text
stringlengths 199
648k
| id
stringlengths 47
47
| dump
stringclasses 1
value | url
stringlengths 14
419
| file_path
stringlengths 139
140
| language
stringclasses 1
value | language_score
float64 0.65
1
| token_count
int64 50
235k
| score
float64 2.52
5.34
| int_score
int64 3
5
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Linux - NetworkingThis forum is for any issue related to networks or networking.
Routing, network cards, OSI, etc. Anything is fair game.
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide
This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.
Click Here to receive this Complete Guide absolutely free.
AFAIK there's no possibility to do that since PXE relies on DHCP. What you could do is setup Static DHCP (DHCP reservation) or work with a DHCP server on a completely different subnet, not accessible from the 'static network'.
Looking forward to your participation in the forums. Have fun with Linux.
What you have set up is 'static DHCP' as I understand it. I don't know if you're asking or explaining that in your post but for those who don't know it:
static allocation: The DHCP server allocates an IP address based on a table with MAC address/IP address pairs, which are manually filled in (perhaps by a network administrator). Only requesting clients with a MAC address listed in this table will be allocated an IP address. This feature (which is not supported by all DHCP servers) is variously called Static DHCP Assignment (by DD-WRT), fixed-address (by the dhcpd documentation), Address Reservation (by Netgear), DHCP reservation or Static DHCP (by Cisco/Linksys), and IP reservation or MAC/IP binding (by various other router manufacturers).
|
<urn:uuid:aa6b43a4-c9a0-40b9-ad53-d10722b24aaa>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-networking-3/pxe-in-static-ip-network-923195/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00060-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.945576 | 547 | 2.578125 | 3 |
The CFI laid bare
Posted 24/05/2011 by Anita Talberg
During the 2010 election, the Government announced that, if re-elected, it would introduce a new program, the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI), to pay landholders for helping to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. On 24 March 2011, legislation for the CFI and two related bills was introduced into the House of Representatives. The debate is expected to take place this week. On the whole, the legislation has been well accepted by stakeholders, but there remain a number of contentious and complex issues with the design of the scheme. As the Parliamentary Library is in the final stages of developing a Bills Digest, this post provides a basic outline of the scheme and its main issues.
After a lengthy consultation process
(attracting nearly 280 submissions), the Government introduced three bills into Parliament as part of this initiative:
The bills were referred to both the Senate and House of Representatives for committee consideration. The House Standing Committee on Climate Change, Environment and the Arts reported
on 23 May 2011. The Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications was expected to report by 20 May 2011 but will now present the final report on 27 May 2011.Outline of the CFI
An outline of the scheme
is provided on the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency website. Basically, the CFI creates a new form of personal property, known as an Australian carbon credit unit (ACCU). Farmers and foresters can generate and hold ownership of ACCUs by undertaking certain projects such as reforestation, manure management or the removal of feral animals. Projects are only acceptable if they are listed on a ‘positive list’, have specific methodologies defined in regulations and are beyond ‘common practice’ in that industry or environment. Two types of ACCUs exist. Those that can be used by Australia to meet its Kyoto Protocol obligation are known as Kyoto-ACCUs, all others are non-Kyoto ACCUs. The positive list is matched by a ‘negative list’. Projects on the negative list have adverse environmental or social impacts and are not eligible projects.
For ACCUs to represent real climate change mitigation, the Bill also requires that carbon abatement endures for a 100-year period. This is referred to as ‘permanence’. All forestry projects have a small percentage of ACCUs deducted from their total to insure against temporary carbon losses after certain natural or human-induced events. This percentage is referred to as the ‘risk of reversal buffer’ and has been set at 5 per cent, nominally. ACCUs are held in an electronic database that is defined in the Australian National Registry of Emissions Units Act 2011. This database also stores Australia’s various Kyoto-compliance units.
Kyoto-ACCUs can be exchanged for units that can be sold to other developed countries that are signatory to the Kyoto Protocol. Non-Kyoto ACCUs could currently only be traded on the voluntary market internationally or domestically. However, if an Australian compliance market were to be established through an emissions trading scheme (ETS), or a carbon price were rolled out through a tax, ACCUs might also be purchased to offset the requirements or liabilities under such schemes.Various positions on the CFI
The Coalition has not adopted an official position towards the policy. It does stand to reason that the concept of the CFI would be acceptable to the Coalition as it leverages emission reduction projects in the land-use sector, in the vein of The Coalition’s Direct Action Plan
on climate change. However, The Direct Action Plan relies on government money, whereas the CFI is based on a market mechanism. Also, the Nationals have voiced concern that the CFI could pose a threat to food production.
Although the Greens support a Federal policy to increase carbon absorption through altered land management practices, they are generally not in favour of any policy instruments that may emulate the outcomes of previous managed investment schemes
. Senator Milne believes
that the current design of the CFI could potentially create a surplus of offsets that might flood the market. She is also concerned
that the creation of ACCUs may generate dangerous competition for land between food, fibre, energy and carbon farmers.
Mr Oakeshott supports
the CFI legislation. To date, Mr Windsor has not given his final verdict on the Bill. Mr Katter made a statement
in the beginning of the CFI consultation process that the scheme was plagued with opportunities for extortion. No other Independents have commented to date.
As could have been predicted, emissions-intensive industry groups do not see the need for the CFI, but of course there is overarching support from both the farming and forestry sectors (although there are some issues of concern to each). There are mixed views amongst environmental and conservation groups regarding the CFI. Many are unsure about the potential outcomes, believing these could either reinforce or actually weaken existing biodiversity. Finally, traditional land owners, as major stakeholders, support the intent of the CFI and are keen to engage with it, but have some legal concerns.Main issues with the CFI
The biggest challenge to the CFI is ensuring that ACCUs have credibility in both domestic and international markets. The integrity of ACCUs is founded on three factors:
- Additionality: For a project to be deliver genuine carbon abatement, it must result in a reduction in atmospheric greenhouse gas that is additional to what would have occurred in the absence of the project (and in the absence of the CFI scheme as a policy instrument). This is known as ‘additionality’. For a project to pass the CFI additionality test it must be included in the ‘positive list’ and it must not be accepted as ‘common practice’ in the relevant industry or environment. The definition of ‘common practice’ is a grey area and difficult to formally apply. It also varies by State and bioregion. Additionality has been an issue of contention amongst prospective CFI participants as it introduces uncertainty into the scheme and makes it difficult to assess the legislation before regulations have been developed. However, for ACCUs to be recognised in international voluntary and compliance markets, additionality is a necessary clause.
- Permanence: As well as being additional, greenhouse gas abatement from CFI projects must be permanent. In the Bill, permanence is considered a 100-year period. This poses a challenge to CFI participants and could be a deterrent for some. There has been some debate over the nominal 5 per cent choice for the risk of reversal buffer. Finally, the Bill requires that if project participants choose to end or reverse a project they must return as many ACCUs as have been credited. Because ACCU prices are predicted to increase, someone in this situation is likely to come out at a loss. This has been an issue of contention.
- Leakage: If efforts to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases in one place, by one activity, lead to increases of such gases somewhere else or in some other form, it is referred to as leakage. Because the CFI is founded on a project-by-project basis, some kinds of leakage are difficult to monitor and control. Yet, problems of leakage can undermine the environmental integrity of the scheme and lead to unsubstantiated claims of carbon abatement.
Because of such rigid requirements for scheme credibility, the design of the CFI and administrative procedures are complex and costly. This has been seen as a major barrier to participation. Another barrier to participation, specifically for Native Title holders, has been the failure to adequately recognise non-exclusive rights to land. The Bill does not provide any special treatment for non-exclusive native title, such as native title access or usage rights, as they are thought less likely to include carbon sequestration rights. The Government has stated that consultation on this issue is ongoing.
With such barriers to participation, the likely uptake of CFI projects is uncertain. According to the Government’s own calculations
, even the most optimistic scenario results in less than 23 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent sequestered or avoided in 2020 through the CFI. The uptake of the CFI will be highly dependent on the demand for ACCUs, which will be determined by any forthcoming Australian carbon price and international commitments. Certainly, the demand, and therefore price, for ACCUs would be stronger and more certain if such credits were accepted to offset liabilities under a domestic compliance market, such as an ETS or carbon tax.
In his sixth update paper
, Professor Garnaut argued for linkage between the CFI and an Australian compliance market. However, he also built a case for limiting the amount of offset credits accepted, at least in the early stages under a fixed price scheme. This is to ensure budget neutrality of a carbon price scheme, but also to guarantee that mitigation efforts in high-polluting sectors are not weakened. The concept of capping the number of credit units available to a domestic carbon pricing scheme has gained some support from such groups as The Climate Institute, the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, and Greenpeace. However, by some others it is seen as a distortion to the market and a barrier to CFI uptake.
Another deciding factor will be Australia’s future decisions under the Kyoto Protocol. Two thirds of the CFI’s abatement potential is expected to come from Kyoto-compliant activities. Yet, the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends in December 2012 and large shadows of doubt hover over the continuance and likely future form of the treaty. While the international compliance market is the biggest market available to CFI participants it provides investor certainty only until December 2012.
Nevertheless, because of the scheme’s interaction with the Kyoto Protocol, and also because of the uncertainty in the science of agricultural carbon management, the CFI is likely to favour forestry projects over agricultural projects. As the Government’s early estimate suggests, more than 80 per cent of abatement under the CFI is likely to come from forestry activities. This bias towards tree plantations could result is a number of perverse outcomes. First, there is a fear that abundant and misplaced forestry projects could impact on water availability. Second, if the resulting plantations end up being mainly carbon-rich monocultures, then biodiversity could be affected. Third, there is the danger that valuable cropland will be transformed into large sections of forests.
These potential perverse outcomes were the reasons behind the Government’s proposed positive and negative lists for projects. A project on the negative list is ineligible as a CFI project. However, not all those projects listed on the positive list are eligible; they must also gain approval under any relevant natural resource management (NRM) plan, if one exists for that project area. While these measures go some way in resolving the risks of perverse environmental outcomes, there are questions as to whether they are adequate and scientifically rigorous. There have been suggestions that the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999
may provide a more credible framework for assessing the environmental impact of land-use change and forestry projects. Another suggestion, and alternative to the positive and negative lists, has been a heavier reliance on, and linkage to, regional NRM and land use plans. However, NRM plans are currently not designed for such purposes. Regional NRM bodies will need significantly more resources if they are to take on this new role. Also, some oversight would be needed to ensure that certain standards exist and are upheld across all NRM plans nationally.
Another potential perverse outcome of the CFI relates to its interaction with existing and future policy instruments at the Commonwealth, State and local levels. Because of the additionality rulings, early movers—those who have made voluntary efforts towards biodiversity and carbon retention by placing a conservation covenant on their land—will not be able to benefit from their actions through the CFI. Similarly, any projects participating in the Government’s Environmental Stewardship program under the Caring for Country initiative would also be excluded from CFI eligibility—and vice versa. As a partial solution, Senator Milne proposes that a fund be created from a proportion of any carbon pricing revenue and that it be used to maintain and enhance existing carbon stocks. In general, though, perhaps there needs to be further investigation into the potential of integrating or streamlining some schemes.
One of the Bill’s stated objectives is the protection of Australia’s natural environment. CFI participants will be able to list information about environmental and/or community benefits associated with an offset project and the ACCUs deriving from it. In the Explanatory Memorandum, the Government proposes a standardised co-benefits index. However, for co-benefits to add real value there needs to be some sort of third-party assessment and an ongoing review of each attributed co-benefit.Conclusions
Although the CFI is seen by most as a positive development, there are concerns with the integrity of the scheme's basic design as well as the details of the administrative requirements. Whether the scheme will have any real impact on atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations will depend heavily on any future carbon price. In line with this, the weaknesses and failures of the scheme will become visible only if and when the demand for ACCUs becomes significant. A 2014 review is expected to resolve any such issues.(image sourced from: http://www.budget.gov.au/2011-12/content/glossy/regional/image/pg20_sml.jpg)
Thank you for your comment. If it does not require moderation, it will appear shortly.
|
<urn:uuid:f2fe6c2e-ce19-49b0-b277-0ceb55e26e1a>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2011/May/The_CFI_laid_bare
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394987.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00046-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.953916 | 2,776 | 2.53125 | 3 |
The English automotive engineer George Carwardine designed the "Anglepoise", a desk lamp, around 1930 and had its innovative construction patented in 1932. The shade is fastened to a long arm, which is jointed in two places.
This construction not only makes the lampshade adjustable but also enables users to position the entire lamp in different ways, depending on what source of light is needed. The equilibrium of forces is achieved in all positions to which the lamp can be adjusted by springs, which function on the principle of the muscles in the human arm. The springs are attached to both sides of the lower joint of the lamp arm so they work by equalizing countervailing forces to keep the lamp in equilibrium.
The construction developed for this lamp by George Carwardine is still in use and not just for lighting. George Carwardine's "Anglepoise" lamp was made for fifty years in various models and produced on a large scale by the English firm of Herbert Terry & Sons in Redditch.
