painful skin intertrigo and abrasion. Besides, in women with pathological processes, the transparent watery vaginal discharge may have a foul smell, which cannot be hidden with scented pads or strengthened genital hygiene.
The smell and the presence of impurities in the watery vaginal discharge is the most striking of all the possible signs of the disease. Aching pain in the abdomen or just heavy discharge can remain undetected for a long time, while the pathology progresses. Many women simply do not want to bother the doctor with such an issue they regard as minor. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between when a watery vaginal discharge can be considered normal and when it is a symptom of disease.
Watery discharge in teenage girls
On average, girls begin puberty at ages 10 or 11. It is during this period that the first vaginal discharge appears, which is often scarce and resemble the consistency of egg white. Significant release of estrogen in the blood of a teenage girl can cause heavy watery discharge. Because of the “dancing” and “swirling” nature of hormones in teenage age, watery vaginal discharge in girls of 10 to 12 years old can be considered a normal phenomenon.
Watery vaginal discharge during a cycle
Hormonal regulation of the female body is extremely complex. For 21 to 35 days, the body undergoes a kind of preparation for fertilization. Before ovulation occurs, there is intensified growth and development of the follicle from which the ovum will be released with a large supply of nutrients and readiness to merge with a sperm cell. Discharge during this period is usually scanty and viscous, and the cervix is sealed with a plug preventing infection from entering the cavity designed for the future baby.
Secretion of hormones changes with the release of the egg into the fallopian tube – the mucus plug is softened and tears away so that the sperm could freely pass through the cervical canal. Discharge during this period is always heavy and its watery nature may be normal.
After a few “rough” days of ovulation, the discharge again becomes mucous and thick. Before menstruation occurs, uterus actively prepares for conception – a new layer of cells permeated with tiny blood vessels appears in the uterine cavity, while a large amount of fluid accumulates in the uterine walls. But since there is no fertilization, the egg dies and the lining tears away. Swelling of the uterine walls may be the cause of the watery vaginal discharge occurring before the start of menstruation.
Diseases of which watery discharge can be a symptom
If the clear vaginal discharge remains watery regardless of the particular menstrual cycle phase, has a foul smell, admixture of blood or pus clots, then there is high possibility of the existence of pathological process. You urgently need to see a doctor for diagnosis and treatment.
Discharge due to vaginal dysbacteriosis (dysbiosis)
Vaginal dysbacteriosis (also called bacterial vaginosis or vaginal dysbiosis) is a disease associated with an imbalance of vaginal microflora. In such circumstances, there is rapid reproduction of Gardnerella bacteria, whose activity causes an unpleasant smell of a spoiled fish.
Clear discharge due to bacterial vaginosis often causes irritation of the mucous membranes – there is itching in the crotch and urination is accompanied by a burning sensation. When the immune processes are triggered, vaginal discharge becomes thicker and takes a yellow-green color.
Cervical erosion, ulceration and cancer
The walls of the vagina have no glands and are humidified by fluid secreted by cervical goblet cells. Therefore, any pathological process in the body is accompanied by heavy vaginal discharge – the cells secret fluid to fight against antigens. During cervical erosion, the discharge may not significantly differ from the usual discharge, but with an ulcer and cervicitis, the clear liquid discharge becomes extremely heavy.
Watery vaginal discharge is accompanied by such a terrible disease as cervical cancer, but with the destruction of the cervical vessels, the fluid acquires a reddish color.
Inflammation of the uterus is always accompanied by a partial opening of the cervical canal and termination of the muddy watery liquid. For acute endometritis, it will be impossible not to notice the pathology – the inguinal lymph nodes increase, the body temperature rises and aching and nagging pains in the abdomen appear. The symptoms are milder for chronic endometritis – only a heavy discharge and recurrent pain in the abdomen and lower back.
When there is endometritis, the uterine epithelium changes its structure making it impossible for the fetus to attach itself and for the placenta to form. This leads to abortion in early pregnancy, miscarriage and infertility. You need to therefore see a doctor immediately at the slightest suspicion of endometritis.
Salpingitis and adnexitis
Vaginal discharge caused by inflammatory diseases of the fallopian tubes provoked by viruses, trauma, and chlamydia can also be watery in nature. When it is bacterial infection, the inflammation quickly changes its nature and the discharge becomes yellowish or yellow-green in color.
Salpingitis and adnexitis becoming chronic can lead to the formation of growths in the fallopian tubes, thus obstructing the passage of the fallopian tubes and causing infertility. Only instrumental methods can be used to diagnose inflammatory diseases of the fallopian tubes. In order words, you need to see a doctor as soon as possible.
In most cases, the appearance of watery vaginal discharge regardless of the particular menstrual cycle phase is a sign there are inflammatory processes in the female reproductive system. A foul smell and discomfort are another sign of the need to see a gynecologist.
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A firearm is any instrument which discharges a missile by the expansive force of the gases produced by burning of an explosive substance.
Forensic Ballistics is the science dealing with the investigation of firearms, ammunition and the problems arising from their use.
General make-up and Mechanism: Firearms consist of a metal barrel in the form of hollow cylinder of varying length, which is closed at the back end and is called the breech end; and the front open end is called the muzzle end. The inside of the barrel consists of three parts. (1) The chamber, at the breech end to accommodate the cartridge, which is usually of large size than the bore, (2) the taper, called lead or leed in rifled arm and chamber cone in a smooth bore, connects the chamber to the bore, and (3) the bore, which lies between the taper and the muzzle. A breech action is attached to the barrel at the breech end to close the end of the barrel. It consists of a receiver which contains a bolt or block which closes and locks. The bolt or the block can be opened to insert a fresh cartridge into the chamber. When the weapon is closed for firing, the barrel comes into position against a flat block of metal called breech face, which seals the breech end of the chamber. The block is pierced in its centre to accommodate the firing pin which is actuated by a spring and moves forward when trigger is pressed. When the weapon the weapon is cocked (ready to be fired), the hammer has been pulled back against a b spring and is held back by the end of the sear, which rests in a notch known as the bent. When the trigger is pulled, the sear is disengaged from the bent and the hammer moves forward and strikes a small pushrod (firing pin or striker). Occasionally, the firing pin and hammer are external and can be pulled aback of the bolt action. The barrel of a “breakdown” action gun or rifle, i.e., a weapon which opens like a shotgun, has at its breech end a moveable limb called extractor, which moves backwards withdrawing the cartridge, when the breech is opened. In a bolt action weapon, a small claw fitted to the front end of the bolt, pulls out the cartridge with it, when the bolt is withdrawn. The lock contains the lock and trigger mechanism, i.e., the apparatus for discharge of the weapon. A firearm s provided with sights with which one can aim, so that the bullet can strike the target accurately. The ‘stock’ is the supporting or handle part of the weapon, the end of which is the ‘butt’. Usually the trigger mechanism and any provision for reloading and ejecting cartridges is within the stock. The hand –arms are provided with grips for grasping them by hand. In long barreled weapons, the butt is elongated to fit into shoulder. Those with long barrels are fired from the shoulder, i.e., rifle and shotgun, and those with short barrels may be fired from the hand, i.e., pistol and revolver. Firearms except revolves and hammer guns have a safety device, which locks the firing mechanism when it is applied, known as safety catch.
Classification : (I) Rifled weapons: (1) Rifles: (a) Air and gas-operated rifles. (b) 0.22 rifles. (c) Military and sporting rifles. (2) Single-shot target-practice pistols. (3) Revolvers. (4) Automatic pistols. (5) True automatic weapons (machine guns).
(II) Smooth-bored weapons (shotgun). (1) Single barrel. (2) Double barrel. (3) Slide-action. (4) Bolt-action. (5) Semi-automatic. (6) Automatic.
Rifled Arms: The bore is scored internally with a number of shallow spiral “grooves”, varying from two to more than 20, the most common being six, which run parallel to each other but twisted spirally, from breech to muzzle. These grooves are called “rifling” and the projecting ridges between these grooves are called “lands”. Riflings vary in number, direction, depth and width. When the bullet passes through the bore, its surface comes into caontact with the projecting spirals which give the bullet a spinning or spiraling motion. Rifling gives the bullet a spin, greater power of penetration, a straight course and prevents it from unsteady movement as it travels in the air. Micro-groove system of rifling consists of 15 to 20 round grooves in bore of the barrel. Rifled firearms are divided into : (1) Low velocity (up to 360 metres per second). (2) Medium velocity (360 to 750 m/s). (3) High velocity (900 m/s and above).
Caliber or gauge: It is measured by the internal dimension of the barrel and is given in decimals of inch or millimeters. The dimension of the rifled weapon is measured between lands and not grooves. In smooth-bored weapons, the bore is measured similarly up to 1.27 cm. (0.5 inch). For larger bores, the size is determined by the size of the lead ball which will exactly fit the barrel, and by the number of such balls of equal size and weight as can be made from 454 gm. (one pound) of pure lead. Thus the 12 bore gun is one whose diameter is that of a ball of lead of such a size that 12 balls may be made form 454 gm. The smaller the number of gauge, the greater the diameter of the barrel.
Shotgun: It maybe single-barrelled or double-barrelled, the barrels lying side by side, or occasionally mounted one over the other. It is intended for firing a single ball, slug or a charge of shots. The barrel varies in length from 55 to 72 cm. The common gauges are 12, 16 and 20. the weapon is made to ‘break’ or open on hinge across the breech facing for the insertion and extraction of cartridge cases. Muzzle loading guns are loaded entirely from muzzle end with the help of a rod using gunpowder, pieces of cloth, stones, metal fragments, seeds, bolts, wood, screws, etc. The interior of the barrels is smooth. When the entire barrel from breech to muzzle is of the same diameter, it is called cylinder-bore. In choke-bore, the distal 7.5 to 10cm. of the barrel is narrow. Different degrees are known as full-choke, half-choke and quarter-choke or improved cylinder. Full-choke is the highest degree of bore constriction. Shotguns may have variable choke adapters. In most of the double-barrelled guns, left hand barrel is choked to some degree, the right hand barrel remaining a true cylinder. Double-barrel shotguns may have a different choke in each barrel. The choking lessens the rate of spread of shot after it leaves the muzzle, increases the explosive force and increases the velocity. There are some shotguns which have small portion of their bore near the muzzle end rifled, which are called “paradox guns”. Some shotguns have the whole of their bore rifled with very shallow grooves. An LG shot fired from a shotgun with a muzzle velocity of 240 metres per second, will have wounding power up to 180 metres. A musket is a military shoulder arm. It has a long forestock and usually takes a bayonet at the muzzle. It is smooth-bore weapon, e.g., 0.410 musket. 0.410 musket fires a single shot at high velocity and is effective up to 90 metres. The muzzle velocity of shotgun is about 240 to 300 m/s and of 0.410 musket from 350 to 600 m/s. Shotguns are effective up to 30 to 35 metres.
Cartridge: A cartridge is the complete round consisting of the case, the percussion cap, the propellent, the wad and the shot charge. The shotgun cartridge consists of a case of short metal cylinder which is continuous with a cardboard or plastic cylinder. The case is rimmed, which helps to keep the cartridge in correct position in the chamber, and makes extraction easy. The case helps to keep the various components in place, prevents the backward escape of the gases and provides a waterproof container for the gunpowder. The length of the cartridge varies from 5 to 7 cm. The cartridge case is filled as follows from the base: percussion cap (detonator cap; primer battery cup), which is set into the centre of the base of the cartridge cylinder, gun powder, a thick felt-wad with cardboard discs lying in front and behind it, the shot and finally the retaining cardboard disc. The diameter of the wadding used in the cartridge is greater than that of the bore of the gun. Wad acts as a piston and seals the bore completely, thus preventing the expanding gases from escaping and disturbing the shot charge. Wads may be glazed-board, straw-board, plastic, cork, felt, etc. Weds may be disc-shaped, cup-shaped, or bizarre-shaped. Shots are of two types (1) Soft or drop shot is made of soft lead, (2) Hard or chilled shot is made from lead and hardened by antimony. The shots may also be plated with copper. The shot consists of up to several hundred small lead shots. The number depending upon the size of the individual pellets. “Shot size” is expressed in number. The smaller the number, the larger the shot. Dust-size shot gun pellets number up to 2600 minute shot in 12 bore cartridge. Birdshot is generally used for hunting fowl and very small animals. The shot are small, ranging in diameter from one to 3.5mm. A 12 bore shotgun shell contains 200 to 400 shot. “Buckshot” has a diameter of 6 to 8 mm. In a 12 bore shell they are nine in number. Rifled slugs are single projectile, and are used in shotguns for big game hunting. They are similar in shape to a blunt bullet with a deep hollow cavity in the base. The sides commonly have angularly inclined fins or ribs that resemble very coarse rifling marks on bullet. The slugs are usually a little smaller in diameter than the shotgun bore itself. The slugs have much greater range than pellets. The spiral grooves on the slugs impart spinning effect. The felt-wad contains grease, which lubricates the bore after the firing of each round. The modern one piece plastic wadding tends to have greater range due to its greater weight. The powder is protected from the grease wad by a thin grease-proof card-wad. The card-wad behind the shot charge prevents the shots from getting lodged in the felt-wad. Some cartridges contain ‘power piston’ which holds the shot inside a polythene cup, which may contribute to the wound at short range. Some cartridges may have brightly coloured plastic granules as a filler between the shot, which may be found inside the wound.
Improvised firearms or country-made firearms are common in India. They are of various calibers but 12 bore is the commonest. They are usually smooth-bored. Some of them can be mistaken for factory-made guns, but others do not appear to be guns at ll. Walking-stick guns and folding guns are single-barrelled shotguns.
Rifle : A rifle is a gun with a long barrel, the bore of which is rifled. A carbine the bore of which is a short-barrelled rifle, or a musket. Its barrel is less than 55 cm,. in length and is meant for persons on horse-back./ it may be self-loading or automatic or both. It is effective up to 300 metres. The bore of a rifle varies from 5.6 to 7.7 mm (0.22 to 0.303 inch). It has a magazine and bolt action, muzzle velocity 800 metres per second and can kill at a range of 3,000 metres. The longer barrel gives an increased speed to the projectile. Velocity is the speed of the bullet or projectile at a predetermined point in its flight. The pressure in the fireing chamber is about 20 tonnes per square inch. The bullet as it leaves the barrel, rotates at about 3,000 revolutions per second. The muzzle velocity is 450 to 1500 metres per second. Rifles may be single-shot, repeating, semi-automatic and automatic.
The four common basic types are: (1) Slide-action rifle (pump-action or trombone-action). The slide on the underside of the barrel is moved manually backward and forward to extract and eject a fired case, feed and load a fresh cartridge into the chamber and cock the gun. (2) Bolt-action rifle: It is manually operated in which the bolt and its handle function to open and to close and also lock the breech. (3) Lever-action rifle: The lever located beneath the receiver or frame is manually moved in swinging and pivoting downward motion and then returned. This acts through a linkage system to open, extract and eject the spent cartridge from and close and lock the breech block. (4) Semi-automatic rifle: Its operation is similar to the semiautomatic pistol.
Revolver: Revolvers are so-called because the cartridges are put in chambers in a metal cylinder, which revolves or rotates before each shot, to bring the next cartridge opposite the barrel, ready to be fired. It has a cylindrical magazine situated at the back of the barrel, which has a revolving motion, and can accommodate 5 to 6 cartridges, each housed in a separate chamber. In the single action type, cocking of the hammer rotates the cylinder and brings the cartridge in the proper position for firing. In the double action type, the hammer can be cocked by hand, or by a prolonged pull on the trigger. The muzzle velocity is 150 to 180 metres per second. They are low velocity weapons. The effective range is 100 metres.
Automatic Pistol: It is a hand arm in which the cartridge is loaded directly into the chamber of the barrel. When a cartridge is fired, the empty cartridge case falls on the ground several metres away, and a new cartridge is fired, the metres away, and a new cartridge slips into the breech automatically by a spring. The cartridges are contained in a vertical magazine n the butt, which can accommodate 6 to 10 cartridges. They are really semi-automatic or self-loading, because the trigger has to be pressed each time a round is fired. The bores vary from 6.35 to 11.25 mm. (0.25 to 0.45 inch). The muzzle velocity is 300 to 360 metres per second or more. They are high-velocity weapons. Their effective range is about 100 metres.
Air Rifle and Air Pistol: In these, compressed air is used to fire lead slugs. Some weapons use cartridges of liquid CO2 as the propellant. The velocity is very little and usually minor injuries are caused. Their range is about 40 metres. The missile is single and fired through rifled barrel. The bores vary from 4.4 to 5.6mm. Wounds are rarely fatal, except when the head is struck. The slug can enter the skull and pass through the whole mass of the brain, but does not produce an exit wound.
Pen Guns: Tear gas pen guns may be modified so as to fire oridinary artridge.
Zip Gun: It is a crude home-made single shot rifled firearm.
Stud Gun: They are tools used to fire metal studs into wood, concrete and steel.
Automatic Weapons: Machine-guns or sub-machine guns continue to fire through the action of gases of the previous explosion and of the ejector and recoil spring.
Cartridge: It consists of a metal cylinder with a flat base which projects as a rim except in an automatic pistol. Rimless cartridge has an extractor groove near the base. The primer cup (percussion cup) is fitted in a circular hole, usually in the centre of the base and has a flash hole in the centre which communicates with the powder space inside. The metal cylinder or cartridge case is elongated, and its distal end tightly grips the base of the bullet. The gunpowder lies between the detonator and the bullet. Usually there is no wad, but sometimes one piece wad is kept. Low-power rim-fire cartridge may not contain gunpowder but only a primer compound in a hollow rim. As such, those cartridges cannot produce the tattooing. Many bullets have near the base, a circumferential groove called “cannelure”, into which the end of the case is crimped. A bullet without cannelure is held in position by stabs on the circumference of the case.
Primers: Primers are ignited by impact (percussion) of the gun’s firing pin. Centrefire rifle and pistol primers are small metal cups usually held in place in the cartridge head primer pocket by friction. The primer cup contains the priming mixture and an anvil so placed that the blow of firing pin on the primer cup crushes the priming mixture against the anvil centre and burns it, which then flashes through the flash hole (fire holes or vents) in the centrefire case head, and ignites the powder charge. The primer used in shotgun cartridge is called a primer battery cup. This consists of a battery cup into which a primer cup fits. The battery cup supports the anvil and provides a flash hole. It is also held in place by friction. The priming mixture contains lead peroxide, lead styphnate, tetrazene, barium nitrate, etc. In rimfire cartridges no percussion sup is provided. The priming mixture is contained within the hollow rim of the cartridge and ignited when it is crushed between the rim walls of the cartridge head b the impact of the firing pin.
(1) Black Powder: It consists of potassium nitrate 75%; sulplure 10%; and charcoal 15%. It is designated as FG, FFG, FFFG, etc., depending on the size of the grains. The more number of Fs, the finer are the grains and the faster in burning. The powder grains are black, coarse or fine, without any particular shape. It burns with production of much heat, flame and smoke. Fine grains travel 60 to 90 cm. or more. One gram of powder produces 3,000 to 4,500 c.c. of gas. The gas consists of CO, CO2, nitrogen, hydrogen sulphide, hydrogen, methane, etc., all at a very high temperature.
(2) Smokeless Powders: It consists of nitrocellulose (gun cotton), or nitroglycerine and nitrocellulose (double-base). They produce much less flame and smoke and are more completely burnt than black powder. One gram produces 12,000 to 13,000 c.c. of gases. The colour varies from bright organe to bluish-black, and in shape from minute globules, flakes, square, rectangular, irregular discs, cylinders to longer threads. Semi-smokeless powder is a mixture of 80% of black and 20% of the smokeless type.
Bullets: The traditional bullet is made of soft metal and has a rounded nose. The metal is lead with varying anmounts of antimony added to provide hardness. This is known as the round-nose soft bullet, and is usually used in rifles and revolvers. The caliber of a bullet is its cross-sectional diameter. in revolver and pistol, the bullet is short and the point usually round or ogival. In rifle, the bullet is elongated with pointed end. Variations are: (1) Square-nosed, soft metal bullet, known as “wad-cutter”, and used primarily for target shooting. (2) Hollow-point variety has a depression in the nose of the soft metal. This bullet is designed to expand or “mushroom’ upon impact.
Jacketed bullets are of two types: (1) The full metal jacket bullet in which a tough, heavy jacket covers all but the base, where the soft metal interior is exposed. The tough jacket may be made of steel, copper, nickel and zinc. (2) The semi-jacketed bullet is provided with a relatively thin but tough jacket, which covers the base and the cylindrical portion of the bullet, leaving the nose partly or fully exposed. This type is designed to expand or “mushroom” like the soft metal, hollow-point type. The combination of the above two is also available. Mushroom bullets produce more serious wounds. Other types of bullets are (1) Short flat-point. (2) Medium flat-point. (3) Medium round-nose. (4) Long round-nose. (5) Medium long sharp-point. (6) Medium sharp-point. (7) Flat base. (8) Sharp-point boat-tailed. (9) Pencil-point. (10) Streamlined with sabot.
The flat base is the most common. In boat-tail bases, the base tapers to the flat with a profile, much like the rear portion of a boat. Rifle bullet weights range from 2 to 33 grams. A dumdum bullet is open at the base, and has the point covered with the jacket. When it strikes an object, the lead at the point expands or mushrooms, and produces a large hole. Expanding dumdum bullets, where the tip of the jacket is cut off, fragment extensively upon striking, and produce extensive wounds with ragged margins. A bullet with a hole in the point is called hollow-point or ‘express bullet. Incendiary bullets contain phosphorus.
Explosive Bullets: The exploding bullet is of various types. The common type has a cylinder inserted into the tip of the bullet. The cylinder contains either black powder or a detonator, such as lead azide. The cavity may contain a single lead shot and possibly a percussion cap and a tiny primer anvil. The wound produced is larger than the usual. If the missile explodes. There is greater fragmentation of the bullet and increased destruction of the tissues. The surgeon and pathologist should wear goggles and use long-handled instruments to manipulate the missile during surgical operation or autopsy, as they are vulnerable to detonations of explosive missiles. The removed bullet should be handled with long rubber-covered forceps and kept in a padded container to protect it from excess impact, vibration and heat.
Plastic bullets: Buton round (plastic bullet) is a solid cylinder of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), 38 mm. in diameter, 10 cm. long, weighing 135 g. It is fired from a smooth-bore weapon and is effective up to 50 to 70 metres. They are used for riot control. It should not be fired at a person under 20 metres range. It causes bruising and pain. Fracture of the skull, eye damage, fracture of ribs, limb bones, and contusions of liver, lung and spleen have been reported.
Mechanism of Discharge of Projectile: A firearm is fired when the trigger is pulled, which is usually situated below, or below and behind the breech. The trigger releases a pin or hammer, whose tip strikes the percussion cap at the base of the cartridge, which explodes by heat created by the strike of the firing pin and sends a flash through a tiny hole into the main body of the powder-filled case, which sets fire to the powder charge or propellent, producing instantaneously a large amount of gas which is under high pressure. The cartridge case swells outwards, due to which the hold on the bullet is released, and forces the bullet into the barrel. Simultaneously, the cartridge case is pushed backwards with equal force against the breech face. The bullet passes out. The confined gas behind it gives recoil thrust to the gun. Noise of gun firing is caused by muzzle blast, or due to the suddenly released gases disturbing the air. If the velocity of the bullet is more than the speed of sound, then there is also a crack from that. The bullet reaches its maximum velocity as it comes out at the open end of the barrel and this is called muzzle velocity. The bullet is followed by a blast of highly compressed hot gas, particles of partially burnt and unburnt powder, smoke, flame and fragments of metal, cartridge and detonator, grease and wad or disc matter. The blast has the shape of a cone whose apex is located at the muzzle. All these things produce some effect on the body at short ranges.
Mechanics of Bullet Wound Production:
(1) Bullet Velocity: A bullet’s ability to wound is directly related to its kinetic energy (E=mv2/2) at the moment of impact. Because kinetic energy increases in direct proportion to weight (mass) of the missile and the square of its velocity, a bullet traveling at twice the speed of a second bullet of equal weight and similar shape, possesses four times much energy or wounding power. Tissue damage produced by high velocity a bullet is disproportionately greater than that produced by bullet of ordinary muzzle velocity. A wound produced by a bullet, whose impact speed equals its muzzle velocity is more severe, than that produced by the same bullet, discharged from the same gun, whose speed has been reduced due to traveling a long distance before it strikes it s target.
(2) Tissue Density: The greater the tissue density, the greater is the amount of energy discharged by the bullet’s passing through it. A bullet may cause slight damage to the soft tissues, but the same bullet at the same speed can produce extensive comminution of the bone.
(3) Hydrostalic Forces: Hydrostatic forces cause excessive degree of destruction. When a bullet passes through a fluid-distended hollow organ, e.g., food-filled stomach, urine-filled bladder, CSF-filled ventricles of the brain, or a heart chamber distended with blood in diastole, produces extensive lacerations due to the explosive displacement of the liquid in all directions.
Wounds from shot guns: The flame extends upto 45 cm; Smoke upto 30 cm; and unburnt and partially burnt powder grains upto 60cm; cards upto 2 metres and wad for 12 to 15 metres.
At contact or near range, greater disruption of tissues occur than is seen in entrance wounds. The margins are everted but there is no singeing, blackening or tattooing of the margins. There may be small separate wounds made by individual pellets.
Wounds from Rifled Fire-Arms: The flame extends upto 7.5cm, smoke upto 30cm, and unburnt and partially burnt powder grains upto 60cm.
Interpretation of abrasion collar: (1) When bullet enters at right angle to surface, abrasion collar is of uniform width. (2) When bullet enters at a tangent to the surface, abrasion collar is of an irregular width and widest border indicates the direction of the bullet.
Skull: In the skull, the wound of entrance shows a punched-in hole in the outer table and the opening on the inner table is large and shows beveling. Pieces of bone from wound of entrance are often driven into the cranial cavity. At the point of exit, a punched-out opening is produced in the inner table and beveled opening on the outer table.
Peculiar effects of Fire-Arms:
(1) Atypical entrance wounds:
(a) For a few microseconds after bullet leaves the muzzle, there may be a tail wobble. This produces large atypical entrance wounds at short range.
(b) The gyroscopic effect of the bullet diminishes as it reaches the end of its flight, wobbles and tumbles and produces large atypical wounds of entrance,
(d) The bullet may strike the surface producing a contusion and fall to the ground. This is seen with soft non-jacketed bullets fired from a firearm with an eroded or worn barrel, and also when the ammunition used is of smaller size than the barrel of the gun.
(2) Single Entrance and Multiple Exits: If the bullet splits up within the body and divides into 3 or 4 pieces, there will be several exits. The bullet striking a bone may splinter it and the fragments act as secondary missiles producing several exists.
(3) Multiple wounds of Entrance and Exist from a single shot: A bullet may transfix an arm and pass through the chest so that four wounds are produced. A bullet passing through the chest or abdomen and thigh and lower legs produce six wounds. This occurs when the person is running or sitting in an unusual position. In such cases, examination of clothing is very important.
(4) Entrance wound is present but Bullet is not found in the Body: This occurs when:
(a) The bullet entering the stomach may be vomited,
(b) Entering the wind pipe may be coughed up,
(d) When it is deflected and passed out by the same wound as it entered.
(5) Unexplained Bullets in the Body: When a loaded firearm is unused for several years and is fired, the bullet may fail to come out of the muzzle. When it is fired again the second bullet may go off carrying the lodged bullet with it and both may enter the body through the same wound. This is called a Tandem bullet.
(6) Fatalities with blank Cartridges: In close discharge a blank cartridge may produce death.
(7) Firearm going off by itself: The firearm can go off by itself without any one touching the trigger due to some defect in its mechanism.
Fire Arm Injuries
(a) Clothing: Remove clothing layer by layer. Avoid cutting or mutilating a wound pattern on clothing. List them all and note their condition and the extent of blood staining. Record the number and position of bullet holes. It is sufficient to describe the number of bullet holes in the outer garment and adding that bullet holes in the remaining clothes correspond in location to the outer garment. The location of bullet holes in clothes, should be described in relation to the distance from collar, seams, pockets, heel level, etc. A single bullet may produce several holes due to the presence of creases in the garment and simulate more than one shot. Air dry clothes if wet. The size of the bullet hole and the extent of soot and powder distribution should be measured and the density of powder stippling noted. Note whether the fibres of the clothing are turned inwards or outwards. Clothing may be forced into the tissues in shot gun wounds.
Number all entrance and exit wounds. The clothes should be preserved carefully in clean brown paper or plastic bags and sent to the laboratory. Photographs of all layers of clothing should be taken with a scale placed nearby. Probes, fingers, etc, should not be introduced through the defects in the clothing as the direction or distribution of fibres will be changed.
(b) Bullet wounds: Do not wash or cleanse the body until samples have been taken for examination for powder residues. Protect the hands with plastic bags.
Shot Gun Wounds:
(a) The exact location of each wound should be noted in relation to its distance from: (i) the top of the head or the sole of the foot. (ii) midline of the body, and (iii) a fixed anatomical landmark.
(b) The character of the perforation, its shape (stellate, round, slit-like or jagged) and size should be noted and also presence or absence of fouling and stippling.
(d) Describe the number and distribution of stellite skin perforations caused by individual pellets and the presence or absence of wad injuries.
(g) Recover wads which reveal the bore of the shot gun and may also have a manufacture’s mark.
Rifled Fire-Arm Wounds:
(a) Note the exact location of each wound.
(b) The character of the perforation, its shape and size should be noted.
(d) A scaled photograph or a diagram showing the numbered wounds is useful.
(e) Track Taken by the Bullet through the body:
f) Remove the bullet with bare fingers or a forceps protected with rubber tubing may be used.
(D) Microscopic Examination: (1) Prepare sections from wounds of entry to demonstrate injury and powder residues. (2) Prepare sections from depth of wound to determine powder residues.
(E) Special Procedures: (1) Photography of wounds. (2) X-ray examination: (a) to locate bullets and shots, (b) to locate fragments of metal and bone, (c) to show course and direction of missiles. (3) Chemical examination: (a) for powder residues. (b) Neutron activation analysis for residues from primer (c) Detection of trace metals.
(F) Specimens to save: (1) The skin around the entrance and exit wounds should be cut out including at least 2.5 cm. of the skin around and 5 mm. beneath the wound and preserved in rectified spirit. (2) Blood for typing. (3) Viscera for chemical analysis.
G. PRESERVATION, MARKING AND PACKING OF EXHIBITS:
CIRCUMSTANCES OF DEATH:
(1) Suicide: The sites of election are: (i) temple (ii) centre of forehead, (iii) roof of mouth, (iv) Midline behind the chin, and (v) left side of front of chest. The wound is usually of contact type. A close up or distant shot is rarely suicidal. Suicides usually pull the clothes aside to bare the skin before shooting themselves. The wound is usually single but rarely multiple suicidal wounds are seen involving a single region, e.g. temple, chest or abdomen. In such cases, the first shot does not incapacitate the victim immediately. The weapon is usually found at the hands due to cadaveric spasm. There is usually a motive and he may leave a note. Suicide by firearm is seen mostly in males.