In 1937 the Norwegian designer Jacob Jacobsen bought the licence from George Carwardine and Terry & Sons for manufacturing and marketing these lamps in Scandinavia. Jacob Jacobsen varied George Carwardine's design to produce the "Luxo L-1" line in lamps. From the 1940s Jacob Jacobsen owned the production rights for all of Europe and the US. The lamp became a hit worldwide. Since 1993 Tecta has made a new edition of the original George Carwardine "Anglepoise" lamp called the "L 10".
|
<urn:uuid:01bd7e79-998e-466b-bce6-a11bd7287997>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.george-carwardine.com/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399425.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00032-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.954888 | 319 | 2.546875 | 3 |
A Robot Designed to Teach Humans
13. December 2013
Esab's Swift Arc robotic welding system consists of a Kuka robot and controller with an Esab Aristo welding source, mounted on roller casters and fully enclosed.
Many companies cite a lack of skilled workers as a reason for implementing robotics and other automation, but what if robots could help train humans? That’s the idea behind Esab’s Swift Arc mobile learning system. The robotic welding cell is designed to demonstrate, develop and teach proper welding techniques as well as robot programming skills.
The fully enclosed robotic welding system features Esab’s Aristo U5000i power source alongside a Kuka KR6 900 robot and controller. Heavy-duty roller casters provide mobility for on-site training. The safety system and operator control panel enable users to practice troubleshooting and programming techniques while gaining the hands-on experience necessary to operate robotic systems on the shop floor. Click here to read more about the system.
|
<urn:uuid:d49e638f-dd38-47db-b5a6-b476f4e99805>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.pfonline.com/blog/post/a-robot-designed-to-teach-humans-
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393146.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00089-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.90151 | 201 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Search the Health Library
Get the facts on diseases, conditions, tests and procedures.
I Want To...
Find a Doctor
Find a doctor at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center or Johns Hopkins Community Physicians.
I Want To...
Find Research Faculty
Enter the last name, specialty or keyword for your search below.
September is Pain Awareness Month
Understanding more about the underlying causes of pain can help improve treatments and alleviate suffering. Johns Hopkins researchers are working on everything from the molecular causes of pain to the latest advances in pain treatment.
What You Need to Know
- Nearly 100 million Americans experience chronic pain —more than those who have diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined.
- Pain is a warning sign that indicates a problem that needs attention.
- Pain starts in receptor nerve cells located beneath the skin and in organs throughout the body.
- Living with pain can be debilitating and adversely affect everyday life.
Arthritis refers to over 100 different conditions ranging from autoimmune disease to normal joint inflammation.
- Recent experiments have uncovered that the body's own immune system makes unique antibodies to help the most severe cases of rheumatoid arthritis progress.
- Unfortunately, there is no cure for arthritis -- treatment plans often involve both short-term and long-term approaches.
- An estimated 294,000 children are affected by juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) and other rheumatological conditions.
According to the National Institutes of Health, eight out of ten people will have back pain at some time in their life.
- Bad posture and bad habits, even a simple cough or sneeze, can throw more than your back out of whack. Dr. Ali Bydon, director the of the Johns Hopkins Bayview Spine Program , discusses lower back pain, it’s causes and who might be a candidate for spinal surgery.
- Over the years, the treatments for back pain changed. Watch Dr. Daniel Sciubba, director of spine research, discusses common spinal problems, treatment options, and common questions.
- Millions of people get crippling headaches, and there are dozens of different headache types -- but receiving the right diagnosis is key to getting the right treatment.
- Migraines can be triggered by stress, fatigue, or certain foods -- and researchers claim obese patients are five times more likely to develop chronic migraines.
- A child's headache may be triggered by several factors, including: genetics, hormones, stress, diet, medication, dehydration, school or behavioral issues, and/or depression.
Innovations in Pain Treatment
There are many different methods and techniques for treating pain, both chronic and acute.
- Botox For Pain Relief -- For patients who have a painful and debilitating nerve compression disorder called thoracic outlet syndrome, Botox may offer temporary relief and an alternative to rib-removal surgery. A small research study has shown promising results.
- Attitude Adjustment -- If you have chronic pain, especially face and jaw pain, you may sleep better and experience less day-to-day pain if you learn to dwell less on your ailments. Researchers studied 214 people and found a correlation between negative thinking about pain and poor sleep and worse pain.
- Newly Discovered Protein May Turn Pain Off -- Researchers have discovered a protein that holds together multiple elements in a complex system responsible for regulating pain, mental illnesses, and other complex neurological problems. In other words: this protein has the capability to turn off the receptors that keep pain lingering.
- Burning Away Intractable Pain -- When a 31-year-old Marine was defusing a buried bomb in Afghanistan last December, it exploded, leaving him unconscious for nearly a month. When he woke up, his face was scarred, he was blind in one eye, he was missing half of his right arm and his left arm was paralyzed. And he was in pain. Neurosurgeons opened the patient’s spine and burned away the scar tissue to alleviate this pain.
Find a Pain Specialist
At Johns Hopkins, you don’t have to live through your pain alone. Our pain centers, programs, and clinics are made up of teams of specialists who aim to ease your pain, and allow you to live in as much comfort as possible. Please follow the links below to learn more about each of our different care centers.
- The Blaustein Pain Center
- Chronic Pain Treatment Program
- Facial Paralysis and Pain Treatment Center
- Headache Center
- Neurosurgery Pain Research Institute
- Palliative Care and Pain Program
- The Pediatric Pain Management Service
- Pediatric Pain Rehabilitation Clinic (Outpatient)
- Pediatric Pain Rehabilitation Program
|
<urn:uuid:77721df3-991c-4226-802b-b735ef340443>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/stories/september_pain_awareness_month.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00083-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.912277 | 968 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Establishing Balance Tolerances for ArmaturesGordon E. Hines and Michael J. Myers
Hines Industries, Inc.
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Note: This article assumes an understanding of the basics of balancing.
1.0 Establishing Realistic TolerancesThere is a misconception that balance problems in a motor can be cured by balancing the armature to a tighter balance specification. Unless other sources of unbalance are also considered, this only raises the cost of balancing the armature, slows production, and in some cases, still ends up with noisy out of balance assemblies. What should be done is to take care of the real problems, and not expect the armature balancing machine to work miracles.
The reasons for balancing an electric motor are to make it run smoothly and quietly, and to assure longevity of the motor bearings. In order for this to happen, the motor’s rotating components must be balanced. A question that arises is “How well does the armature have to be balanced?” In other words, “How good is good enough?” The specifications for “good enough” is known as the balance tolerance.
It is important to realize that balancing the motor’s armature is only one step in the balancing process. Just as a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, it is equally important to consider the balance of every rotating component attached to the armature, and also to consider how each of them is attached. A perfectly balanced component that is mounted off-center will create unbalance.
Vacuum cleaner fans are often made with an oversize hole. A balanced fan can move to one side, and this causes unbalance. The fan may also be held in place with an unbalanced pressed-fit washer used as a retainer, or with a nut that may be out of balance or have threads with run off-center. The motor shaft may have run-out, meaning that even if the fan, washer, and nut were all in balance, the run-out would generate unbalance.
Too much emphasis is often placed on making a “tight” unbalance tolerance for the motor armature, ignoring other design consideration.
2.0 Static And Dynamic BalanceGenerally speaking, if most of the mass of a rotor is concentrated in a disc that is 5 to 10 times as large in diameter as in thickness, static balance will be sufficient. Rotors that have their mass distributed along their axis should be dynamically balanced. In the gray area between the extremes, each case must be examined individually.
If an armature has a particularly short stack, so that the correction planes are close together, it makes sense to do only “single-plane” (static) balancing. It is unlikely that this type of armature would have a significant amount of “two-plane” (couple) unbalance.
The sum of the forces at the bearing planes due to static unbalance is equal to the force of static unbalance at the correction plane. If the correction plane is reasonably centered between the bearings, half of the sum appears at each bearing. If the correction plane is nearer to one bearing, a larger fraction of the force appears at that bearing. Making a static unbalance correction at a single “correction plane” location will have a direct effect on the static unbalance as measured at the armature support bearings.
A typical unbalanced armature usually has “dynamic” unbalance. Dynamic unbalance is a combination of “static” and “couple” unbalance. Dynamic unbalance can only be corrected by making two corrections to the armature, in two “correction planes”. This will not have a direct effect on the vibration at the bearing planes. The force at the bearings, due to couple unbalance, is reduced by the ratio of the correction-plane-spacing to the bearing-spacing. In other words, if the correction planes are close together, and the armature support bearings are further apart, an unbalance correction at the correction planes will have a smaller effect on the unbalance as measured at the support bearings. An armature with the bearing planes six inches apart, and a 3 inch long stack, might be corrected with a correction mill making two cuts two inches apart on the stack. The force at the bearings due to this much couple unbalance measured at the correction planes will be equal to 1/3 of the force at the bearings due to the same couple unbalance measured at the bearing planes. In other words, 0.003 ounces of unbalance at the correction planes (2 inches apart) will result in a 0.001 ounces of unbalance at the bearing planes (six inches apart).
One way around this confusion is to establish balance tolerances at the bearing planes. Another way is to separate the dynamic unbalance in the armature into static unbalance and couple unbalance. In the example given above, one would impose a couple tolerance of three times the static tolerance at the correction planes. These two methods are equivalent. Either method can be used. In these days of computer based balancing machines, it is simple to have the computer calculate the unbalance correction amounts at the correction planes, and the unbalance at the bearings for comparison with a tolerance.
The apparent change in couple unbalance as the planes are moved about is because couple unbalance causes a “twisting” force that causes the axis of spin to wobble about a point on the shaft that is somewhere between the two bearings. As the planes are moved closer together, the “lever arm” for the couple decreases, and a larger couple amount is required to produce the same wobble effect.
3.0 Causes Of Motor UnbalanceThe best way to minimize balance problems, is to minimize the initial unbalance which will need to be corrected. Unbalance in a small electric motor can be split into two categories, unbalance that is created BEFORE the armature is balanced, and unbalance that is created AFTER the armature is balance.
3.1 Unbalance before the armature is balanced.
The following causes of armature unbalance occur before the armatures is balanced.
3.1.1 Eccentricity of the laminations
Eccentricity in the laminations which make up an armature stack can cause unbalance. To minimize the unbalance, sometimes the laminations are randomly placed, and sometimes they are split into three of four groups oriented as shown below.
If the bearing surfaces on the shaft are not concentric, this will create unbalance equal to the weight of the part multiplied by the amount of eccentricity between the workpiece’s mass centerline and its geometric centerline.
3.1.3 Shaft Straightness
If the armature shaft is bent, the mass of the armature stack may be off-center, resulting in unbalance. If the bearing spacing in the balancing machine is different from what it will be in the end product, the axis of rotation in the balancing machine may not be the same as the axis of rotation in the end product. It is good practice to use the same bearing spacing in the balancer, as in the end product.
3.1.4 Winding Irregularities
If the wires are longer on one side of the armature than the other, this will result in unbalance. This can be caused by winding tension variations. There can be “loose” wires, or a “bump” can develop in the winding pattern, increasing the length of all the wires that go over that bump.
3.1.5 Non Uniform Trickle Impregnating
If the epoxy resin on the armature is not applied uniformly, this can result in unbalance.
3.2 Unbalance after balance the armature
The following causes of unbalance can occur after the armature is balanced.
3.2.1 Adding a Component – Eccentricity
If there is eccentricity in the armature (or components placed on the armature), this can cause unbalance. All too often there are loose tolerances on components that get mounted to an armature. Unbalance is created by not holding the “fits and clearances” for these parts tightly enough. If there is excess clearance, any part, even a perfectly balanced part, mounted off-center, will generate an unbalance equal to its weight multiplied by the distance that it is off-center.
In particular, this applies to fans that are rigidly mounted to an armature. When mounting a cooling fan on an armature, if the minimum clearance is 0.0002”, and the maximum is 0.002” the centerline of the fan can shift almost 0.001 inches on a loose fit condition. If a 10 ounce fan is balanced separately on a collet so that it is balanced while running on-center, and then mounted on this shaft, the fan will create 10 x 0.001 or 0.01 ounce inches of unbalance.
In this case, it is not reasonable to balance either the fan or the armature to 0.001 ounce inches (and less reasonable to specify a tighter balance tolerance on both), rather than fixing the problem of excess clearance by specifying tighter dimensional tolerances on the fit of the fan to the shaft. 3.2.2 Adding a component – Defective Parts
It is possible for defective parts to cause unbalance. If the parts such as fans or locating washers are made with their hole off-center, this can generate a significant amount of unbalance, depending on the weight of the part.
4.0 Process ControlIt is important to establish reasonable balance tolerances, both of the individual motor components, and of the completed motor assembly.
4.1 Motor Components
If the balance tolerance of individual motor components is set too tightly, it will increase their balancing time. If the balance tolerance of individual motor components is set too loosely (or if the workpiece dimensional tolerances are too loose), this may result in a large amount of unbalance in the assembled motor. Even if it is possible to physically correct such a large amount of unbalance, this is undesirable, as the large amount of material that must be removed will lower the electrical efficiency of the motor. If the manufacturing process is not kept under control, the motor design may need to have windings and/or laminations added, to make up for what is being taken away in the balancing operation.