(2) Homicide: A great variety of wounds can occur depending upon the circumstances. A close up or distant shot is usually seen. The wounds may be multiple and may be found on the back or sides of the body, or involve different regions of the body. The weapon will not be found at the scene. There may be evidence of struggle.
(3) Accident: They are rare and usually single. The wounds are found on the front of the body and frequently directed upwards.
GUN SHOT WOUNDS
EXAMINATION OF THE SCENE
Besides taking the usual precautions at the scene with regard to the preservation of fingerprints and the position of the body, until the preliminary police examinations have been completed, special caution must be exercised both as regard to handling the weapon or to ensure that it is not touched by anyone. If the missile is found embedded in wood or some similar material, it should not be extracted, but if its examination proves necessary it should be cutout together with material in which it is embedded. Under no circumstances should it be gripped in metal forceps, to avoid any damage before being taken to the laboratory. The same principle applied to cartridge cases found at the scene. Any marks made subsequently upon the missile or cartridge case may make it difficult or impossible for the ballistics experts to match them with particular weapon. If the weapon is at the scene of shooting, its position in relation to the decreased must be noted. It must be borne in mind that even after serious injury, the deceased may be capable of some movement or locomotion before death occurs. The investigating person should keep following points in mind
Study the circumstances of the firing
Preservation of evidence
The type of bullets and their makings may help identify the gun.
Shells collected in absence of gun- help identify gun.
Preliminary advice on the line of further investigation
At the scene, consideration should be given to the presence or absence of weapon, and its position in relation to the body, position of blood stains, signs of disturbance, accessibility to the scene (e.g. how the door was secured from the inside), position of spent cartridge cases, trajectory of missiles, and impact marks on object or surfaces from missiles and their distribution.
The site of the wound in most suicide cases conforms to well recognized selected areas such as temple, mouth, and midline structures to the front of the body. The direction of the wound track from site is a further good indication of the aim of the shooter towards a particular vital structure such as heart or brain,.
The range of discharge of the firearm is another useful factor, which may help confirm on manner of death as being self-inflicted. Unless there is some mechanism to discharge a firearm from a distance further than arm is reach, than such a discharge is extremely unlikely to have been self-inflicted.
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| 0.941751 | 7,795 | 3.28125 | 3 |
- During the American Revolution (1775-83) the Continental Congress designated one or more days of Thanksgiving each year.
- In October 1789, George Washington proclaimed a Thanksgiving, not just to celebrate the harvest, but also the success of our war of independence and ratification of the U.S. Constitution, which was signed on September 17, 1787.
- In 1863, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln announced a national day of Thanksgiving to be held the last Thursday in November.
- During the Great Depression President Franklin Roosevelt made Thanksgiving a week earlier in an effort to help the economy. He later signed a bill in 1941 to make Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November.
- Since 1957 Canadians have also been celebrating a day of Thanksgiving for their bountiful garden harvests. Canadians celebrate their Thanksgiving on our Columbus Day, the second Monday in October.
How Thanksgiving Began
Thanksgiving started as religious days of prayer by the Pilgrims. Thanksgiving feasting evolved when Pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians shared a harvest feast together in the autumn. Then, feasts were not a single gathering for one meal; instead they lasted anywhere from 3 days to one week long. Thanksgiving celebrations continued throughout individual colonies and states for centuries after 1620.
Who were the Wampanoag? Wampanoag were Native American people known as the Eastern people who assisted the Pilgrims (English colonists) with finding food and building shelter when they first arrived to the new world. Wampanoag tribes were located in southeastern Massachusetts and Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, as well as in Rhode Island.
Wampanoag men hunted deer (venison), rabbit and squirrel, and as you may guess - turkey. Water fowl were also plentiful, since they lived near the bay areas. Wampanoag women were the farmers of the group, and also gathered wild nuts and berries. They dried and stored their harvests underground. Everyone was involved in storytelling, creative arts and music. The Wampanoag shared with the Pilgrims their knowledge of local crops, how to avoid poisonous plants, and how to build wetus (homes).
The Three Sisters
Native Americans knew how to plant using the Three Sisters companion planting technique. This is fun to try in a school or kid's garden. Three Sisters companion planting teaches children about gardening, Native American customs, traditions, nutrition and American history.Three Sisters
Squash Squash Climbing Beans
The corn stalks (or giant sunflowers) provide a structure for the beans to climb on, eliminating the need for poles. The beans add nitrogen to the soil, and the squash spreading along the ground helps prevent weeds and shades the soil, helping to retain moisture. Nutritionally speaking, grains (in this case corn) and beans compliment each other, making a complete protein.
Traditional Three Sisters even graced the gardens at The White House this past season. First Lady, Michelle Obama, had children plant corn, squash and beans in the 1,500 square-foot garden using seeds from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian. Varieties included Cherokee White Eagle corn, Rattlesnake pole beans, and Seminole squash.
17th Century Cooking
Thanksgiving feasts of the 17th century probably included seafood, duck, deer, eggs, along with combinations of grains and beans. Sides of cranberry sauce and potatoes were not foods eaten back then. Pilgrims cooked in household hearths and used spits to roast freshly hunted meats and fowl. Women baked in covered pots placed on stones over hot embers.
Indian corn (not sweet corn), barley and wheat were staple grains, along with root vegetables, beans, berries and fruits that were preserved by drying. Sweet corn didn't make its appearance in the US until 1779 and didn't become widely available until the 19th century.
Nature's bounty included: beans, wild onions, berries, fruits (including beach plums and grapes), squash, parsnips, turnips, Jerusalem artichokes, Indian corn (ground into samp, a cornmeal mush for porridge), cabbage, leeks, herbs and spices (including parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme), nuts, eggs and roots such as yellow pond lily roots (Nuphar advena).
When it comes time to eat, avoiding oversized portions can be a challenge. Filling half of your plate with fruits and vegetables and then 1/4 plate protein and 1/4 plate starch helps in balancing food groups. Traditional Thanksgiving fare today includes turkey and any or all of the above-mentioned native ingredients, plus, you name it: stuffing, casseroles, fruits, exotic veggies, buns, biscuits, and pies from apple to mincemeat. Every family has their own favorite cultural traditions and dishes using garden grains, fruits and vegetables. American Thanksgiving menus may include sides of gravy, biscuits, breads, rolls, soups, stews, or foods made with carrots, celery, onions, potatoes, yams, turnips, rutabagas and pumpkin. Vegetarian or Vegan Thanksgiving meals feature non-meat proteins, such as tofu or seitan (made from wheat) or bean and grain complimentary protein combinations.
Thanksgiving traditions may also include donating or volunteering to help at soup kitchens, participating in or going to parades and other fun activities. Holidays in general are times to be mindful and considerate of the many Americans who suffer from eating disorders and those who have recently lost a loved one.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Photo Credits:"Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor," by William Halsall, 1882 at Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA; courtesy of Wikipedia.
Related Links: ChooseMyPlate.gov
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| 0.949025 | 1,190 | 3.65625 | 4 |
The Energy Information Administration released updated data today on natural gas production and prices through the end of 2012. The chart above displays annual data from 1995 to 2012 for: a) total U.S. natural gas production (gross withdrawals, see red line) and b) the inflation-adjusted wellhead price of natural gas in 2012 dollars (blue bars). Here are some highlights:
1. The U.S. produced almost 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas last year (gross withdrawals or “wet gas” including methane, ethane, propane, and butane), setting a new record for annual production. Natural gas production increased by 4.5% in 2012, following a 6.2% increase last year. Over the last decade, natural gas production has increased by 24%. Although not displayed in the chart, the production of consumer-grade dry natural gas (almost pure methane) in the U.S. also reached a record high last year of 24 trillion cubic feet.
2. As a result of the record production levels in 2012, the average price of natural gas fell last year to $2.66 per 1,000 cubic feet. Adjusted for inflation in 2012 dollars, that was the lowest, average annual price since 1995.
3. In the decade from 1995 to 2005, production of natural gas in the U.S. was basically flat, and then actually fell towards the end of that 10-year period, so that domestic gas production in 2005 was actually below output in 1995. Also, imports of natural gas surged during that decade, increasing by 53% between 1995 and 2005, since the U.S. had to rely heavily on imported natural gas to meet domestic demand. With flat domestic production, and rising industrial and consumer demand for natural gas, the inflation-adjusted wellhead price almost quadrupled from $2.33 per 1,000 cubic feet in 1995 to $8.62 in 2005.
4. Starting around 2008, hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling started to revolutionize the production of natural gas when previously inaccessible oceans of gas trapped inside shale rock miles below the ground started being unleashed with the breakthrough extraction technologies. Accessing shale gas in the U.S. proved to be a real game-changer, and the chart above helps to tell the story. As production surged to new record levels in each of the last six years, the inflation-adjusted price of natural gas has fallen, and is now at a 17-year low. Compared to the most recent peak of $8.50 in 2008, gas prices have fallen by 69%.
Bottom Line: The shale gas revolution in America has totally transformed our energy landscape. The fact that we’re having a national debate now about whether to allow exports of U.S. natural gas to Europe and Japan demonstrates that we have entered a new era of energy abundance and prosperity that would have been unthinkable even five years ago.
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Black Carbon Twice as Dangerous as 2007 Estimate, Scientists Say
The black carbon produced by diesel engines is nearly twice as damaging to the planet as estimated in 2007 and trails only carbon dioxide as the most dangerous climate pollutant, according to an article published online today in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
The four-year study by more than two dozen researchers also showed that black carbon causes “significantly higher warming” over the Arctic and can affect rainfall patterns in high- emitting regions such as Asia. The pollutant also has contributed to rising temperatures in mid- to high-latitude areas including the U.S. and Canada.
“The potential to slow warming by cutting black carbon is even more important than previously understood,” Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, said today in a statement discussing the study. “It also kills over a million people every year who contract deadly respiratory diseases.”
The Climate and Clean Air Coalition, a group of more than two dozen nations that aims to reduce short-lived pollutants including methane, is pursuing projects that reduce black-carbon emissions from heavy-duty vehicle engines, brick production, waste burning and inefficient cookstoves.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced last year that the U.S. was joining the coalition, as “more than one-third of current global warming is caused by short-lived pollutants.” The U.S. contributed $12 million of the $15 million in startup funding, and committed an additional $10 million in annual support to existing efforts, Clinton said.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at [email protected]
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| 0.957004 | 353 | 3.03125 | 3 |
If you have eczema, you’re used to avoiding a long list of triggers that could make your symptoms worse. However, you may not be aware of one particular and dangerous trigger — the virus that causes cold sores and some cases of genital herpes.
Direct contact with another person's cold sore or genital herpes outbreak, especially when your eczema symptoms are flaring, can lead to very serious complication called eczema herpeticum.
Eczema herpeticum occurs when eczema-damaged skin is infected with herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) through skin-to-skin contact. Normally, the most common herpes symptom is a cold sore on the lip or around the mouth that takes a week or two to heal. HSV-1 can also cause genital herpes, often through oral-genital contact, although most cases are caused by herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2).
If you have eczema and get the HSV-1 infection on an eczematous area of your skin, you may experience a blistery rash that can spread quickly. If left untreated, the infection can affect vital organs and, though rare, can be deadly. Because of these consequences, eczema herpeticum is considered a dermatologic emergency.
Symptoms and Treatment for Eczema Herpeticum
The first sign of eczema herpeticum occurs about 5 to 12 days after exposure to the virus. Here’s what to look for:
- Clusters of blisters that appear on skin affected by eczema. At first, the blisters are filled with clear fluid, but then that fluid turns to yellow pus. If left untreated, the rash spreads in crops to other areas, sometimes covering large areas of the body. At this point, the rash is very painful. The blisters eventually break open, bleed, and crust over.
- Fever, fatigue, and flu-like symptoms. These symptoms often start as the blisters are appearing.
Because you may not even know that you’ve been exposed to the herpes virus, these symptoms may seem very puzzling. You should call your primary doctor or dermatologist if your eczema symptoms become worse or if you suddenly see blisters for no apparent reason. Your doctor may opt to treat you even before a definitive diagnosis is made because early treatment is best. Several anti-viral drugs, including acyclovir (Zovirax), can get the infection under control. These drugs may need to be given in a hospital through an intravenous line into the bloodstream in some cases.
Sometimes a person with eczema will have a second or third outbreak of eczema herpeticum, but these tend to be much milder.
How to Gracefully Avoid People With Cold Sores
Taking steps to avoid getting the herpes virus in the first place is your best protection against eczema herpeticum. The first step is to know what a cold sore looks like. A cold sore first appears as a red, tender bump. It then evolves into a fluid-filled blister that will ooze and crust over. A cold sore can appear anywhere, but typically crops up around the lips, mouth, and even on or in the nose.
In eczema herpeticum, the sores may start in an area of eczema elsewhere on the skin, such as the arms or legs.
If you come in contact with someone who has an obvious cold sore, these tips will help you avoid the social awkwardness this situation often brings:
- Avoid kissing. Show affection with a hug instead.
- Don’t share food, drinks, lipstick, lip balm, etc. This includes any item that comes into contact with another person’s mouth. Politely decline with a simple, “No, thank you.”
- Wash your hands frequently. People with a cold sore may spread the virus by touching their sore and then touching a doorknob, TV remote, or other items.
On the Alert for Herpes Symptoms
Genital herpes symptoms can reoccur in a person multiple times each year. They typically involve itching or burning, followed by an outbreak of sores anywhere in the genital or anal area. Urination is usually painful. An outbreak can last up to a month. Keep in mind that a person infected with genital herpes may be contagious several days before herpes sores appear on the genital area.
The only sure way of protecting yourself against genital herpes is by not having sex. It’s important to avoid performing oral sex on someone if you have a cold sore and vice versa. Likewise, it is important to avoid oral contact with genital herpes sores. If you don’t abstain, use condoms, but be aware that the condoms may not prevent herpes infections since they cover only the penis and not surrounding genital skin.
To protect yourself yet still enjoy sexual intimacy, have an open and honest discussion with your partner. Ask if he or she is infected or could be. Explain that contracting herpes can put you at risk for serious complications because of your eczema. Having an honest talk beforehand may stop an uncomfortable situation from happening later on.
Coping with eczema may be a challenge for you, but eczema herpeticum can present a serious threat. Take precautions to protect yourself and reduce the risk by being vigilant about managing your eczema to avoid flares.
Last Updated: 3/4/2011
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Freshwater - National Responses (Albania)
Albania has produced two strategic documents related to the protection and management of water: the National Water Strategy, 2004 and the Water and Sewerage ?Strategy, 2004.
Moreover, the creation of regional agencies for River Basin Management and the National Water Council has resulted in the establishment of an administrative structure for planning the utilisation and management of river basins. Legislation in the area of water consists of laws, international agreements and bylaws, such as the Decisions of the Council of Ministers (DCM) and the National Water Council.
Primary legislation for the water problems in Albania includes:
- Law No. 8093 dated 21.3.1996 on Water resources (as amended);
- Law No. 8102 dated 28.3.1996 on Regulatory framework of water supply sector and waste water removal (as amended);
- Law No. 8905 dated 6.6.2002 on Protection of Marine Environment from Pollution and Damage;
- Law No. 9103 dated 10.7.2003 on Protection of transboundary lakes;
- Law No. 9115 dated 24.7.2003 on Environmental Treatment of Polluted Water;
- Decision No.145, date 26.02.1998 for approval of Hygienic-health regulation on
- control of drinking water quality, design, construction and supervision of supply drinking water systems;
- Decision No. 796 dated 16.10.2003 On approval of national strategy of water supply and sanitation;
- Decision No. 273 dated 7.5.2004 On approval of National Water Strategy;
- Decision No. 177 dated 31.3.2005 On the allowed norms of liquid discharges and zoning criteria to host aquatic environments;
- Decision no. 103, dated 31.3.2002 On environmental monitoring in the Republic of Albania.
- State of Environment Report 2008, Agency of Environment and Forestry
- National Environment Strategy 2006, Ministry of Environment, Forests and Water Administration
For references, please go to www.eea.europa.eu/soer or scan the QR code.
This briefing is part of the EEA's report The European Environment - State and Outlook 2015. The EEA is an official agency of the EU, tasked with providing information on Europe's environment.
PDF generated on 25 Jun 2016, 05:20 AM
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Wildlife holidays in Cyprus
Tell me about Cyprus …
The Republic of Cyprus is a rugged, sun-drenched island at the crossroads of Africa, Asia and Europe.
It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Until independence in 1960, Cyprus was under British administration. The Republic of Cyprus is now divided into two parts, with the northern region occupied by Turkey.
The Troodos Mountains cover the south and central areas of the island, while the narrow Kyrenia range runs along the northern coastline. It has a gentle Mediterranean climate and in early spring, while Western Europe endures late winter gloom, Cyprus enjoys clear blue skies and warm sunshine.
Our Cyprus specialist recommends...
"I recommend ‘The Island of Cyprus’ tour to enjoy the warmth of spring whilst we search for migrating birds, wonderful orchids and other flowering plants on the Isle of Aphrodite."
What’s special about the wildlife?
North Cyprus is renowned in the botanical world for its astonishing variety of flora.
Over 300 species of bird have been recorded in Cyprus, and its bird migration can be particularly spectacular when numerous species pass through, including such rarities as Blue-cheeked Bee-eater, Caspian Plover and White-breasted Kingfisher.
Naturetrek tours to Cyprus
Naturetrek offers two wildlife holidays to Cyprus focusing on the birds, flowers and culture.
What might I see?
- Hillsides cloaked in cheerful anemones, asphodels & marigolds
- Up to 30 species of orchid including the stunning endemic Cyprus Bee Orchid
- Birds & flowers of the maquis & mountains
- Glittering turquoise waters, sun-bleached rocks & characterful tavernas
WHAT YOU'VE BEEN SAYING ABOUT OUR Cyprus HOLIDAYS
Both the trip leaders, Alan and Andy, were exceptional, both with their knowledge and leadership. Nothing was too much trouble.
Both Andy and Alan were first class, good humoured, patient and absolutely on top of their subjects.
Altogether a superb trip with plenty of good humour as well as serious iteration of species identification. Thank you!
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Counting Seal Pups in the Pribilofs
Thanks to everyone who attended and watched the live webcast!
The New England Aquarium is home to six northern fur seals, half of the U.S. aquarium population. Aquarium visitors have the chance to see an animal rarely seen anywhere else. A majority of northern fur seals migrate to the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea for their annual breeding season. The National Marine Mammal Laboratory does a study every two years to determine the rate of pup production on the Pribilof Islands. This August, through the John G. Cunningham Award, Patty Schilling helped with the 2010 fur seal pup count. It was a chance to observe these rarely seen animals first hand in the wild and utilize the information to better understand the Aquarium’s Northern fur seals.
You can scroll through all the blog posts written about this expedition here.
Browse video posted by the Aquarium's marine mammal trainers here.
About Aquarium Lectures
The Aquarium has been providing free lectures and films by scientists, environmental writers, photographers and others since 1972. The Aquarium Lecture Series is presented free to the public through the generosity of the Lowell Institute, which has been providing funding for free public lectures at universities and museums since 1836.
Click through to see a schedule of upcoming lectures.
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| 0.940637 | 278 | 3.125 | 3 |
Flinn’s school field trip turns into something more than expected when he and his friends follow clues to find the stolen pirate treasure.
Why I like this for a read aloud book:
*Adventure that includes both pirates and dinosaurs!
*Time travel through a cupboard
Captain Flinn calls the pirate dinosaurs “slimy seafaring sausages” and “nasty noodle-brained nincompoops.” He is using alliteration.
*Alliteration is using the same consonant or sound at the beginning of each word or neighboring word. Tongue twisters often include alliteration. Try these Tongue Twisters.
A tutor who tooted the flute
Tried to tutor two tooters to toot
Said the two to the tutor,
“Is it tougher to toot–
Or to tutor two tooters to toot?”
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck
If a woodchuck would chuck wood?
A woodchuck would chuck all the wood;
If a woodchuck would chuck wood.
(I delighted in showing adults how quickly I could spout this particular tongue twister when I was a young girl.)
A skunk sat on a stump.
The stump thought the skunk stunk.
The skunk thought the stump stunk .
What stunk? The skunk or the stump?
*Play ABC Alliteration
Take turns making up alliterations using the alphabet for your springboard:
A – Alligators arduously acting are amplifying abilities
B – Bats buying baseballs bring bad business
C – Caterwauling kittens cling to crepe curtains
Depending on your listeners word prowess, you can require the alliteration to be just 2-3 words long or 5+. It’s more important for the alliteration to be correct than the grammar. It doesn’t need to be a complete sentence and it doesn’t have to make sense. Just have fun with it! (This is a great way to give your listener fun phonic practice–hearing/thinking of words that have the same beginning sound.)
More Family Fun
*This book has a game board on the back inside cover. Play Snakes and Ladders.
I didn’t have a die handy, so we tossed six pennies. The number of pennies that landed “head” side up, was the number of spaces moved. (You know my motto: Improvise!)
Here are some fun facts about the history of Snakes and Ladders:
*It is an ancient (maybe even 200 BC!) game from India.
*Its original name was “The Ladder to Salvation”.
*The ladders represented virtues or the good things you did in life.
*The snakes represented vices or the bad things you did in life.
*There were more snakes than ladders because it is a challenge to overcome bad habits.
*Reaching 100 meant reaching salvation.
*The English brought the game back to England from India.
*When the game came to the United States, it was called “Chutes and Ladders”.
Here is a picture of an ancient game board from India:
*As you read, be sure to use your pirate voice when the pirates are talking!
*Did you notice the shape of the island? Check each page for skulls. You’ll find one or more on each page spread.
*To whom do the peculiar feathers belong?
*How does the illustrator draw the inside of mouths that are yelling or singing? Check out the kids’ mouths as they tumble out of the cupboard. Why do you think the illustrator did that?
*Where did Flinn pick up the spider? Check out Gordon Gurgleguts’ pirate ship. Looks as if he needs a good cleaning service or at least a duster!
*Why would Giganotosaurus NOT want to play the Snakes and Ladders game at the end of this book?
Find this book at your local library or buy it here.
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Wildlife finds new home in nation's largest wetland, prairie restoration refuge
Migratory birds, water fowl and other wildlife now have a new place to call home. Thousands of acres of marginal farmland were converted back to native tall-grass prairies and wetlands in the nation's largest restoration effort of its kind.
Glacial Ridge National Wildlife Refuge spans about 30,000 acres over northwestern Minnesota and was once land used for, crop production, cattle and sheep grazing but is again thriving with wildlife, Greg Bengtson, NRCS Glacial Ridge project manager said.
"You're looking at basically the size of a township," Bengtson said. "That's a huge area."
In the last 10 years, Bengtson led the conservation effort with technical advice and funding while working with 30 other partners to put about 2,000 acres a year into a permanent easement in NRCS' Wetland Reserve Program. Most of the area belonged to The Nature Conservancy but 11 other landowners also participated in the Polk County project.
With these combined efforts, the Glacial Ridge is the largest contiguous tract of WRP in Minnesota and is the largest tall-grass prairie and wetland restoration project in U.S. history.
Wetlands provide habitat for waterfowl and other wildlife. Portions of the area are open to the public for hunting, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service puts out blinds were folks can go, sit and view the courtship of the greater prairie chickens in the spring, which is an interesting sight, Bengtson said.
"The males all gather and dance and try to attract a female. They puff up and have an orange air-sac. It's a neat thing to watch," he said.
In Minnesota, the bird is on a special-concerns list, meaning they have low numbers and are in need of more habitat. Greater prairie chickens need large expanses of grass like those found on Glacial Ridge.
Along with the improved habitat for the chicken and other plants and animals, the Glacial Ridge restoration provides other benefits for the local community.
"(Wetlands)improve the quality of the water running off the site and into the township," said Bengtson. The new public drinking-water wells for the city of Crookston are located on Glacial Ridge.
In addition to supplying clean water, the restoration is also giving flood prevention.
"Flooding (here) is a huge issue. Restoring wetlands on Glacial Ridge will hold a lot of that water back and slow down water flowing north," said Bengtson.
Several different agencies and universities now do research studies on the grounds, and the information can be used in the future to develop models that will help predict drought, flooding and wetland shifts to protect people and wildlife.
Minnesota is not the only state making a difference through the Wetlands Reserve Program. Visit the local NRCS service center for more information or www.nrcs.usda.gov/programs/wrp.
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Kano Jigoro, Founder of Judo (1860 – 1938)
Judo was arguably the first Japanese gendai budo [modern martial way] to gain international fame. Kano based his Judo on principles he learned from years of training in koryu [old-style] jujutsu systems such as Tenjin Shin’yo-ryu and Kito-ryu.
Kano is also credited with introducing the use of colored belts to differentiate between ranks, a practice now ubiquitous in Japanese, Korean, and certain Chinese martial arts.
Ueshiba Morihei, Founder of Aikido (1883 – 1969)
Aikido was based primarily on the Daito-ryu Aiki Jujutsu of Takeda Sokaku. Over the years, Ueshiba’s Aikido changed, perhaps due in large part to the influence of his spiritual practices. Consequently, students of Ueshiba who trained with him during different periods of Aikido’s development may have very different approaches to the art.
Tomiki Kenji (1900 – 1979)
Tomiki was an early senior student of both Kano and Ueshiba. He was awarded the first Menkyo Kaiden [license of complete transmission – 8th dan equivalent] by Ueshiba in 1940 and was promoted to 8th dan in Judo by the Kodokan in 1964.
Tomiki, a Waseda University professor, developed and systematized a major portion of the curriculum that we currently use at the Renshinkan.
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Free kindergarten games that help pre-k/kindergarten students learn English reading and writing. Online kids phonics games, phonics scramble games, missing vowels games, phonics fun and word search puzzles, etc. Free printable picture phonics scramble games for kids to learn and practice phonics short vowels words, phonics long vowels words games.Perfect for young kids to start building up phonics reading skills!
Fun and educational free printable phonics game with kids favorite picture that kids can print out and fill in the missing Consonant Blends & Digraphs.
Free printable kindergarten words learning activities, free kindergarten math and reading worksheets,free kids learning activites, free printable early childhood worksheets from on website: http://prek-8.com.
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Welcome to MIROR Project
MIROR is an acronym for "Musical Interaction Relying On Reflexion".
The project is co-funded by the European Community under the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), 7th Framework Programme, sub programme Technology-enhanced Learning. The MIROR Project deals with the development of an innovative adaptive system for children's music and dance learning and teaching, based on the "reflexive interaction" paradigm: the MIROR Platform.
The project started on the 1st of September 2010 and ended on 31st of August 2013.
As from the Final Report of the European Commission:
"The project is a landmark in the development of technology enhanced music systems. It serves as a reference and source of inspiration for new initiatives in this research domain."
"They show that an interdisciplinary approach and collaboration between hard and soft sciences is feasible and that the development of technology in a context of psychology-pedagogy can be mutually fruitful."
"The technological results are interesting and the interdisciplinary approach also led to new and promising methodologies for the psychological-pedagogical sciences".
"The consortium tested the psychological and pedagogical effectiveness of the Reflexive Interactive Paradigm (RIP) that was implemented in the MIROR technology using a mix of methods that combine both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Some publications of the final results are on their way of being published and they will certainly have impact in the field."
"The consortium has set up a system that implements the spiral approach in development and testing. The resulting tools have been iteratively refined over the whole project and proven to be fully accessible and usable for the community."
"The technology provided new stimulations for thinking out of the box about new pedagogy and child-machine interactions. The MIROR project, despite its possible shortcomings, can be seen as a landmark in the domain and it will inspire new developments in this fascinating field."
"There is evidence that the project can achieve a significant scientific, technical, commercial, social impact."
MIROR Project periodic REPORTS:
1st year - Publishable Summary - November 2011 (download)
2nd year - Publishable Summary - November 2012 (download)
3rd year - Publishable Summary - December 2013 (download)
3rd year - Final Report (download)
Dissemination reports including list of publications and events produced within the MIROR Project - Deliverable D8.2.1 (download)
Yearly updated specification document - Deliverable D2.2.1
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| 0.909462 | 527 | 2.828125 | 3 |
The Borderlands - a Story of its Wildlife, Landscape, People - and The Wall
The International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP) sent a team of world-renowned photographers, with writers, filmmakers and scientists to the borderlands of the United States and Mexico to document the wildlife, ecology, and effect of immigration and the border wall on this landscape. This region is a shared conservation treasure of international importance that harbors some of the most biodiverse landscapes on the continent. Many species here are found nowhere else in the US, and nowhere else in Mexico and some are found nowhere else on Earth.
Art for Conservation partnered with Borderlands Rave coordinator Krista Schlyer and iLCP in creating a 30 print canvas giclee exhibition that is currently touring across the United States. See the images below.
To purchase fine art prints from the exhibition, availble as both photo prints and canvas giclees, click here. All proceeds will go towards travel costs for the exhibit.
Landscapes and ecosystems in the borderlands range from sand dunes and arid mountains to riparian corridors to tropical scrub forests peppered with birds, butterflies and tree frogs. Some are remote and others are islands of natural beauty in urban centers. This dunescape in the Gran Desierto in Mexico shows the land’s interaction with wind and water, mountain and sky. Creatures great and small from endemic dune beetles and bees to desert tortoises and bighorn sheep call this landscape home.
The borderlands from California to Texas are the domain of some very charismatic creatures, including these bighorn sheep. History and human development have taken a great toll on populations of bighorn and other large mammals. The future offers us the opportunity to restore some of the habitat that once sustained these species, but barriers to their movement will forever impede this recovery. Almost two-thirds of the border remains wall-free, and those areas that currently have wall can be altered and past damage mitigated.
The Janos-Hidalgo herd, found in the borderlands of New Mexico, is one of five free roaming herds of plains bison left in North America. An international consortium of scientists identified this herd as critical in the current effort to restore bison to their historical role in grassland ecology—an opportunity that exists in very few places on the continent. The Janos-Hidalgo herd has been crossing the border for 80 years, accessing scarce water and food resources on either side of the borderline. Current barrier construction will end this passage, threaten the survival of the herd, and destroy hopes for the recovery of this keystone species in the region.
Return of the BEAR
Transboundary conservation efforts in Texas and northeastern Mexico have been helping to reconnect this landscape after a century of degradation. Wildlife is beginning to respond. Black bears, which had been extirpated from Big Bend National Park in Texas, have now returned via established corridors from Maderas del Carmen Biosphere Reserve in Mexico. All of this effort and the successes that have come from it, could not have happened had the border here been blocked by a wall. If the current policy continues, human traffic will likely shift to remote areas like this, and walls will follow close behind.
Grasslands, now one of the most imperiled ecosystems in the world, once provided a home to
50 million bison, which roamed the vast plains of North America, and to prairie dog colonies that created burrow homes for countless species. These grasslands near Janos, Mexico, sit less than an hour south of the border and extend far north into New Mexico. Researchers here are working to reconnect and rebuild this remnant grassland and restore its inhabitants, but barrier construction threatens to block wildlife at the border.