4.2 Motor Assemblies:
If the tolerance of the complete motor assembly is set too tightly, it will be more difficult to balance the armature, the balancing operation will take more time, which will reduce the production rate, and increase cost. If the tolerance is set too loose, the end product may have too much vibration.
4.3 Production Rate:
Production line clearances and tolerances need to be controlled so that a motor component to be balanced, will have less unbalance than can be corrected in a single correction pass. Modern day automatic balancing machines such as those built by Hines Industries can typically make a 95 percent unbalance correction in a single pass. This means that to balance a part to a given unbalance tolerance level in a single pass, the initial unbalance should be no more than twenty times the unbalance tolerance. More than that, will usually take (at least) two correction passes. This is one reason why some balancing machines that are rated at processing 600 parts per hour, can only produce 300 balanced parts per hour.
4.4 Other Considerations
Vibration can be caused by problems other than unbalance. Non-uniform windings on the armature, or an eccentric shaft will generate more electrical “pull” on one side of the motor than the other.
5.0 Establishing A Balance ToleranceThe International Standards Organization (ISO) has developed standards, for use in establishing a balance tolerance for different applications. To follow the ISO guidelines, it is necessary to know the following three things about the part to be balanced:
1 – the general type classification
2 – the approximate maximum service speed of the workpiece
3 – the weight (mass) of the workpiece
5.1 Type Classification – “G” Grades
A small electric motor in a non vibration-sensitive application does not need to be balanced to the same level as a small high-speed motor powering a precision instrument. The ISO has developed a grading system, crating a “G” grade for G-0.4 to G-4,000 for different product applications. For armatures, we normally deal with G-1, G-2.5, and G-6.3.
Figure 1 shows the three ISO grades that are usually used in establishing an unbalance tolerance in electric motor armatures.
Grade G-6.3 is used for “small electric armatures, often mass produced, in vibration insensitive applications.
Grade G-2/5 is used for small electric motors which need to run more smoothly.
Grade G-1 is used for small electric motors with special requirements, which need to run even more smoothly. 5.2 Operating Speed
The second step is to evaluate the approximate maximum service speed of the workpiece. For each “G” level, the faster a part turns, the smaller the permissible vibration displacement must be. What this means, is that armatures that spin at higher speeds need to be balanced to finer balance tolerance levels. The “x-axis” in Figure 1 shows the maximum service speed, in RPM. 5.3 Maximum Displacement - eper
The third step in establishing a balance tolerance for a workpiece is to locate the point where the appropriate rotor classification line intersects the maximum service speed line (see Figure 1). The “y-axis” will then give the f displacement this is known as the “eper”. 5.4 Maximum Unbalance – uper
The maximum amount of unbalance in units such as “ounce-inches” or “gram centimeters” is known as the uper. To calculate the unbalance tolerance, multiply the maximum permissible displacement (eper) by the weight of the workpiece.
= (m) (eper)
uper = Permissible Unbalance
in ounce inches
m = weight of workpiece in ounces
eper = permissible eccentricity
(mass center displacement)
The following formulas can be used with the eper value in (thousandths of an inch) obtained from Figure 1 to calculate an unbalance tolerance based on the maximum permissible displacement:
To convert eper into ounce-inches of unbalance:
(eper) (weight, oz.)
= unbalance in gram-centimeters
To convert eper into gram-inches of unbalance:
(eper) (weight, oz.) (28.35)
= unbalance in gram-centimeters
To convert eper into gram-centimeters of unbalance:
(eper) weight, oz.) (28.35 (2.54)
= unbalance in gram millimeters
5.5 Establishing the Balance Tolerance:
ISO 1940 recommends two methods of allocating uper to correction planes: simplified approximate methods and general methods:
5.5.1 Simplified Approximate Methods
If the workpiece meets the following criteria, section 22.214.171.124 recommends allocating ½ of uper to each plane: the center of gravity of the workpiece is in the mid-third of the bearing span; the distance between the correction planes is greater than one third of and less than the bearing span; the correction planes are essentially equidistant from the center of gravity of the rotor.
If the correction planes are not essentially equidistant from the center of gravity, section 126.96.36.199 describes a method of allocating a proportion of uper to each plane, allowing the plane closer to the center of gravity a larger proportion. The ratio between the tolerances at the correction planes must not exceed 0.7:0.3 (no more than 0.8 uper in the plane closer to the center of gravity, no less than 0.3 uper in the plane farther from the center of gravity)
If the distance between the correction planes is smaller than 1/3 the bearing span, the effect of couple unbalance is reduced. Consequently, section 188.8.131.52 describes a method of allocating separate couple and static unbalance tolerances. In this case, as the distance between correction planes decreases relative to the distance between bearing planes, the couple unbalance tolerances increase. In fact, if the planes are close enough, the couple unbalance tolerance for each plane may easily exceed uper itself. On the other and, the tolerance for the arbitrarily selected static unbalance plane is assigned a proportion of uper depending upon the distance between this plane and the farthest bearing. As the distance between the static plane and the farthest bearing increases with respect to the total bearing span, the smaller the proportion of uper assigned to that plane.
5.5.2 General Methods
Section 7.3.3 of ISO 1940 offers two methods of allocating uper to the correction planes. The first method (184.108.40.206) applies to all rotors. The second method (220.127.116.11) applies to the specific case of rotors where the distance between the correction planes is smaller than the bearing span. Both these methods require some decision-making, which assumes some knowledge of how balance affects the workpiece in its service application.
Section 18.104.22.168 involves calculating unbalance tolerances by determining (somewhat arbitrarily) two ratios: “k”, a ratio of permissible unbalance at a reference plane to uper, and “R”, a ratio of permissible unbalance in one plane to that in the other plane. After factoring in the plane locations, spacing and bearing span, the lowest unbalance obtained from four separate equations is allocated to the two planes using one of the ratios.
Section 22.214.171.124 addresses the particular problem of workpieces where correction planes are significantly closer together than the bearing span. To accommodate this problem, section 126.96.36.199 makes two suggestions: allocate uper to the correction planes in the same ratio as the permissible dynamic bearing load is allocated to the bearings; measure the unbalance at the service bearings. Remember that as the distance between correction planes decreases, the effect of couple unbalance (unbalance 180 degrees out of phase in two planes) on the service bearings also decreases. However, the distance between planes does not change the effect of static unbalance on the bearings. Consequently, using the methods in 188.8.131.52, one can measure static unbalance just as easily, couple unbalance more easily, and evaluate the effect of unbalance on the service bearings in proportion to the permissible dynamic bearing loads.
6.0 Effective BalancingIt is not cost effective to balance an armature to an extremely fine tolerance, and then mount add-on components that were not balanced to a similar degree of accuracy, or to mount add-on components without selecting appropriate fits and clearances to control the unbalance that will be caused by the add-on part not being held concentric with the armature
Balancing the armature to a finer tolerance than necessary will not make up for unbalance created by mounting less precise components to the armature.
>>> Go to top of page
Click here for information about Hines Armature Balancing Machines
|
<urn:uuid:fe4e39fd-35b1-44db-bc2e-173bb607d9ce>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.hinesindustries.com/balancing-articles/armature-balancing-tolerances.shtml
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00051-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.924698 | 4,073 | 3.1875 | 3 |
There are questions that evolution cannot answer. These questions mostly deal with God's ultimate creation : man.
How did physical life come from inorganic chemicals? Life is more than matter and energy (Genesis 2:7; Job 12:7-10). We know that if a creature is denied air it dies. Even though its body may be perfectly intact, and air and energy are reintroduced to spark life, the body remains dead. Scripture agrees with the observable evidence when it states that only God can give the breath of life. Life cannot be explained by raw materials, time, and chance alone, as evolutionists would like us to believe.
"All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that its complexity is so great, it is hard for us to imagine that it did" (Harold C. Urey, quoted in Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 1962, p. 4).
Where did man's conscience come from? We know that animals do not have a conscience (Psalm 32:9). A parrot can be taught to swear and blaspheme, yet never feel conviction. If man evolved from animals, where did our conscience come from? The Bible explains that man alone was created as a moral being in God's image (Genesis 1:26-27). Human conscience understood (Romans 2:14-15). The Bible reveals that God has impressed His moral law unto every human heart. "Con" means "with" and "science" means "knowledge". We know it is wrong to murder, lie, steal, etc.. Only the Bible explains that each human has a God-given knowledge of right and wrong.
Where did love and other emotions come from? Evolution cannot explain love. Yet, God's Word reveals that the very purpose of our existence is to know and love God and our fellow man. God is love, and we were created in His image to reflect His love (Matthew 22:37-40),(I John 4:7-12). Evolution cannot explain emotions. Matter and energy do not feel. Scripture explains that God places gladness in our hearts (Psalm 4:7), and ultimate joy is found only in our Creator's presence : "in thy presence is the fullness of joy" (Psalm 16:11).
The Bible is inspired by the Creator. Therefore, it is no surprise that life's ultimate questions are answered within its pages. The Bible reveals the purpose of our existence. The Bible offers the only remedy for sin, suffering and death. God's Word presents the only perfect sinless Saviour, the One who died from our sins and rose from the dead (I Corinthians 15:1-4). Jesus is the Creator (John 1:1-4),(Colossians 1:16-17). Your eternal destiny will be determined by your choice. There is only one provision for sin. Jesus died in your place. Only by faith in Christ's finished work at Calvary, will you be saved. This is God's free gift offered to all. Please heed Jesus' words. "Repent ye and believe the gospel (Mark 1:15). If you do, you will live in Heaven with our awesome Creator forever! Amen!
|
<urn:uuid:817fd2aa-b2ac-477c-b591-27c90994e9b9>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.examiner.com/article/questions-that-evolution-cannot-answer?cid=rss
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394987.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00060-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.950431 | 703 | 2.859375 | 3 |
The milk market in the EU is regulated by a quota system. Every member state has a national production quota which it distributes to farmers. Whenever a member state exceeds its quota, it has to pay a penalty (called ‘super levy’) to the EU. This national penalty is in turn financed by penalties imposed on farmers who have exceeded their individual quotas.
The EU has decided in the 2009 ‘Health Check’ reform that national quotas shall be increased by 1% every year, so that their value is slowly eroded. This shall prepare a soft landing in 2015 when the quotas expire and production is liberalized.
Quota raise prices
The expansion and eventual abolition of milk quotas has been heavily criticized by farmers. However, milk quotas have many disadvantages. Apparently, less production is equivalent to higher prices. This means first that quotas do not create money for farmers from nothing but that consumers have to foot the bill. Second, higher prices on the EU market reduce EU exports of dairy products below the level its global comparative advantage would suggest. Artificially reduced milk production leads, for instance, to a loss to European cheese exporters. Third, higher prices on the EU market trigger additional imports. Some of the extra money paid by consumers thus goes to foreign suppliers.
Quotas distort markets
National quotas distort production across the EU. Some member states could competitively produce more milk than their quotas allow – notably Italy and Austria. Others are encouraged by their quota rights to produce a greater share of the EU’s total milk production than they would under free market conditions. By the same token, individual quotas for farmers distort competition within the member states. Less competitive farmers who own quota rights produce too much, while more efficient producers are restrained.
Quota are costly to administer
Governments need to register and compare quota rights and actual production for each farmer. Contributions are collected from farmers in advance to cover a potential national penalty and are subsequently reimbursed, minus individual penalties for farmers who have exceeded their quota in a year when the national quota has also been exceeded. Farmers engage in contracts to lease and transfer quota rights (in member states where this is allowed), and they have to weigh the risks of penalties in their production decisions.
Quota are unfair
Besides being economically damaging, a quota for milk production is also unfair. The ineffectiveness of quotas for running a prosperous economy has long been understood in the EU. Quotas are used to protect natural resources, such as fish, but not to create a rent for producers. Why should milk producers be privileged over other sectors of the farm and non-farm economy?
|
<urn:uuid:14415817-d383-4273-a274-79fa6d83c149>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.reformthecap.eu/issues/policy-instruments/milk-quota
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00094-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.968166 | 533 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Great Zimbabwe Ruins
The Great Zimbabwe ruins are the largest collection of ruins
in Africa south of the Sahara.
Located in the heart of southern Africa, between the Zambezi
and Limpopo Rivers, they are testament to a culture of great wealth and great
Built between the 11th and 15th centuries, Great Zimbabwe
was home to a cattle-herding people who also became adept at metal-working. The
ruins are the largest of their kind on the Zimbabwe Plateau, but they are by no
Other, smaller sites were ransacked by European
treasure-hunters in the 19th century. These smaller ruins are called zimbabwes
and can be found as far as Mozambique.
Out of all these, the ruins of Great Zimbabwe are the largest.
The granite walls - embellished with turrets, towers, platforms and elegantly sculpted stairways
- seem to have had no defensive function. But, in the words of archeologist Peter Garlake, they display "an
architecture that is unparalleled elsewhere in Africa or beyond."