Here, as in all places where the wall is being built, it is clear that human beings will find ways to get around, over or through it. What is equally apparent, is the psychological symbolism of walls between human communities, as is so clearly illustrated by this image of a child playing on a beach in Tijuana, in the shadow of the border wall.
The creation of the Lower Rio Grande Valley wildlife corridor has been a Herculean effort of 30 years, made possible by the dedication and effort of volunteers and national wildlife refuge staff like. So little habitat is left in this ecosystem - less than 5 percent - that restoring and reconnecting what habitat remains is crucial to the future of endangered species like the ocelot and jaguarundi. But the border wall threatens to unravel all that has been accomplished in this rare ecoregion.
Miguel de la Cueva
In much the same way that borderlands wildlife are dependent on the plant communities that comprise their habitat, many plant species are dependent on wildlife to help them distribute their seeds and migrate when climatic conditions become unsuitable for them. Species with largely plant-based diets, like javelina, rabbits and many species of birds and bats, can be important seed dispersers. Walls that block the movement of animals may also block the migration of some plants. With droughts becoming more frequent in the Southwest, the survival of any plant species’ may depend on the ability to move freely.
In places, such as the Barry M. Goldwater Range and Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, the border wall continues for 35 miles unbroken. Humans know where it ends and can find their way around. Many animals cannot. Sonoran desert toads have been seen and photographed standing at the wall, or even jumping repeatedly into it, trying to get through until they die of dehydration or are eaten by predators.
The Algodones Dunes in southern California and northern Baja California, Mexico, appear from the sky as a blank landscape—the only identifying features being softly undulating dunes, and now an odd line of metal bisecting them. On closer inspection this landscape reveals its secrets—the Algodones are a globally unique ecosystem, with wild creatures found nowhere else on the planet. At least 16 endemic species of beetles, bees and ants make their homes here. They share these dunes with the more common coyotes and rattlesnakes, as well as rare plants, desert tortoises, horned lizards and many others.
Near the edge of the Pacific Ocean, with Tijuana on one side and San Diego on the other, lies a place called Friendship Park. The park was designated in the 1970s as an international meeting ground—a place where friends and families living on opposite sides of the border could meet and share a picnic, and where musicians came to entertain them. First Lady Pat Nixon, who attended the dedication, spoke these words: “I hate to see a fence anywhere.” Friendship Park has in the past year been declared off limits to the public, and what was a low wire fence in Nixon’s time, has become a 15 foot steel wall.
The kit fox is one member of a diverse group of grassland species that now thrive on open range in northwestern Chihuahua in Mexico, just a dozen miles south of the border. But climates are changing and droughts becoming more frequent, a trend that is expected to worsen as the effects of global warming continue to mount. The ability to move freely, particularly northward, may determine the fate of kit fox and many other terrestrial species in the region. Walls and other barriers now being constructed by the United States may decide the fate of them all.
This ocelot was not photographed on the Borderlands RA VE, or even in the borderlands. Though he small cat once ranged all throughout south Texas and into Louisiana and Arkansas, there are now less than 100 in the U.S.—all confined to small patches of remnant habitat in the lower Rio Grande valley. Like many endangered species in the borderlands, from jaguarundi to Mexican gray wolves, the ocelot’s future stands on a knife’s edge, and any further loss of habitat or habitat connectivity could end its existence in the United States.
Numerous are the moments in history where the path of the United States intersected with that of Mexico. History and our proximity have ensured that our cultures are both divergent and parallel. And all of this comes together in the borderlands, where the lines blur between American and Mexican, English and Spanish, old and new. We have much to learn from each other, as all neighbors do.
Above the law
In fall 2007, the Department of Homeland Security began constructing a wall in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, a crucial stretch of habitat for countless species, including bobcats, mountain lions, javelina and coatimundi. Conservation groups, including the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife, sued to stop construction, and won their case in a federal district court. But the Department of Homeland Security, with the stroke of a pen waived all environmental laws, dismissed the findings of the court, and continued with construction.
The culture of the borderlands is often a blending of worlds: part Mexican and part American, some conservation and some cowboy. A person may spend part of his life living in the United States as a ranch hand, and part of it in Mexico planting native grasses and helping to restore natural flows to streambeds. Like many borderlands residents, the subject of this photo is a unique product of a unique location, where nationality matters, but it does not supersede neighborliness, and a connection to the land underlies all.
All life in the desert centers around what little water is available year-round. Watering holes like this one in the Tinajas Altas mountains of southwestern Arizona, are crucial to borderlands wildlife like bighorn sheep, Sonoran pronghorn, deer, bobcats and birds. In the past few years, construction of the U.S. border wall has placed 15 feet of steel between countless desert species
The Rio Grande River defines the U.S.-Mexico border from El Paso to Brownsville, Texas, where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. The river corridor supports rare creatures like the ocelot and jaguarondi, as well as some of the oldest communities in the United States. Residents who acquired their homesteads through Spanish land grants 10 generations ago still call this land home. Border wall construction plans will require seizure of some of this land by the federal government. The wall will separate residents from large portions of their property, and from the river that drew them here in the first place.
Hundreds of birds, mammals, fish, amphibians and plants make up the community of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, which extends from the U.S.-Mexico border to 40 miles north of it. Similar riparian areas used to exist throughout the Southwest, but damming and water pumping drained and diverted most of these ecosystems. The San Pedro is therefore a magnet for wild creatures. The rich biological diversity of the river corridor has earned it designations as both a World Heritage Natural Area and a Globally Important Bird Area.
Against the wall
A lawsuit temporarily halted construction of the wall that now bisects the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in southeastern Arizona. But because the Department of Homeland Security had been given the authority by Congress to waive all laws, the temporary restraining order issued by a federal district court judge was dismissed and construction continued. Today all passage is blocked at the border for species like javelina, along with bobcats, deer, rabbits and many others.
The Saguaro cactus is found only in the Sonoran Desert of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. This desert spans the border and is home to a diverse array of desert wildlife including desert bighorn sheep, desert tortoises, endangered Sonoran pronghorn, bobcats and many others. As a single ecosystem, political boundaries and the infrastructure that now defines them impose an arbitrary division of a natural system.
Saguaro cactus, icon of the American Southwest, can grow to be a giant— 50 feet tall and weighing several tons. They are a plant both hardy and fragile, like the ecosystem over which they preside. Because construction of the wall was rushed and environmental laws were waived, no consultation with wildlife scientists was required. There were no studies of how severing this ecosystem and destroying a wide swath of habitat would impact the saguaro and the countless creatures that depend on it. We have left the future of this unrivaled desert icon to chance.
Our national parks, national wildlife refuges and other public lands are for many Americans sacred ground. In addition to providing rare islands of habitat for the nation’s plant and wildlife species, they are places of quiet and respite for people who need an escape from the interstate
highway pace of life. The borderlands are a Mecca of these quiet spaces. Nearly a quarter of the 1,950-mile U.S.–Mexico border lies within public lands, including Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. And all of these hallowed lands lie in the direct path of the border wall.
Green jays and similar tropical species can be found in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and nowhere else in the United States. These birds, photographed on the Audubon Sabal Palm Preserve in Brownsville, Texas, have lost 95 percent of the native habitat that once sustained them here. Wall construction is consuming more of it every day—18 feet of concrete wall is being built into the Rio Grande levee system, a levee that in some places sits a mile north of the river or more. If construction continues, much of the green jay’s remaining habitat, including this Audubon preserve, will lie south of the U.S. border wall.
The grasslands of the Southwest are home to an enduring ranching culture. Because there were no requirements to meaningfully consult with local people during wall construction, the insights and concerns of people who live on this land were largely ignored. Roads, walls and increased border patrol activity have eroded the quiet nature of the borderlands. And many have witnessed first-hand the ineffectiveness of walls as immigration policy. Most have seen people climbing over, through, or around barriers, and have noted that all the new roads border patrol has built to ease its travel, provide the same convenience for smugglers.
Javelinas help form the backbone of borderlands food chains. In addition to being important prey species for carnivores, including mountain lions, jaguars and Mexican gray wolves, javelinas offer important services to the plants they eat, carrying their seeds to new locations so plants can expand their ranges and migrate when climatic conditions require. Blocking the movement of even a single species can have broad ranging impacts that reverberate through an entire ecosystem. And in the case of javelinas, which are found all along the 2000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, any wall, anywhere in the borderlands is likely to affect them.
These wild turkeys are a few of the beneficiaries of habitat conservation in the borderlands done by private individuals hoping to restore land and migration corridors for wild creatures. The birds evoke the ancient feel of much of this landscape, so far removed from the roads and cities that have replaced natural places in so much of North America. In the wild places of the borderlands, it is possible to imagine echoes of a time before humans, when birds the size of trees roamed the land.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress passed the Wilderness Act “to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness.” Since then, Congress has designated more than 700 wilderness areas, which strictly prohibit roads and cars in order to preserve wild solitude. One of those areas, the Otay Mountain Wilderness, lies in Southern California, on the U.S.-Mexico border. In December 2008, the Department of Homeland Security began slicing through the quiet Otay mountainside with roads in order to get machinery and materials to the border for wall construction. “Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed.” —Wallace Stegner
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How the brush is held depends on which calligraphic genre you are practicing. For Japanese calligraphy, the brush is held in the right hand between the thumb and the index finger; very much like a Western pen. For Chinese calligraphy, the method of holding the brush is more special; the brush is held vertically straight gripped between the thumb and middle finger. The index finger lightly touches the upper part of the shaft of the brush (stabilizing it) whilst the ring and little fingers tuck under the bottom of the shaft. The palm is hollow and you should be able to hold an egg in there. This method, although difficult to hold correctly for the beginner, allows greater freedom of movement, control and execution of strokes.
A paperweight is placed at the top of all but the largest pages to prevent slipping; for smaller pieces the left hand is also placed at the bottom of the page for support.
In Japan, smaller pieces of Japanese calligraphy are traditionally written seated in the traditional Japanese way (seiza), on the knees with the buttocks resting on the heels. In modern times, however, practitioners frequently practice calligraphy seated on a chair at a table. Larger pieces may be written while standing; in this case the paper is usually placed directly on the floor, but some calligraphers use an easel.
A man practicing calligraphy in Beihai Park, Beijing
In China, there are many people who practice calligraphy in public places such as parks and sidewalks, using water as their ink and the ground as their paper. Very large brushes are required. Although such calligraphic works are temporary (as the water will eventually dry), they serve the dual purpose of both being an informal public display of one's work, and an opportunity to further practice one's calligraphy.
Calligraphy takes many years of dedicated practice. Correct stroke order, proper balance and rhythm of characters are an essential in calligraphy. Skilled handling of the brush produces a pleasing balance of characters on the paper, thick and thin lines, and heavy and light inking. A lot of times, a calligrapher will practice writing the Chinese character yong (meaning eternity) many, many times in order to perfect the eight basic essential strokes contained within the character. Those who can correctly write the yong character beautifully can potentially write all characters with beauty.
Basic calligraphy instruction is part of the regular school curriculum in both China and Japan. Students in both countries can attend schools designed to perfect the art and further the tradition of calligraphy in East Asia. There are fewer and fewer opportunities for individuals to attend such schools, given the economic situation.
The study of calligraphy as a means by which to read historical works has become more necessary, however and the Chinese government has recently begun programs to award special scholarships to those whose interest and ability are considered in this unique and often rigorous course of study.
The Arts :: Calligraphy
Artform | Styles | Tools | Study | Stroke Order | Noted Calligraphers
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Idaho State Tree - Western White Pine - Pinus monticola
Leaf: Acicular, 2 to 4 inches long, fascicles of 5, blue-green with white lines of stomatal bloom on two of the three needle surfaces, persist 3 to 4 years, bundle sheath is deciduous, apex blunt.
Flower: Monoecious; male cones are small, yellow, and clustered near the tips of branches; female cones are larger, almost round, greenish-pink in color, and clustered near the tips of branches in the upper parts of the crown.
Fruit: Large cylindrical woody cones, 5 to 12" long, thin and curved. Brown when mature; scales thin and unarmed, typically tipped with globs of white resin; very short stalk.
Twig: Moderately stout and grayish-brown.
Bark: Initially thin and grayish-green later becoming up to 2 inches thick, gray to purplish-gray and broken into square or rectangular blocks, not ridged and furrowed. Dark bands commonly encircle the tree where whorls of branches have fallen off.
Form: Tall, straight, evergreen conifer growing to 180 feet tall and 4 feet in diameter with an open crown, long up-raised branches near the top (horizontal lower down); bole commonly free of branches for half its length.
Photos courtesy: Michael Aust, John Baitey, Ctaude L. Brown, Bruce Bongarten,
Susan D. Day, Edward C. Jensen, Richard E. Kreh, Larry H. McCormick, Alex X.
Niemiera, John A. Peterson, Oana Popescu, John R. Seiter, David W. Smith, Kim
C. Steiner, James E. Ward, Rodney E. Will, Shepard M. Zedaker.
Text written by: John R. Seiter, Edward C. Jensen, Or John A. Peterson
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| 0.869397 | 411 | 2.625 | 3 |
Editor: Jane Villa-Lobos
CITES AND PLANTS FOR NOVEMBER 1994
By Bruce MacBryde
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) will hold its 9th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (now 123 member nations) on 7-18 November 1994 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (USA). For plants, the agenda includes potential listing actions mainly on certain timbers, medicinals and ornamentals, and several basic regulatory topics. The Parties also will select the six regional members for the CITES Plants Committee. Background on the treaty and plants is available in proceedings of the previous biennial meetings, and minutes of the annual meetings of the CITES Plants Committee (1988-1994) and CITES Plant Working Group (1984- 1987).
Among the draft resolutions for decision in Florida are: (1) revising the 1976/1979 criteria and proposal document for inclusion of species (fauna and flora) in CITES Appendices I and II; (2) adopting strict criteria and beginning an international registration of nurseries that qualify in artificial propagation of particular taxa in Appendix I; and (3) consolidating (with some updating) of all the past CITES resolutions.
Nine countries have proposed amendments to the CITES appendices for plants, to list 35 species, uplist 23 species, downlist 9 species and delist 3 species. Pivotal are several proposals to include tropical species in Appendix II to regulate their timber (see also medicinals below), from: Africa Dalbergia melanoxylon, Entandrophragma (ca. 11 spp.), Khaya (ca. 6 spp.); Latin America Swietenia macrophylla and its natural hybrids with S. humilis; and Asia Diospyros mun. Plants almost all of Asia proposed for Appendix II particularly because of medicinal or other chemical overuse are: Berberis aristata DC., Gentiana kurroo, Colchicum luteum, Rheum australe, Aconitum deinorrhizum, A. ferox, A. heterophyllum, Coptis teeta, Picrorhiza kurrooa, Nardostachys grandiflora and the trees (also used for wood) Prunus africana, Pterocarpus santalinus, Taxus wallichiana and Aquilaria malaccensis (syn. A. agallocha).
The desire to strengthen export-import controls is shown in proposals to uplist to Appendix I succulent Madagascar species: Aloe (16 spp.), Euphorbia cremersii and Pachypodium ambongense. Some succulents also are proposed for downlisting to Appendix II: Euphorbia primulifolia, Pachypodium brevicaule, P. namaquanum, Astrophytum asterias, Leuchtenbergia principis and Mammillaria plumosa; and for delisting from Appendix II: Aloe vera.
Other proposals to use Appendix I are: listing Dactylanthus taylorii to control commerce in the wood-rose, and uplisting the Asian orchids Cypripedium cordigerum, C. elegans, C. himalaicum, C. tibeticum and Dendrobium cruentum. Other proposals to downlist to Appendix II are for the orchids Didiciea cunninghamii, Cattleya skinneri and Lycaste skinneri var. alba; and to delist from Appendix II Alocasia sanderiana and Camellia chrysantha.
To obtain or provide information, see U.S. Federal Register notices to be published in late August 1994 or contact: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Office of Scientific Authority, 725 Arlington Square Bldg., Washington, DC 20240. Tel: 703-358-1708; Fax 703-358-2276.
FIELD RESEARCH IN BRAZIL
The Instituto Ecologico Cristalino-IEC is a nonprofit organization seeking to expand research activities at its field station in Mato Grosso State, Brazil. The field station is located in the Meridional Amazon Forest, one of the richest fauna and flora areas in the Amazon. The IEC is seeking institutions that are interested in supporting research in biology, ecology, agroforestry, reforestation, environmental education, and related areas. Contact: Adrianna Gomes Consorte-McCrea, CEA-AF, Instituto Ecologico Cristalino, R. Teodora Baima, 100 11A 01220-040 Sao Paulo, BP, Brazil.
The Regional Community Forestry Training Center (RECOFTC) is offering two training courses this fall in Bangkok, Thailand. The first course will be held November 7-December 2 in collaboration with the Agricultural and Rural Development Department of the University of Reading, UK, and will provide middle management personnel in forestry departments and community forestry programs with training in extension skills in participatory community forestry. The course will integrate classroom lectures with field experience in communities in Thailand and will cost US$3,850.
The second course, which will be held December 12-20 in collaboration with Resolve, World Wildlife Fund, USA, will focus on conflict resolution. It is aimed at mid-level officials and NGO personnel involved in forest management and conservation. The course will consist of lectures combined with role playing exercises, interactive discussion, group work and presentation and will cost US$1,550.
For more information on these training courses, contact: Dr. Somsak Sukwong, Director, RECOFTC, Kasetsart University, P.O. Box 1111, Bangkok 10903, Thailand. Tel: (662) 579-0108, 561-4881; Fax: (662) 561-4880.
Collaborative and Community-Based Management of Coral Reefs: Lessons from Experience addresses the central problem of how to involve people in natural resource management in order to make it effective. Coral reefs are among the world's most biologically diverse and productive ecosystems and are an integral part of tropical coastal ecosystems. However, the cumulative impact of human activities on reefs has increased with the world population. Of the 5.6 billion people on Earth in 1991, 3.5 billion lived in coastal areas. Many of the world's densest population clusters are found on tropical coasts bordered by coral reef ecosystems. Coral reefs are subject not only from human pressures, but from natural events. Environmental changes such as temperature variation, sediment runoff from deforestation and water pollution are serious threats. Therefore, coral reef management has become one of the most important issues in the environmental conservation movement with regard to food resources, the livelihood of the people who live around coral reefs, and the marine life that actually dwell inside coral reefs.
The book contains numerous valuable case studies and information on how to manage coral reefs in areas such as the Maluku Islands (Indonesia), San Salvador Island (Philippines), Phuket (Thailand), St. Lucia (Caribbean), and the Florida Keys (USA), to name a few. The case studies highlight the process of achieving a balanced ecological relationship between the human users of the resource and the reef ecosystem itself.
For ordering informaiton, contact: Kumarian Press, Inc., 630 Oakwood Ave., Suite 119, West Hartford, CT 006110-1529; Tel: (203) 953-0214; Fax (203) 953-8579.
RARE Center for Tropical Conservation, an international, nonprofit conservation organization, seeks a program director to develop, manage, and evaluate programs from RARE Center's Philadelphia office. The program director will work closely with the executive director and current program staff to achieve the program and related fund raising goals of the organization.
Responsibilities will include: research and development of new programs, including drafting proposals, budgets, and agreements with collaborating organizations; evaluation of programs; preparation of reports required by institutional donors; management of programs and people in the field; and presentation of RARE Center and its programs to funding agencies, conferences, etc.
The ideal candidate should be a college graduate with an advanced degree who has proven program development experience in Latin America and the Caribbean and who can bring the power of economic analysis to bear on conservation problems. The candidate should also be English/Spanish bilingual and able to communicate in Portuguese as well. Management experience, willingness to travel extensively, and communication skills are also important factors.
Salary is negotiable. Please send a curriculum vitae to John
Guarnaccia, Executive Director, RARE Center, 1616 Walnut Street,
Suite 911, Philadelphia, PA 19103.
The Secretariat of BirdLife International, a global partnership of 53 national conservation organizations, requires an Advocacy Program Manager to develop and coordinate its BirdLife Policy and Advocacy Program. Specific tasks include: coordinating and facilitating the development of BirdLife policies on both broad environmental and international issues affecting birds where a joint position by the BirdLife Partners is desirable; encouraging the adoption and adherence to agreed policies by Partners and other relevant parts of the BirdLife Network; developing and expanding the Advocacy Programme with a focus on agreed policies and priorities; developing and maintaining close relationships with national and international development agencies, international conventions and treaties and other key organisations whose policies and actions BirdLife wishes to influence; and managing and motivating advocacy staff.
For this post the individual should have excellent communication skills, a detailed understanding of international agencies and conventions, and be a good persuader and influencer with knowledge of international conservation and development issues. The candidate should have high levels of initiative and self-motivation and be able to work under pressure and travel the world frequently.
The post will be based at the BirdLife International Secretariat in Cambridge, UK. The salary scale ranges from US$ 25,500 - 34,500 plus benefits. Relocation costs will be covered.
Applications should be made to Dr. Michael Rands, Deputy
Director-General, BirdLife International, Wellbrook Court, Girton
Road, Cambridge, CB3 0NA, UK. This should include a letter
highlighting relevant experience, qualifications and motivation
for seeking this post and a full curriculum vitae which should
arrive by no later than 10th September 1994.
The Great Lakes Protection Fund, a nonprofit organization to support projects that ensure the health of the regional ecological ecosystem, seeks a new Executive Director who will be responsible for all aspects of the Fund's activities. This includes grant making, outreach, oversight of the endowment, and management of a staff of six professional and clerical personnel. The Executive Director works closely with and reports directly to the Board of Directors.
Applicants should have high standards, imagination,
leadership qualities, an entrepreneurial style and a strong
commitment to the Fund's goals. The salary scale and benefits are
competitive, and compensation will be set to attract the most
qualified candidate. Candidates should submit a letter of
application and a resume to Maureen Smyth, Great Lakes Protection
Fund, 35 East Wacker Drive, Suite 1880, Chicago, IL 60601; Tel:
(312) 201-5029. There is no deadline for submitting an
application, but the initial screening is expected to be
completed by September 1.
Ecologically Sustainable Developments (ESD), Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting ecologically sustainable development plans and projects throughout the world, is seeking a Vice President for Program. The incumbent will direct and manage ESD's program activities and initiate and develop ecologically sustainable development programs. A B.S. degree is required in any of the following areas: natural resources, landscape architecture, resource economics or regional planning. Other requirements: demonstrated successful supervisory and management experience; established contacts in the environmental and NGO communities; and working knowledge of geographic information systems. Salary is commensurate with experience, appropriate to the nonprofit community. Starting date is approximately January 1, 1995.
Candidates should submit a 2-3 page statement articulating their personal definition of ecologically sustainable development; a resume, with introductory letter of interest; and three professional and three personal references. Deadline is October 31, 1994. Submit application to: Donna Beal, Administrator, ESD, Inc., P.O. Box 848, 2 Church Street, Elizabethtown, NY 12932; Tel: (518) 873-3200; Fax: (518) 873- 2686.
September 26-28. A symposium, "The Origins, Implantation,
and Differentiation of the Fauna and Flora of Madagascar,
including the Islands of the West Indian Ocean", will be held by
the Socie.ty of Biogeography in Paris, France. For information,
write: Dr. W.R. Lourenco, Societe de Biogeographie, 57, rue
Cuvier, 75005 Paris, France.
October 5-9. The second annual Institute of Marine and
Coastal Ecology will take place at a secluded site north of San
Carlos on the rugged gulf coast region of the Sea of Cortez,
Sonora, Mexico. Participants will study the diversity of tropical
desert and coastal life forms as well as marine ecology.
Activities will include snorkeling, hiking and kayaking.
Participants must be in good health to attend. Cost is $645 per
person which includes transportation, instruction, camp services
and all meals. One unit of University credit is available for an
additional fee. For further information call Cynthia Lindquist,
Institutes Director, Tel: (602) 629-0757; Fax: (602) 622-5622.
October 19-22. "Ecosystem Management and Restoration for the 21st Century" is the theme of the 1994 Natural Areas Conference to be held in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Sessions will include papers on topics such as: environmental education as a tool for natural areas protection, new approaches to ecosystem management, understanding and managing hurricane effects in natural areas, wetland management, and exotic species policy and management. For registration information, contact: Bill Helfferich, South Florida Water Management District, P.O. Box 24680, West Palm Beach, FL 33416-4680; Tel: (407) 687-6637.
Alves, M. and Coelho, M. 1994. Genetic variation and
population subdivision of the endangered Iberian cyprinid
Chrondrostoma lusitanicum. J. Fish Biology 44(4):
627-636. (Ten of the 15 Portuguese indigenous species of
Cyprinidae (fishes) are endangered due to habitat destruction and
Andrade, G. and Rubio-Torgler, H. 1994. Sustainable use of the tropical rain forest: evidence from the avifauna in a shifting-cultivation habitat mosaic in the Colombian Amazon. Conservation Biology 8(2): 545-554.
Anon. 1994. Condor killed. New Scientist 143(1933): 13. (An endangered Californian condor, recently returned to the wild, died after flying into a power line)
Anon. 1994. English plans for marine nature conservation. Marine Pollution Bull. 28(3): 135.
Anon. 1994. Parrots: Caribbean Amazons. On the Edge (Wildlife Preservation Trust International) 49: 9-10. (Five of the species of Amazon parrots that inhabit the Caribbean are considered endangered)
Anon. 1994. Reefbase - a global database of coral reef systems and their resources. Marine Pollution Bull. 28(3): 133.
Anon. 1994. Spotlight on education: Brazil. On the Edge (Wildlife Preservation Trust International) 49: 3-4. (Successful environmental education program developed, focusing on the conservation of the highly endangered black lion tamarin)
Anon. 1994. Symbol of success. Nat. Wildlife 32(5): 22-24. (Bald eagle no longer classified as endangered in lower 48 states of US)
Anon. 1994. Turkey - new environmental protection association set up by ship owners and industrialists to fight marine pollution. Marine Pollution Bull. 28(3): 136.
Barbour, M. and Whitworth, V. 1994. California's living land.scape. Fremontia 22(3): 3-13.
Baskin, Y. 1994. California's ephemeral vernal pools may be a good model for speciation. BioScience 44(6): 384-388.
Belleville, B. 1994. Making ecosense. The Florida Naturalist 67(2): 9-11.
Bennett, D. 1994. The unique contribution of wilderness to values of nature. Nat. Areas J. 14(3): 203-208.
Bjorndal, K., Bolten, A. and Lagueux, C. 1994. Ingestion of marine debris by juvenile sea turtles in coastal Florida habitats. Marine Pollution Bull. 28(3): 154-158.
Blockstein, D. 1994. A National Institute for the Environment: Congress is debating a proposal to create a new institute to provide the big picture on environmental issues. Fisheries 19(7): 28-29.
Bond, I. 1994. The importance of sport-hunted African elephants to CAMPFIRE in Zimbabwe. Traffic Bull. 14(3): 117-119.
Bright, P., Mitchell, P. and Morris, P. 1994. Dormouse distribution: survey techniques, insular ecology and selection of sites for conservation. J. Applied Ecology 31(2): 329-339. (The doormouse Muscardinus avellanarius L., protected species in Britain)
Byrnes, P. 1994. In the kingdom of the Keys. Wilderness 57(205): 19-21. (Destruction of the Florida Keys)
Cayo, D. 1994. Exploring Fundy's untamed coast. Canadian Geographic 114(4): 28-37. (Logging threatens an isolated seashore)
Cayot, L., Rassman, K. and Trillmich, F. 1994. Are marine iguanas endangered on islands with introduced predators? Noticias de Galapagos 53: 13-14.
Collier, G., Mountjoy, D. and Nigh, R. 1994. Peasant agriculture and global change. BioScience 44(6): 398-407. (Mexico)
Crowder, L., Crouse, D., Heppell, S. and Martin, T. 1994. Predicting the impact of turtle excluder devices on loggerhead sea turtle populations. Ecological Applications 4(3): 437- 445.
Doak, D., Kareiva, P. and Klepetka, B. 1994. Modeling population viability for the desert tortoise in the western Mojave Desert. Ecological Applications 4(3): 446-460.
Fa, J. 1994. Herbivore intake/habitat productivity correlations can help ascertain re-introduction potential for the Barbary macaque. Biodiversity and Conservation 3(4): 309.
Fernandez-Duque, E. and Valeggia, C. 1994. Meta-analysis: a valuable tool in conservation research. Conservation Biology 8(2): 555-561.
Francisco-Ortega, J., Ellis, R., Gonzalez-Feria, E. and Santos-Guerra, A. 1994. Overcoming seed dormancy in ex situ plant germplasm conservation programmes; an example in the endemic Argyranthemum (Asteraceae: Anthemideae) species from the Canary Islands. Biodiversity and Conservation 3(4): 341-353.
Hall, P., Chase, M. and Bawa, K. 1994. Low genetic variation but high population differentiation in a common tropical forest tree species. Conservation Biology 8(2): 471-482. (Pentaclethra macroloba, Costa Rica)
Hardy, J., Reisen, W., Milby, M. and Reeves, W. 1994. Potential effects of global warming on mosquito-borne arboviruses. J. Medical Entomology 31(3): 323-332.
Hill, G. 1994. Observations of wildlife trade in Mergui Tavoy District, Kawthoolei. Traffic Bull. 14(3): 107-110. (Myanmar, bordering Thailand)
Holdgate, M. 1994. Ecology, development and global policy. J. Applied Ecology 31(2): 201-211.
Hunter, J. 1994. Is Costa Rica truly conservation-minded? Conservation Biology 8(2): 592-595. (Banana plantations in the Sarapiqui area)
Huntsman, G. 1994. Endangered marine finfish: neglected resources or beasts of fiction? Fisheries 19(7): 8-15.
Jordan, A. 1994. Paying the incremental costs of global environmental protection: the evolving role of GEF. Environment 36(6): 12-20, 31-35. (The Global Environment Facility (GEF), set up in 1992, channels donor funds to developing world for environmental protection projects)
Kershaw, M., Williams, P. and Mace, G. 1994. Conservation of Afrotropical antelopes: consequences and efficiency of using different site selection methods and diversity criteria. Biodiversity and Conservation 3(4): 354-372.
Kiviat, E. and Hartwig, T. 1994. Marine mammals in the Hudson River estuary. Hudsonia 10(2): 1-5.
Klekowski, E., Corredor, J., Morell, J. and Castillo, C. 1994. Petroleum pollution and mutation in mangroves. Marine Pollution Bull. 28(3): 170-177.
Komai, T. 1994. Rediscovery of Pagurus imaii (Yokoya, 1939) (Decapoda: Anomura: Paguridae) from Hokkaido, Japan. Nat. Hist. Research 3(1): 33-40. (Hermit crab)
Kremen, C. 1994. Biological inventory using target taxa: a case study of the butterflies of Madagascar. Ecological Applications 4(3): 407-422.
Lee, C. 1994. The 1994 legislature - victories and disappointments. The Florida Naturalist 67(2): 16-19.
Lovelock, C., Jebb, M. and Osmond, C. 1994. Photoinhibition and recovery in tropical plant species: response to disturbance. Oecologia 97(3): 197-307.
McGranahan, G. and Songsore, J. 1994. Wealth, health and the urban household: weighing environmental burdens in Accra, Jakarta and Sao Paulo. Environment 36(6): 4-11.