Although inexpertly restored in many places, the ruins at Great Zimbabwe are still by a good
margin the most impressive ancient structures in sub-Saharan Africa. They are also the source of considerable pride
for present-day Zimbabweans. After all, the huge chiseled walls of the Great Enclosure, with its soaring stone
tower and complex chevron patterns, are a work of high engineering skill.
Much about Great Zimbabwe is still a mystery, owing in large measure to frenzied plundering of
the site around 1902, but it can be stated with certainty that the Queen of Sheba never drew breath here. Instead,
at any given time during Great Zimbabwe's heyday, anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 black Africans did.
By the thirteenth century, they dwelt at the epicenter of an industrious southern
African empire, with trading links stretching as far away as India, Persia and China.
In a small museum that stands near the site nowadays, you can inspect shards of Persian pottery,
a Chinese writing set and brass ornaments from Assam in India, all unearthed amid or near the ruins and all
Outside the splendid stone buildings, however, the mass of people lived in conditions resembling
a modern slum. By the 16th century, when the Portuguese arrived in southern Africa, Great Zimbabwe had fallen into
obscurity. No one is certain why.
Atop a granite outcropping, walls merge with enormous
boulders to form the fortified Acropolis.
In the valley below sits the Great Enclosure with almost a
million granite blocks in its outer walls.
The stonework, entirely without mortar, gradually improves
until the newest walls stand double the height and width of the oldest
A second wall, a meter inside the enclosure, forms a long,
At some points the walls are 11 meters high and extend for
over 800 meters.
The soapstone birds are one of Zimbabwe’s symbols.
They are eight birds carved in soapstone that were found in the ruins of Great Zimbabwe.
These eight sculptures combine both human and bird elements. For instance, the bird’s beak is
substituted by lips while its claws are changed to feet.
It is unsure what the birds symbolized. The most prevalent theory is that they were the emblems
of the royalty. Today, the soapstone birds can be found on Zimbabwe’s flag.
|
<urn:uuid:5c7eb6b5-36b7-46cb-9f9e-e3db1676ec78>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.greatzimbabweruins.com/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00067-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.951281 | 738 | 2.890625 | 3 |
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured an exoplanet’s true color. HD 189733b has an azure color that’s similar to Earth’s, but there is no chance the planet holds life as it orbits extremely close to its host star.
HD 189733b is a gas giant with an atmospheric temperature exceeding 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 degrees Fahrenheit), and some rather cruel weather. As NASA notes, HD 189733b is dominated by high winds that can reach speeds of 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) per hour, and it rains glass (!), based on previous data collected by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. The azure planet is one of the closes exoplanets to Earth, just 63 light-years away, which makes it a prime candidate for research using Hubble or other telescopes.
Using Hubble, NASA scientists were able to measure how much radiation is reflected by the planet’s surface, called albedo. Based on the albedo ratio, the more radiation given off the more light is reflected. Scientists used Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph to determine the planet’s true color, notes NASA. Scientists recorded data as the planet passed in front of its star and as it orbited behind it, in order to eliminate starlight that could interfere with light reflecting off the planet’s surface.
While the planet was obscured from view as it traveled behind its star, scientists were able to detect a drop in the amount of light produced by the system that fell within the blue spectrum , notes NASA. Lead author Tom Evans, from the University of Oxford, said, “We saw the brightness of the whole system drop in the blue part of the spectrum when the planet passed behind its star,” while noting that other parts of the color spectrum that were measured remained constant, indicating no change.
Continue Reading Below
The planet’s azure color is due to atmospheric silicate particles that scatter blue light. Previous data collected by Hubble revealed HD 189733b’s red sunset was caused by haze in the atmosphere. Scientists often have difficulty determining the color of a planet’s atmosphere, which makes the HD 189733b research even more important. NASA points out that the colors of Jupiter and Venus’ atmospheres are caused by unknown particles.
Frederic Pont, from the University of Exeter and an author on the study, said in a statement, “These new observations add another piece to the puzzle over the nature and atmosphere of HD 189733b. We are slowly painting a more complete picture of this exotic planet.”
NASA classifies the planet a “hot Jupiter,” due to its relative size and close proximity to its star, and it is an ideal research candidate for scientists as they search for exoplanets. Hot Jupiters can be found throughout the universe and previous research has indicated gas giants, in general, like to stay close to their parent stars.
|
<urn:uuid:52b53fbf-57a6-4709-81e5-d44d0e5586e0>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.ibtimes.com/meet-new-blue-planet-nasa-hubble-telescope-reveals-exoplanet-hd-189733bs-true-color-photo-1342147
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396538.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00102-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.940518 | 621 | 3.78125 | 4 |
Join a modern day explorer as he leads a team and treks through the last remote rainforests, deserts and plains of Madagascar in search of ants! See brilliant photos of Dr. Brian Fisher, an adventurer and biologist featured on Animal Planet, the BBC and in Discover magazine, as he inventories insects as a useful tool to discover and preserve the biodiversity of all plants and animals on this unique island.
This large format photo essay follows the story of Dr. Fisher’s research as he inventories ants on a massive scale and constructs Madagascar’s first biodiversity research center. All proceeds from the sale of this book ($50) go directly to support the mission to discover and conserve the biodiversity of Madagascar. Your contribution to this California Academy of Sciences project is tax deductible in the United States.
Through education and research, Dr. Fisher’s team is creating an industrial strength index and database of the environment. This fascinating story features more than the early warnings of an environment under attack, but also explores how a local community becomes "bioliterate" - understanding and protecting the natural world that surrounds them.
Full color, full page images detail the planning, strength and endurance required to explore difficult terrain and perform field research on a massive scale in distant lands. Trucks mired in mud, ox carts forging rivers and the camaraderie of international research teams – its all in this book.
Dr. Fisher has published research on ants since 1986. He is a leading authority on the application of modern methods to biodiversity and conservation. His current research centers in Madagascar where he initiated the Biodiversity Center Project in collaboration with Park Tsimbazaza. He has conducted research in Madagascar since 1992, and for the last six years has been the lead scientist on the National Science Foundation-funded arthropod inventory of Madagascar project. He has trained a cadre of Malagasy University students in entomology and conservation biology. His specialty within entomology is the diversity and evolution of ants. He has published over 50 peer reviewed articles in scholarly journals and books. He is currently Associate Curator of Entomology at the California Academy of Sciences and adjunct research professor of biology at the University of California at Berkeley. He has appeared in a number of BBC, Discover Channel, and National Geographic films.
Ant Genera of the Malagasy Region Published January 16, 2015
Ant Genera of Southeast Asia Published May 23, 2014
Neotropical Ant Genera Published June 24, 2013
Ant Genera of the Afrotropical Region Published June 25, 2012
|
<urn:uuid:e9316d89-9ed4-4463-b235-aff62123075c>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.blurb.com/b/94432-save-an-ant-save-a-planet?alt=Save+an+Ant%2C+Save+a+Planet%2C+as+listed+under+Nonprofits+%26+Fundraising
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00192-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.929456 | 522 | 2.515625 | 3 |
plural noun[treated as singular or plural] Geology
Large-scale processes affecting the structure of the earth’s crust: there remains an area of active tectonics north of the mountain chain Nicol had come to different conclusions about the tectonics of the area
More example sentences
- These data clearly demonstrate that parts of the Scottish basement underwent major thick-skinned tectonics during the Grenvillian orogeny.
- As the two examples confirm, the largest failures and most rapid rock-slope development rates are associated with steep, mountain environments and with active tectonics.
- The significant time gap between orogenic deformation and thermal metamorphism implies that metamorphism in many other orogens may not necessarily be due to compressive tectonics.
For editors and proofreaders
Line breaks: tec|ton¦ics
Definition of tectonics in:
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed.
|
<urn:uuid:83ce59ed-a9dc-4d73-8435-477be4a16545>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/english/tectonics
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395548.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00162-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.897202 | 217 | 2.84375 | 3 |
- source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
- source: Family History Library Catalog
Compton Abdale is a small settlement in the Cotswold District of Gloucestershire, England. From 1894 until 1974 it was located in the Northleach Rural District.
A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Compton Abdale from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:
- "COMPTON-ABDALE, a parish in Northleach [registration] district, Gloucester; on the river Colne, 3 miles WNW of Northleach, and 9 SE by E of Cheltenham [railway] station. Post town, Northleach, under Cheltenham. Acres: 2,215. Real property: £2,047. Population: 258. Houses: 49. The property is divided among a few. Part of the surface is heath. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol. Value: £81. Patrons: the Dean and Chapter of Bristol. The church was repaired in 1859."
Online sources which may also be helpful:
- Compton Abdale from A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 9/Bradley hundred] in the Victoria County History series provided by the website British History Online
|
<urn:uuid:dc1f3ca7-2b58-4bd3-98d8-d89a790c13cb>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Place:Compton_Abdale%2C_Gloucestershire%2C_England
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00181-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.922896 | 282 | 2.875 | 3 |
By giving us your feedback, you can help improve your www.NOAA.gov experience. This short, anonymous survey only takes just a few minutes to complete 11 questions. Thank you for your input!Give my feedback
May 17, 2012
NOAA scientists will use data from a new Japanese polar-orbiting satellite launched earlier today from Tanegashima Space Center, Japan, to help forecast severe storms, monitor the decline of Arctic sea ice, and predict the onset of El Niño, La Niña and other global climate phenomena. Once deemed operational, data from this new spacecraft and the U.S.' new Suomi NPP satellite, which was launched last year and is operated by NOAA, will strengthen the environmental monitoring capabilities of both nations.
Under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed last year between NOAA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), NOAA will use data from an instrument onboard JAXA's Global Change Observation Mission 1 - Water (GCOM-W1) satellite.
The instrument, the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR-2), will provide data crucial for tracking sea-surface temperatures and support near real-time weather and ocean forecasts.
Additionally, under the MOU, NOAA will provide ground support, including ground reception of AMSR-2 data, and transmit it from Norway's Svalbard Satellite Ground Station to JAXA and to NOAA. NOAA will also process, archive and distribute AMSR-2 data products to users and make data from the Suomi NPP satellite and the upcoming Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) satellites available to JAXA.
"The cooperation between NOAA and JAXA is strong," said Mary Kicza, assistant administrator for NOAA's Satellite and Information Service. "JPSS will extend the agreement, providing significant and lasting benefits to scientists around the world"
JPSS is now operating Suomi NPP. The mission is a partnership between NASA and NOAA and is the first in a series of next-generation polar-orbiting satellites.The second in the series, JPSS1, is on track to launch in 2017.
Kicza added, "The data from GCOM-W1 will complement the data we expect from JPSS, allowing us to meet observational requirements that otherwise would be difficult to meet."
"GCOM-W1, given the Japanese nickname "SHIZUKU" ("water drop"), is the first satellite of the GCOM series which enables us to observe global-scale, long-term climate change," said Dr. Masanori Homma, executive director for Space Applications Mission Directorate, JAXA. "We expect GCOM-W1, observing data of the global water cycle, will contribute greatly to NOAA's activities."
NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Join us on Facebook , Twitter and our other social media channels.
|
<urn:uuid:5924429a-34cd-426a-985b-2162ff07d362>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2012/20120517_usandjapan.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00078-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.894621 | 635 | 2.90625 | 3 |
In 1965, California lawmakers named serpentine the state rock because it symbolized the Gold Rush years and contained a mineral being put to myriad industrial uses.
Nearly half a century later, attitudes toward that mineral - asbestos - have changed, and one state lawmaker wants serpentine stripped of its status.
Health authorities say asbestos, which is no longer mined in the U.S., can cause an incurable cancer called mesothelioma as well as other diseases when its fibers are inhaled.
"This is a question of health and public awareness," said Democratic state Sen. Gloria Romero of Los Angeles, who proposed the bill. "We know that California has the highest rates of mesothelioma deaths in the nation and we don't think it's appropriate to be celebrating as the state rock something which contains asbestos."
Romero's proposal to remove serpentinite, as the jade-green rock is formally known, as the state rock has hit a wall of opposition from geologists and industry advocates. Contending the rock is being unfairly maligned, they have started a social-media crusade on Twitter and blogs to stop the proposal.
"The rock is an ideal symbol for our state," said Garry Hayes, a Modesto Community College geology teacher who was among the first to protest the bill online. "The asbestos issue is there, but it's a small part of what serpentine is."
Some opponents have accused trial lawyers of pushing Romero's plan so they can pursue a whole new type of lawsuit by plaintiffs alleging their health was damaged when they were exposed to naturally occurring asbestos in serpentine found on property throughout the Sierra Nevada foothills and 42 of California's 58 counties.
Serpentine is found throughout the country but is particularly plentiful in the same places where gold was found in California. In the 1960s, it was increasingly mined for its asbestos that was often was used in construction.
The rock was crushed or broken to release the asbestos minerals' durable and fire-resistant fibers, which were used in household appliances, construction materials and other goods.
Lawmakers hoped the designation would help expand the then-$6 million California asbestos industry.
Just how big of a problem the rock poses today is being debated. Geologists say not all serpentine rocks contain asbestos, and chrysotile, the type found most frequently, is not as dangerous as other types.