McIntyre, S. and Lavorel, S. 1994. Predicting richness of native, rare and exotic plants in response to habitat and disturbance variables across a variegated landscape. Conservation Biology 8(2): 521-531. (Australia)
Mulliken, T. and Haywood, M. 1994. Recent data on trade in rhino and tiger products, 1988-1992. Traffic Bull. 14(3): 99-106.
Nash, S. 1994. Further parrot trade records for Irian Jaya, Indonesia. Traffic Bull. 14(3): 121-124.
Numata, M. 1994. Pasture and weed vegetation in relation to land use and nature conservation in northern Pakistan. Nat. Hist. Research 3(1): 7-20.
O'Brien, J. 1994. Research on South Florida Galactia (Fabaceae). Plant Conservation 8(1): 1-3.
Oliver, K. 1994. Island: crossroads. The Florida Naturalist 67(2): 4-7. (Grand Bahama Island's Rand Nature Center, home to a large population of rare greater flamingos)
Oostermeijer, J., Van Eijck, M. and den Nijs, J. 1994. Offspring fitness in relation to population size and genetic variation in the rare perennial plant species Gentiana pneumonantha (Gentianaceae). Oecologia 97(3): 289-296.
O'Ryan, C., Flamand, J. and Harley, E. 1994. Mitochondrial DNA variation in black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis): conservation management implications. Conservation Biology 8(2): 495-500.
Pearce, F. 1994. Not warming but cooling. New Scientist 143(1933): 37-41. (The world's most populous areas are getting cooler - due to the aerosol effect)
Pennisi, E. 1994. Tallying the tropics. Science News 145: 362-363, 366. (Barro Colorado Island, Panama)
Peres, C. 1994. Indigenous reserves and nature conservation in Amazonian forests. Conservation Biology 8(2): 586-588.
Pleumarom, A. 1994. The political economy of tourism. The Ecologist 24(4): 142-148.
Pray, L., Schwartz, J., Goodnight, C. and Stevens, L. 1994. Environmental dependency of inbreeding depression: implications for conservation biology. Conservation Biology 8(2): 562- 568.
Pritchard, P. 1994. Ecotourism - panacea or problem ? The Florida Naturalist 67(2): 2.
Rabe, F. and Chadde, S. 1994. Classification of aquatic and semiaquatic wetland natural areas in Idaho and western Montana. Nat. Areas J. 14(3): 175-187.
Rosenzweig, M. and Clark, C. 1994. Island extinction rates from regular censuses. Conservation Biology 8(2): 491-494. (British Islands)
Roth, D., Perfecto, I. and Rathcke, B. 1994. The effects of management systems on ground-foraging ant diversity in Costa Rica. Ecological Applications 4(3): 423-436.
Russell, R., Carpenter, F., Hixon, M. and Paton, D. 1994. The impact of variation in stopover habitat quality on migrant rufous hummingbirds. Conservation Biology 8(2): 483-490. (California Sierra Nevada)
Saberwal, V., Gibbs, J., Chellam, R. and Johnsingh, A. 1994. Lion-human conflict in the Gir forest, India. Conservation Biology 8(2): 501-507.
Samson, F. and Knopf, F. 1994. Roundtable: prairie conservation in North America. BioScience 44(6): 418-421.
Sandison, M. and McGough, H. 1994. A validation of draft CITES criteria against selected plant taxa. Traffic Bull. 14(3): 92-98.
Schneider, D. 1994. Return of the ospreys. Canadian Geographic 114(4): 20-27.
Schwartz, M. 1994. Conflicting goals for preserving biodiversity: issues of scale and value. Nat. Areas J. 14(3): 213-216.
Skow, F. 1994. Redwoods: the last stand. Time June 6: 58-60. (California)
Stahle, D. and Chaney, P. 1994. A predictive model for the location of ancient forests. Nat. Areas J. 14(3): 151-158. (USA)
Stokes, M. and Slade, N. 1994. Drought-induced cracks in the soil as refuges for small mammals: an unforseen consequence of climatic change. Conservation Biology 8(2): 577-580.
Stone, P., Snell, H. and Snell, H. 1994. Behavioral diversity as biological diversity: introduced cats and lava lizards wariness. Conservation Biology 8(2): 569-573. (Exotic predators have decimated island populations of birds & reptiles)
Suzan, H., Nabhan, G. and Patten, D. 1994. Nurse plant and floral biology of a rare night-blooming cereus, Peniocereus striatus (Brandegee) F. Buxbaum. Conservation Biology 8(2): 461-470. (USA & Mexico)
Tokar, B. 1994. Between the loggers and the owls: the Clinton Northwest forest plan. The Ecologist 24(4): 149- 153.
Tomiuk, J. and Loeschcke, V. 1994. On the application of birth-death models in conservation biology. Conservation Biology 8(2): 574-576.
Valle, C. 1994. "Pepino War, 1992" - is conservation just a matter for the elite? A Galapagos viewpoint. Noticias de Galapagos 53: 2.
Van der Valk, A., Squires, L. and Welling, C. 1994. Assessing the impacts of an increase in water level on wetland vegetation. Ecological Applications 4(3): 525-534.
Virkkala, R., Rajasarkka, A., Vaisanen, R., Vickholm, M. and Virolainen, E. 1994. The significance of protected areas for the land birds of southern Finland. Conservation Biology 8(2): 532-544.
Walters, T., Decker-Walters, D. and Gordon, D. 1994. Restoration considerations for wiregrass (Aristida stricta): allozymic diversity of populations. Conservation Biology 8(2): 581-585. (USA)
Weinstock, J. 1994. Rhizophora mangrove agroforestry. Econ. Bot. 48(2): 210-213.
White, A., Hale, L., Renard, Y. and Cortesi, L. 1994. Collaborative and Community-based Management of Coral Reefs. Kumarian Press, West Hartford, Connecticut. 129 pp.
Willson, M., de Santo, T., Sabag, C. and Armesto, J. 1994. Avian communities of fragmented south-temperate rainforests in Chile. Conservation Biology 8(2): 508-520.
Zettler, L. 1994. Extinction in our own backyard. Am. Orchid Soc. Bull. 63(6): 686-688. (Platanthera integrilabia, Kentucky & Tenn.)
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GREEK SHIPPING IN THE 20TH CENTURY: MYTH OR REALITY?.
Our guest speaker is Professor Gelina Harlaftis, Dept. of Maritime Studies, Univeristy of Piraeus and author of A History of Greek-Owned Shipping (Runciman Award, 1997).
Monday March 6, 2000, 7:30 pm.
The Graduate Lounge, 301 Philosophy Hall, 116th St. and Amsterdam.
Reception to follow. Co-sponsored by Hellas.
The lecture will address challenging questions like the following:
"In 1894 Greeks owned 1% of the world's fleet and had the 13th biggest merchant marine; 100 years later they owned the largest fleet, with 16% of world tonnage. Why would Greeks, members of a small European country of fewer than 10 million people own the world's largest fleet, larger than the one of the United States, Japan or any other European nation? And why would a fleet sailing under various flags and carrying cargoes for many nations be identified as Greek-owned? what does being Greek have to do with the operation of such multinational shipping enterprises?"
Another quote from Master Mariner Michailides, engages the imagination:
"The famous genius as sea is something beyond any rules of logic ... It is something like what Zorba, the hero of Kazantzakis says: 'I cannot explain it with words, so I will explain it with dancing.' It is sailing against the mainstream; it is the expoitation of opportunities in critical periods of shipping. It is to buy whan others sell, to sail when others lay up, to order new buildings when the others do not even dream of it. It is the deep belief of the Greek that the sea 'becomes ill but she never dies."
Excerpted from Dr. Harlaftis' book, A History of Greek-Owned Shipping
Admission to the lecture is free and open to the public. All are welcome!
See you there.
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Radon gas emissions contain radioactive particles which disperse naturally outdoors, but can build up in indoor environments. Most of the radon we breathe is exhaled immediately, but some of the particles can attach themselves to the lungs, exposing them to damaging levels of radiation.
Researchers analysed 7,148 cases of lung cancer and 14,208 controls (people who had not developed lung cancer) across Europe. In the largest study of its kind, they examined radon levels in the present and past homes of all the lung cancer sufferers and the controls. They also obtained detailed smoking histories, including the effects of second-hand smoke on lifelong non-smokers.
They found that radon accounted for 20,000 deaths from lung cancer in Europe each year, equating to 9% of lung cancer deaths and 2% of all cancer deaths across Europe. The risk of radon-induced lung cancer increased proportionally to how much radon people were exposed to.
Smokers were at much greater risk of developing lung cancer, as radon exposure multiplied the effects of smoking.
Concentrations of radon in homes vary widely from house to house, and urban areas tend to have lower levels than rural areas. Action can however be taken to reduce radon exposure in the home, say the authors. At moderate cost increasing underfloor ventilation would reduce high radon concentrations in existing homes. As new homes are constructed, a radon proof barrier installed at ground level would be even lower cost, they conclude.
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MURRAY CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT (UTAH)
Agency History #681
In compliance with a petition from the residents of Murray City to Governor John C. Cutler, a proclamation was issued on July 1, 1905, designating Murray as "a city of the second class." This declaration made Murray eligible to establish a school district under the provision of the 1890 territorial free school law. Almost immediately, the city was divided into five municipal wards for the purpose of electing a board of education. An election was held the following December and newly elected members of the Board of Education took office on January 1, 1906. The board at once appointed a supervisor who had charge of all the schools and school work for the remaining part of the 1905-1906 school year. At the first meeting of the board in June 1906 a superintendent of schools was elected for two years. The mission statement reads: "The mission of Murray City School District is to work in partnership with families in the education of our youth for a changing world." [Policies, Rules and Regulations, The Board of Education of Murray City, GS02 (rev. 13 Sept. 1995), viewed on Murray School District world wide web site, May 2002.]
The Murray City School system conducts an educational program for kindergarten and grades one through twelve, organized into elementary, junior high and senior high schools. The district has 11 schools--7 elementary schools (grades K-6), 2 junior high (grades 7-9), one high school (grades 10-12), and one alternative high school. Murray is a city with a population of about 35,000, located in the middle of the Salt Lake Valley. Spanning approximately 43 blocks north to south (4500 South to 6600 South) and approximately 14 blocks east to west (900 East to the Jordan River and the North Jordan Canal), Murray City encompasses nine and a half square miles. The boundaries of the district are the same as the city limits. Although Murray City School District covers fewer square miles than any of the state's 40 school districts, it is the 14th largest in number of students enrolled. Reported enrollment for the 2001-2002 school year is 6,358. When the district was created in 1905, enrollment was 953.
The district is governed by a five-member, elected Board of Education. Voters in each of the district's five precincts elect one member to serve as their representative on the Board of Education. School board elections are held in November in conjunction with the general election. The board members elect a president and vice president at the time new members are sworn into office at the first board meeting in January. The district is also subject to the general oversight of the Utah State Office of Education. The superintendent appointed by the board is the executive officer of the board.
The superintendent is appointed by the board and works under the direction of the board. An assistant superintendent oversees curriculum and instruction. Together, these officers supervise the directors of Technology & Applied Technology Education, Curriculum K-12, and At Risk Programs. Directors of Personnel & Pupil Services and Special Services & Purchasing report to the superintendent. The district also employs a business administrator. The principal is the administrative officer and instructional leader of the school, working directly under the Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum & Instruction.
Murray residents objected to the consolidation of Salt Lake County Schools in 1905, which would have split the population of the newly incorporated city (residing in county school districts 24 and 25) between Granite District on the north and Jordan District on the south. Through annexation, the population of Murray was increased above the necessary threshold to qualify as a city of the second class. Thus, Murray (which was incorporated in 1902 as a city of the third class) gained the authority to establish its own city school district.
|Gideon M. Mumford,||July 1905-June 1912|
|Carl Ephraim Gaufin,||June 1912-July 28, 1928 (died)|
|E. Allen Bateman,||1928-1933|
|J. Easton Parratt,||August 1, 1950-1972|
|Richard H. White,||July 1-October 1972|
|Glen C. Oldroyd,||December 1972-1986|
|Ronald L. Stephens,||1986-July 1, 1998|
|Richard Tranter,||July 1, 1998-present|
|BOARD PRESIDENTS, 1905-1906, 1911-PRESENT|
|James Godfrey,||July-December 1905|
|Michael McMillan,||January 1, 1906-unknown|
|U. G. Miller,||1917-1918|
|D. D. Lester,||1924-1926|
|N. L. Jensen,||1926-1927|
|D. D. Lester,||1929-1930|
|Sarah E. H. Moffatt,||1930-1931|
|George H. Watts,||1931-1932|
|Carl C. L. Hansen,||1932-1933|
|D. D. Lester,||1933-1935|
|George H. Watts,||1941-1942|
|W. Douglas Allen,||1942-1943|
|F. T. Duvall,||1948-1949|
|D. D. Lester,||1949-1950|
|Lawrence P. Parry,||1953-1954|
|Wendell C. Day,||1954-1955|
|Earl J. Healy,||1955-1956|
|Paul S. Rose,||1956-1957|
|David B. McCleery,||1957-1958|
|Earl J. Healy,||1958-1959|
|Victor L. Brissell,||1959-1960|
|Herbert G. Spencer,||1960-1961|
|Paul S. Rose,||1962-1963|
|Earl J. Healy,||1963-1964|
|Herbert G. Spencer,||1964-1965|
|Briant S. Stringham, Jr.,||1965-1966|
|Paul S. Rose,||1966-1967|
|Kenneth V. Simper,||1967-1968|
|Herbert G. Spencer,||1968-1969|
|Briant S. Stringham, Jr.,||1969-1971|
|Vere A. McHenry,||1971-1972|
|John R. Evans,||1972-1973|
|Thayne R. Harris,||1973-1974|
|Briant S. Stringham, Jr.,||1974-1975|
|Vere A. McHenry,||1975-1976|
|J. Dale Ahlberg,||1976-1977|
|Boyd F. Jensen,||1977-1978|
|Thayne R. Harris,||1978-1979|
|Briant S. Stringham, Jr.,||1979-1980|
|George I. Brown,||1980-1981|
|J. Dale Ahlberg,||1981-1982|
|Briant S. Stringham, Jr.,||1982-1983|
|George I. Brown,||1983-1985|
|J. Dale Ahlberg,||1985-1987|
|Laura S. Baker,||1987-1988|
|Bruce R. Cutler,||1989-1990|
|Laura S. Baker,||1991-1992|
|Laura S. Baker,||January-June 1995 (resigned)|
|Mildred V. Horton,||June 1995-January 1997|
|Sherry Madsen,||January 1997-January 1999|
|Mildred V. Horton,||January 1999-January 2001|
|G. Lloyd Naylor,||January 2001-[present]|
COMPILED BY: W. Glen Fairclough, Jr. , May 2002
Johnson, G. Wesley, and David Schirer for the Corporation of the City of Murray. Between the Cottonwoods. Salt Lake City: Timpanogos Research Associates, 1992.
McHenry, Vere A. "Fifty Years of Independence: A History of Murray City Schools." Master's thesis, University of Utah, June 1954.
Moffitt, John Clifton. A Century of Service, 1860-1960: A History of the Utah Education Association. Salt Lake City: Utah Education Association, 1960.
Moffitt, John Clifton. The History of Public Education in Utah. Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1946.
Murray City Corporation. The History of Murray City, Utah. Murray, Utah: Murray City Corporation, 1976.
Murray City School District. District Office staff roster, http://www.mury.k12.ut.us/DO/DO.HTM [May 2002]
Murray City School District. Policies, Rules and Regulations, The Board of Education of Murray City. [May 2002]
Murray City School District. Public Information Office.
Murray City School District. World Wide Web site, http://www.mury.k12.ut.us/ [May 2002]
Salt Lake County. County Superintendent of District Schools. Report of County Superintendent of District Schools, July 1, 1907.
Salt Lake County. Superintendent of County Schools. Circular of the Public Schools of Salt Lake County. 1890.
Series 83238 Utah. Legislature. Utah Code Annotated, 1851-ongoing. Title 53A, Sections 2-3.
Series 1052 Utah. Legislature. Utah Code Unannotated, 1982-ongoing. Title 53A, Sections 2-3.
Series 240 Utah. Secretary of State. Public Documents Serial Set, 1896-1956. 1905-1906, part 1, no. 6; Sixth Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Utah for the biennial period ending June 30th, 1906. The report of the Superintendent of Murray City School District appears on pp. 71-73.
Series 10819. Utah. State Office of Education. School Directories, 1912-ongoing.
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http://www.archives.utah.gov/research/agencyhistories/681.html
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en
| 0.883404 | 2,148 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Start defining a keyboard macro
If a keyboard macro is being defined, end the definition; otherwise,
execute the most recent keyboard macro
Re-execute last keyboard macro, then append keys to its definition.
Append keys to the last keyboard macro without re-executing it.
Run the last keyboard macro on each line that begins in the region
To start defining a keyboard macro, type F3. From then on,
your keys continue to be executed, but also become part of the
definition of the macro. ‘Def’ appears in the mode line to
remind you of what is going on. When you are finished, type F4
kmacro-end-or-call-macro) to terminate the definition. For
F3 M-f foo F4
defines a macro to move forward a word and then insert ‘foo’. Note that F3 and F4 do not become part of the macro.
After defining the macro, you can call it with F4. For the above example, this has the same effect as typing M-f foo again. (Note the two roles of the F4 command: it ends the macro if you are in the process of defining one, or calls the last macro otherwise.) You can also supply F4 with a numeric prefix argument ‘n’, which means to invoke the macro ‘n’ times. An argument of zero repeats the macro indefinitely, until it gets an error or you type C-g (or, on MS-DOS, C-BREAK).
The above example demonstrates a handy trick that you can employ with keyboard macros: if you wish to repeat an operation at regularly spaced places in the text, include a motion command as part of the macro. In this case, repeating the macro inserts the string ‘foo’ after each successive word.
After terminating the definition of a keyboard macro, you can append
more keystrokes to its definition by typing C-u F3. This
is equivalent to plain F3 followed by retyping the whole
definition so far. As a consequence, it re-executes the macro as
previously defined. If you change the variable
nil, the existing macro
will not be re-executed before appending to it (the default is
t). You can also add to the end of the definition of the last
keyboard macro without re-executing it by typing C-u C-u
When a command reads an argument with the minibuffer, your minibuffer input becomes part of the macro along with the command. So when you replay the macro, the command gets the same argument as when you entered the macro. For example,
F3 C-a C-k C-x b foo RET C-y C-x b RET F4
defines a macro that kills the current line, yanks it into the buffer ‘foo’, then returns to the original buffer.
Most keyboard commands work as usual in a keyboard macro definition,
with some exceptions. Typing C-g (
the keyboard macro definition. Typing C-M-c
exit-recursive-edit) can be unreliable: it works as you’d
expect if exiting a recursive edit that started within the macro, but
if it exits a recursive edit that started before you invoked the
keyboard macro, it also necessarily exits the keyboard macro too.
Mouse events are also unreliable, even though you can use them in a
keyboard macro: when the macro replays the mouse event, it uses the
original mouse position of that event, the position that the mouse had
while you were defining the macro. The effect of this may be hard to
The command C-x C-k r (
repeats the last defined keyboard macro on each line that begins in
the region. It does this line by line, by moving point to the
beginning of the line and then executing the macro.
In addition to the F3 and F4 commands described above,
Emacs also supports an older set of key bindings for defining and
executing keyboard macros. To begin a macro definition, type C-x
kmacro-start-macro); as with F3, a prefix argument
appends this definition to the last keyboard macro. To end a macro
definition, type C-x ) (
kmacro-end-macro). To execute
the most recent macro, type C-x e
kmacro-end-and-call-macro). If you enter C-x e while
defining a macro, the macro is terminated and executed immediately.
Immediately after typing C-x e, you can type e repeatedly
to immediately repeat the macro one or more times. You can also give
C-x e a repeat argument, just like F4.
C-x ) can be given a repeat count as an argument. This means to repeat the macro right after defining it. The macro definition itself counts as the first repetition, since it is executed as you define it, so C-u 4 C-x ) executes the macro immediately 3 additional times.
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en
| 0.865384 | 1,086 | 3.1875 | 3 |
High School Graduation Initiative also known as School Dropout Prevention Program
The High School Graduation Initiative (HSGI) collects data, on an annual basis, on five Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) Indicators. In addition to the GPRA indicators grantees are also required by statute to report annually on the Event Dropout Rate for high schools served by the program. All of the data, except for the Graduation Rate, posted on the ED.gov site were reported by grantees in their Annual Performance Report (APR). The Graduation Rate data were identified using the U.S. Department of Education EdFacts Initiative. EdFacts collects data reported by each State Education Agency (SEA) to the U.S. Department of Education as part of reporting and accountability requirements under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act (P.L. 107-110). For more information on EdFacts please visit the website at: http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/edfacts/index.html
- 2012-13 School Year Performance Data
- 2011-12 School Year Performance Data
The five GPRA indicators and Statutorily Mandated Reporting Requirement are as follows:
|Indicator #1: For each high school served by the project, the school’s graduation rate, as defined in the State’s approved accountability plan for Part A of Title I of the ESEA.*|
Indicator #2: The number and percentage of students enrolled in grades 9 through 12 in schools or programs served by the project who, during the most recent school year, earned one quarter of the credits necessary to graduate from high school with a regular diploma.
Indicator #3: The number and percentage of students served by the project who had not attended school for 60 or more instructional days immediately prior to their participation in the project; and the average daily attendance of such students while participating in the project.
Indicator #4: The number and percentage of students served by the project during the most recent school year who were two or more years behind their expected age and credit accumulation in high school; and the number and percentage of such students who earned one half or more of the credits they need to graduate with a regular diploma.
|Indicator #5: For each school served by the project that includes eighth grade the (A) average daily attendance of such school and (B) the number and percentage of students enrolled in eighth grade who enrolled in ninth grade at the start of the next year.|
|Statutorily Mandated Reporting Requirement: For each high school served by the project the annual dropout rate defined in Part H, Section 1829 USC 6561h) as the annual event school dropout rate for students leaving school in a single year.|
*The values have been derived by consolidating EdFacts; data for the schools served by each grantee (i.e., not all the schools in the districts and states that received an award participate in the HSGI program) and were not submitted directly to U.S. Department of Education. When there are fewer than 300 students in the population, graduation rates have been put in ranges in accordance with the Department's privacy protection requirements. The rate for the grantee falls somewhere within the published range.
For more information about these data, please contact Inas El-Sabban at [email protected]
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://www2.ed.gov/programs/dropout/performance.html
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|
en
| 0.965564 | 711 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Nicotine can give the brain a boost
Nicotine-based drugs may help delay the moment a person with dementia has to enter a care home, say researchers.
Nicotine has toxic effects, and carries a strong risk of addiction, but scientists have shown it can also boost learning, memory and attention.
The effect is small, but it may help give dementia patients up to six extra months of independent living.
A team at King's College London have demonstrated the positive effects of nicotine in experiments on rats.
They showed that nicotine boosted the animals' ability to carry out a task accurately - particularly when they were also distracted.
When able to give full concentration, the animals responded correctly to stimuli about 80% of the time. Nicotine boosted the accuracy rate by about 5%.
However, when distracted, the animals' success rate fell to about 55%. In this case nicotine brought it back up to around the 85% level.
The King's team, based at the Institute of Psychiatry, studied the mechanisms which underpin the effects produced by nicotine.
They showed how proteins on the surface of cells respond to the compound, and pinned down the role of several key chemicals in the brain, including dopamine and noradrenaline.
It transpired that there are only subtle biochemical differences in the way nicotine stimulates the brain, and triggers addiction.
Several nicotinic drugs are already in development, but the King's team hopes its work will speed up the discovery of agents which give the brain a bigger boost than nicotine, with longer lasting effects.
Lead researcher Professor Ian Stolerman said: "Nicotine, like many other drugs, has multiple effects, some of which are harmful, whereas others may be beneficial.
"It may be possible for medicinal chemists to devise compounds that provide some of the beneficial effects of nicotine while cutting out the toxic effects."
Professor Stolerman stressed that the positive effects produced by nicotine were small, and would be of no benefit to most people.
However, he said they could potentially make a difference to dementia patients.
He added that the "cognitive boost" that many smokers experience from nicotine may contribute to the pleasure they get from their habit.
Professor Clive Ballard, of the Alzheimer's Society, said: "Although nicotine has therapeutic qualities, when it is absorbed through smoking the health risks outweigh the benefits.
"Smoking increases risk of vascular dementia, the second most common form of dementia and is associated with a number of other health risks.
"More research is now needed to find a safe and effective treatment for dementia, with the potential benefits of nicotine, but without the health risks."
Rebecca Wood, of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, agreed that people should not be tempted to smoke to try to ward off dementia. She said the best way to minimise risk was to eat a balanced diet and exercise regularly.
Professor Stolerman said there was no reason to believe that nicotine or smoking reduced the risk of getting dementia - it only helps to reverse symptoms.
It is estimated that 700,000 people in the UK live with dementia.
The research will be presented to a Federation of European Neuroscience Societies conference in Geneva.
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CC-MAIN-2016-26
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7497037.stm
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en
| 0.954123 | 646 | 3.171875 | 3 |
by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko
05/13/2010 | 12:40 PM
Once upon a time, when PC games used to be 2-dimensional, every kind of graphics processing was done on the CPU. This was also true for early 3D games. Neither Wolfenstein 3D nor Doom with its numerous clones listed a graphics accelerator among their system requirements. Well, they couldn’t since there were no graphics accelerators at that time and game developers did not rely on them. Moreover, talking about gaming applications of their products, Intel and AMD focused on enhancing the capabilities of their CPUs in the way of MMX and 3DNow! instruction sets. Intel promoted MMX as a means to boost the quality, level of detail and speed of gaming graphics whereas the name of AMD’s technology speaks for itself.
This situation went on for quite a while. Even rather late projects by id Software and Epic Games such as Quake and Unreal used the CPU as the main tool for processing graphics, notwithstanding the significantly expanded game worlds. Things changed in 1996 when the obscure and young firm 3dfx Interactive unveiled the world’s first 3D graphics accelerator for the PC affordable for ordinary gamers. The product looks ridiculous by today’s standards as it could only map and filter textures, but the quality of the filtering was unprecedented at that time. None of then-existing CPUs, whatever multimedia instruction sets they supported, could deliver such performance even at a lower image quality. A game would look completely different running in the Glide mode as opposed to software mode.
That was the first revolution in the world of gaming 3D graphics. CPUs were losing their ground year by year, their influence on performance constantly diminishing. There were other turning points, the next one being the Nvidia GeForce 256, the world’s first graphics processor with a TCL unit (Transformation, Clipping, Lighting) that could transform 3D coordinates into 2D ones, clip polygons and light the scene, offloading the CPU. As is often the case, the new product did not take off immediately. Nvidia’s opponents still relied on the growing computing capacities of CPUs for those tasks, yet hardware TCL had become widespread by the end of 2001 anyway. The same year there was a third revolution that expanded the capabilities of GPUs even more by making them programmable. The Nvidia NV20 (GeForce 3) came out as the first chip to support DirectX 8.0. And the last notable innovation occurred in 2002 when ATI Technologies announced the R300, the first GPU to support DirectX 9.0.
From that moment onwards, GPUs were developing in an evolutionary way. New versions of DirectX and OpenGL were being implemented. The computing part, originally divided into vertex and pixel processors, became unified. New types of shaders were supported and there were lots of other innovations. GPUs quickly surpassed ordinary CPUs in sheer computing power, giving birth to the idea to use them not only to process graphics but also to accelerate complex computations unrelated or loosely related to 3D applications. Both leading developers, AMD and Nvidia, are working actively in this direction, but that’s not the point of this review. Looking at the computing capabilities of today’s GPUs estimated at teraflops (more than the huge supercomputers of earlier times could offer!), one might find modern CPUs to have rather humble parameters.
This provokes a natural question if 3D games need powerful CPUs at all. The answer is not as simple as it seems. First, if some GPUs resources are allotted to compute the game AI or physical model, there are fewer resources left for graphics processing. And we know just too well that today’s games have very complex visuals that may take all the 1600 stream processors of an RV870 chip to be rendered at a decent frame rate. Second, it is not so easy to rewrite the game code to make maximum use of GPU resources. It looks like a number of computational tasks, including gaming ones, are still performed better on the CPU, therefore premium-class gaming computers from famous manufacturers like Alienware are equipped with extremely fast and expensive CPUs. Particularly, the quad-core Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition cost $999 when announced and the newest six-core Core i7-980X is going to cost that much today. That’s quite a lot, but a top-end graphics card is expensive as well. For example, a Radeon HD 5850 costs about $300 whereas topmost solutions that deliver maximum performance are as expensive as $600-800 (a dual-processor Radeon HD 5970) or even $1000 and more (a couple of Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 cards working in SLI mode).
We know that the frame rate of a modern video game depends much more on the graphics card than on the CPU but does it make sense to try to save on the latter? Won’t a cheaper CPU be a bottleneck in a system with a newest graphics card? We are going to investigate this issue using all of our testing tools. The platform we use for benchmarking graphics cards is already equipped with one of the fastest CPUs available today. It is an Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition that sells in retail for $700-800. Let’s compare it with an affordable Intel Core i5-750:
The Core i5-750 is appealing from a financial point of view. Having a recommended price of $199, it can be found selling for $170-190. It is a full-featured quad-core CPU with the Nehalem architecture, 8 megabytes of L2 cache, but without Hyper-Threading. The latter technology is unimportant for gaming whereas the amount of cache is. And the i5-750 is just as good as the i7-975 EE in terms of cache memory. It must also be noted that a good LGA1156 mainboard is going to be much cheaper than an LGA1366 one.
From every aspect the Core i5-750 looks a highly attractive option for a gamer who wants to save some money on the CPU and invest it into a faster graphics card. Having both platforms at our disposal, we want to check out how wise such economy is and if the affordable CPU will allow the graphics card to show its best.
We are going to compare the performance of Intel processor with Nehalem microarchitecture on two testbeds, which were built on different mainboards, memory modules configuration and, of course, CPUs.
Intel LGA1366 platform:
Intel LGA1156 platform:
Other system components were identical and included the following:
The ATI Catalyst and Nvidia GeForce graphics card drivers were configured in the following way:
Below is the list of games and test applications we used during this test session:
First-Person 3D Shooters
Third-Person 3D Shooters
Semi-synthetic and synthetic Benchmarks
We selected the highest possible level of detail in each game using standard tools provided by the game itself from the gaming menu. The games configuration files weren’t modified in any way, because the ordinary user doesn’t have to know how to do it. We ran the tests in the following resolutions: 1600x900, 1920x1080 and 2560x1600. Unless stated otherwise, everywhere, where it was possible we added MSAA 4x antialiasing to the standard anisotropic filtering 16x. We enabled antialiasing from the game’s menu. If this was not possible, we forced them using the appropriate driver settings of ATI Catalyst and Nvidia GeForce drivers.
Since there is an enormous number of graphics card models available to us these days, we tried to make sure that each of the two major players in the discrete gaming graphics market is represented by super-powerful flagship solutions, as well as comparatively affordable mainstream models, which are popular among users with limited budget. As a result we ended up with three graphics accelerators from each: ATI and Nvidia:
Performance was measured with the games’ own tools and the original demos were recorded if possible. We measured not only the average speed, but also the minimum speed of the cards where possible. Otherwise, the performance was measured manually with Fraps utility version 3.1.2. In the latter case we ran the test three times and took the average of the three for the performance charts.
The CPU does not affect the frame rate much in this game and its influence lowers at higher resolutions. The Core i7-975 EE is 6-9% ahead of the Core i5-750 in terms of average speed at 1600x900, but at 2560x1600 the gap is only 4% with the dual-processor card and within 1% with the single-GPU Radeon HD 5000 series models. It is at the lowest resolutions that the CPU affects the bottom speed the most. For the Radeon HD 5770, replacing the CPU with a faster one can already make sense then, but we guess that purchasing a faster graphics card, e.g. a Radeon HD 5850, will be an even better solution.
It’s different with the Nvidia products. For example, the senior GeForce series model will perform better with a top-end CPU: the difference between the two CPU models we use in this test session can be as large as 30% (in favor of the Core i7-975 EE, of course). The GeForce GTX 470 depends less on the CPU whereas the previous-generation architecture does not benefit much from the faster CPU because the frame rate seems to be limited by the graphics card itself. The graphics card’s role grows up naturally as the display resolution gets higher, but the new GeForce TX 400 series models perform better when coupled with a top-speed CPU. The only exception is the extreme resolution of 2560x1600 pixels where this difference is reduced to naught. Anyway, the GeForce GTX 400 will benefit from a top-end CPU whereas the Radeon HD 5850, for example, can do just fine without one. By the way, this may be an indication of higher efficiency of the AMD Catalyst driver over the Nvidia GeForce one.
The AMD products are somewhat more CPU-dependent in this game, the maximum effect from the faster CPU amounting to 15% and higher – with the Radeon HD 5970 at 1600x900. This effect is no higher than 7% at the higher resolutions, though, and is really hard to see at all at 2560x1600. Even the Radeon HD 5770 speeds up by a mere 3% with the faster CPU then, the bottom speed remaining roughly the same. Thus, the wise solution is to save on the CPU and invest the money into a better graphics card.
It’s different with the Nvidia cards. They become increasingly more CPU-dependent as the display resolution grows up, which is especially conspicuous with the GeForce GTX 400 series: the senior and junior models enjoy a performance boost of 43% and 30%, respectively, in terms of average frame rate. The Core i7-975 EE can even make the game comfortable to play on the GeForce GTX 275 at 2560x1600! Perhaps this is some future potential which Nvidia can untap by releasing new and optimized drivers.
We don’t have a clear picture here. The tested cards perform predictably at 1600x900 but then we see a queer thing at 1920x1080: the performance of the top-end model gets somewhat lower when we switch from the LGA1156/Core i5-750 to the LGA1366/Core i7-975 EE platform. This may be due to a negative effect of Hyper-Threading technology which is not supported by the Core i5-750, but we can also write it off as a measurement inaccuracy. The Core i5-750 platform suddenly slows down at 2560x1600 but this was due to the smaller amount of system memory: 4 gigabytes as opposed to 6 gigabytes on the LGA1366 platform.
The Nvidia cards show a similar effect. It is the GeForce GTX 275 at 1600x900 and the difference of 5% can hardly be only due to measurement inaccuracies. This effect does not show up at the higher resolutions where the GeForce series products perform in different ways. For example, the GeForce GTX 470 is 6% faster with the better CPU at 1920x1080 but does not benefit from the latter at 2560x1600 whereas the GeForce GTX 480 speeds up by 8% with the top-end CPU at the highest resolution. As opposed to the previous tests, the Nvidia cards are not very CPU-dependent, but they only deliver high speed at 1600x900 (and the bottom speed of the GeForce GTX 275 is too low to be comfortable even then). Oddly enough, the LGA1156 platform is quite satisfied with 4 gigabytes of system memory. We don’t see any performance slump at the highest resolution as with the AMD cards.
The junior graphics card in this review is obviously a bottleneck and its performance doesn’t depend much on the CPU and amount of system memory. The more advanced cards offer more headroom in choosing your CPU, especially at 1600x900 (but this resolution is unlikely to be used with top-end graphics cards). At the higher resolutions the Core i7-975 EE does not boost the frame rate more than 5%, so there is no sense to prefer it to the cheaper Core i7-920 if you’ve got an LGA1366 mainboard. And if you are building your computer from scratch, you may as well go the LGA1156 or even AMD AM3 platform, especially as both platforms offer more advanced processors than junior Core i5 or AMD Phenom II models.
The same is true for the Nvidia cards. We can only note that the GeForce GTX 470 proves to be the least CPU-dependent model in this test. That card is going to perform nicely in Far Cry 2 together with an affordable CPU, but you must be aware that it may only show its best with some more advanced CPUs than the Core i5-750.
This game runs without multisampling antialiasing because it worsens the quality of textures and lowers the frame rate.
Contrary to our expectations, the AMD products prove to depend more on the CPU at 2560x1600. At the lower resolutions the difference between the two CPUs from Intel is negligible.
The same is true for the Nvidia GeForce series, the GeForce GTX 400 cards being somewhat slower with the top-end CPU at high resolutions. This may be a negative effect of Hyper-Threading technology which is enabled in the Intel Core i7-975 EE by default.
We use the game’s DirectX 10.1 and DirectX 11 modes for graphics cards that support them.
The Radeon HD 5850 is the least CPU-dependent product from AMD here. When installed into the LGA1156 platform, it slowed down by 0.5 to 21% whereas the other Radeons could be up to 30-35% slower with the Core i5-750, especially at the lowest resolution.
The Nvidia cards are good in this test. The GeForce GTX 480 slows down by 17% only when moving to the slower platform. The difference is even smaller than 10% at high resolutions. The less advanced graphics cards are even more indifferent to the CPU. There is one important nuance with graphics cards from both developers: they deliver a higher bottom speed on the LGA1366 platform with Core i7-975 processor and you should take this into account if you want to play at high resolutions.
This game is tested in multiplayer mode that uses the OpenGL API. The integrated benchmark does not report the bottom frame rate.
This game is rather simple in terms of visuals and 3D technologies. The CPU doesn’t influence the frame rate much as we benchmark the multiplayer mode. The difference between the two Intel platforms is about 10%, reaching 12-15% in a few individual cases like when the top-end cards from AMD and Nvidia perform at low resolutions. At 2560x1600 the difference between the expensive and affordable CPUs is negligible.
This game’s integrated benchmark does not report the bottom frame rate.
The AMD cards do not lose much speed when switching from the LGA1366/Core i7-975 EE platform to the LGA1156/Core i5-750 one. It is only in one case that the gap is more than 15%, with the Radeon HD 5770 at 1920x1080 (this resolution is too high for that card anyway). Like in most other tests, the smallest effect is observed at 2560x1600 where the capabilities of the graphics subsystem come to the fore.
The Nvidia products do not show clear trends but the GeForce GTX 275 is overall more CPU-dependent in this game than its newer GF100-based cousins. The cheaper CPU and mainboard do not provoke a serious performance hit. If the frame rate is high on the LGA1366/Core i7-975 EE, it is also playable on the LGA1156/Core i5-750. The opposite is true, too. If you buy a top-end CPU, you still won’t be able to increase the frame rate to a comfortable level with a GeForce GTX 275 despite the formal performance increase of 25%.
This test is unique as the difference between the two platforms having the same graphics card inside may be as high as 45 and even 60%! On the other hand, the frame rates are so high that this performance boost has no practical value. And the difference becomes small at 2560x1600, just when the extra speed would be most called for. The only exception is the Radeon HD 5970 which is 16% slower with the Core i5-750 at the highest resolution, but the difference between 110 and 95 fps cannot be felt without Fraps.
The integrated benchmark does not report the bottom frame rate.
The Nvidia solutions are less CPU-dependent than their opponents in this game. The Radeon HD 5000 series is up to 30-35% slower on the LGA1156/Core i5-750 platform than on the LGA1366/Core i7-975 EE. With the Nvidia cards, the maximum difference is 15%, which is observed with the GeForce GTX 480 at 1600x900. In the other cases, the difference is even smaller than 10%, the GeForce GTX 275 being even faster on the slower platform (this must be due to the Core i5-750 not supporting Hyper-Threading). The frame rate is playable in every case, so this game does not really call for a top-end CPU.
We enforced full-screen antialiasing using the method described in our special Mass Effect 2 review.
The game is rather indifferent to the CPU and mainboard, at least when it comes to the CPUs we use in this test. After all, the affordable Core i5-750 is quite an advanced CPU with four cores but we did not have the opportunity to perform the test with a dual-core model. We can note that the Nvidia products are more CPU-dependent. Moreover, the bottom speed does not change much with the Radeon HD 5000 series whereas the Nvidia cards have a lower bottom speed on the LGA1156/Core i5-750 platform at resolutions up to 1920x1080. We can see no situation where the cheaper CPU does now allow playing comfortably. Like in the other cases, the wisest decision is to save on the CPU and invest the money into a faster graphics card.
We enable the DirectX 11 mode for graphics cards that support it.
The performance of the Radeon HD 5000 series cards does not depend much on the platform: the Core i7-975 EE is only 11% ahead at best, which is too small to make any practical difference. Replacing a Radeon HD 5770 with a Radeon HD 5850 is going to be a better decision since the latter card delivers comfortable performance at 2560x1600 irrespective of the CPU and platform.
The Nvidia cards are more sensitive to the platform, especially the newer GF100-based products which need a top-end CPU to show their best. However, it is still better to buy a faster graphics card rather than a faster CPU especially as the G200-based models from Nvidia do not support the DirectX 11 capabilities which improve the visuals of this particular game greatly.
The game’s integrated benchmark cannot report the bottom frame rate. We use DirectX 10 and 10.1 modes here.
Here, all of the graphics cards, except for the flagship models, deliver the same results irrespective of what platform they work on. The Radeon HD 5970 and the GeForce GTX 480 are really limited by the Core i5-750. The former performs 2-5% faster and the latter, 25-30% faster when the CPU is replaced with the Core i7-975 EE. On the other hand, these performance benefits are not as crucial as to justify the investment into the expensive CPU. Purchasing a faster graphics card will be a wise decision.
We use DirectX 11 mode for graphics cards that support it.
The results are indicative of the near identical reaction of the AMD cards to the platform and CPU. Among the Nvidia cards, the GeForce GTX 480 is the only card to depend on the CPU. This beast seems to be only satiated by a most powerful CPU indeed as the increased bottom speed indicates. On the other hand, the frame rate is never lower than 25 fps even at 2560x1600, so a faster CPU does not make much point even here.
The last gaming test in this review produces unique results. We’ve finally found a game where the faster CPU is justifiable in a gaming platform as it determines whether the game is playable or not. Just take a look at the results of the Radeon HD 5800. You can also see that the Core i7-975 EE/Radeon HD 5770 configuration is preferable to the Core i5-750/Radeon HD 5850 one at 1600x900 due to the higher bottom speed.
Nvidia cards behave in the same manner. Not only the GeForce GTX 275 but also the advanced GeForce GTX 470 can benefit from working together with a faster CPU. The difference in bottom speed is considerable even with the GeForce GTX 480, although this card runs the game fast enough even with the weaker CPU. Overall, we can note that Nvidia solutions are less CPU-dependent than the Radeon HD 5800 series.
We minimize the CPU influence by using the Extreme profile (1920x1200, 4x FSAA and anisotropic filtering). We also publish the results of the individual tests across all resolutions.
This is a rather resource-consuming benchmark, especially in the Extreme mode, so the CPU does not influence the result much. When it comes to the AMD solutions, replacing the Core i5-750 with the Core i7-975 EE leads to a performance growth of 7-8%, but may also provoke a small performance hit with some graphics card models. With the Nvidia cards, the frame rate does not grow up more than 2%.
We can see a similar picture in the individual tests. There is no notable effect even at low resolutions, let alone 2560x1600. In other words, a platform with a rather weak CPU can score quite well in 3DMark if you equip it with a top-end graphics card or a multi-GPU tandem.
The results of our comparative test of two Intel platforms are easy to understand and explain. Yes, it is best to equip your gaming platform with both a top-performance graphics card and a premium-class CPU if you’ve got the money, but what if you haven’t? According to our tests, the graphics card being the same, the performance of the platform with an Intel Core i7-975 EE processor can be 10 to 30% higher than that of the platform with an Intel Core i5-750.
But as our tests have also shown, this difference is far from crucial and can be easily made up for by purchasing a better graphics card. It is only in individual cases such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 or WiC: Soviet Assault that using a top-end CPU is indeed justifiable and necessary to enjoy a comfortable frame rate, but such games are rather rare. With the current prices, buying a Core i5-750 for $200 instead of a Core i7-975 EE for $650-800 will save you about $400 or more which you can spend for a Radeon HD 5850/5870 or even GeForce GTX 480.
As for specific recommendations concerning the choice of a graphics card, the current Radeon HD 5000 series from AMD is overall less CPU-dependent than the GeForce GTX 400 and 200 series from Nvidia. This trend does not hold true in every game, however, and you can see the opposite situation in certain games. But whatever games you are going to play, we would recommend you to prefer a top-class graphics card to a top-end and expensive CPU if you can’t afford to have both. This will ensure high performance in most modern as well as in upcoming games. Besides, the Intel LGA1156 platform is at its peak right now and you can buy an inexpensive Core i5-750 today to replace it with a more advanced model, i.e. a Core i7-870, in the future.
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Heine: Father of Secular Judaism
By EGON FRIEDLER
Heinrich Heine, the great poet of 19th-century
German romanticism, has always been a most controversial figure. A Jew
self-converted to Protestant Christianity, heavily influenced by French
culture, and sharply critical of the semi-feudal Germany of his own time, Heine
was rejected by German Jews and Christians alike. Heine played no small role in
forging this polemic: his biting sarcasm was bestowed upon friends and enemies
Heine had a flair for making enemies, as dramatic as his genius for composing
poetry in the lyric vein—verses that made him, justly, the idol of millions of
readers. As an essayist, literary critic, political analyst, arts and theater
journalist, philosopher and music connoisseur, Heine bequeathed his singular
prophetic vision to the German literary scene. He foresaw a Communist
revolution that would sweep away the profoundly stratified German body politic,
and that subsequently would fall victim to its own excesses.
Well aware of the present penchant for romanticizing the twilight of the
Gothic, pre-Christian past, Heine glimpsed the possibility of the return of a
savage power—later reincarnated in the Nazi regime.
During his lifetime and posthumously, Heine suffered the slings and arrows of
antisemitism. The Nazis tried to erase him from German history, but the
popularity of his song, the “Lorelei,” was too great; though in the end, it was
attributed to an anonymous source.
Whenever the Jewish intellectual contribution to world culture is discussed,
Heine’s own Judaism comes in for questioning. Whenever the thorny question of
Jewish identity is raised, Heine’s name is bandied about interminably. A book
published in Israel [in 2000] has enriched this lively give and take. Written by
the journalist Yigal Lossin, Heine: The
Double Life rings true in its multifaceted analysis of the complex poet.
Lossin, whose passion for Heine inspired the composition of the work, availed
himself of such Heine experts as Hugo Bieber, J. Sammons, and S.S. Prawer. The
result, according to a review in Ha’aretz,
was delightful in its amiable style and fluidity, one of the most overwhelming
successes in the sphere of Israeli non-fiction.
Do What I Say, not What I Do
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was born into a well-to-do business family. His
mother, Piera van Geldern, envisioned a great future for her offspring, and
sent young Heinrich to a Roman Catholic finishing school. Despite his mother’s
assimilationist tendencies, the family’s own Jewish tradition was quite strong,
exerting a strong influence on Heine’s life. His uncle, the rich Hamburg banker
Salomon Heine (the family patriarch, as it were), supported Heine financially
from the cradle to the grave. This gross dependency inevitably led to a
love-hate relationship, and periodic explosions were the rule between the two.
In Heine’s youth, his uncle set him up in a business framework that ended, as
was to be expected, in total bankruptcy.
When Heine was a much older man, his uncle cynically observed that if Heine had
been able to support himself, he would never have needed literature. Though
Heine considered himself a steadfast opponent of society’s hypocrisy, he
frequently submitted, albeit unwillingly, to norms that he inwardly rejected.
Studying law as his parents desired, he managed to complete his degree. Of
course, he never practiced litigation. Heine was a revolutionary who foresaw
the dark side of the revolution, a German who feared the uglier aspects of the
German character. Though an enemy of institutionalized religion, he made sure
to be married in a Parisian Catholic church; while proclaiming the delights of
hedonism and free love, the woman he married was a near-illiterate Paris
merchant, and their life together was the height of “middle-class” existence. He did all this while preaching the ideas of
Jewish pride, and decrying the servile attitude of Jews who converted to
Christianity for social advancement. Heine was the epitome of
self-contradiction: converting was exactly what he did.
A vocal critic of organized Jewish community life, Heine was emphatic in his
condemnation of the more reactionary aspects of Jewish faith. He clashed with
the fanaticism of Orthodox sects, while simultaneously opposing the crass
opportunism of the upwardly mobile assimilationists. Of all the elements in
Heine’s life that shaped his Judaism most clearly, his membership in “The
Jewish Society for Science and Culture,” in his youth, had the greatest impact
No less important, however, was his return to Judaism following his own
apostasy, in his later years of illness and paralysis. It would be fitting
indeed to remember Heine’s celebrated response to a friend who inquired about
the poet’s desire to re-join the Jewish people: “There is no need to return, for
in fact I have never left.”
Heine’s welter of internal contradictions aside, the opinions of cultural
historians and literary critics regarding him are even more bewildering. Yigal
Lossin brings us the judgment of Isaac Deutscher, who considers Heine one of
the “Jewish non-Jews” like Trotsky, Rosa Luxembourg, Freud, Spinoza, and Marx.
For Max Nordau, Heine was one of the great prophets and legislators of the
Jewish people: Nordau, in his famed speech before the first Zionist Congress,
saw Heine—together with Spinoza—as one of the great Jewish thinkers, no less
than Rambam, Yehudah Halevy, Hillel, Philo of Alexandria, and Ibn Gabirol.
For Lossin, Heine is a forerunner of what would become, in the century
following his death, the mainstream of the Jewish people: the Jew who
identified with his people, culture and history, but not with the religion.
Lossin reminds us that Heine believed, 70 years prior to Ahad Ha’am, that Jews
of Eastern Europe were freer than those of the emancipated West, and that 80
years before Chaim Nachman Bialik, Heine upheld the necessity of Jewish
self-defense; and that before Tchernikovsky, Heine extolled the notion of
wreaking vengeance upon the enemies of Israel. Even the Reformists came in for
their share of the blame: Heine took an aversion to their readiness to abjure
their own roots in exchange for citizen’s rights.
Paradoxically, Lossin views Heine as a species of Proto-Zionist thinker,
although the biographer is careful to mention that Heine himself never referred
to the land of Israel as a solution to the problems of the Jewish people. Due
to Heine’s harsh appraisal of Orthodox Judaism’s excessive spirituality, Lossin
sees him as a model for subsequent thinkers like Berdichevsky, Tchernikovsky,
and the Canaanite literati of the 1950s.
In most vital chapters of the book, which Lossin trenchantly call “Third Class
Jew,” the author precisely defines Heine’s Judaism: “What is the nature of this
Judaism to which Heine never returned because, by his own declaration, he never
abandoned it? In our own time we would see this as free, nationalistic and
secular. It is the choice that has liberated so many Jews who live in this time
of ‘God is dead,’ and who cannot identify with either with either the Orthodox
or Reform interpretations of their religion. It is Judaism of another type,
which does not obligate its followers to comply with its precepts or even to
adhere to its faith; its basis is, quite simply: feeling.”
Lossin’s observations make sense. Heine, in his manner of being, preceded
millions of contemporary Jews who refuse to confine their Judaism to rigid
theological straitjackets. Belonging and cultural identity take precedence here
over questions of metaphysics: a historical community, with great traditions,
forged in the continuum of more than 4,000 years, is the patrimony of Jews like
Hence, the relevance of Lossin’s book is increased. For one thing, it provides
an up-to-date vision of one of Western history’s most controversial figures, with
relevance to both Jewish polemics and universal literary criticism. Secondly,
it gives context to the growth of Jewish secularism, proving once and for all
that secularism and assimilation are in no way compatible (as certain voices
would insist). Instead, secularism is seen as a logical outgrowth of the
philosophy of Emancipation, a positive form of Jewish identification from
Heine’s period to our own day.
This essay is reprinted with permission from Contemplate: The International Journal of Cultural Jewish Thought
(Center for Cultural Judaism, 2005-2006), and with permission from the author. For further reading please click here.
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Leave No Trace
"Leave nothing but your thanks."
- Robert Baden-Powell, on camping
What does it mean to leave no trace?
It means exactly what you might think - to enjoy your outdoor camping adventure to the fullest, and afterwards leave no sign that you were ever there.
No-trace or "minimum impact" camping, is Scouting's outdoor philosophy. Leaders and youth in all sections must learn and teach each other minimum impact outdoor skills, so that the natural world will be there for us to enjoy for many years to come.
Here are some more ideas to practise Leave No Trace ethics:
- Pack out all garbage, and pick up garbage left behind by other campers
- Take only pictures
- Hike along existing trails whenever possible
- Don't wash dishes (or bathe) directly in lakes, rivers, streams or ponds
- Use biodegradable soaps and shampoos
- Don't feed or harass wildlife
- Use stoves, where possible, instead of an open fire
- Respect the rights of fellow campers - keep voices low and leave radios at home
- Don't cut down living plants or trees
- Buy or repackage food into burnable or reusable containers
- If you have a large group, divide into several smaller parties and camp on different sites at least 100 metres apart to lessen environmental impact
- Don't dig trenches around tents, and don't dig holes for grease pits
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A passage about "energy intensity" in the, er, cheery Thomas Homer-Dixon book The Upside of Down got me thinking more about the historical trend in GHG emissions intensity.
For new readers, a couple months back I showed that the globally-averaged emissions intensity has been decreasing for decades even though the total emissions were increasing. In other words, the economy has been expanding faster than GHG emissions. Therefore, a future emissions target based on the rate of emissions per economic production, as was proposed in Canada, would allow total emissions to increase.
History Database of the Global Environment (similar analysis has been done for the recent past by the IPCC's WG III and by Informetrica for Canada alone).
The graph shows that the emissions per unit energy - the blue line - has been relative stable since the Industrial Revolution. The energy intensity- the green line - mirrors the original emissions intensity curve. It peaked in the 1920s and has been decreasing since.
In other words, the emissions intensity has been falling for the past eighty years because we’ve been producing more stuff with less energy not because we’ve become more efficient, emissions-wise, at producing energy. Over the past three decades, world energy production has actually became less GHG efficient due largely to increased energy use in Asia. Emissions intensity decreased during this time only because, as a planet, we were able to produce more income with less energy.
The graph is useful for articulating the challenge that lies ahead. Since it will take time to rebuild the existing energy production infrastructure ("slow turnover of capital stock"), becoming more energy efficient, producing more stuff with less energy is critical to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the short-term. That's the green line. But to achieve the long-term emissions reductions (ie. like these proposals) required to avoid dangerous interference with the climate, we'll need to move the blue line. In other words, we'll need to radically change the way be produce, not just use, energy. And, again, with the slow "turnover of capital stock", we need to start planning as soon as possible.
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Learn something new every day
More Info... by email
A transformer is an electrical device which transfers electrical energy from one electrical circuit to another. While ordinary transformers cost a substantial amount of power loss to a line, resulting in roughly 40 to 50 percent of all transmission and distribution losses, an energy efficient transformer is designed to be more efficient and reduce the amount of power loss that occurs when the energy is transferred. An energy efficient transformer accomplishes this by using extremely conductive materials, including electrical steel and easily magnetized materials.
Transmission and distribution losses are some of the biggest enemies to efficient power transfer in transformers. These losses are natural losses of attrition which occur as electricity moves through the line. Much like a dragging cloth along a piece of sandpaper, where tiny portions of the cloth will be snagged during the process, some of the power flowing through a transformer is similarly "snagged" and displaced by the substances through which it moves. The amount of "snagging" that occurs is largely dependent on the conductivity of the materials through which the electricity flows; highly conductive materials can pass a charge with much less of a snagging effect.
The efficacy of a modern energy efficient transformer is roughly twice that of a comparable transformer from the 1970s. This means that while an average transformer results in 40 to 50 percent power loss — in other words, only half of the power moving through the transformer actually makes it to the next circuit — the power retention of an energy efficient transformer is much higher, suffering only 20 to 25 percent loss. Much of the power loss in traditional transformers comes from the substances used in their creation; standard steel and other ordinary metals tend to impede the flow of electricity to a degree where much of the power is lost through heat conversion.
A modern energy efficient transformer solve this problem through its conductive construction materials. When created from materials that have a higher conductivity, such as steel specifically designed to hold an electrical charge, energy efficient transformers retain more of their original power, allowing more to be funneled into the adjoining circuit. An amorphous metal transformer is one good example of this; the core of the transformer is made from material which can easily be magnetized and demagnetized, resulting in not only better power transfer, but reduced carbon dioxide transmissions when generating power from fossil fuels.
One of our editors will review your suggestion and make changes if warranted. Note that depending on the number of suggestions we receive, this can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Thank you for helping to improve wiseGEEK!
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A USGS scientist prepares a tracer solution in a gas-tight bladder that will be pumped into a zone of nitrate-containing groundwater to monitor the production and consumption of nitric oxide dissolved in groundwater. USGS scientists and their colleagues have developed a method to measure the rates at which inorganic nitrogen compounds, such as nitrate and nitrite, transform in groundwater.
Single-well tracer tests involve injecting a tracer solution into one port of a multilevel sampling well, creating a tracer cloud in the groundwater, and then monitoring the water chemistry in the tracer cloud from the same well as the tracer cloud moves away from the well. Single-well tracer tests can be used to measure chemical reactions in the subsurface such as measuring how nitrogen transforms in groundwater.
USGS scientists processing groundwater samples during a subsurface pH modification experiment. In the foreground is a tank containing an injection solution used to create a plume of groundwater with lower pH.
A diagram of a push-pull, single well injection test that can be used to estimate the rate that hydrogen is consumed by bacteria in the subsurface. Step 1 of the test involves the controlled injection of a solution of dissolved hydrogen gas and a non-reactive tracer into a monitoring well. Step 2 involves pumping the injected tracer solution out of the subsurface using the same well, and collecting water-quality samples from the pumped fluid.
A diagram of a natural gradient, single well injection test that can be used to estimate the rate that hydrogen is consumed by bacteria in the subsurface. Step 1 of the test involves the controlled injection of a solution of dissolved hydrogen gas and a non-reactive tracer using a single port of a multilevel monitoring well. Step 2 involves the collection of water-quality samples from the plume of hydrogen and tracer as it drifts past the same well.
A sewage treatment plant on the Massachusetts Military Reservation, Cape Cod discharged its treated wastewater into a series of infiltration beds through pipes like the one in the photo. This practice lasted for more than 60 years, and created a plume of wastewater more than 6 kilometers (approximately 4 miles) long in the subsurface.
USGS scientist collecting water-quality samples for the investigation of the natural restoration of the wastewater plume on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
A conceptual diagram of the setup of the subsurface tracer test. A solution of bromide (conservative tracer), 17ß-estradiol, 4-nonylphenol, and sulfamethoxazole was injected into the subsurface. A series of corresponding water samples were collected from the multilevel sampler downgradient of the injection well.
Treated wastewater disposal beds on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, which created a large subsurface plume of contaminated groundwater. A team of scientists has been conducting long-term multidisciplinary research on the physical, chemical, and biological processes that control the transport of contaminants in groundwater.
A view of the side of a trench cut into the Cape Cod aquifer showing what is commonly referred to as a "homogeneous" aquifer. Studies of the distribution of the horizontal conductivity resulted in a range of conductivity from 0.02 to 0.34 centimeters per second, which demonstrated that the aquifer is not homogeneous.
Multilevel monitoring wells being prepared for installation prior to a large-scale natural-gradient tracer test above a plume of sewage-contaminated groundwater. Each well has 15 to 20 monitoring ports.
An array of several hundred multilevel wells were installed in an abandoned gravel pit. The array of wells was used to conduct a natural-gradient tracer test. The results of the test provided information on how contaminants are transported in groundwater.
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WASHINGTON (AP) - Grandma may have been right about keeping a teakettle warming on the stove in winter to moisten the air.
Studies of seasonal influenza have long found indications that flu spreads better in dry air.
Research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science indicates that the key is the absolute humidity which measures the amount of water present in the air, regardless of temperature - not
the more commonly reported relative humidity.
Relative humidity varies depending on air temperature; absolute humidity doesn't.
The correlation with flu and low humidity is important because in cold winter weather, when flu is most common, even a high
relative humidity reading may indicate little actual moisture in
the air. The less moisture there is, the happier the flu virus
seems to be.
Still, overdoing the moisture can cause other problems, like
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A Short Lesson In Wildlife Photography
Imagine this: You show up for a wildlife photography shoot in Africa. An expert guide with a Land Rover outfitted especially for photography meets you. Camera mounts are set securely in place on the doors of the vehicle. Several padded, easy-open cases for long lenses are mounted inside the vehicle. Beanbags are handy for supporting cameras and lenses in a hurry. You have plenty of film. Perhaps best of all, you have three months to shoot!
A dream come true? It sure did, for National Geographic photographer Chris Johns, one of the world's premier wildlife photographers. That's how he traveled while shooting his cheetah story for National Geographic (I know because I saw a television program on his adventures).
Well, I don't know about you, but I don't have all the aforementioned luxuries. However, I still get good wildlife pictures. And you can, too, by following a few basic wildlife photo tips.
Pack the right gear. The Boy Scouts of America follow the motto, "Be Pre-pared." That's good advice for wildlife photographers--who must be prepared for a wide variety of photo ops.
Choose your lenses carefully. For my animal portraits, my basic lenses are my 70-200mm zoom and 100-400mm zoom. When an animal is far away, I use a 1.4x tele-converter on my 100-400mm zoom, which when set at 400mm gives me an effective focal length of 560mm. For pictures of animals in their habitats, I use my 17-35mm zoom--when I can get fairly close. If not, I use my 70-200mm zoom.
Don't forget filters. I use a polarizing filter to darken the sky and to reduce reflections on water. I use a warming filter to give my pictures deeper shades of red, orange, and yellow, a skylight filter to protect the front element of my lens, and a graduated filter to darken the sky when it's much brighter than the land in my pictures.
Film. Pack way more than you think you'll need. I use fast film for low light and fast action shooting. Lately, I've been using ISO 200 film pushed one and two stops. For bright-light shooting, I use ISO 100 film, which produces nice enlargements with no noticeable grain.