The World Health Organization has said that all types of asbestos, including those in the air from natural sources, cause cancer. But the Environmental Protection Agency says naturally occurring asbestos that remains undisturbed in the ground presents no risk.
Dr. Marc B. Schenker, a University of California, Davis, public health sciences professor who has studied the issue, said he supports the proposed law to strip serpentine of its status as state rock.
"On the other hand," he said, "I wish the efforts were being put into improving public health and preventing disease due to environmental exposure rather than these symbolic gestures."
Residents of the Sierra foothills are not entirely convinced of the risk.
"To declare naturally occurring asbestos as a danger and a health hazard has not been proven," said John Knight, a county supervisor who represents unincorporated El Dorado Hills. "We should not create a hysteria about something that's not scientifically proven."
The town was the subject of a 2005 study by the EPA that showed elevated levels of asbestos in the air.
About 2,500 Americans die from mesothelioma every year, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Heather Wakelee, a physician at the Stanford Cancer Center, said most of those cases are connected to occupational exposure, and relatively few are people who were exposed to naturally occurring asbestos.
The state Senate has approved the proposed law, and it is working its way through the Assembly. Since it has been amended, it would need approval from the Senate again.
If the bill becomes law, some think its impact will be more than symbolic.
"The state is already being hit with lawyers moving here to sue over asbestos that's been used in manufactured products," said John H. Sullivan, president of the Civil Justice Association of California, which advocates tort reform. "I believe that these and other lawyers would feel they've struck gold if they can also bring lawsuits over naturally occurring asbestos."
But many lawyers dismissed that claim.
"It's just not true, no matter how many times other people say it is," said J.G. Preston, a spokesman for Consumer Attorneys of California. "The Civil Justice Association of California ... planted this seed because it's in their interest to make trial lawyers look greedy and foolish."
The group's political action committee has donated $14,700 to Sen. Romero's political campaigns since 2000, state records show.
Ben DuBose, whose Dallas-based law firm pursues asbestos-related cases, said he didn't think the law would open up new avenues for litigation. He added, however, that it might help show there's a worldwide consensus about the health danger of naturally occurring asbestos.
Asbestos litigation has been a major business for lawyers since the 1960s. Lawyers seeking clients with mesothelioma have become a fixture on late-night television advertisements in California.
Defendants and insurers have paid out more than $70 billion in asbestos litigation since lawsuits began, according to a 2005 study by the nonpartisan RAND Institute for Civil Justice. The average jury award for a mesothelioma victim is around $4 million.
Aides from Sen. Romero's office said language in the bill was developed in consultation with the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, a California group with significant funding from law firms that specialize in asbestos litigation.
But Romero said she took the lead in crafting the bill and moving it forward.
"It's not a giveaway to the trial lawyers," she said.
© 2010 The Associated Press.
|
<urn:uuid:83a933b7-385c-4713-8b84-bc1009daa832>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.scpr.org/news/2010/07/15/17319/california-may-dump-state-rock-serpentine-which-co/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397567.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00141-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.975969 | 1,209 | 2.859375 | 3 |
This publication encourages the use of detailed soil maps in solving waste-disposal problems in Kansas, in conjunction with other studies. Soil landscapes, soil maps, and soil-profile descriptions of parts of Kansas are briefly explained. Relevant research and soil classification is summarized in narrative and tabular form. Criteria for rating Kansas soils as having slight, moderate, or severe limitations for septic-tank seepage fields, sewage lagoons, and trench-type and area-type sanitary landfills are given, and ratings are made for each of the 300 or so soil series of Kansas. Use of detailed soil information is explained, and references and terms are given for further consultations. Soil maps should be considered to be a first approximation to solution of land use problems; they are most useful when combined with deeper geologic investigations and other complimentary studies.
These definitions are for laymen--including geologists, planners, public health officials, and engineers--who may be unfamiliar with some of the terms of soil science. A 27-page glossary of soil science terms, published in 1970, is available from the Soil Science Society of America, 677 South Segoe Road, Madison, Wisconsin 53711, for those who want a more complete listing. A publication (Olson, in press) in the reference list is specially designed to explain exact criteria for interpreting the terms of a soil-profile description. Interpretation of soil-profile descriptions will become increasingly important as more people use soil maps and soil descriptions for waste disposal and many other purposes.Aerobic--Aerobic conditions of an environment are those with plenty of oxygen or air for respiration and oxidation. Open sewage lagoons are aerobic systems, especially if the water is aerated (mixed). Anaerobic conditions, as in closed septic tanks, are those where oxygen content is deficient. Different sets of organisms decompose materials in the contrasting environments.
Alluvium--Alluvium is soil material deposited by floodwaters. It is stratified in places, and occupies floodplains of Kansas like those illustrated in Figures 4 and 6.
Calcareous-Calcareous soil contains sufficient calcium carbonate (often with magnesium carbonate) to effervesce visibly when treated with cold 0.1N hydrochloric acid. Kansas soils listed as carbonatic in Table 1 have more than 40 percent by weight carbonates (expressed as CaCO3) plus gypsum, and the carbonates are greater than 65 percent of the sum of carbonates and gypsum.
Colluvium--Colluvium is a deposit of soil material accumulated at the base of steep slopes as a result of gravitational action. Figure 3 shows the relative landscape position of colluvium in Brown County.
Consistence--Soil consistence is the resistance to deformation or rupture and the degree of cohesion or adhesion of the soil mass. Terms used for describing consistence at various soil moisture contents are: nonsticky, slightly sticky, sticky, very sticky, nonplastic, slightly plastic, plastic, very plastic (wet soil); loose, very friable, friable, firm, very firm, extremely firm (moist soil); loose, soft, slightly hard, hard, very hard, extremely hard (dry soil). Exact definitions of these terms are given in the publication by Olson (in press).
Effluent--Effluent is the liquid portion of sewage, especially that handled in septic-tank seepage fields. Limitations of soils of Kansas for disposing of effluent in septic-tank seepage fields are given in Table 2 and Table 6.
Eutrophic-Eutrophic conditions are environmental conditions where concentrations of nutrients are optimal or nearly so for plant or animal growth. Eutrophic conditions in lakes and reservoirs cause growth of weeds and algae, especially when sewage or waste leachates and effluents empty into bodies of water. Good waste management in soils of Kansas can help to avoid or reduce eutrophication of lakes and reservoirs, by preventing excessive nutrient enrichment of the waters.
Friable--See definition of consistence.
Glacial Till--Glacial till is unstratified glacial deposits left by the icemass and consisting of clay, sand, gravel, and boulders intermingled in variable proportions. Only the northeast corner of Kansas has soils formed in glacial till.
Ground Water--Ground water is that portion of the total precipitation which at any particular time is either passing through or standing in the soil and the underlying strata and is free to move under the influence of gravity. Depths to fluctuating ground water or apparent water table in soils of Kansas are given in Table 1.
Interstices--Interstices are the spaces between soil particles, also called pore spaces. Generally they are filled with water or air, and are the scene of most of the biological and chemical activities which are important to ultimate waste disposal and treatment in septic-tank seepage fields and sanitary landfills. The size and shape of interstices in soils are largely determined by particle size (Table 1) and other characteristics of the soil profile (Olson, in press).
Leachate--Leachate is the liquid material sometimes lost from a sanitary landfill, particularly when the landfill is improperly maintained in soils with severe limitations. Liquid material in a septic-tank seepage field is generally called effluent. Both leachates and effluents in soils with slight limitations for waste disposal (Table 6) are generally adequately filtered before reaching the water table, if the waste disposal system is properly maintained.
Loess--Loess is soil material transported and deposited by wind; it consists predominantly of silt-sized particles. Many soils in Kansas have formed in loess deposits (see Figures 3-6).
Mineralogy--Soil mineralogy is the study and characterization of natural inorganic compounds with definite physical, chemical, and crystalline properties (within the limits of isomorphism), that occur in the soil. The mineralogy of soils of Kansas is listed for each specific soil in Table 1.
Moderate Limitations--Moderate limitations are the ratings given to soils that have properties moderately favorable for waste disposal. Moderate limitations can be overcome or modified by special planning, design, or maintenance. During some part of the year moderate soils are less desirable for waste disposal than soils rated slight. Some soils rated moderate for waste disposal require special drainage, extended tile lines, extra excavation, or some other modification. Criteria for moderate limitations for soils for waste disposal are given in Tables 2, 3, 4, and 5; specific soils of Kansas with moderate limitations for waste disposal are listed in Table 6.
Montmorillonite--Montmorillonite is an aluminosilicate clay mineral with a 2:1 expanding crystal structure (with two silicon tetrahedral layers enclosing an aluminum octahedral layer). Considerable expansion may be caused along the C axis by water moving between silica layers of contiguous units. Kansas soils with high content of montmorillonite clays are listed in Table 1; these soils shrink appreciably when dry and swell when wet. This shrinking and swelling has great implications for waste disposal, affecting permeability, tile lines, trafficability, and many other aspects of soil behavior.
Mottles--Soil mottles are spots or blotches of different color or shades of color, indicating wet conditions in Kansas soils. The pattern of mottling and the size, abundance, and color contrast of the mottles varies considerably in different soils and is specified in soil-profile descriptions. Significance of soil mottling to waste disposal in Kansas is discussed in the section on soil-profile descriptions for the Butler soils.
MPN--Most probable number (MPN) is a measurement of numbers of microorganisms in water or some other media. Often the microorganisms are too numerous and too small to be counted, so that a "most probable number" is estimated instead. For coliform bacteria (see discussion of research on soils for waste disposal) a culture medium is generally inoculated with a small amount of soil or water. After incubation, a count of the number of colonies formed on the culture medium enables a "most probable number" to be estimated to give an approximation of the number of organisms present in the original sample.
Nontronite--Nontronite is a clay mineral of montmorillonitic type with a relatively high content of iron (see definition of montmorillonite).
Particle Size--Particle size refers to the grain-size distribution of the whole soil down to a depth of about one meter or to a hard layer or bedrock. The term is a marriage between engineering and pedologic (soil science) classifications. Particle size groups of Kansas soils are given in Table 1 and Figure 12, and are discussed in the section on soil classification. Particle size groups include soils that are sandy-skeletal, loamy-skeletal, clayey- skeletal, sandy, loamy (coarse-loamy, fine-loamy, coarse-silty, fine-silty), and clayey (fine, very-fine).
Ped--A ped is a unit of soil structure such as an aggregate, crumb, prism, block, or granule, formed by natural processes. A pedologist is a person who studies peds and whole soils in their natural state.
Pedologist--See definition of ped.
Percolation Rate-Percolation rate is the rate of downward movement of water through soil. For septic-tank seepage field design it is measured commonly in auger holes in soils with minutes for the water level to drop one inch the unit of measure, indicating the downward flow of water in nearly saturated soil at hydraulic gradients of the order of 1.0 or less. Some of the variabilities of auger bole percolation tests in soils are discussed in the section on soil classification.
Permeability--Permeability is that quality of soil that permits it to transmit gases, liquids, and sewage effluent. Permeability classes (slow, moderate, rapid) are defined in the section on soil classification, and are specified for soils of Kansas in Table 1. Permeability rates (in/hr) are also compared with percolation rates (min/in) in the discussion on soil classification.
ppm--Parts per million (ppm) is a unit of measurement, generally expressed in weight of an element, nutrient, or contaminant as compared with the weight of the media or mass in which it occurs.
Rockiness--Rockiness refers to the relative proportion of bedrock exposures, either rock outcrops or patches of soil very thin over bedrock, in a soil area. The word rocky is used arbitrarily for soils having fixed rock (bedrock). In contrast, the word stony is used for soils having loose detached fragments of rock. Specific classes of rockiness are defined in the publication by Olson (in press). Rockiness classes 0 to 5 in Table 2 and Table 4 indicate increasing proportion of rock in the map units as the numbers increase.
Septic-Tank Seepage Field--A septic-tank seepage field is a system enabling filtration and oxidation of sewage liquids in soils. After sewage digestion in a septic tank, effluent seeps through the soil and is purified over time in the seepage field. Eventually, the water becomes free of health hazards and returns to the ,round water for reuse. Figures 21 and 22 are examples of the many kinds of septic-tank seepage fields.
Severe Limitations--Severe limitations are the ratings given to soils that have one or more properties unfavorable for waste disposal, such as steep slopes, bedrock near the surface, flooding hazard, high shrink-swell potential, or unfavorable permeability. This degree of limitation generally requires major soil reclamation, special design, or intensive maintenance. Some soils can be improved by reducing or removing the soil feature that limits use, but most are difficult and costly to alter for waste disposal. Criteria for severe limitations for soils for waste disposal are given in Tables 2, 3, 4, and 5; specific soils of Kansas with severe limitations for waste disposal are listed in Table 6.
Siliceous--Siliceous soils have more than 90 percent by weight of silica minerals (quartz, chalcedony, or opal) and other extremely durable minerals that are resistant to weathering. Kansas soils which are siliceous are listed in Table 1.