Batteries. Here, too, bring more than you think you'll need. Autofocus lenses and motor drives, essential for wildlife photography, use up battery power fast. Don't be caught without power. I pack a lot of batteries, and I'm glad my wife is sometimes along to carry them (as well as all my back-up gear: extra lenses, camera bodies, etc.).
Pack a flash. I never go out to photograph animals without my flash and a flash extender, which, you guessed it, extends the range of the flash. Flash extenders attach to flash heads with touch fasteners, so you can attach them and remove them quickly. You'll find them invaluable when an animal is in the shade and when you want to add some sparkle to an animal's eyes.
Tote a tripod. Sure it's no fun to lug around a tripod. But you'll be so happy you did when you need it in a low-light situation, when conditions dictate using a slow shutter speed. A monopod is a good second choice for a camera support. And if you will be shooting from a car, pack some socks before you leave home and fill 'em up with beans on site for custom-made beanbag supports. Me? I tote a tripod and a monopod, as well as a pair of socks!
Pack it in. The bag you pack your gear in is important, too. You want your gear protected, and you want quick access to it. I usually use a camera backpack, with a built-in rain hood. But that's just what I like. Before you choose a camera pack or packs, envision your shooting situations--from a vehicle, on foot, over rough or smoother terrain, etc.--and choose one that meets your needs and budget.
Work with a guide. If you want to maximize your time in the field, that is, find animals fast, then you must work with someone who knows the territory. Go it alone and you could spend many hours or days looking for wildlife. Sure, a guide will cost extra money, but in my 20 years of shooting, I've come to realize that it's a very good investment in my pictures.
Study your subject. Each species of animal has its own habits, and lives in a select habitat. If you know where to look and what to look for, you'll have a better chance of getting a behavioral photograph--a picture in which the animal is doing something that is part of its life. Find out as much as you can about the wildlife you'll be photographing. There is a lot of information on the web. Simply use a search engine like www.google.com and type in the animal you want to photograph. Hundreds of listings will appear on your monitor in a few minutes.
Know The Basics
Practice at home. Great
wildlife photo opportunities come and go in an instant. That's why
you must be ready to shoot on demand--in a few seconds. If you practice
all your photographic techniques at home, perhaps at the local zoo or
wildlife park, you'll get a much higher percentage of good pictures
in the field than if you had just relaxed at home and looked at great
wildlife pictures, which actually is a good idea, too. No, I don't
mean relax! I mean look at wildlife pictures and think about how you could
take those kinds of pictures, or perhaps even improve upon them.
And, this one is kind of simple, but all too true: you must go to someplace with great wildlife for great wildlife pictures. My favorite spots are Galapagos and Africa.
Rick Sammon is the host of the Photography Workshop series on the Do It Yourself Network and guest host of the Canon Photo Safari on ESPN.
- FilmToaster Scanner Review
- Always Remember to Take a Good Look: How to See What’s Right in Front of You as a Photographer
- Tamron SP 85mm f/1.8 Di VC USD Lens Review
- Watch Ansel Adams’ Son Discuss How His Father Made His Most Famous Photo (VIDEO)
- Hasselblad Launches World’s First Compact Mirrorless Digital Medium Format Camera: the 50MP X1D
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Hurricane Sandy, one year later
When Hurricane Sandy hit the Caribbean and North America in October 2012 it left a path of destruction in its wake, causing up to US$68 billion worth of damage. It was the second most expensive hurricane ever recorded.
Aside from the economic losses, the storm killed nearly 300 people. 120 of those killed were in the Latin American and Caribbean region, where Sandy displaced hundreds of thousands, destroyed homes, critical infrastructure and crops, and threatened livelihoods for many people who already face poverty - and (in the case of Haiti) worsening the humanitarian crisis.
In light of the first anniversary of Sandy, UNDP is looking at the impact of the storm on the people of the Caribbean. Special attention is being paid to the lessons learned and the strides made in to rebuilding.
UNDP has played a crucial role in helping countries affected by the storm to recover, supporting livelihoods, helping people to reconstruct homes and assisting communities in infrastructure restoration. UNDP has been active in disaster prevention in the region for decades and the storm clearly demonstrated that those countries that have invested in mitigating disaster risk and preparing for recovery were better able to protect investment and development gains.
Our work on the ground
One year on from the hurricane, UNDP says that recovery efforts from the storm are underway, but suffering of those in developing Caribbean nations may have been underplayed. more
Hurricane Sandy ploughed through the Caribbean region before hitting the eastern coast of the United States, severely impacting several countries. more
Gabion walls protected schools, communities, farmlands, harvests and critical infrastructure during Hurricane Sandy that hit Haiti the week before. more
In an effort to guide early recovery, UNDP launched the Hurricane Sandy Recovery Project to provide coordinated and evidence based recovery to the hardest-hit areas. more
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Welcome to the California Fish Website!
This site provides information and links about California's freshwater and anadromous fish, current aquatic management issues, and research that is being done to improve the conservation of native fish species.
What's New? Help us to beta test the Cal Fish App! Use your smartphone, tablet, or other geo-location-enabled device to get information on the freshwater fish species for your current location in California. Then answer a short survey to help us to improve the app. Ask us how you can create a bookmark or icon on your device for quick access to the Fish App!
Fish Species Profiles Find information on the life history of the fish species of California both native and non-native. Simply search by species name. You can also search by the county and watershed in which the species is found.
Publications *NEW Reports being added* Read scientific literature on topics connected to freshwater fish and California’s watersheds.
Research Projects Find out what work is being done in the field right now to learn more about California’s fish species and the habitats they live in.
Conversions and Glossary Browse a listing of definitions and explanations to supplement and clarify the rest of the information on the site.
Fish People Learn about some of the scientists currently studying our local fishes and their habitats.
California Fish Photo Library Need a large format version of a picture? Go here for larger format versions of some of the pictures seen on this site along with other photos that are not on this site. Go here to learn about photo use and copyright.
Aquaculture Go to the website of the Aquaculture Specialist, Dr. Fred Conte. Go to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's Aquaculture page for information, including sources of native fish stock.
Have a sick pet fish? The Small Animal Clinic at the UC Davis Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital sees fish. Clients can make an appointment at 530-752-1393.
For more information The fish species location information on this website is derived from the PISCES Database of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, from a database version obtained on 2 February 2014. Most of the fish identification and life history information on this site can be found in greater detail in the book Inland Fishes of California written by Professor Peter B. Moyle and available from the University of California Press, copyright 2002.
Thank-you to the people who have contributed to the development of this site: Dr. Terry Salmon, Shelley Collier, Dr. Beth Chasnoff, Dr. Peter Moyle, Brian Hodge, Jenna Voss, Craig Fergus, Dexter Fernandez, Karl Krist, David Krause, Josh Viers, Nick Santos, Rebecca Quinones, Adam Lum, Himali Rajakarunanayake, and Alyssa Obester. Thanks also to all the people who have contributed photos of fish!
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This is Mary Tillotson. And this is Steve Ember with THE MAKING OF A NATION -- a VOA Special English program about the history of the United States. Today, we begin telling about Bill Clinton, America's forty-second president. He led the United States for eight years. He acted on many important issues that affected the United States and other countries. President Clinton also had to defend himself against accusations of dishonesty and sexual wrongdoing.
In 1991, many Americans felt happier and more secure than they had in years. Worries about nuclear war had eased. The United States had led a coalition of allies to victory in the Persian Gulf War. In a little more than four days, the coalition freed Kuwait from invaders from Iraq and deeply damaged the Iraqi military.
Republican President George Bush had won huge popularity after successfully leading the war effort. Most political experts believed President Bush would easily be re-elected in 1992.
President Bush’s popularity fell, however, as many people lost their jobs. Unemployment climbed to its highest rate since 1984. Economic growth slowed to recession levels. The federal government was deeply in debt after years of borrowing to pay for its programs.
The opposition Democratic Party correctly believed it had a good chance to elect a president in 1992. It placed its hopes for winning the White House on Arkansas Governor William Jefferson Clinton.
The future president was born William Jefferson Blythe on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. His parents were William Jefferson Blythe and Virginia Blythe. Bill’s father was a traveling salesman. His father had died in a car accident three months before Bill was born. At age two, Bill was sent to live with his grandparents while his mother studied to become a nurse.
Bill’s mother married Roger Clinton when Bill was four years old. The family moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1953. Bill officially changed his name to William Jefferson Clinton at age 15.
Bill Clinton’s new father, Roger Clinton, drank too much alcohol. Bill’s life at home was unpleasant at times. However, he did well in school and liked it very much. He also developed a strong early interest in politics. He competed for many offices while in high school.
In 1963, Bill Clinton met President John F. Kennedy. Bill was visiting Washington, D.C. as a delegate for a citizenship training program. President Kennedy provided the young Bill Clinton with a strong example of leadership.
Bill continued his education at Georgetown University in Washington. He graduated in 1968. Excellence in his studies won him a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oxford University in Oxford, England. He spent two years there before entering Yale University Law School in New Haven, Connecticut.
At Yale, Bill fell in love with another Yale law student. Hillary Rodham of Park Ridge, Illinois shared his deep interest in politics and public service. They were married in October of 1975. Their daughter Chelsea was born in 1980.
Bill Clinton returned to Arkansas after completing law school. He soon entered politics as a Democrat, narrowly losing an election for Congress. Later, Arkansas citizens elected him attorney general -- the top law official for the state. In 1978, he became the Democratic Party candidate for governor. He easily defeated his Republican opponent. He was the youngest man ever elected governor of Arkansas.
While Bill Clinton was governor, the federal government operated a holding center for Cuban refugees in Arkansas. Rioting among these Cubans hurt his chances for re-election. Governor Clinton’s opponent said he should have done more to get the government to hold the Cubans someplace else. Mr. Clinton also supported unpopular new taxes.
Bill Clinton was defeated in his effort to be re-elected governor of Arkansas in 1980. He deeply regretted this loss. He promised himself he would again be governor. Bill Clinton gained his goal in the election two years later. He continued to serve as governor of Arkansas until 1992.
Education in Arkansas improved under the leadership of Governor Clinton. Many more students graduated from Arkansas high schools. The number of students entering college also rose. The state began requiring examinations for teachers. It also increased their pay. Mr. Clinton started health centers in public schools. And he expanded Head Start programs to help prepare poor children to begin school.
While governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton also served in national organizations for governors and Democratic Party leaders. He became well known as a moderate Democrat.
In 1991, William Jefferson Clinton announced he would compete for the Democratic nomination for president. Former Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas and former California Governor Edmund Brown, Junior were his main opponents for the nomination.
However, Paul Tsongas later suspended his campaign for lack of money. Mr. Clinton won a big lead over Mr. Brown in state nominating elections.
Democrats met for their national nominating convention in New York City in July, 1992. They named Bill Clinton as their candidate for president. He chose Senator Al Gore of Tennessee to be his vice president in the election.
The Republican Party nominated President Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle for a second term. Texas businessman Ross Perot competed as an independent. His vice presidential candidate was a former top Navy officer, James Stockdale.
President Bush talked about his foreign policy successes during the campaign. He said he would cut taxes. He said Bill Clinton would raise taxes. Many Americans, however, remembered that President Bush had raised taxes after promising not to do this.
Bill Clinton criticized President Bush mostly about important domestic issues in the United States. He said the president had failed to deal with the slow economy and high unemployment. President Bush answered that the Democrats controlled Congress. He said the Democrats defeated most of his domestic proposals. Ross Perot criticized both Republican President Bush and Democratic candidate Clinton. Mr. Perot said neither man considered the importance of the huge federal debt.
Bill Clinton and Al Gore won the 1992 presidential election. They received about forty five-million votes. President Bush and Mr. Quayle had about thirty-nine million votes. About 18 million people voted for Mr. Perot and Mr. Stockdale.
Bill Clinton became America’s forty-second president on January twentieth, 1993. At age forty-six, he was the third youngest person ever elected president.
At his swearing-in ceremony, the new president said there was no longer division between foreign and domestic issues. Listen to these words from President Bill Clinton’s swearing-in-speech:
BILL CLINTON: "The world economy, the world environment, the world AIDS crisis, the world’s arms race -- they affect us all. Today, as an old order passes, the new world is more free but less stable. Communism’s collapse has called forth old animosities and new dangers. Clearly America must continue to lead the world we did so much to make.”
Even as President Clinton took office, critics were accusing him of wrongdoing. There were questions about sexual relationships outside his marriage. Other accusations involved an investment he and Mrs. Clinton had made years before. In 1978 they had bought land in Arkansas to sell for holiday homes.
President Clinton denied any dishonorable actions. But the criticism and suspicion of America’s forty-second president continued.
This program of THE MAKING OF A NATION was written by Jerilyn Watson and produced by George Grow. This is Steve Ember And this is Mary Tillotson. Join us again next week for another VOA Special English program about the history of the United States.
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Although theme and subject may be used interchangeably, the theme is truly what the poem says about the subject. Theme, says Kenny Tenamura of Purdue Online Writing Lab, is “the ‘meaning’ of a story.” The general subject of May Swenson’s poem “Women” is obvious from the title. The poem’s theme, that women are objects and playthings of men, is also clearly portrayed in its imagery, symbolism and diction and by its speaker.
The most striking aspect of “Women” is its image on the page. The poem is constructed in two identical, curved columns, read separately. They seem to conjure up the headless profiles of two women, representing womankind. The columns are connected at two points by longer lines, which read smoothly with each column; these connecting lines might be viewed as bustline and waist. The poem’s shape also suggests a “moving pedestal," the central image of the first column. The central image of the second column is a rocking horse. Both images objectify women and are to be understood as women’s purpose and reality.
The poem’s central images double as its major symbols. The old adage is that men should put women up on a pedestal, but Swenson describes women as “moving pedestals moving to the motions of men." This symbol disappears in line 10 as women become “things in the toyroom.” The poem’s midsection describes the rocking of horses, “The / pegs / of their ears," while riders are reduced to “trusting fists” and “legs” that “stride away," showing that there is no relationship between riders and their toys. Women are to be used and nothing more. The pedestal image returns in the last section, second column, but its purpose is reversed -- instead of men putting women on a pedestal, “women should be pedestals to men."
Swenson uses simple lines of one or two words and, rarely, three. There is no room for debate in these lines, no justifying or pondering possibilities. The connecting lines -- 10 and 20 -- represent the link of common experience between women. The first line notes that women are “the gladdest things in the playroom," indicating that they are objects and happy to be so. In the second, longer line, the riders, portrayed as “egos” that women serve, abandon their toys, as children do when interest wanes. The final six lines in each column suggest what “women should be" -- "immobile sweetlipped,” “smiling” and always ready to do men’s bidding.
Does Swenson truly mean that women should be the playthings of men? A common mistake in analyzing poetry is equating the poet with the speaker. Purdue OWL explains that just as in a novel, where the narrator does not necessarily represent the writer’s view, a poem’s speaker may not equal the poet. Rather, a poem’s speaker is often a persona, or adopted identity. Given that “Women” was published in a 1978 collection, it seems likely that the speaker presents views of womanhood common at that time.
Style Your World With Color
See if her signature black pairs well with your personal style.View Article
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Explore a range of deep greens with the year's "it" colors.View Article
- Polka Dot Images/Polka Dot/Getty Images
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KITE HISTORY FACT OF THE DAY:
Kites have a long and interesting history. Used as cultural expressions, scientific aids, instruments of communication and war, artistic displays and as pastimes and playthings, the kite is a global device that seems to transcend time. Over the vast scope of history, kites have been used in a wide variety of ways.
Kite History Fact of the Day:
Historical Research by Best-Breezes
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This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Bob Doughty.
And, I'm Faith Lapidus. This week, we tell about a new test for patients with heart disease. We also tell about progress in fighting an infectious disease. And we tell about the environmental friendliness of North American colleges and universities.
American researchers say they have developed a simple test that can tell if a person with heart disease is likely to suffer a heart attack. The researchers say the test measures levels of a protein in the blood. They say people with high levels of the protein are at high risk of heart attack, heart failure or stroke.
Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo of the University of California in San Francisco led the team of researchers. They studied almost one thousand patients with heart disease for almost four years. During that time, more than two hundred fifty of the patients suffered a heart attack, heart failure or stroke. Some of them died.
The researchers tested the heart disease patients for a protein called NT-proBNP. Patients with the highest levels were nearly eight times more likely than those with the lowest levels to have a heart attack, heart failure or stroke.
The researchers considered other ways to identify someone with an increased risk of heart disease. They found that patients with high levels of the protein were still more likely to have a health problem involving the heart.
The researchers say the presence of high levels of the protein in the blood shows that the heart muscle is under pressure in some way. The study involved mostly men, so the researchers could not say for sure that the results are true for women.
They also say the patients with the highest levels of NT-proBNP were older and had other problems, like diabetes or high blood pressure. Such patients were more likely to be already taking medicine for their heart.
Other researchers say more studies are needed to confirm if knowing the protein levels of a heart patient should affect that person's treatment. They also would like to know if more aggressive treatment would be able to reduce the patient's chance of suffering a heart attack or stroke.
Measles is one of the most infectious viruses known. It spreads through the air when people infected with the disease expel the virus through the nose or mouth. Children in wealthier countries are usually given a vaccine to protect against measles.
A campaign called the Measles Initiative was launched in two thousand one to vaccinate children in developing countries. The aim was a fifty percent reduction in deaths linked to measles by two thousand five.
Last month, organizers of the Measles Initiative announced that the final numbers showed a sixty percent drop in deaths. There were eight hundred seventy-three thousand deaths in nineteen ninety-nine, the year used for comparison. Six years later that number had dropped to three hundred forty-five thousand.
The organizers say more than two million lives have been saved, mostly in Africa. Health officials report a seventy-five percent drop in deaths in Africa linked to measles.
Measles itself is usually not a direct cause of death. Deaths are commonly the result of infections like pneumonia or severe diarrhea. Those who survive can suffer brain damage, blindness or other disabilities.
The first sign of infection is usually a high body temperature for as long as a week. Patients may develop a runny nose, cough, red and watery eyes and white spots inside the mouth. After several days, areas of skin may change color, first usually on the face and upper neck.
A case of measles can be just a mild and unpleasant part of childhood. But severe cases are more likely in children with poor diets or weakened defenses from diseases like AIDS. Children under the age of five and adults over the age of twenty are more likely to suffer severe cases. People who recover from measles can never get it again.
The Measles Initiative includes the American Red Cross, the World Health Organization and UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund.
The campaign has cost almost four hundred million dollars. Officials say about five hundred million more will be needed to meet a new goal by two thousand ten. The goal now is to reduce measles deaths worldwide to less than ten percent of the rate in the year two thousand.
The campaign will now center its efforts in Asian countries, especially India. Each year, about one hundred thousand Indian children die as a result of measles.
This year is the tenth anniversary of the invention of the cell phone camera. Some people say the device began a kind of revolution in everyday life.
It all started at a hospital in the United States. Philippe Kahn was there with his wife. She was preparing to give birth to their daughter Sophie. Mr. Kahn wanted to take pictures of the baby and share them with family and friends around the world. He thought about placing electronic versions of the pictures on an Internet Web site.
Mr. Kahn said he spent two days working on the project. When Sophie was born, he had connected a camera to his cellular telephone. The unusual device could also put the pictures on the Internet.
At the time of his invention, Philippe Kahn was already a successful businessman. He started Borland International shortly after moving to the United States from France. Borland International became the third largest computer software company in the world. Mr. Kahn had also started other businesses. So he formed a company to produce and sell camera phones. The first ones were sold in Japan in nineteen ninety-nine.
Today, camera phones are almost everywhere. The newspaper USA Today says four hundred sixty million of the devices were sold last year alone. Sales are expected to increase to more than one billion by two thousand ten.
A new study has rated the environmental friendliness of top colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. A research group called the Sustainable Endowments Institute was responsible for the study. The group is part of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, a non-profit organization that helps aid agencies.
Last month, the group released a report called the College Sustainability Report Card. It used the definition of the word sustainability provided by Business Week magazine. That definition is "meeting humanity's needs without harming future generations." The report attempts to measure the steps taken by higher education toward this goal.
The report rates one hundred public and private colleges and universities in North America on their environmental and investment policies. The colleges and universities included in the study are those with the largest amounts of money invested for future growth. The report says these one hundred schools hold more than two hundred fifty billion dollars in investments.
The study used information provided by ninety of the one hundred schools. Researchers looked for evidence of sustainable development in twenty-six different areas. They included improving energy use and officially working toward sustainability as a goal. Other areas were serving locally grown food and having buildings that cause little harm to the environment.
The researchers also studied the investment policies of the one hundred colleges and universities. They considered who helps decide what kinds of companies the schools invest in and how school officials control information about those investments.
The researchers compared the answers, and rated the colleges and universities across seven groups. Each school then received a final rating. Just four schools received the report's top rating. The four are Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Stanford University and Williams College.
This SCIENCE IN THE NEWS program was written by Nancy Steinbach and Caty Weaver. Brianna Blake was our producer. I'm Bob Doughty. And I'm Faith Lapidus. Learn more about science, and download transcripts and MP3 files of our programs, at voaspecialenglish.com. The Web site also has an Internet link to the full report by the Sustainable Endowments Institute. Listen again next week at this time for more news about science in SPECIAL ENGLISH on the Voice of America.
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How was the earth formed, and where did animals come from? Why does the hippopotamus live in water, and why do cats chase rats? Imaginative answers to these and other age-old questions can be found among the rich oral traditions of Africa. Generations of listeners have delighted in these fanciful explanations of the natural, moral, and spiritual worlds, which unfold amid a realm of talking animals, magic drums, tricksters, and fairies.
Known as the "Father of Black History," Carter Godwin Woodson was among the first scholars to promote the history and achievements of African-Americans. His compilation of fables about a jealous blind man, a disobedient daughter, a rivalry among brothers, and other timeless predicaments is punctuated with thought-provoking proverbs and gentle humor. Told in simple language, these tales will enchant readers and listeners of all ages. Over sixty evocative illustrations appear throughout the book.
Reprint of African Myths Together with Proverbs, The Associated Publishers, Inc., Washington, DC, 1928.
|Availability||Usually ships in 24 to 48 hours|
|Author/Editor||Carter Godwin Woodson|
|Grade level||4 - 6 (ages 9 - 12)|
|Dimensions||5 x 8|
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| 0.860029 | 261 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Dance Traditions of Madhya Pradesh
Dances of Madhya Pradesh
Tribal Dance Form
Madhya Pradesh has been, and still is, to a large extent dominated by its tribal
population. So it is not surprising that the ethnic dance and music of Madhya Pradesh
is also tribal in nature.
Maria Gond Tribes -Marriage Dance
The colourful Maria Gonds of Bastar celebrate almost every significant event in
their lives by dancing. One of their most famous dance tradition is the spectacular
marriage dance, the Gaur do catch a performance if you can.
The head dress that the Maria Gonds wear for the dance is made of bison horn, raw
silk and feathers and is handed down from father to son. Like the American Indians,
the Maria Gonds attach great importance to their head dress; a Maria may give a
bullock in exchange for a good pair of horns. The traditional marriage ceremony
of the Marias is simple - theres just the dance and the feast after it
Murias Tribes Drum Dance
Their neighbours, the Murias, are known for their tradition drum dances called Mandri.
It is mainly the dance of boys, who play the drum along with dancing. Sometimes
girls also join them, though they appear grouped separately.
The dance movements and steps of the boys are often complicated, involving kneeling,
jumping, gyrating and the like, but at no time is there a let-up in the playing
of the drum.
All over India the harvest means celebration and dancing. So it is for the tribals
here. Women in the Bundelkhand region dance the Jawara, in which they carry the
newly harvested grains of the jowar (sorghum) crop on their heads in baskets. They
skilfully keep their baskets balanced on their heads without using their hands even
though the dance is often quite fast-paced.
The Folk Theatre
The Maach of Madhya Pradesh is a folk theatre form presented largely through traditional
song and dances. Men portray all the characters and the themes are generally historical
or borrowed from folk legends about kings and warriors. There is not much of acting,
as the theme unfolds mainly through song and dance. The singing is generally done
by the dancers themselves, but there are supporting musicians too. The climax of
the performance often shows the principal characters dancing in a cloud of coloured
The dances are to some extent influenced by the folk dances of the neighbouring
state of Rajasthan. The womens dances are full of swirls, with one hand holding
the ghunghat (veil worn over the face) and the other poised on the waist
Other interesting dances of the tribals of Madhya Pradesh are the Phag (a sword
dance) and Lota (a dance performed by women who balance full pitchers of water on
Music of Madhya Pradesh
The Magnificent Tribal Music
Madhya Pradesh probably has the longest musical lineage among the Indian states,
both classical and folk. With songs to mark every occasion these people truly seem
to sing their way through life.
The tribals in fact can make music from anything you hand them: leaves of trees,
seeds of fruits, animal horns, sticks, pots, pans and so on. The tribals of Bastar
for instance swish around the dried pod of a tree, the rattling seeds of which produce
the most enchanting music.
Surprisingly, none of them are trained musicians. They are farmers, blacksmiths
or shepherds by day, but when the sun disappears into the horizon, they transform
into ace drummers, flautists and singers. Preserved among these ancient communities
are some of the earliest and most primitive instruments devised by man.
The flutes and trumpets used by the tribals of Madhya Pradesh are of the simplest
kind, played as part of religious ceremonies or for the sheer pleasure of it.
The singha could well be the first aerophonic instrument invented by man. It is
simply the horn of a dead animal, the tip of which has been sawn off.
The ansingha is an S-shaped trumpet of brass, copper or even silver used as an accompaniment
to music performances.
Pungi or been is synonymous all over India with the community of Jogis or snake
charmers. It has two parallel bamboo pipes fitted into a gourd, one of which gives
the drone while the other has the finger holes. Even Margot Fontaine cant beat the
grace of a cobra dancing to a Jogis pungi.
But you must be cracked silly if you think the snake is swaying to the music of
the snake charmer. Snakes are stone deaf and cant hear a thing. The dance is actually
defensive postures adopted by the snake fearing an attack from us humans.
The Marias use a richly ornamented brass trumpet called the binnoor. A horn-shaped
variation of this is played in religious processions and temple ceremonies.
Mohuri is a cylindrical bamboo flute with seven holes that produces shrill, piercing
notes. Almost all the communities in the region play it.
The modern flute is called bansuri. Usually with six finger holes, it is an integral
part of every music and dance performance.
An older cousin of the modern flute, the bansari is a cylindrical bamboo tube with
four finger holes used by the folk singers.
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| 0.948536 | 1,159 | 3.15625 | 3 |
- freely available
Sensors 2013, 13(5), 6109-6140; doi:10.3390/s130506109
Abstract: Wearable computing is a form of ubiquitous computing that offers flexible and useful tools for users. Specifically, glove-based systems have been used in the last 30 years in a variety of applications, but mostly focusing on sensing people's attributes, such as finger bending and heart rate. In contrast, we propose in this work a novel flexible and reconfigurable instrumentation platform in the form of a glove, which can be used to analyze and measure attributes of fruits by just pointing or touching them with the proposed glove. An architecture for such a platform is designed and its application for intuitive fruit grading is also presented, including experimental results for several fruits.
Measurement systems and devices are present everywhere in the current world, but frequently based on computers and interfaces that need explicit user interactions. Several devices are not portable or user friendly, so they can be only used in structured laboratory environments by trained people. As we use hands for most of our daily tasks [1,2], one interesting solution is to integrate sensors in our hands to build a wearable mobile sensing platform in the form of a glove. The advantage of such platform is that the hands of the user and his attention become free for his task while the glove acts as an intuitive supporting device that provides and collects information about the task being done.
We propose a novel mobile sensing platform mounted on a glove that integrates several sensors, such as touch pressure, imaging, inertial measurements, localization and a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader. As a platform, the system is suitable for several applications, but this work focuses on a fruit classification and grading system. One interesting usage of this system is help workers during manual harvesting.
1.1. Fruit Classification
It is known that agricultural products such as fruits and vegetables have, from the harvest moment until they are consumed, losses in quantity and quality of up to 25% in developed countries and losses of up to 50% in developing countries . A more recent publication indicates that these losses can reach 72% in some Asian countries . One of the reasons for such losses is the deterioration caused by physical damages , so firmness is essential for fruits to bear injuries during transport and commercialization . Such damages can occur also during classification and other sorting processes in supply chains.
As said, horticultural products go through several sorting/handling processes: in the field, in the warehouse, in the distributor and in the market. Each classification involves mechanical manipulation of the product, which may cause additional damages and speed its deterioration . Moreover, if the agricultural product is harvested at the ideal maturity, it will have longer shelf life and offer better quality [6–8]. On the other hand, if the product is harvested immature, it can be easily damaged during handling . In that way, if a good classification is made at the harvest moment, the product can be stored in an identified box that will follow to the market, reducing the need of several reclassifications and manipulations.
In the fruit classification application, our glove uses data from several sensors while the hand of the user is approaching and touching a fruit. After the user touches the fruit, he is advised via tactile or audible feedback if that fruit should be harvested. The importance of such feedback is to help manual harvest workers to collect fruits at the best moment, trying to offer products with longer shelf life and better quality.
The main contributions of this work are:
A comprehensive state of the art review of glove-based systems and a brief review of fixed and portable fruit classification systems;
A novel wearable mobile sensing platform;
Usage of force/pressure sensors at fingertips to measure the hardness and pressure of objects, especially fruits;
Hybrid palm-based optical sensing subsystem;
Real time algorithms for interactive object segmentation and computation of its geometrical properties;
Application of the proposed platform for intuitive and non-destructive fruit classification.
This paper is structured as follows. Section 2 describes the state of the art in glove-based systems and a brief overview of fruit classification systems, including some portable devices. Next, Section 3 describes the architecture of the proposed platform and the algorithms used with some practical and experimental considerations of its implementation and construction. Finally, a fruit classification study case application with experimental results is described in Section 4 and the conclusions are presented in Section 5.
2. Related Work
This section presents a review of articles and patents of glove-based devices in several applications. Some authors consider that Mann was one of the first researchers to present a wearable computing system , where computers would be an unobtrusive extension of our bodies providing us ubiquitous sensing abilities. Mann himself argues that his wearable computer was not the first one, and explains that there were shoe-based computers in the early seventies . He says that in the future, “our clothing will significantly enhance our capabilities without requiring any conscious thought or effort” .
As one of the novelties of our work is the usage of the proposed glove for fruit classification, we also present a review of non-destructive techniques for fruit classification focused on techniques related to the ones used on our system.
2.1. Glove-Based Systems
As our interaction with objects in the physical world is mainly performed through our hands, many works in glove-based systems have been done in the last 30 years . Dipietro et al. present a review with several applications of glove-based systems in the areas of design and manufacturing, information visualization, robotics, arts, entertainment, sign language, medicine (including rehabilitation), health care and computer interface.
Gloves are especially used as input devices for wearable computers, which have a different paradigm of user interfaces. In such systems, the interaction with the computer is secondary because the user is mainly concerned with a task in the physical world . Smart gloves or data gloves used as input devices are presented as alternatives to standard keyboards and mice both for desktop and wearable computers in several works [12–21]. These systems use sensors to sense discrete (yes/no) fingertip touches, and some use finger bending sensors and accelerometers to capture hands' and fingers' orientation.