Slight Limitations--Slight limitations are the ratings given to soils that have properties favorable for waste disposal. The degree of limitation is minor and can be overcome easily. Good performance and low maintenance can be expected, Criteria for slight limitations for waste disposal are given in Tables 2, 3, 4, and 5; specific soils of Kansas with slight limitations for waste disposal are listed in Table 6.
Slope--Slope is soil surface deviation from the level horizontal plane, measured in percentage (units vertical drop per 100 horizontal units). Thus a slope of 15 percent has 15 feet of vertical drop for each 100 feet of horizontal distance. Slope complexities are also described in the soil survey, where soil map units have undulations or other variations from a simple slope.
Soil--Soil is unconsolidated material several feet thick formed by environmental factors acting on geologic materials over time, conditioned by relief, to produce a sequence of layers or horizons which occupy predictable and mappable parts of landscapes. Soil, as used in this Bulletin, refers to delineations on soil maps and descriptions of those soil map units with depth in the landscapes of Kansas. Soils in landscapes are illustrated in Figures 3-6.
Soil-Drainage Class--Soil-drainage class is determined by mottles and patterns of color in soils, indicating duration and extent of wet conditions. Drainage classes include excessively drained, somewhat excessively drained, well drained, moderately well drained, somewhat poorly drained, poorly drained, and very poorly drained. The classes are briefly discussed in the section on soil classification, are specified for Kansas soils in Table 1, and are more completely defined in the Soil Survey Manual (Soil Survey Staff, 1951).
Soil Map--A soil map is a map showing the distribution of different soil map units in relation to the prominent physical and cultural features in the geography of Kansas. Examples of soil maps are given in Figures 27-29.
Soil Profile--A soil profile is an exposed section of soil commonly described for each soil map unit in a soil survey. Figure 8 is an illustration of a soil profile.
Soil Series--Soil series is the basic unit of soil classification consisting of soils which are essentially alike in all major characteristics except the texture of the surface horizon. Soil series are generally named for the places where they were first identified; Table 1 and Table 6 list the soil series mapped in Kansas.
Stoniness--Stoniness refers to the number and kinds of loose coarse fragments in or on soils. Specific classes of stoniness are defined in the publication by Olson (in press). Stoniness classes 0 to 5 in Table 2 and Table 4 indicate increasing stoniness as the numbers increase.
Structure--Soil structure is the combination or arrangement of primary soil particles into secondary particles, units, or peds. These secondary units may be arranged in the profile in a distinctive characteristic pattern. The secondary units are characterized and classified on the basis of size, shape, and degree of distinctness into classes, types, and grades. Classes (size) include fine, medium, and thick; types (shape) include plates, prisms, blocks, and granules; grades (degree of distinctness) include weak, moderate, strong, and structureless. Structure examples are given in the section on soil profile descriptions for some soils of Kansas; exact definitions of the terms are in the publication by Olson (in press).
Texture--Soil texture is the relative proportion of sand (0.05-2.0 mm diameter), silt (0.002-0.05 mm diameter), and clay (less than 0.002 mm diameter) in a soil sample. Soil textures include sand, loamy sand, sandy loam, loam, silt loam, silt, sandy clay loam, clay loam, silty clay loam, sandy clay, silty clay, and clay. Soil textures are precisely defined in the publication by Olson (in press).
Trafficability--Trafficability of soils is the relative ease or difficulty with which wheeled or crawler-type vehicles can move over the soils. Trafficability is a general term, dependent upon type of soil materials (see definition of unified soil classification), depth to water table, soil moisture content, slope, and many other factors. Trafficability of soils is especially critical for heavy equipment during installation of septic-tank seepage fields, construction of sewage lagoons, and covering of sanitary landfill in Kansas soils. Wet clayey soils (Figure 9) with high content of montmorillonite (listed in Table 1) generally have poor trafficability; well-drained soils with loamy textures (Table 1) on level or gentle slopes generally have good trafficability. Soil consistence (see definition of consistence) is another good indicator of soil trafficability.
Unified Soil Classification--The unified soil classification is a system of categorization of soil materials, particularly relevant for excavations and embankments of sewage lagoons as listed in Table 3. The classification is outlined for laymen in a publication by Olson (1972a), available from the Department of Agronomy (Soils), Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14850. Briefly, the unified soil groups listed in Table 3 are:
- GW--Well-graded gravel, gravel and sand mixtures, little or no fines
- GP--Poorly graded gravel, gravel and sand mixtures, little or no fines
- GM--Silty gravel, gravel and sand and silt mixtures
- GC--Clayey gravel, gravel and sand and clay mixtures
- SW--Well-graded sands, gravelly sands, little or no fines
- SP--Poorly graded sands, gravelly sands, little or no fines
- SM--Silty sands, sand and silt mixtures
- SC--Clayey sands, sand and clay mixtures
- ML--Inorganic silts and very fine sands, rock flour, silty or clayey fine sands, or clayey silts with slight plasticity
- CL--Inorganic clays of low to medium plasticity, gravelly clays, sandy clays, lean clays
- OL--Organic silts and organic silty clays of low plasticity
- MH--Inorganic silts, micaceous or diatomaceous fine sandy or silty soils, elastic silts
- CH--Inorganic clays of high plasticity, fat clays
- OH--Organic clays of medium to high plasticity, organic silts
- Pt--Peat and other highly organic soils
Water Table--Water table is the upper surface of ground water or that level below which the soil is saturated with water. Apparent water table is the level to which the water level rises when holes are dug in soils. Obviously, waste disposal is difficult when apparent water tables are high in soils. Table 1 lists the seasonal depths to apparent water table in Kansas soils.
1 inch = 2.54 centimeters (cm)
1 foot = 30.48 cm = 0.3048 (m)
1 mile = 1.609 kilometers (km)
1 centimeter = 0.39 inches
1 meter = 3.281 ft = 39.37 in
1 kilometer = 0.621 miles
1 square foot = 0.093 m2
1 square mile = 259 hectares (ha)
1 acre = 0.405 ha
1 hectare = 0.01 km2 = 2.471 acres
1 square kilometer = 0.386 mile2
1 cubic foot = 0.028 m3
1 cubic meter = 35.3 ft3
Kansas Geological Survey, Geology
Placed on web Aug. 7, 2009; originally published March 1974.
Comments to [email protected]
The URL for this page is http://www.kgs.ku.edu/Publications/Bulletins/208/08_summ.html
|
<urn:uuid:b3ef4c32-60b2-4409-b44e-0c70c8100982>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.kgs.ku.edu/Publications/Bulletins/208/08_summ.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399425.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00130-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.908068 | 4,268 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Reaction Engines Ltd announced 28 November the biggest breakthrough in aerospace propulsion technology since the invention of the jet engine. Critical tests have been successfully completed on the key technology for SABRE, an engine which will enable aircraft to reach the opposite side of the world in under 4 hours, or to fly directly into orbit and return in a single stage, taking off and landing on a runway.
SABRE, an air-breathing rocket engine, utilises both jet turbine and rocket technology. Its innovative pre-cooler technology is designed to cool the incoming airstream from over 1,000 deg C to -150 deg C in less than 1/100th of a second (six times faster than the blink of an eye) without blocking with frost. The recent tests have proven the cooling technology to be frost-free at the crucial low temperature of -150 deg C.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has evaluated the SABRE engine’s pre-cooler heat exchanger on behalf of the UK Space Agency, and has given official validation to the test results: ‘The pre-cooler test objectives have all been successfully met and ESA are satisfied that the tests demonstrate the technology required for the SABRE engine development’.
Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts said: ‘This is a remarkable achievement for a remarkable company. Building on years of unique engineering know-how, Reaction Engines has shown the world that Britain remains at the forefront of technological innovation and can get ahead in the global race. This technology could revolutionise the future of air and space travel’.
Well over 100 test runs, undertaken at Reaction Engines Ltd’s facility in Oxfordshire, integrated the ground-breaking flight-weight cooling technology and frost control system with a jet engine and a novel helium cooling loop, demonstrating the new technologies in the SABRE engine that drive its highly innovative and efficient thermodynamic cycle. This success adds to a series of other SABRE technology demonstrations undertaken by the company including contra-rotating turbines, combustion chambers, rocket nozzles, and air intakes and marks a major advance towards the creation of vehicles like SKYLON designed primarily to transport satellites and cargo into space.
Wednesday 28 November 2012 Alan Bond, who founded Reaction Engines to re-build the UK’s rocket propulsion industry and has led the research from the start, said:
‘These successful tests represent a fundamental breakthrough in propulsion technology. Reaction Engines’ lightweight heat exchangers are going to force a radical re-think of the design of the underlying thermodynamic cycles of aerospace engines. These new cycles will open up completely different operational characteristics such as high Mach cruise and low cost, re-usable space access, as the European Space Agency’s validation of Reaction Engines’ SABRE engine has confirmed.
‘The REL team has been trying to solve this problem for over 30 years and we’ve finally done it. Innovation doesn’t happen overnight. Independent experts have confirmed that the full engine can now be demonstrated. The SABRE engine has the potential to revolutionise our lives in the 21st century in the way the jet engine did in the 20th Century. This is the proudest moment of my life’.
Dr Mark Ford, ESA’s Head of Propulsion Engineering, said: ‘One of the major obstacles to developing air-breathing engines for launch vehicles is the development of lightweight high-performance heat exchangers. With this now successfully demonstrated by Reaction Engines Ltd, there are currently no technical reasons why the SABRE engine programme cannot move forward into the next stage of development’.
The Editor (Spaceflight)
|
<urn:uuid:33fb5a88-d568-43c8-bb22-6203a4ca525d>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.bis-space.com/2012/11/29/7780/sabre-gets-major-breakthrough
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393093.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.924268 | 765 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Lilith Evolved: Writing Midrash
In this Go and Learn, guide, we explore the notion of midrash and highlight "The Coming of Lilith" by theologian Judith Plaskow as an example of how contemporary Jewish feminists have created their own midrashim—retellings of biblical stories—in order to incorporate women's viewpoints into the traditional texts of Judaism. In writing their own versions of these texts, Plaskow and her peers have made Judaism more inclusive of the voices and perspectives of all people who engage in its teachings.
- For youth:
Lilith Stories: Exploring and Writing Midrashim
- For family/congregational education:
Telling Stories, Discovering Midrash, and Learning about Lilith
- For adults:
The Faces of Lilith: Finding Your Own Voice in Midrash
"The Coming of Lilith:" A Contemporary Midrash
Historically, rabbis wrote midrash to explain problems they found in biblical texts. If there seemed to be a missing piece to a story, an inconsistency between two different passages, or a redundant word or verse, the rabbis would explain the problem by writing a new midrash, filling in the missing dialogue, reconciling the seeming contradiction, or showing how there is no redundancy since each word is there to teach a specific lesson or practice.
Rabbinic midrash has often been taught as if it were "the way things really happened." For instance, many Jews believe that the story of Abraham smashing the idols comes from the Bible. In fact, this story is a midrash, told to answer the question implicit in the text itself—why did God choose Abraham and ask him to move to a new land and start a new people?
Excerpt from "The Coming of Lilith" by Judith Plaskow, 1972
In the beginning, the Lord God formed Adam and Lilith from the dust of the ground and breathed into their nostrils the breath of life. Created from the same source, both having been formed from the ground, they were equal in all ways. Adam, being a man, didn't like this situation, and he looked for ways to change it. He said, "I'll have my figs now, Lilith," ordering her to wait on him, and he tried to leave to her the daily tasks of life in the garden.
In the last forty years, midrash has become a form of interpretation and commentary used not only by rabbis but also by "ordinary" Jews. The women's movement and Jewish feminists were central to this transformation. In the 1970s, women started to notice that many traditional texts of Judaism and all rabbinic responsa were written by men (as far as we know). Women searched for glimpses of female viewpoints, but they were difficult to find. They realized that the experiences of half of the Jewish population are absent from the official record of the Jewish people. To remedy this imbalance, women began to create their own midrashim, retelling biblical stories from the perspectives of female characters.
In 1972, one such woman—the feminist theologian Judith Plaskow—wrote "The Coming of Lilith." It is a midrash about the Garden of Eden, told from a feminist point of view. "The Coming of Lilith" is actually a midrash on a midrash. In the original Lilith midrash, the rabbis wondered how to reconcile the two different accounts of the creation of man and woman in the book of Genesis. Genesis chapter 1 describes God's creation of man and woman at the very same moment. But Genesis chapter 2 recounts how God makes man and puts him in the Garden of Eden, and then realizes he needs a mate, and creates woman.
The rabbis tried to reconcile these two stories into one coherent narrative. What happened to the woman created in Genesis 1, such that Adam was alone and in need of a mate in Genesis 2? To answer this question, the Rabbis created the legend of Lilith as the first woman. In this legend, Lilith was Adam's equal, but when he insisted on dominating her, she left him. So God created Eve to be Adam's second mate; created from his body, she was more willing to be submissive to him. Thus, Lilith was the woman mentioned in Genesis 1, and Eve the new woman created in Genesis 2 after Lilith fled.