There are several glove applications as assistive devices. For people with blindness, for example, a glove with ultrasound sensors can measure the distance to objects and emit tactile feedback . Also for blind people, there is the possibility of identifying objects using a linear camera fixed to the tip of one finger . Another glove-based system has special keys located at the fingers to allow text input in Braille . Culver propose an hybrid system with an external camera and a data glove with accelerometer and finger bending sensors to recognize sign language . For people unable to speak, it is possible to use gloves with speech synthesis to translate gestures into spoken sentences . Gollner et al. describe a glove for deaf-blind people that uses several pressure sensors on the palm to understand a specific sign language and also to provide textual information to the user via tactile output through vibrator motors .
More recently, Jing et al. develop the Magic Ring, a finger-worn device to remotely control appliances using finger gestures. In the same epoch, Nanayakkara et al. present the EyeRing , a finger-worn camera for visually impaired people with applications for recognizing currency notes, colors and text using optical character recognition (OCR). The camera worn in the finger sends live images to a mobile phone using Bluetooth, and the image recognition and processing tasks are done on the phone.
An increasing usage of smart gloves is in medicine and rehabilitation applications. Several systems were proposed and developed in order to measure hand and fingers posture [30–36] to help medical doctors diagnose certain patient's problems such as Parkinson's disease . These systems are based on accelerometers, touch sensors, pressure sensors and finger bending sensors. In some of these systems, sophisticated sensors are used to measure bending, such as optical fiber sensors and Conductive Elastomer materials directly printed in the glove's fabric. Other systems add sensors to capture biological signals such as heart rate, skin temperature and galvanic skin response .
Related to medicine, there are also several health care applications. Angius and Raffo present a glove that continuously monitors a person's heart rate, and automatically calls a doctor if some risk situation emerges . In the same way, another system calls a doctor if a glove detects an inadequate value of heart rate, oxygen in the blood, skin temperature or pressure of elderly people . Another glove has lights and a camera at fingertips to ease manual tasks related to health care and other delicate applications.
Several gloves have been built with an integrated Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader recently. RFID readers emit a radio signal to a low cost label (or transponder) that answers with an identification, frequently without the need of batteries, so objects can be easily and reliably identified by automation systems. Fishkin et al. propose a glove to study and analyze person-object interactions using a RFID reader fixed to the glove . In a similar application, Hong et al. propose a RFID-based glove to recognize elderly people activities . Another project also uses a RFID reader fixed to a glove and a probabilistic model to recognize daily tasks . Im et al. propose a daily life activities recognition system using three accelerometers, a RFID reader, and several objects with RFID tags . Min and Cho add gyroscopes and biological signal sensors to classify motions and user's actions in daily life activities . Yin et al. present a system that analyzes human grasping behavior using electrical contacts at fingertips .
As a tool to improve and facilitate manual tasks, there are gloves with cameras attached at the back of the hand [48,49] to allow users to take pictures using finger gesture commands while keeping the hands free. One application, for example, allow policemen driving motorbikes to rapidly take pictures when needed. Another usage of gloves as a productivity tool is the usage of a RFID reader fixed to the glove to help doing warehouse inventories .
Other glove systems are used for training and teaching, such as a glove that analyses the user's swing in Golf games using pressure sensors. Pressure sensors are also used in a glove for music teaching, which uses tactile information, vibrating the user's fingers as they need to press piano's keyboards . Similarly, Satomi and Perner-Wilson describe a glove with pressure sensors at fingertips to sense the force applied to the keys by piano students .
For security applications, a glove can detect if a vehicle driver is sleeping by measuring grip pressure and emit an alarm if needed . Walters et al. present a glove to help firefighters sense external temperature, as it is hard for them to perceive the temperature given their thick gloves, obligating them to remove the gloves from time to time to sense the ambient temperature . Ikuaki proposes a conjunct of glove and camera connected by a wireless link that can capture tactile information (temperature and object pressure) associated to a photo taken .
Table 1 shows a summary of the mentioned works divided by application categories. We note that several glove-based systems are not mentioned here, including several commercial products and open source/hobby projects. One interesting open source project worth mentioning is the KeyGlove , which aims to build a glove as a platform for several usages. At the moment, the KeyGlove can be used as an input device (mouse/keyboard).
From the presented review, it is clear that most glove-based systems are focused on studying people's behavior, as input devices or as a productivity tool. Furthermore, each of these systems is restricted to specific tasks and applications. In contrast with that, the wearable mobile sensing platform proposed in this work is focused on studying objects and their characteristics. Thus, although our focus is on its use in a fruit grading application, the proposed glove has several sensors that allow it to implement the applications of similar systems described in this review. For blind people, for example, our system can measure the distance to an object that a hand is pointing, and can also recognize objects using computer vision and RFID, or even hand gestures, among other examples.
2.2. Fruit Classification Systems
As detailed in Section 4, our aim is to embed several sensors in the proposed glove for non-destructive measurement of horticultural products' maturity. Even with the increasing usage of automated harvesting machines, one motivation for the usage of a glove to support harvesting is that manual hand-harvesting is still cheaper and widely used, however the quality of the collected products is subject to the workers judgement.
Harvesting fruits and vegetables at the right ripening moment is directly related to their resulting quality and shelf life [6,8]. Fruit quality can be evaluated using several techniques that measure internal variables such as firmness, sugar content, acid content and defects or external variables such as shape, size, defects, skin color and damages [6,8,59,60]. Diameter/depth ratios are also used as quality factors . According to Kader, “Maturity at harvest is the most important factor that determines storage-life and final fruit quality” . Kader also says that immature fruits, or fruits collected too soon or too late, offer inferior flavor and quality and are more subject to disorders. Moreover, Zhou et al. explain that injured fruits should be detected as soon as possible because they can get infected by microbes and spread the infection to a whole batch .
In general, fruits and vegetables can be classified using invasive or non-invasive techniques. Invasive techniques rely on inserting probes inside the product under analysis or extracting parts of it, while non-invasive techniques are only based on measurements taken externally. Another approach is called non-destructive evaluation, which might consist in the use of sensors that touch the fruit but without destroying it. We note that the penetrometer test, a destructive and invasive method, is still frequently used. The measurement is made using a device that has a probe that penetrates the fruit to read its firmness .
2.2.1. Imaging Techniques
Appearance is considered one of the most common ways to measure quality of any material . Gunasekaran argues that among several methods to evaluate food quality, computer vision is the most powerful .
Chalidabhongse et al. use a sequence of 2D images taken from various angles to build a 3D representation of mango fruit, implement 3D reconstruction for measuring geometrical properties such as area and volume with accuracy between 83% and 92% . Charoenpong et al. use two cameras in different positions to obtain mango fruit volume with a root mean square (RMS) error of 2% and coefficient of determination of 0.99 when the data is fitted to real mango measures .
Mustafa et al. propose a system for measuring banana perimeter and other geometrical information . As it is not possible to compute real geometrical information using only camera information, they place a dollar coin on the same image of the evaluated banana. As the diameter, area and perimeter of the coin are known in the real world, their computer vision system uses this information to compute the banana's parameters. They also use color to estimate ripeness. Lee et al. argue that color is often the best indicator of fruit quality and maturity, then present a color quantization technique for real-time color evaluation of fruit quality . Their system performance reaches 92.5% accuracy for red fruits, and 82.8% for orange fruits.
2.2.2. Mechanical Techniques: Firmness
Among several mechanical properties of fruits, firmness is considered one of the most important quality parameters [59,68]. Traditionally, firmness measurements are based on invasive systems, such as the penetrometer. One classical and well known technique for such test is the Magness Taylor, which measures maximum penetration force . Looking for non-destructive firmness measurements, researchers proposed several alternative techniques to measure firmness. Several of them are mechanical, and some are based on spectroscopy and ultrasound.
One interesting alternative has been proposed by Calbo and Nery . They present two devices for simple, accurate and non-destructive measurement of fruit firmness, based on cell's turgor pressure, which is known as the pressure difference between cell interior and the barometric pressure . Their systems consist of devices with a base to place the fruit, and a moving applanating plate that rests on the top of the fruit. After placing the applanating plate on the top of a fruit, the user waits 1 or 2 minutes to read flattened area at presumed constant cell pressure. Alternatively, these systems allow immediate flattened area readings at presumed constant cell volume to calculate firmness as a ratio between the applied external force and the fruit flattened area.
Although simple and practical, Calbo et al. explain that this method and variations of it are still not used in commercial instruments to measure turgor . As a possible solution, they recently proposed a miniaturizable sensor system for measuring cell turgor, an important fruit firmness component that is used in this work as explained in Section 4. Their system can be used to build a hand-held device that can be manually pressed against fruits on the market to instantly obtain fruit firmness . According to these authors, mature fruits should present pressures ranging from 0.2 to 1 kgf/cm2 and mature green fruits present pressures from 1.5 to 4 kgf/cm2. In all cases, pressure values close to zero means that the fruit is inadequate to be consumed.
The device proposed by Calbo et al. is suitable even for organs with irregular surfaces, such as cucumber and oranges, however care should be taken during the usage of devices based on this principle regarding the compression applied by the user. The fruit under evaluation must be pressed in a way that it must be completely in contact with the sensing area of the sensor. This can be easily achieved using force or pressure sensors with small sensing areas.
Thanks to the development of embedded technology, real time image processing systems in the form of compact and mobile devices are possible today . Some works relate the usage of mobile computer vision systems to measure geometrical attributes of 2D objects with 2 mm precision .
Wong et al. propose a mobile system to grade fruits using user's mobile phones. In their system, the user can take a photo of a fruit and send it using MMS (Multimedia Messaging System) to a server, which will process the photo taken and send a Short Message (SMS) to the mobile phone with the fruit grading. A coin of known size must be in the same photo so that the grading algorithm can compute real geometrical properties of the fruit based on the known size of the coin. Due to transmission timing, the response is just received some minutes after the photo has been taken .
3. Wearable Sensing Platform Architecture and Implementation
Figure 1 shows an overview of the proposed platform and its communication with external devices. The glove operation is standalone, without the need of any of these external hardwares, but if any is available, the glove can use them as auxiliary devices.
As seen in Figure 1, external devices communicate with the glove via the ARM board inside the box in forearm of the user. The ARM board is based on a Gumstix Overo FireSTORM module, which runs the main algorithms of the system on a 800 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor with 512 MB of RAM and 8 GB SD Card. This box also contains WiFi, Bluetooth and 8 AAA standard batteries. The processor runs Linux with the OpenCV computer vision library.
Figure 2 depicts the hardware's block diagram. As said, the central unit of the system is the ARM processor, which is shown as Gumstix Overo in the block diagram. It has an Universal Serial Bus (USB) On-The-Go (OTG) port connected to a USB 2.0 HUB, which is installed in the box located at the top of the glove (see Figure 1). This HUB connects 2 USB cameras mounted in the palm of the hand, a RFID reader, also shown in Figure 1, and a 915 MHz radio to exchange information with a programmable wrist watch.
Figure 1 also shows the ez430-Crhonos programmable wrist watch from Texas Instruments, which can be used to easily display numeric information measured by the glove's sensors to the user. Another interesting feature is that the glove can connect to data loggers with wireless communication, such as Bluetooth, and use the information collected by the data logger during several days to aid its computation about a given object and its environment.
As the ARM processor has logic levels of 1.8 V and the microcontrollers and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) have logic levels of 5 V and 3.3 V, logic level converters are needed to interconnect them using asynchronous serial ports. In the block diagram, the level converters are shown as “LC”. All the sensors fixed to glove are connected to 8-bit microcontrollers (AtMega 328), so the only wirings from the box on the glove to the box on the forearm are serial lines. Next, a description of each module, sensor and auxiliary device is presented.
3.1. Finger Sensors
There are two types of sensors mounted on the fingers: finger bending sensors to measure finger flexion angle and pressure sensors mounted on each fingertip.
Finger bending sensors present a varying electrical resistance according to their bending. Each of them is connected to a voltage divider circuit (with a 10 KΩ resistor) and the divider output is connected to a LM358 operational amplifier to make the reading more robust and reliable. The operational amplifier output is then connected to the analog input of the AtMega 328 microcontroller. In order to calibrate the sensors, a user must wear the glove and completely close the hand while the system reads analog to digital converter (ADC) values for each finger several times. Next, the user completely opens the hand and the ADCs related to these sensors are read again. Then a linear function maps the angles between fingers completely closed or completely opened.
For the fingertip pressure sensors, the same electronics setup with voltage divider and operational amplifiers is used; however, the calibration procedure is different. We evaluated two types of sensors for fingertip pressure measurement: a probe connected to a pressure transducer by a flexible tube and Force Sensitive Resistors (FSRs).
Figure 3 shows the first possible setup that we have evaluated. In this system, a probe consists of a small piece of plastic material that is drilled to have a chamber and an output connected by a flexible tube to a pressure transducer. A membrane (yellow on the photo and red on the scheme) is glued on the top of the plastic piece to cover the chamber. The chamber and the flexible tube are completely filled with water or oil.
For the tests, a MPX5700 pressure transducer from Freescale was used. Given a 5 V DC power input, Equation (1) shows the transfer function provided by the manufacturer, where X is the sensor output tension in Volts, A is the offset, typically of 0.2 Volts, and 0.101972 is a constant to convert pressure from kPa (Kilo-Pascals) to kgf/cm2 (kilogram-force per centimeter squared).
As there is a probe with a chamber and a flexible tube connected to the pressure transducer, a calibration of the entire system can be done for evaluation. In order to do this calibration, we built a calibration system based on the Wiltmeter base gauge. In this system, the sensor to be calibrated (red rectangle in Figure 4) is inserted between two plates and gently pressed against these plates with screws. In the bottom plate, there is a chamber and a membrane contacting the sensor. For a reliable calibration, it is important that the sensing area of the sensor under calibration is fully covered by the membrane. After the sensor is tied, one must manually press the syringe and keep it pressed in a steady position for some seconds. During this time, the pressure is read in the manometer and the voltage from the sensor under evaluation must be also read.
This procedure was repeated for several values. In our case, we pressed the syringe to obtain pressure values from 0 to 6 kgf/cm2 in intervals of 0.5 kgf/cm2. The analog voltage reading of the sensors were taken automatically with a digital multimeter with RS-232 interface connected to a computer, so we were able to acquire 30 values for each pressure imposed with the syringe, and take the average of these 30 values to use later.
After performing the measurements, we found a linear relation of the pressure and our probe response. From Equation (2) the linear regression determination coefficient was r2 = 0.99. This equation allows easy mapping of the pressure measured by the probe to be used at fingertips.
Although reliable and precise, there are some issues related to the use of the pressure transducer, such as the need of removing all air of the chamber and tube, which may be laborious due to the size of the parts and the transducer size. The current implementation of the glove used a simpler sensor for pressure measurements: the Force Sensitive Resistor (FSR). As the pressure definition is force applied to a certain area (F/A), if the sensing area is known, we can use a force sensor to obtain pressure.
Although less precise than the direct pressure transducer setup, the FSRs are easier to work with and highly thin/compact. They respond to force applied to their sensitive area by varying their electrical resistance according to an inverse power law. In order to calibrate these FSR sensors, we used the same calibration system already described and shown in Figure 4. Figure 5 shows a photo of a FSR sensor being calibrated, and a closer view of the FSR sensor (on the right).
After acquiring all the values, we look for a mathematical expression that properly fit these values. For this purpose, we enter the acquired values in a power regression algorithm and in a polynomial regression algorithm and obtain the data fitting shown in Figure 6. This figure shows the calibration results for 4 different FSR sensors, and a power (black line) and polynomial fit (red line) for the average of all sensors calibration. The graph clearly shows that the power curve, as the theoretical response of this type of sensor, yielded, as expected, the best response.
A better fit was obtained with a power fit, which had a determination coefficient of r2 = 0.99. The resulting transfer function that maps raw sensor values into pressure is described by Equation (4), where x is the tension in Volts from the sensor. This relation can be used for applications in medicine, rehabilitation and plant science. Moreover, given the pressure/force relation P = F/A, both quantities can be easily obtained.
Although inexpensive, FSR manufacturers highlight that such sensors are sensible for actuation forces as low as 1 gram, offering a wide pressure operating range (from less than 0.1 kgf/cm2 to more than 10 kgf/cm2). They also say that these sensors have good repeatability and high resolution, making them ideal for wearable applications.
3.2. Palm-Based Optical System
The objective of the optical board fixed in the palm of the hand is to acquire optical information about a given object to which the user points his palm. The board is composed of an infrared distance sensor (based on LED emitter/receiver with λ = 850 nm ± 70 nm), a long wavelength infrared (LWIR) thermometer (from λ = 8 μm to 15 μm), a laser pointer that can be turned on and off by software commands and a pair of VGA cameras. Figure 7 depicts each sensor mounted on this board and shows a photo of the board actually built. M1 and M2 are cameras' microphones that can be used to capture audio.
3.2.1. Distance Sensor
The distance measurement is the first step of the computer vision mechanism of the platform. In order to save power, with the exception of the distance sensor, all other parts of this board are kept off by default. The distance sensor (SHARP GP2D120XJ00F) continuously monitors the distance from the optical sensors to objects in front of it. When an object is detected in the range from 5 cm to 25 cm, the microcontroller turns on the power of the optical sensors and starts computer vision analysis. Unfortunately, the output voltage of this sensor is not a linear function of the measured distance, so we collected thirty distance sample pairs (distance/voltage) and found the best fit using a power regression shown in Equation (5). In the equation, x is the raw ADC value, and D is the distance measured by the sensor.
3.2.2. Laser Pointer
The laser pointer module positioned between the 2 cameras can be seen in Figure 7. This device emits a focused red light beam with λ = 650 nm that appears as a very bright red filled circle in the object that the glove is pointing at. Its main usage is for interactive segmentation of objects. When the user points his hand to a certain object, the red dot projected on the object helps the computer vision software to segment this object from the rest of the scene faster and more easily.
Using a single camera does not make possible the computation of geometrical information of the real world. With the aid of the laser, it is known that the bright red dot projected on the object comes from a line parallel to the optical axis of the camera, which makes possible the computation of precise object distance, and based on that, other geometrical properties of the object. Basically the distance dL of Figure 8 is proportional to the object's distance. More details about distance measurement with cameras and laser pointers can be found in the work of Portugal-Zambrano and Mena-Chalco .
The small distance (baseline) from the laser to the cameras (H = 2.5 cm) allows only a small range to be measured with the laser (from 3 cm to 7.3 cm). In this range, the system uses distance computed using the laser pointer to obtain a more accurate distance measurement, and consequently more precise area, perimeter and other geometrical properties. One of the reasons for such approach is that the IR distance sensor is less precise than the laser based method.
3.2.3. Dual Camera Head
The dual camera setup can operate in two modes: standard stereo or a composite of visible Red, Green, Blue (RGB) and Near Infrared (NIR). In the stereo mode, the cameras operate similarly to the human eyes. Their different points of view of the same scene cause a disparity that can be used to obtain depth information of the image to reconstruct the 3D scene. Detailed information about stereo vision can be found in most computer vision textbooks.
One of the major problems of a stereo vision system is that it can be considerably slow, and consequently unsuitable for the glove application. This happens because an algorithm must scan blocks of the image of the left camera and compare with blocks of image of the right camera in order to find correspondences between the images of the two cameras. Our solution for this sensing platform relies on the usage of the moving fovea approach proposed by Beserra et al. , which focuses the computation of the stereo disparity map only in a window that contains the object of interest, but not entire images, thus decreasing the processing time. To improve the performance even more, we use the laser point position as the center position of the moving fovea in both images.
The second operating mode consists in merging information from visible and invisible light spectrum. To do that, the standard lenses of one of the cameras must be removed and replaced by lenses with a filter that rejects visible light (from λ = 380 nm to λ = 750 nm) and allows near infrared light to enter the sensor (starting at λ = 750 nm). The usage of mixed NIR and visible images is useful for several applications. Salamati, for example, explores mixing NIR and visible images to obtain information about material composition of objects in a scene . Other authors use a combination of NIR and visible images to build more robust and accurate segmentation algorithms .
To integrate NIR and visible spectra, most systems use optical setups that split incoming light rays into two cameras with mirrors and lenses, but this setup is also not possible on our system due to size constraints. Our solution makes the assumption that the object of interest is planar, so the distance to all points in this object is the same. As the distance to the object is known from the distance sensor, we use the stereo vision equation to obtain the relation of the visible image pixels coordinates with the infrared image pixel coordinates. The cameras are horizontally aligned to take advantage of epipolar geometry , so all lines on one image correspond to lines on the other image.
Equation (6) shows the standard stereo vision equation, which is typically used to obtain depth (Z in the equation) by using known camera parameters, which are the focal length (f) and the distance between the cameras, also called baseline (H). As f and H are fixed, the variables that determine Z are xL and xR. The same point of the real image appears at different positions on the left (xL) and right images (xR). This difference is called disparity. To merge the NIR and visible images into a unique 4 channel image, we use Equation (6) as shown in Equation (7). The four channels are R (red), G (green), B (blue) and I. R, G and B come directly from the color image captured by one of the cameras, and I comes from Equation (7) computed with data from the modified camera to reject the visible spectrum.
Each pixel of the resulting 4-channel image MI is given by Equation (8). In this equation, the left camera captures visible images (V IS) and the right camera captures infrared images (NIR). The left image is taken as the reference, so for all x, x = xL. To improve the result of the 4-channel image, a calibration can be done.
The image acquisition process done by the cameras suffers from several factors that degrade the captured image. Apart from quantization and electrical noise, the optical distortion due to the lenses causes differences in the pixel sizes of the same image, especially when we compare pixel sizes from the image's center to its peripherals. This problem is even worse in our situation because we want to extract reliable geometric information from the object of interest. To alleviate this problem, we use Zhang's camera calibration to reduce distortion.
Each camera operate with 640 × 480 (VGA) resolution and has a field of view (FOV) of 48 degrees. With this FOV, these cameras can capture objects with diameters of 28 cm at a distance of 31 cm and with diameter of 6 cm at a distance of 8 cm.
Figure 8 shows the optical layout of the sensors with their fields of view highlighted in blue, green and yellow. The left diagram shows a top view of the cameras capturing an object image, and the right diagram shows an example of the resulting images. Note that most of the scene intersects in both cameras. The figure also shows the remote temperature measurement accomplished by the infrared temperature sensor that measures the temperature of a given area proportional to its distance from an object.
3.2.4. Object Segmentation and Seed Tracking
One paramount step that affects the quality and reliability of all remaining parts of the system is the object segmentation, which is a hard task given the non-structured and unknown environment that gloves might operate. As already said, we use the laser point to allow the user to interactively point which object to segment [80,81]; however, this approach might not be enough to keep the object correctly segmented while the user is moving his hand towards the object. To make the segmentation more reliable, we transform each detected laser point in a seed and keep control of each of these seeds until all desired information is computed from the image.
When the user moves his hand, the optical flow based on the Lucas–Kanade method tracks the laser seeds (simply, all the places where the laser was pointed to for a certain time) to keep the object segmented according to the seeds deposited by the laser pointer. A time to live mechanism prevents spurious seeds to deteriorate the segmentation result. For a detailed discussion of the object segmentation with seed tracking, please refer to the work of Beserra et al. .
Based on the seed set, a fast Fuzzy segmentation algorithm is executed to extract the object of interested from the rest of the scene. In the application example described in Section 4, examples of figures of the resulting segmentation are shown. The resulting segmentation has a large number of applications, such as object classification, recognition and counting.
3.3. Other Sensors and Actuators
As shown in Figure 2, the architecture also has several other multi-purpose accessories, briefly described here.
GPS: A Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver that is powered off by default. It can be powered on by software when some glove application needs to obtain geographical location. An example application is to build thematic geographical maps of fruit quality and productivity.
IMU: an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) is mounted on the top of the hand in order to obtain accurate and reliable Euler angles (roll, pitch, yaw) about the orientation of the hand. One application of the IMU is to stabilize and improve pictures taken by the cameras.
As actuators to notify and give feedback to the user, there is a vibration motor that can be controlled to vibrate the glove with different timings, and a piezoelectric buzzer to emit sounds of different frequencies. The system can be adjusted to activate these actuators according to several values measured by the glove.
An optional RFID reader fixed to the ring finger allows objects with RFID tags to be easily identified by the glove software by simply approaching the hand to about 5–15 centimeters from the object. The RFID reader can be seen in Figure 1. An example usage is to integrate the fruit grading system with automatic product history and tracking systems.
A programmable wrist watch such as the ez430 Chronos can also be used to show information about the glove's sensors to the user. A possible use is to allow users to view quantitative information about the sensors.
An infrared temperature sensor that remotely measures temperature is also present in the palm of the hand as shown in prior figures. It can be used during harvest to measure both ambient temperature and the objects' temperatures, such as fruit temperature, to aid posterior studies of fruit conditions and quality.
Figure 9 shows the top and bottom of the constructed glove prototype. We remind that the system is a fully functional prototype that was built with standard and simple tools. It can have its size considerably reduced using surface mounting devices (SMD) technology and custom made glove and sensors.
As a platform, we note that subsets of this system can be easily built. For example, one of the drawbacks of the computer vision system is that it consists of an intensive processing application while the cameras also have considerable power consumption (approximately 300 mA of current), leading to a short battery life. In our measurements, the system's battery life is of about 40 minutes when continuously performing computer vision tasks. We think this is acceptable as our platform is novel and a proof of concept, which may be considerably optimized with newer batteries, low power processor technologies and low power cameras such as the ones used in mobile phones.
As a useful alternative for several applications, the platform can be used without the computer vision sub-system and the ARM processor. In that case, only the 8-bit microcontroller is powered, and although the features are limited, several tasks can be done. We have made experiments with a possible setup without computer vision in which the system can measure pressure, temperature and finger bending. Such setup allows the system to function continuously for 108 h (about 13 work days of 8 h) with only two standard rechargeable 2,700 mAh batteries, or 48 h with two 1,200 mAh batteries.
4. Results for a Fruit Classification Application
The great number of applications and possibilities of glove-based systems were already discussed in Section 2. In this section we describe details and experimental results of a novel glove-based system for fruit classification.
The system we have implemented allows evaluation of fruit quality by simply pointing the glove to a fruit and then touching this fruit. It uses distance information and one of the cameras to compute fruit's area and then approximates its volume by a spherical model. Finally, when the user touches the fruit, the volume is also computed based on the finger bending sensors, its turgor pressure is measured and an overall quality parameter is computed according to weights for each of these parameters that can be provided by the user. If the result is below a certain customizable threshold, the tactile feedback system warns the user by vibrating the glove during a specified time.
4.2. Pressure Measurement
To perform the turgor pressure tests, fruits in different stages of development were purchased at a local Brazilian market. The purchased fruits are climacteric, which means that they are able to ripen after being picked. The fruits are: Tomato, Pear, Banana, Papaya, Guava and Mango.
Figure 10 shows a plot of the turgor pressure of six tomatoes captured with the fingertip sensors during a period of time that comprehends several grasp operations in each tomato using the glove shown in Figure 9. The plot shows 4 lines, one for each finger with a FSR sensor, and each peak in the graph represents a tomato being grasped for some seconds and then released. It is important to note that the user does not have to apply a specific force to the tomato. One must only care to grab the tomato with fingertips in a way that the fruit will be completely touching the pressure sensor, and that the force is not too high to damage the fruit or too low such that the sensor will not sense the pressure. The gray line shows a threshold line of 200 kPa to classify the tomatoes as ripe or unripe. We remark that the threshold is specific for each fruit variety.
As the technique used is new, there are still no standard tables of values for such fruits, which is in the scope of a future work. Again, the threshold is not the same for different fruits and even for different varieties of the same fruit, however they fit in a range of pressures. In that case, unripe fruits present turgor pressures from 150 kPa to 400 kPa, and ripe fruits present turgor pressures from 20 kPa to 100 kPa . Pressure values close to zero means that the fruit is inadequate to be consumed.
Figure 10 clearly shows that the measurement of some fingers must be ignored because their pressure is considerably lower than the ones acquired by other sensors, probably because these fingers did not cooperate well to the grasping. Furthermore, it also shows the pressure difference of ripe tomatoes, green tomatoes and spoiled tomatoes that are inadequate for consumption. In the figure, the first and second peaks correspond to ripe tomatoes, the third to a spoiled tomato, the fourth to a ripe tomato and fifth and sixth to ripening tomatoes. These results are consistent with the measurements made by Calbo and Nery using other devices . Furthermore, according to Nascimento Nunes, this pressure measurement alone already offers an important quality index related with eating quality and longer post-harvest life of tomatoes .
Figures 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 show some of the fruits evaluated using the glove. Each figure shows four fruits: from the left to the right, the first is the most unripe, and the one on the right is the most ripe (considering the sample fruits). The figure also shows the respective turgor pressure measured for each fruit, which is the average of 30 measurements.
Table 2 shows detailed information about the measurements done, including the average of 30 measurements, maximum and minimum values and standard deviation. Note that the standard deviations are less than 10% of the measured value in all cases, showing reliability in the measurements done by the presented system.
4.3. Finger Bending Sensor
We also propose the usage of the finger bending sensor described in Section 3 to measure the diameter of a spherical object. For that purpose, an adjustment spline curve is passed through several calibration points and then several measurements are done for other spheres of different diameters in order to evaluate the overall performance of the system.
The values acquired for calibration are shown in Table 3, which shows the raw finger bending sensor reading, which can vary from 0 to 1,024, and the diameter of reference spheres used for sensor calibration.
Figure 17 shows the results of a spline curve fit to adjust the values from the finger bending sensors to the spherical shapes. Table 4 shows a list of several experimental measurements obtained with the glove, compared with the real value of the spherical objects (the Ground Truth). Note that the errors are as low as 3%.
Thus, we have shown the possibility of using the finger bending sensors to measure finger angles, and based on calibration data, use these angles to estimate the diameter of ideal spheres, which can be used to obtain sphere's radius, volume and other geometrical data. Such results could be used to estimate volume of spherical fruits.
4.4. Optical Measurements
As mentioned in Section 2, volume measurement is an important metric to evaluate fruit quality. In order to measure fruit's volume we use the Fast Fuzzy segmentation algorithm to extract the fruit's image from the rest of the scene. The fruit is selected by pointing the laser at it, and then the segmentation system searches for the brightest red point in the image and segments that region. After the segmentation, the system counts how many pixels were segmented in the image. The number of segmented pixels is the area of the object. To evaluate the real metric area, we make the assumption that the object is spherical and it is projected on the camera as a circle, thus Equation (9) can be used to compute the area of the circle, which can be manipulated to give its radius as shown in Equation (10).
Equation (11) shown in Section 3 depicts the traditional pin-hole camera model, where x is the object height in the camera projective plane, f is the camera's focal length, Z is the distance from the camera to the object given by the distance sensor or laser pointer and X is the real size of the object. In Equation (12), we substitute x by the diameter of the object on the camera plane (2 · r) and X by the real height of the object 2 · R in the world. The minus sign means that the image formed in the camera plane is upside-down. Expanding Equation (12) with Equation (10), we find Equation (13), where aCI is the area of the circular object on the camera image obtained by the segmentation system and ACO is the area of the real object that we want to find. Simplifying Equation (13) yields Equation (14), which gives the object's area in pixels independently of the distance from the camera to the object. Figure 18 shows the theoretical size of an object of known size at different distances from the camera compared with real measurements made with our system. It also shows the computed area for this object at several distances, which is expected to be always the same. Note that the relative area measured with the camera (red line) follows the theoretical distances (green line) closely. In the same way, the black dotted line shows the real area, which is fixed, and the area measured with the camera is shown in the blue line, which ideally would be constant.
The area conversion from pixels to cm2 was approximated using ten circles of known size and fitting their values with a polynomial regression of order two, which is shown in Equation (15). To obtain the volume, Equation (10) is combined with the sphere volume equation shown in Equation (16).
Figure 19 shows an image of a green tomato captured with the glove. The hand of the user pointed the laser to several parts of the tomato, which generated the seeds shown in the middle image of Figure 19. The resulting segmentation is shown on the right, and based on the pixel count, the area was measured with 90% accuracy and the volume with 74% accuracy. The segmentation time was 8 ms. It is important to note that these values are specific to this tomato, as the circle and sphere approximations might have different accuracies for other tomatoes. These results would not be adequate for other fruits; however, the proposed system, as a platform, is able to perform many other computer vision tasks to analyze other fruits using different computer vision algorithms. We remind that this is an example implementation of the possible uses of the platform, and the description and tests of other computer vision systems for fruit classification is outside the scope of this paper, which is focused on presenting the platform.
We have proposed a mobile sensing platform in the form of a wearable computer, a glove, for fruit classification. It is composed of several sensing devices, including cameras, pressure and temperature sensors, among others. A reference architecture is also presented, based on which several applications can be developed using subsets of the proposed system to address the needs of specific applications.
In order to make possible the implementation of this platform, we propose several novelties in this work, from which we highlight the use of the moving fovea approach with a laser to point, segment and compute geometrical properties of objects, and the usage of calibrated FSR sensors to sense pressure at fingertips.
As an application example, we also depict a new methodology that uses the glove for classifying fruits using data from several sensors. The experimentations have shown the feasibility of fruit grading using our system for several climacteric fruits.
The glove's price is about US$ 350.00 for the complete system, including cameras for the computer vision tasks. A sub-set of the platform was also built without cameras and computer vision capabilities. This simpler version costs only US$ 30.00 and includes sensor bending and pressure sensors. Thus, the battery life of this version is of more than ten work days. We think that this price would allow even small growers and harvesters to acquire such a glove to aid the execution of more uniform harvesting. Moreover, these prices are for a prototype—industrial production and scale would improve the system and decrease the price. Finally, although there is an increasing interest in robotic-based harvesting systems, many farmers, especially from developing countries, still cannot afford automated systems such as robots. Hence, our glove presents a possible solution in such cases, aiding harvesting with better objectivity and less variability.
We remark that the platform described in this article is suitable for a variety tasks. Of course, because it is a prototype and uses standard available electronics, enhancement can be done to improve the whole system performance. In this way, the presented glove can be considerably miniaturized using standard manufacturing techniques if products should be built using parts of the concepts presented here. Moreover, as computer and automation systems become more pervasive and ubiquitous, wearable systems such as gloves are a perfect assistant tool for hand-based tasks, since most of our daily tasks are done using hands.
The authors would like to thank the support from the Brazilian National Council, Sponsoring Agency for Research (CNPq).
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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|Category||Works||Main technologies used|
|Medicine and rehabilitation||[15,30–33,37–40,52]||ACC FFS PS SRR Bio-signals IC HR TF TS|
|Input device for computers||[12–15,18–21,57]||ACC FFS SRR|
|Productivity, security and services||[17,48–50,54–56,58]||ACC RFID TS PS Cam|
|Assistive technology and health care||[22–25,27,40,41,43]||ACC Cam TS PS HR Speech synthesis TF|
|Behavior and daily life activities studies||[30,34–36,42,44–47]||ACCFFS RFID SRRGyro|
|Learning and training||[51–53]||TF PS|
|Fruit||Pressure (kPa)||Fruit 1||Fruit 2||Fruit 3||Fruit 4|
|Raw 10-bit Sensor Reading (0–1,024)||Sphere diameter (mm)|
|Sensor Reading||Computed Diameter (mm)||Ground Truth (mm)||Error (%)|
© 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
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| 0.893492 | 16,456 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Past Extra Credits|
Nine Facts About No Child Left Behind
Fact Number Three: No Child Left Behind provides parents and taxpayers with important information about the performance of local schools.
No Child Left Behind requires states and school districts to give parents easy-to-read, detailed report cards on schools and districts, telling them which ones are succeeding and why.
Included in the report cards are student achievement data broken out by race, ethnicity, gender, English language proficiency, migrant status, disability status and low-income status; as well as important information about the professional qualifications of teachers.
With these provisions, No Child Left Behind ensures that parents have important, timely information about the schools their children attendwhether they are performing well or not for all children, regardless of their background.
Parents interested in learning more about No Child Left Behind can order a free copy of the "No Child Left Behind Parents Guide" by:
- Calling the U.S. Department of Education's Publications Center (ED Pubs) toll-free at 1-877-4-ED-PUBS (1-877-433-7827); TTY/TDD: 1-877-576-7734; FAX: 1-301-470-1244;
- Ordering online at: www.edpubs.org; or
- Writing to request a copy: ED Pubs, P.O. Box 1398, Jessup, MD 20794-1398.
About Extra Credit
NCLB Extra Credit is a regular look at the No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush's landmark education reform initiative passed with bipartisan support in Congress.
Subscribe to get the Extra Credit emailed to you.
Unsubscribe to stop receiving Extra Credit.
Last Modified: 02/25/2004
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| 0.885275 | 367 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Burning needed to limit fires
Controlled blazes would consume much of the wildfire fuel.
Updated 2:42 pm, Sunday, September 11, 2011
Texas never has seen wildfires cause so much destruction so quickly.
In less than a week, 186 fires have killed four people, burned more than 1,400 homes and spread across 150,000 acres.
As evacuated residents are allowed to return to their homes this week, the destruction is underlining a lesson that land managers, conservation organizations and state and federal agencies have been teaching for years.
Texas needs to burn and homeowners should be prepared.
“We don't have a fire culture in the state of Texas,” said Texas A&M University associate professor of range science Charles “Butch” Taylor, who started the first burn association in the state. “We are just trying to put more fire on the landscape.”
Taylor's goal is ambitious. Those who have lost homes are slow to forget the terror of a wildfire and it's easy for them to see all fire as bad.
But more than a century of fire suppression has thrown almost every ecosystem in Texas off balance, from the tightly packed forests of East Texas to the shrub-choked grasslands of West Texas, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and The Nature Conservancy.
“We want fire,” said John Karges, a conservation biologist for The Nature Conservancy. “We just want it on our schedule, not the fire's.”
In Mason County, David Connell earned his master's degree by studying the effects of regular controlled fires on his family's ranch. After 12 years of having small plots set ablaze, the property went from a basic monoculture of juniper to 306 species of plants.
“The objective is to see what the potential is” by having fire reintroduced on a regular basis, Connell said. “It's basically a really big experiment. We're having fun with it.”
Rather than wait for the inevitable human- or lightning-ignited fires, what Karges, Taylor and Connell want and use are prescribed fires.
They assert that by closely monitoring the weather, the moisture levels of plants, setting up fire breaks, having firefighters on hand and working with neighboring landowners, fire can be used safely.
Prescribed, or controlled, burns not only reduce fuel loads, which then helps prevent cataclysmic fires, but in the long run can improve habitat for native species and provide better feed for livestock.
“We can't remove risk,” said Jason Wrinkle, the conservancy's desert program manager, who oversees the prescribed fires in the Davis Mountains. “But we mitigate risk.”
The Bastrop fire
Last week's Bastrop County Complex Fire is a prime example.
Fueled by parched pines and pushed by sustained winds of 26 mph, the fire roared through the county from its start in a subdivision, destroying 1,386 homes, more than any wildfire in the history of Texas, according to the Texas Forest Service.
The fire torched almost all of Bastrop State Park and threatened the historic cabins built by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
“It was something like I had never seen before,” said Jeff Sparks, manager of the TPWD Wildland Fire Program. He helped fight the Bastrop fire.
But none of the structures was lost.
Sparks and others knew that eventually, there would be a fire in the state park. The pine ecosystem actually was dependant on it.
TPWD wrote a fire plan for the park and started conducting systematic prescribed burns, especially around the cabins, some 15 years ago.
The fires they started didn't take out all the grass and shrubs, but the strategy helped keep them in check.
In the areas of the most recent controlled burns, the Bastrop fire did not have as much fuel and thus burned with less intensity and stayed closer to the ground instead of consuming entire trees. The small controlled burns may have saved many of the trees.
The prescribed fires around the historic cabins similarly reduced the fuel load of grass and brush, which allowed Sparks to then light backburns as a preemptive strike against the advancing wildfire.
“Our prescribed fires did help us protect our structures” Sparks said. “We would not have been able to do that if our fuel loads were not reduced.”
The Nature Conservancy had similar success in the Davis Mountains with the Rock House Fire this spring.
Knowing the mountains had historically burned, the conservancy started its own prescribed-burning program when weather conditions were favorable.
The program was almost complete when the 314,000-acre Rock House Fire became a firestorm and roared across the valley and into the mountains. Federal, state and local firefighters couldn't stop it as it burned homes, threatened lives and killed wildlife.
The mountains lit up, but the forest was not destroyed.
“Where it burned through our prescribed fire units, it dropped in intensity and moved out of the canopy,” Wrinkle said.
The fire stayed out of the forest canopy in the controlled-burn sites. The trees in those areas are expected to survive.
The prescribed fires did what they were designed to do.
But Wrinkle admits he has it relatively easy. His job is ecosystem restoration. And he has plenty of room to work in. He does not have the constraints of a rancher who has to have grass to feed livestock, or close neighbors who will complain about the smoke.
In urban areas it's not so simple.
To reduce the fears about fire and encourage prescribed burns, Taylor started the Edwards Plateau Prescribed Burning Association in 1996. It was the first of a dozen such groups that now cover the state.
Taylor's nonprofit is supported by dues-paying members who volunteer to work prescribed fires under the direction of a certified burn boss. In turn, members are eligible to have prescribed fires on their property.
Working on the western half of the Edwards Plateau, Taylor said he gets better results in rural counties. Closer to the cities, he has to deal with more roads and homes that can't be inundated with smoke and landowners who grew up believing all fire is bad.
But areas near towns and cities often need fuel reduction is the most.
In April, a homeless man's campfire was left unattended and destroyed or damaged 21 homes in Austin. The fire covered 100 acres before it could be contained. Similar fires broke out last week around San Antonio, Houston and Dallas.
Taylor pointed out light winds on the day of the Austin fire made it possible for firefighters to contain it relatively quickly.
“That fire could have gone from Austin to Kerrville,” he said. “The problem is there because there is no fuel management.”
But today, with the fuel load high, the focus is on stopping all fires as quickly as possible.
All summer, Bexar County fire inspectors have spent their spare moments perched on hilltops and doing backcountry road patrols looking for any sign of fire.
With junipers turning brown because of the drought, any fire coupled with strong winds could easily get out of control.
“We are going to be susceptible to these large fires, and citizens need to be aware,” Bexar County Fire Marshal Ross Coleman said. “Last year, we had all that rain come in the early part of the fall, so we had all this excessive growth of tall grass and brush. Now you have a large dead fuel pack that is ripe for fire.”
Coleman's job is focused on protecting structures. Prescribed fires in the dense wooded areas between subdivisions would not only be difficult to control but the smoke would present a public-safety hazard.
So he encourages homeowners, especially those who live in the sprawling subdivisions that abut forested lands, to learn about the risks of wildfire and do their own brush-clearing to protect their homes.
“Fire education is the most effective means of fire suppression,” he said.
Along with parts of Fort Davis, the Rock House Fire burned half of the 507-acre Chihuahuan Desert Research Center, south of the city, creating an almost perfect test and control plot to study how plants and animals will respond to the reintroduction of fire.
“This is an amazing opportunity that I never want to see again,” said Cathryn Hoyt, the center's executive director, whose 100-year-old adobe house was destroyed by the fire.
Hoyt has waited years to study the reintroduction of fire to the desert landscape. But knowing both the destruction and restorative properties of fire, she can attest to how difficult it is to convince landowners fire should be a land-management tool.
“I think what they are teaching right now in the schools, the dogma is that fire is good,” she said. “But when you get down to the nitty-gritty, I think there is still a whole lot we need to learn.”
The politics of working with neighbors and the difficult decision of just when the risks are controlled enough for a fire to be lit are not to be taken lightly, she explained.
“You cannot guarantee that a prescribed fire will not get away from you,” she said. “And those are the disasters that stay in people's mind.”
For Hoyt, though she knows the benefits of fire, seeing smoke on the horizon is nerve-wracking.
“It's an unbearable loss to see your land burn up, to see your cattle in pain, to see your home smoldering,” she said. “But at the same time, when the land starts to green up and when the cattle start to fatten up because they are on nice green grass, or when you are building a home that will hopefully last 100 years, there is hope.”
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April 19, 2012 —
Spring is the time of year when all aspects of nature seem to come alive; buds and sprouts are appearing on bushes, trees, and out of the ground, and bears make their appearance after wintering in their dens. Birds are heard in the forests and fields chirping and trilling away; many of these calls heard are breeding and territorial defense calls.
In this region, large birds start nesting first; some of the local eagle pairs started incubating eggs during the latter part of February. Larger waterfowl, such as Canada geese, are close behind. By the time you read this, the flute-like melody of the wood thrush, and a myriad of sounds of other breeding birds, will be evident in varied habitats across the region.
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| 0.963424 | 162 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Hi galindez,Originally Posted by galindez
I am quoting from 'Practical English Usage' by Michael Swan.
In British English 'round' can be used for movement or position:
'She walked round the car and looked at the wheels.
We all sat round the table.
Where do you live? Just round the corner.
Also in British English round is used to talk about going to all (or most) parts of a place, or giving things to everybody in a group:
We walked round the old part of the town.
Can I look round.
Could you pass the cups round, please?
around ((or about) refer to movements or positions that are not very clear or definite:
The children were running (around ( or about) everywhere
Also used to talk about time-wasting or silly activities:
Stop fooling around (or about) . We're late.
It can also mean 'approximately':
What time shall I come? around ( or about) eight.
In American English (I am still quoting as I am Australian) about is mostly used to mean 'approximately' or 'not exactly'.
Americans (still quoting) normally use around where British English uses round.
I hope that helps.
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http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/threads/23309-spoken-english?goto=nextoldest
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| 0.942656 | 262 | 3.53125 | 4 |
In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Caerhun like this:
CAERHUN, or Caer-Rhun. a village and a parish in Conway district, Carnarvon. The village stands on the Conway river, near the Conway and Llanrwst railway, 5 miles S of Conway. It occupies the site of the Roman Conovium; has yielded many Roman relics; and is a pretty place. The parish includes also the townships of Isar-afon, Maen-y-Bardd, Penfio, and Rhwng-y-Ddwyafon; and its Post Town is Llanrwst. Acres, 13,402. Real property, £4,687. Pop., 1,314. Houses, 313. The property is divided among a few. The surface comprises mountains, glens, and chasms; and is highly picturesque. The living is a vicarage, annexed to the rectory of Llanbedr, in the diocese of Bangor. The church is good; and there are dissenting chapels.
A Vision of Britain through Time includes a large library of local statistics for administrative units. For the best overall sense of how the area containing Caerhun has changed, please see our redistricted information for the modern district of Conwy. More detailed statistical data are available under Units and statistics, which includes both administrative units covering Caerhun and units named after it.
GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, History of Caerhun, in Conwy and Caernarvonshire | Map and description, A Vision of Britain through Time.
Date accessed: 26th June 2016
Click here for more detailed advice on finding places within A Vision of Britain through Time, and maybe some references to other places called "Caerhun".
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en
| 0.935684 | 388 | 2.6875 | 3 |
What is odd about this report?
"Warming temperatures are melting patches of ice that have been in place for thousands of years in the mountains of the Canadian High Arctic and in turn revealing a treasure trove of ancient hunting tools,"
They cite as examples:
In 1997, sheep hunters discovered a 4,300-year-old dart shaft in caribou dung that had become exposed as the ice receded. . . . [Archaeologist Tom] Andrews and his team (including members of the indigenous Shutaot'ine or Mountain Dene) have found 2,400-year-old spear throwing tools, a 1000-year-old ground squirrel snare, and bows and arrows dating back 850 years.
So what does this dire news add up to? Prizes -- the adulation of other correspondents here in the Siberia of the Internet -- to the first correspondent who spots it.......
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http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2010/04/come-let-us-reason-together.html
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en
| 0.954181 | 184 | 2.578125 | 3 |
obese is a major health risk. Obesity can cause many complications including,
but not limited to:
- Hypertension or high blood pressure
- Dyslipidemia -– An abnormal concentration of fat in the bloodstream.
- Type 2 diabetes – Insulin resistant diabetes
- Coronary heart disease – The buildup of plaques in the main arteries of the heart.
- Stroke – The blockage of blood flow to the brain
- Gallbladder Disease – Can cause nausea and fever, caused by gallstones.
- Sleep Apnea – Problems breathing during sleep.
- Respiratory Problems
it is possible to develop these health problems without being obese,
obesity raises the likelihood of their development dramatically. Many
of these conditions can lead to disability, or even death.
isn't a coincidence that Latinos have the second highest rate for
obesity, and are also disproportionately affected by heart disease and
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http://www.asu.edu/courses/css335/da_whybad.html
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| 0.891481 | 192 | 3.21875 | 3 |
The launch of a privately owned Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was delayed today when a computer detected a possible problem with one of the rocket's engines.
Preparations for the company's trial cargo run to the International Space Station proceeded smoothly until 4:55am local time when, instead of the Falcon 9 rocket's main engines igniting, an onboard computer scrubbed the launch.
"Liftoff - we've had a cutoff. Liftoff did not occur," said NASA launch commentator George Diller.
A few minutes later a SpaceX official reported the cause of the delay - a high-pressure reading in one of the engine's chambers. With only a one-second launch opportunity today, SpaceX had no time to try to sort out the problem.
The company's next opportunity to launch is on Tuesday.
The unmanned rocket, carrying a Dragon cargo capsule, will try to reach the International Space Station.
SpaceX is one of two firms hired by NASA to fly cargo to the $100bn orbital outpost, which is owned by the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada.
Since the space shuttles were retired last year, NASA has had no way to reach the station and is dependent on its partner countries to fly cargo and crew. It hopes to change that by buying rides commercially from US companies.
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2014 Keratoconus Research UpdateNovember 11, 2014
It’s an exciting and hopeful time for people with keratoconus and there was plenty of news to report at the Keratoconus Information Forum hosted by the Centre for Eye Research Australia (CERA) in Melbourne on Tuesday 11 November 2014.
Keratoconus is a common degenerative condition of the eye where the cornea (front window of the eye) gets progressively thinner. As a result of this thinning, the normally round shape of the cornea becomes distorted and a cone-like bulge develops. This results in significant visual impairment.
Hosted by Associate Professor Mark Daniell, Principal Investigator, Corneal Research, the evening featured presentations the from keratoconus researchers at CERA who outlined breakthroughs for treating and halting the progression of the disease.
Professor Paul Baird, Principal Investigator, Ocular Genetics, covered the topic Genes, environment and keratoconus, which focused on how the identification of keratoconus genes has led to the development of new screening methods to identify the people at risk of the disease.
Dr Srujana Sahebjada, Research Optometrist, gave an update on the keratoconus innovations happening at CERA with a focus on technological advances in treatment.
Dr Elsie Chan, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, spoke about Cross-linking – 2014 and beyond. Corneal collagen cross-linking, a technique which uses UV light to strengthen chemical bonds in the cornea and has the potential to be the most significant breakthrough in treating and stopping keratoconus.
Information about the Australian Study of Keratoconus is available here.
The event was supported by Keratoconus Australia.
To view the slides from the event please click on the links below:
- “Keratoconus – Genes and Risk Factors”
Prof Paul Baird, Principal Investigator, Corneal Research, CERA
- “Keratoconus Research Innovation at CERA”
Dr Srujana Sahebjada, Research Fellow, Optometrist, Ocular Genetics Unit
- “Corneal collagen cross-linking: 2014 and beyond”
Dr Elsie Chan, Consultant Ophthalmologist (Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne
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The United Nations warned today that a continued failure to tackle climate change was putting at risk decades of progress in improving the lives of the world’s poorest people.
In its annual flagship report on the state of the world, the UN said unsustainable patterns of consumption and production posed the biggest challenge to the anti-poverty drive.
“For human development to become truly sustainable, the close link between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions needs to be severed,” the UN said in its annual human development report.
How many more articles, daily scientific reports and lines of hard evidence connecting man’s activities to climate change do we need before we do something about it? How many more national and global scientific organisations do we need to add to the immense list of those who warn us about the dangers of relying upon fossil fuels? When the decades of science that proves man-made climate change is a reality is as tight as the science that connects HIV to aids and that smoking causes cancer, how much longer do people have to stand back being ambivalent about it, tittering about it being good for the UK wine industry, or it being nice to have hot weather up north? How many more millionaires are going to actively prevent society doing something about one of the largest disasters our generation will ever face? When the global average temperature creeps up and positive feedback mechanisms kick in, precisely what will the death toll need to be, from the exacerbated weather events or sky-high food prices and famine, before our conscience kicks in?
Several leading journalists have suggested climate change denial is as severe as Holocaust denial, and warnings such as this by the UN make me think that those accusers may well be on to something.
Carbon emissions need to be reduced on a national level, by an immense amount and very quickly. You know who to talk to… Go and talk to them about it.
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Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was a major participant in the Holocaust. On July 1, 1937, the British-appointed Mufti asked the German Consul-General of Palestine "to what extent the Third Reich was prepared to support the Arab movement against the Jews." Following this meeting, the Mufti was visited in Palestine by Adolf Eichmann, who was getting "acquainted with the country and the life and to establish contact with people." Around the time of Eichmann´s visit, a prolonged and organized campaign of atrocities against the Jews of Palestine was launched.
Also around that time, the Mufti became a paid agent of the Nazi Abwehr and was put in charge of counterintelligence and sabotage. When the British stopped an Abwher shipment of arms to the Mufti in Palestine, through Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the Mufti re-located to Baghdad, where he directed Arab and Nazi finance, diplomacy and propaganda. In 1941, the Mufti inspired a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq led by General Rashid Ali. Collaborating with his masters in Berlin, he would declare a Jihad against Britain, which he called "the greatest foe of Islam." The British backed a successful counter-coup and the Mufti proceeded on to Berlin, where he was appointed by the Nazis as titular head of a Nazi pan-Arab government-in-exile.
On November 21, 1941, the Mufti met with Adolph Hitler and recorded the following in his diary:
The Mufti said : "The Arabs are Germany´s natural friends... They are therefore prepared to cooperate with Germany with all their hearts and stood ready to participate in a war, not only negatively by the commission of acts of sabotage and the instigation of revolutions, but also positively by the formation of an Arab Legion. In this struggle, the Arabs were striving for the independence and the unity of Palestine, Syria and Iraq."
Hitler: "Germany was resolved, step by step, to ask one European nation after the other to solve its Jewish problem, and at the proper time direct a similar appeal to non-European nations as well....Germany´s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. The moment that Germany´s tank divisions and air squadrons had made their appearance south of Caucasus, the public appeal requested by the Grand Mufti could go out to the Arab world."
Hitler and the Mufti were planning to first exterminate the Jews of Europe and then the Jews of the Middle East. The Mufti, who visited Nazi death camps several times, organized support for the Nazis from amongst Muslims in Russia, the Balkans, and the Middle East. He headed the "Arab Bureau" in Berlin, where he directed a massive network of Arab-Nazi collaborators. He organized tens of thousands of Bosnian and Albanian Muslims into military units known as Handschar divisions, which carried out atrocities against Yugoslav Jews, Serbs and Gypsies, and he attempted to organize an Arab-Nazi Legion. Handschar fighters would be discovered battling against Israeli independence in 1948.
Originally posted by Rosen
Last month he received a telepathic message from Yahweh, leader of the Elohim civilization, concerning recent events about Israel. I'm not sure about the proper ways to link and quote an article in these forums, but here's a tidbit:
"You have totally betrayed your spiritual mission, the only one that justified your return to the land of IsRael. Because, to be Zionist without being spiritual and religious, is pure racism and is totally unacceptable. You only have the right and the duty to be Zionist and Palestinian...While some of our previous Messages sent by our Prophets of old gave you centuries to be accomplished, this one here only leaves you a few years, or even months."
[edit on 6-5-2009 by Rosen]
[edit on 6-5-2009 by Rosen]
Originally posted by daersoulkeeper
OK HERE IS THE KEY POINT OF THE ARTICLE DIRECTLY TRANSLATED
"“The truth is that Israel does not have the courage to attack us. If we should be subjected to an attack, I do not believe to extinguish that we need more than eleven days, the existence of Israel.”"
IF THEY ARE ATTACKED ,,,,,it would take no more than 11 days to destroy Israel.
THIS DOES NOT EVEN REMOTELY SAY israel destruction is within 11 days. [SNIP]
Originally posted by CharlesMartel
reply to post by mrmonsoon
The German "elf Tagen" means 11 days. The article doesn't say when the 11 days starts, but 3 May + 11 days = 14 May.
The last paragraph says that Israel can't count on US support under Obama.
Assuming the article is not a total fabrication, Israel only has about a week to act.
I'm not sure it would have much relevance as, I'm sure you've seen in your lifetime, there have been so many doomsday prophets, and so many armageddon "insiders" that eventually SOMEONE is going to be right (religion and faith notwithstanding).
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The Savage Constitution
Stanford Law School
March 7, 2013
63 Duke Law Journal 999 (2014)
Conventional histories of the Constitution largely omit Natives. This Article challenges this absence and argues that Indian affairs played a key role in the Constitution’s creation, drafting, and ratification. It traces two constitutional narratives about Indians: a Madisonian and a Hamiltonian perspective. Both views arose from the failure of Indian policy under the Articles of Confederation, when explicit national authority could not constrain states, squatters, or Native nations. Nationalists agreed that this failure underscored the need for a stronger federal state, but disagreed about the explanation. Madisonians blamed interference with federal treaties, whereas the Hamiltonians argued the federal military was too weak to overawe the “savages.”
Both accounts resulted in constitutional remedies. More important than the Indian Commerce Clause, new provisions secured by the Madisonians declared federal treaties supreme law, barred state treatymaking, and provided exclusive federal power over western territories. But expansionist states won concessions guaranteeing federal protection and western land claims, while other provisions created a fiscal-military state committed to western expansion.
The two narratives fared differently during ratification. While few embraced centralization, many Federalists repeatedly invoked “savages” to justify a stronger federal state and a standing army. This argument swayed Georgia, which ratified to secure federal aid in its ongoing war with the Creek Indians. But it also elevated the dispossession of Natives into a constitutional principle. The Article concludes by exploring this history’s interpretive implications. It suggests the Indian affairs context unsettles conventional understandings of the Constitution as intended to restrain the power of the state, and challenges both originalist and progressive assumptions about constitutional history.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 91
Keywords: Legal History, Constitutional History, Native Americans, Treaty Power, Supremacy Clause, War Powers
Date posted: March 9, 2013 ; Last revised: February 15, 2014
© 2016 Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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|The Library of Congress > American Memory|
USING THE COLLECTIONS
|USING THE COLLECTIONS
In the Folklife Reading Room, you will find a sampling of the many works on folk music, folklore, ethnomusicology, oral history, and material culture available in the Library's General Collections. Here you may use standard publications and a sizable collection of magazines, newsletters, posters, and other ephemera. Unpublished theses and dissertations, as well as published bibliographies and directories, are also available.
Folk Archive collection material is organized by AFS (Archive of Folk Song) and AFC (Archive of Folk Culture) numbers. The earlier system, AFS, assigned numbers to individual items, initially usually individual songs. Beginning in the 1980s, a new system was devised to assign AFC numbers and dates to collections as a whole. Collection storage areas are not open to readers, and all material will be retrieved by reference staff.
You will find that a number of reference tools available in the Folklife Reading Room are particularly helpful. These include topical guides, collection guides, subject files, and card catalogs.
Folklife Finding Aids are a series of cross-collection topical guides to particular subjects. The Folklife Center is developing a finding aid for each state, and many are now available. In addition, there are finding aids for such topics as Zora Neale Hurston, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Slave Narratives, and World War II.
Collection guides provide detailed descriptions of fully processed collections.
The subject files, consisting of largely ephemeral material, have grown over the years in response to reader requests for information and now include thousands of folders. There are entries for American Indian tribes by tribal name, and for many folk song titles, two of the most frequently researched topics in the reading room. Other titles of interest to women's history and culture specialists include Calamity Jane, Double Dutch, Fairy Tales, Festivals, Folk Dance, Gay and Lesbian Folklore, Gospel Music, May Pole, Medicine, Midwife, Needlework, Paper Cutting, Sacred Harp, Suffrage, Wedding Customs, Witchcraft, Women's Army Corps Songs, and Women's Mill Songs.
The corporate-subject files include ephemeral material on individuals, organizations, festivals, exhibits, and so forth.
Several card catalogs provide information on various collections. One lists primarily English-language field recordings, 1933 to 1950, and is organized by title, performer, and geographic region. An AFS Collection card catalog is organized by collection title, collection number, and subject. Although this catalog can be useful, it is incomplete.
Folklife Center publications frequently list, describe, or illuminate Folklife Center collections. Examples include the quarterly Folklife Center News (1977-); the five volumes of Folklife Annual (1985-90); illustrated books from many of the center's field documentation projects—such as Old Ties, New Attachments: Italian-American Folklife in the West (Washington: Library of Congress, 1992; F596. 3.I8 T54 1992) and Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools in America (Washington: Library of Congress, 1988; LC3802.E74 1988); and the published field recordings in the Library of Congress's landmark series Folk Music of the United States. Splendid performances by women playing instruments and singing solo or in groups are featured on these recordings.
Reference aids are bibliographies and directories on selected topics. These are no longer produced and many are out of date, but some may be useful. Examples of topics available include Autoharp, Ballad, Carter Family, Folk Dance, Dulcimer, Protest Songs, Shape-note Singing, and Women and Folk Music.
Computer searches are possible in the reading room, with the assistance of the reference staff, and the American Folklife Center's own database is keyword searchable for some collections. The Library of Congress's new bibliographic database provides the Folklife Center with the opportunity to catalog multiformat collections. Some written records for folklife collections are available through the Library of Congress Online Catalog. These records link to the finding aids for each collection, so researchers may read about each collection in detail.
For Archive of Folk Culture finding aids available online, see the Web page Finding Aids for Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture.[Top]
|Home||Table of Contents||About the Guide||Abbreviations||Search|
|The Library of Congress> > American Memory|
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