In the ancient rabbinic tradition, Lilith was vilified. The rabbinic stories turned her into a demoness who sought to kill human infants unless they were protected by amulets. However, in "The Coming of Lilith," Plaskow transforms the fearsome, baby-stealing Lilith into a wise and brave woman. Instead of being a rival to be feared, she becomes Eve's friend and empowerer.
In this midrash, Judith Plaskow explores some of the questions she and her contemporaries were grappling with during the 1970s. They took the women's movement into the religious sphere, rethinking basic assumptions about how God created humans and what might have caused inequality between men and women.
"The Coming of Lilith" also examines the potential power of sisterhood to transform the world and right its inequities. Eve and Lilith build "a bond between them" by telling each other stories, laughing and crying together, and teaching each other many things. This bond between women has the potential to be a catalyst for change, as shown by the concluding line of the story: "And God and Adam were expectant and afraid the day Eve and Lilith returned to the garden, bursting with possibilities, ready to rebuild it together."
Today, more than 30 years after it was written, "The Coming of Lilith" may sound a bit dated. But its message about the responsibility of humans to partner with one another and with the Divine to improve our world remains relevant, as does its encouragement of all people to add their own voices to the chorus of a modern and more inclusive Judaism.
How to cite this page
Jewish Women's Archive. "Lilith Evolved: Writing Midrash." (Viewed on June 26, 2016) <http://jwa.org/teach/golearn/sep07>.
|
<urn:uuid:b40de48c-be61-42ed-9842-20faca04c63a>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://jwa.org/teach/golearn/sep07
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00070-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.975044 | 1,277 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Earth’s climate is regulated by the greenhouse effect. A greenhouse is a house made of glass, where sunlight shines in and warms the plants and air inside. This also means the heat is trapped by the glass and cannot escape. Our atmosphere acts like a greenhouse, where gases absorb and re-emit heat to warm the Earth.
Global climate change is a significant change in the climate system over long periods of time. It includes the interaction of all ecosystems on Earth’s surfaces — oceans, land, air, ice and biodiversity — due to natural processes, such as the sun’s energy, or human activity, like burning fossil fuels. Recently, due in part to human activity, greenhouse gases are building up in the atmosphere rapidly, causing a significant change in the Earth’s climate system.
One of the biggest contributors to climate change is carbon dioxide, which has increased since the industrial age. This leads to changes in climate patterns, which affect everything on the planet, including forests. The most important role that trees and forests play is taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. As they grow trees remove carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere and sequester them in their leaves, branches, trunks and roots. More trees can decrease the rate of climate change and help us withstand its effects, potentially resulting in less intense storms, fewer infectious diseases, a more stable water supply and fewer wildfires.
Did you know?
- Forests are the largest forms of carbon storage, or sinks, in the United States. Currently, plants absorb and store about 15 percent of the United States’ total carbon dioxide emissions from the transportation and energy sectors.
- One mature tree absorbs CO2 at the rate of 48 pounds per year.
- Over a year, an acre of forest can consume the amount of CO2 created by driving a car 26,000 miles, about twice the annual mileage for an average driver.
- Deforestation accounts for up to 15 percent of global emissions of heat-trapping gases.
References Environmental Protection Agency. Climate Change. Carbon Dioxide Capture and Sequestration. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ccs/index.html (accessed June 4, 2013). http://www.ncsu.edu/project/treesofstrength/treefact.html (accessed June 4, 2013). Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Forest Service. Trees Reduce Air Pollution. http://www.dnr.state.md.us/forests/publications/urban2.html (accessed June 4, 2013). FAO. Newsroom. 2006. Deforestation Causes Global Warming. http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000385/index.html (accessed June 4, 2013).
|
<urn:uuid:20adc74b-8683-47e9-8f66-214064536b59>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.americanforests.org/discover-forests/forest-facts/climate-change/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00187-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.912031 | 582 | 4.125 | 4 |
The Curious History of an Early Spirit
It went like this, but wasn’t. Some four thousand years ago in Mespotamia, the perfumers at the court of King Zimrilim created a technique to separate the essential oils of precious woods and flowers from the woods and flowers themselves in order to embalm their dead. Originally, this probably involved soaking flower petals in warm water and capturing the fragrant oils that rose to the surface. What they called this method is lost, but other cultures refined their work into the art and science now known as distillation.
|
<urn:uuid:3d00f993-59c9-475b-a358-62aa44618c45>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.kindredcocktails.com/category/review-taxonomy/cocktail-review?page=1
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397749.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00009-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.96405 | 118 | 3.390625 | 3 |
I’m a very casual student of history and I’ve always enjoyed thinking about “game changers”. Throughout all of human history, we have been inventors. From fire, to the wheel, to electricity, to the computer, to the Internet, our inventions have changed (and often disrupted) our cultures and the world.
In the last 100 years, I think the electric lights, radio and television, aviation, and the Internet have been the biggest game changers.
Although invented in the 1870s, it was the widespread use of electric lights in the early 1900s that really changed the world. It meant safe illumination that wouldn’t explode or burn the house down like gas lamps or candles. The English language has had to add words like “nightlife” and “night shift”. Electric lights make us feel safe at night. Electric lights meant that our days were no longer bounded by sunrise and sunset.
The first public radio broadcast in 1910 was several opera signers. Along with television, both changed the way we think about the world. Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats (both on radio and TV) helped Americans through the Great Depression and World War II. They brought the greater world into living rooms and bedrooms. Fashion, politics, and water cooler conversations all revolved around the messages on radio and television. Radio and television meant that we could learn about and react to something happening anywhere the world as it happened.
The Wright brothers first flew in 1904, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that commercial aviation really took off. In 1879, Jules Verne wrote “Around the world in 80 days”. In 2012, Flightfox.com showed us how to travel around the world visiting 6 continents for at least 48 hours each for less than $3000. Aviation allows FedEx and UPS to deliver a package to almost any spot in the world in 24 hours. If radio and television told us what was happening anywhere in the world, aviation allows us to get up and go do something about it.
In the world of Information Technology, there have also been game changers. Today, in less than a second, our systems receive a request for a whois page, look up all of the details, compose a response, and ship it to the browser. During peak hours, our servers will answer over a thousand requests every second. We track over 215 million active domains and have over 5 billion curent and historical whois records. It’s no trivial feat to reliably deliver that content quickly.
For DomainTools, the game changers have been large memory systems, solid state drives, and virtual systems.
10 years ago, it was very very expensive to buy a server with more than 4 gigabytes of memory. With improvements in manufacturing and memory technology, it’s easy to buy systems with 256 gigabytes or more of memory. DomainTools uses a number of servers with huge amounts of memory to hold the entire index of all of the whois records in memory. It would be very difficult to answer a thousand requests per second quickly and cost effectively.
From the beginning, DomainTools used MySQL to hold most of it’s data. At first it was 10s of gigabytes to hold everything. Today, it’s terrabytes. Two years ago, we were approaching the breaking point of keeping our MySQL databases on hard drives. The spinning platters of the hard drive simply could not keep up with our needs. We faced a tough decision to either figure out how to make MySQL faster or change our software to use something else. We ended up testing SSDs and the effect was incredible. Despite the high cost, the SSDs were 100x faster than the hard drives and it bought us time to explore other technologies and techniques. Today, we use more SSDs than hard drives.
When DomainTools started, as a small company, every server was precious. Every server had to do multiple roles in order to keep the bottom line in the black. Back in 2007, the cost of keeping our operating systems upgraded was getting to be too high. The problem was that if a server had a MySQL database, an Apache web server, a PHP application, and a Ruby application, it was trickly to upgrade all of them without conflict. For those who lived through those days, the “expat” library was the worst offender. We made a hard decision to try out virtual systems. First with VM Ware, and later the OpenVZ, the results were awesome and we have not looked back. Over the last three years, we have upgraded almost all of our systems to virtual systems. We have fewer hardware nodes, so our co-location costs are lower. We use the processors we have more efficiently. And lastly, every virtual server does exactly one thing, so the “cost” of keeping our systems up-to-date is much lower.
I’m sure there are folks out there who disagree on the three biggest technological changes over the last 100 years or in the IT world. I’d love to hear your thoughts and stories on the technologies that were game changers for you.
Category: Domain Tools Updates
|
<urn:uuid:9d6d8068-7fa8-46f6-bba2-2fabbd3b0593>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://blog.domaintools.com/2013/03/game-changers/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403826.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00014-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.966196 | 1,071 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Copyright explainer - Part 1
Protecting Copyright in Game Content - Practical Implications
Most people in the games industry will be familiar with one or more aspects of copyright, which is the most important of the various intellectual property rights in relation to the protection of content in videogames. With the increase in digital distribution platforms as well as the growth in complexity of virtual worlds, it is vital that game developers have a working grasp of some of the practical issues that relate to copyright.
Here, Rustam Roy, associate at Dundas & Wilson LLP explains the key issues faced with regards to copyright. Part one in this two-part series will touch on some of the very basic building blocks of copyright as it relates to game content, while part two will look at practical issues in relation to exerting control over the copyright in a finished game.
What is copyright?
Copyright is a property right that entitles the copyright owner to prevent others from doing a number of acts in relation to the copyright work – each of these is referred to as a "restricted act". Copyright is NOT a monopoly – it is theoretically possible (although perhaps unlikely) for two identical works to be created and protected by copyright simultaneously, provided that each is created independently of the other without committing a restricted act in relation to the other.
Many people are familiar with the "idea" and "expression of idea" distinction, which provides that copyright does not protect an idea (eg the idea of a multi-player role-playing game in a fantasy world) but only the expression of that idea (eg the specific features of an actual fantasy world and its features).
There are several different categories of copyright works (for example, literary works, sound recordings, artistic works and dramatic works), each of which has to satisfy the basic requirements for copyright protection – the work has to be original (and this is has a specific meaning in relation to copyright) and it has to be recorded in some form. There are differences the practical terms of copyright in relation to each of these categories of copyright works. For example, the duration of protection, the criteria for assessing infringement and the default ownership position will depend to some extent on the type of copyright work.
Unlike, for example, in the US, under English law copyright exists automatically and need not be registered to be enforceable. In the event that one wants to enforce the right against someone else (eg sue someone for copyright infringement), the courts will first examine whether the work in question is protected by copyright.
Who owns copyright?
The general rule is that the author of the work owns the copyright, although the law recognises that people are often employed to create parts of a copyright work (game developers and artists, for example) and in such circumstances, subject to certain conditions, the employer is the owner of the copyright in a work created by an employee. The flip-side of this is that an independent contractor (ie someone who is not legally an employee) is the owner of the copyright in a work, even if that contractor has been instructed to create that work by someone else for a payment.
Where is copyright protected?
Like all intellectual property rights, copyright exists in relation to a particular legal jurisdiction, which means that the extent to which copyright exists is determined by the copyright legislation in a particular territory. Usually, copyright legislation will require that there is some sort of territorial connection (eg the copyright owner's residence in a particular country) before a work can be protected by the copyright legislation of that country.
This does not mean that a copyright work which, for example, is protected by UK copyright, is not automatically protected in other countries. In fact there are three major international treaties which deal with international copyright protection and enforcement and the UK is a signatory to each of these treaties. While UK copyright will be recognised pursuant to those treaties, there may still be differences in the scope of copyright protection in other territories – the most common difference being the duration of copyright protection.
Types of copyright in a videogame
The most obvious copyright work in a videogame is the computer program, which, for the purpose of copyright law, is a literary work. Due to the requirement of being recorded in some material form, it is the object code and the source code which are the elements of the computer programme which are protected by copyright. In practical terms, it is the source code which is of more immediate use commercially and therefore an infringement of copyright in the computer program will be judged primarily by an examination of the similarity of the source code used in the original programme as well as in the alleged copy. The judgment in Navitaire v Easyjet and Bulletproof Technologies (2005) confirmed that the courts will examine whether source code and graphic elements have been copied, in evaluating claims of copyright infringement of computer programmes.
Apart from the computer program itself, copyright can exist in graphic images (in bitmap or other formats), design drawings and sound recordings. The recent Court of Appeal judgments in Nova Productions Ltd v Mazooma Games Ltd and others and Nova Productions Ltd v Bell Fruit Games Ltd (2007) examined in some details claims of copyright infringement in relation to arcade games, in the absence of any alleged copying of source code. The judgments made clear that, while software and graphic elements can be protected by copyright, the recorded materials that are alleged to have been copied will need to be expressed at more than just a general level of abstraction (especially if the relevant features are also fairly common-place) for copyright to actually exist in relation to those materials.
The ownership of the copyrights in the various works that can be part of a video game depends on who created the work. A developer (whether that is a company or an individual), should always try to own all rights in a finished game, but, notwithstanding verbal discussions between a team of people who are working on game, that is not an automatic result in case there are any differences in agreement or intention. The following could, conceivably, all own a slice of the relevant rights:
- Anyone who (1) writes an original part of the source code in the computer program, or (2) creates original artwork for the game, or (3) writes original music for the game and who is not employed to do so or who has not agreed to transfer his/her rights to the developer.
- The entity from which the game engine or parts of code are licensed in, for use in the game.
- The entity which owns rights in the underlying franchise, if applicable.
Apart from a variety of people owning rights, a developer also needs to be aware of the use of open source software, which is prevalent in many middleware products. Use of open source software can, depending on the licence terms that apply, mean that it is not possible to restrict the downstream licensing of software which was written using the open source software.
Link to other Intellectual Property Rights
Moral rights are a collection of rights that can be exercised by the author of a copyright work (or the director, in the case of a film). These rights ((i) to be identified as the author, (ii) to be able to object to derogatory treatment of the work, (iii) not to have some work falsely attributed to him/her and (iv) to maintain the privacy of photographs and films which were commissioned for private use) can not be licensed or assigned, but they can be waived.
Copyright can also co-exist with other intellectual property rights, such as design rights and trade marks. A design drawing of a character’s weapon can be protected by copyright, while the product manufactured from that drawing (for merchandising, for example) can be protected by design right. It is also possible that a work will be protected by copyright as well as design right – for example, an architectural drawing.
Copyright works can also function as trade marks – for example, the name or likeness of a character in a game. The pictorial representation of the character, or the particular type-setting of the name, may be protected by copyright while the pictorial representation may be protected by trade mark law as a logo and the name as a text.
Patents and copyright do not generally protect the same works, except for computer software, which, in some jurisdictions (notably the USA), can be patented if the software meets the requirements of patent law. In the UK, it is theoretically possible for computer software to be patented, although the approach take is not as liberal as in the USA.
Rustam Roy is a media and entertainment lawyer in Dundas & Wilson's TMT practice, and was previously the sole lawyer at the European office of one of the major Japanese MMO publishers. This article is general in nature and should not be regarded as legal advice or be substituted for specialist legal advice in relation to specific circumstances. © Dundas & Wilson.
From GamesIndustry.biz Recommendations by Taboola
|
<urn:uuid:1be8966a-ef93-49c2-9582-41f7083f59d7>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/copyright-explainer-part-1
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00053-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.951761 | 1,812 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Landfills can be regarded as a viable and abundant source of materials and energy. In the developing world, this is widely understood and one may thus often find waste pickers scavenging for still usable materials. In a commercial context, landfills sites have also been discovered by companies and many have begun harvesting materials and energy
The alternatives to landfills are waste reduction and recycling strategies. Secondary to not creating waste, there are various alternatives to landfills. In the late 20th century, alternative methods of waste disposal to landfill and incineration have begun to gain acceptance. Anaerobic digestion, composting, mechanical biological treatment, pyrolysis and plasma arc gasification have all began to establish themselves in the market.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Letters: Waste to Energy
Tuesday, May 25, 2010 at 12:02 a.m.
In response to "Win-Win Waste System" (Letters, May 13):
The waste-to-energy concept is not new in San Diego. In the late 1980s, a 40-megawatt facility was within a gasp of beginning construction near San Marcos; that facility ultimately was doomed by cost issues. Another project recently disappeared due to management's financial naiveté. The projects did not fail because of technology. The concepts and working models were good science, using proven technology. The good news lies in the slow but sure approach being used by another San Diego startup: American Standard Renewable Fuels. As with the other projects, the technology works. The company is extraordinarily well managed and is actively looking to finance a number of projects. In addition, San Diego Gas & Electric has been a willing signatory in the past to power purchase agreements with companies proposing biomass projects. SDG&E meet ASRF; ASRF meet SDG&E.
|
<urn:uuid:f951e823-edcb-4cf6-a088-8cf51a819307>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://trash2cash1.blogspot.com/2011/07/one-true-alternative-to-landfills.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397873.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00120-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.954231 | 373 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Financial, Idioms, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
[Latin, In fact.] In fact, in deed, actually.
This phrase is used to characterize an officer, a government, a past action, or a state of affairs that must be accepted for all practical purposes, but is illegal or illegitimate. Thus, an office, position, or status existing under a claim or color of right, such as a de facto corporation. In this sense it is the contrary of de jure, which means rightful, legitimate, just, or constitutional. Thus, an officer, king, or government de facto is one that is in actual possession of the office or supreme power, but by usurpation, or without lawful title; while an officer, king, or governor de jure is one who has just claim and rightful title to the office or power, but has never had plenary possession of it, or is not in actual possession. A wife de facto is one whose marriage is Voidable by decree, as distinguished from a wife de jure, or lawful wife. But the term is also frequently used independently of any distinction from de jure; thus a blockade de facto is a blockade that is actually maintained, as distinguished from a mere paper blockade.
A de facto corporation is one that has been given legal status despite the fact that it has not complied with all the statutory formalities required for corporate existence. Only the state may challenge the validity of the existence of a de facto corporation.
De facto Segregation is the separation of members of different races by various social and economic factors, not by virtue of any government action or statute.
adj. Latin for "in fact." Often used in place of "actual" to show that the court will treat as a fact authority being exercised or an entity acting as if it had authority, even though the legal requirements have not been met. (See: de facto corporation, de jure)
de factoadjective absolutely, actual, actually, as a matter of fact, authentic, bona fide, certain, demonstrable, existent, existing, existing in fact, factual, genuine, in existence, in fact, in point of fact, in reality, positively, real, substantive, tangible, true, truly, unquestionable, valid, veritable, well-founded, well-grounded, with validity
Associated concepts: de facto administrator, de facto admissions, de facto apprenticeship, de facto appropriation, de facto authority, de facto board, de facto board of directors, de facto contract, de facto contract of sale, de facto corpooation, de facto court, de facto director, de facto dissolution, de facto districts, de facto domicile, de facto government, de facto guardian, de facto judge, de facto officer, de facto trust, de facto trustee
See also: actual, bodily, material, physical
DE FACTO, i. e. in deed. A term used to denote a thing actually done; a president of the United States de facto is one in the exercise of the executive power, and is distinguished from one, who being legally entitled to such power is ejected from it; the latter would be a president de jure. An officer de facto is frequently considered as an officer de jure, and his official acts are of equal validity. 10 S. & R. 250; 4 Binn. R. 371; 11 S. & R. 411, 414; Coxe, 318; 9 Mass. 231; 10 Mass. 290; 15 Mass. 180; 5 Pick. 487.
|
<urn:uuid:9361d7fc-73fe-4a2c-b125-51864c2af647>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/de+facto
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00037-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.9123 | 738 | 2.75 | 3 |
From the rise of the Nazi party, through the bombing of Pearl Harbor, to the ultimate defeat of the Axis nations and the first chills of the Cold War, The Second World War: A Short History offers a completely comprehensive overview of the Second World War in one readable, compact volume. Alastair Parker deftly explores the causes of the war and why it lasted so long, how it was won and lost, and its consequences for humanity. The author traces the key events in both the European and Far Eastern theaters, outlining the strategies of the participants and the strengths and weaknesses of their fighting forces. Parker conveys a vivid picture of the features that distinguished the Second World War from any war that preceded it, including mobile warfare, widespread forced migration, the Holocaust, and strategic and nuclear bombing. Unlike many other histories of the war, this short history places the British and European involvement squarely in an international perspective, never shying away from raising difficult and fundamental questions about this monumental conflict. The Second World War presents an unprecedented short history, offering a sweeping survey of events that omits none of the drama that filled the years between 1939 and 1945. With intriguing photographs and a number of helpful maps, it is a fascinating and objective look at the central struggle of our times.
Back to top
Rent The Second World War 3rd edition today, or search our site for other textbooks by R. A. C. Parker. Every textbook comes with a 21-day "Any Reason" guarantee. Published by Oxford University Press.
Need help ASAP? We have you covered with 24/7 instant online tutoring. Connect with one of our tutors now.
|
<urn:uuid:d07a9939-46a2-40d3-afb4-0bf9ccb25ba2>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.chegg.com/textbooks/the-second-world-war-3rd-edition-9780192802071-0192802070
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00146-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.919219 | 334 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Tocqueville, Alexis de
|Birthname||Clerel, Charles Henri Maurice|
|born on||29 July 1805 at 03:00 (= 03:00 AM )|
|Place||Paris, France, 48n52, 2e20|
|Timezone||LMT m2e20 (is local mean time)|
|Astrology data||05°28' 14°12 Asc. 17°48'|
French political scientist, historian and politician, best known for "Democracy in America," 4 vol, 1835-40, a perceptive analysis of the U.S. political and social system in the early 19th century.
Diminutive in stature, acutely sensitive and plagued by severe bouts of anxiety and illness since childhood, Tocqueville remained close to his parents through his life, though outwardly proud and cold. He found it difficult to form deep and lasting relationships but was skilled in his influence of those close to him in small groups. As a youth, he became a lawyer in 1835 and moved easily into government service as the son of a royalist and a peer of France.
The July Revolution of 1830 that put the citizen king Louis-Philippe of Orleans on the throne was a turning point, convincing Tocqueville that France was moving toward social equality. He and his friend Beaumont made a journey to America to study the prison system and reforms, 1831-32. Hailed for his writings as a political scientist, he found the following years prestigious and happy.
In 1835, he married an Englishwoman, Mary Mottely. Returning to France, he continued to write, and entered politics by winning public election in 1839 to the Chamber of Deputies. From then on, he won every election by a wide majority, though his career in public office was generally mediocre.
The Revolution of February 1848 brought about an improvement of his political situation. In 1850 he was named President of the Assembly. Briefly imprisoned for opposing Louis-Napoleon's coup d'etat on 2 December 1851, he was deprived of all political offices for refusing his oath to the new regime.
Returning to his Norman estate and to writing, Tocqueville's new book, "The Old Regime and the Revolution" in 1856 made him, once again, a public figure. He died in 1859 just at the onset of a revival of liberalism in France and his reputation in the 19th century reached its high point during the decade following his death.
- Work : Begin Major Project 1831 (Studied U.S. prison systems, one year)
- Work : New Job 1835 (Became a lawyer)
- Relationship : Marriage 1835 (Mary Mottely)
- Work : New Job 1839 (Elected into Chamber of Deputies)
- Work : New Job 1850 (President of the Assembly)
- Social : Institutionalized - prison, hospital 2 December 1851 (Briefly imprisoned for refusing the new regime)
chart Placidus Equal_H.
- Work : Published/ Exhibited/ Released 1856 (Last book released)
B.C. in hand from Ken Gillman 12/1999, obtained by Mme Nicole Girard in France.
(Considerations February 2000 presents the chart as LAT, even though France was on the Gregorian calendar and accurate time pieces were common.)
Birth certificate in Didier Geslain archive, 'Historiens' pdf file, p. 79.
- Traits : Body : Size (Small in stature)
- Family : Relationship : Marriage more than 15 Yrs (23 years to Mary)
- Passions : Criminal Perpetrator : Prison sentence (Imprisoned for refusal of new regime)
- Vocation : Law : Attorney (Initially)
- Vocation : Politics : Public office (Chamber of Deputies, Pres. of Assembly)
- Vocation : Writers : Textbook/ Non-fiction (Political historian and sciences, noted writer)
|
<urn:uuid:4a665b0c-ad2a-41cc-90c7-5461d4a1f458>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Tocqueville,_Alexis_de
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00090-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.968567 | 838 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Multiplying and Dividing
* The Best Stuff for Multiplying & Dividing
* Sharing Big Numbers
* Discover the Basics - Multiplying & Dividing
Adding and Subtracting
* Addition, Subtraction, & Place Value
* The Best Stuff for Adding & Subtracting
* Discover the Basics - Adding & Subtracting
Fractions and Decimals
* Fractions & Decimals
Percents, Ratios, and Rates
* Percents, Ratios, & Rates
Access to Algebra
* Discover the Basics - Equations!
* Discover the Basics - Negative Numbers
* Discover the Basics - Squares, Roots, & Exponents
*Access to Algebra
Organizing and Graphing Data
* Organizing & Graphing Data
Measurement and Geometry
* Measurement & Geometry
* Discover the Basics - Perimeter, Area, & Volume
California Math Supplement
* Grade 3
Math Intervention Strategies
How it Works
Discover and Perfect the power of Guided Student Discovery
533: Fractions & Decimals, 645 pages - $89.95
This book helps students create their own mental pictures of fractions, and discover tangible ways of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing them. It uses graphics to clearly illustrate fractions of a thing, fractions of many things, and fractions of a fraction, and enables students to comprehend the real comparisons that underlie the traditional rules, and to reconnect to their sense of natural curiosity and tactile reality.
||Ideal for teachers, resource teachers, homeschool instruction, parents wanting to support their child's work, includes photocopying rights.
|Email My Order
||Click here to order individual chapters or the whole book, emailed to you within 24 hrs.
|
<urn:uuid:8bb33931-8c76-4fa3-a8a8-39c1aac78c46>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.masterylearningsystems.com/Fractions_and_Decimals.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00078-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.802551 | 380 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Types of Maple Trees Leaves
Identification of maple trees can be difficult because of various species and subspecies. One of the major methods to differentiate diverse species is using the types of maple tree leaves which can give us abundant information on some special maple species.
As members of the same tree family, most maple trees have similar leaf shapes with multiple leaf lobes. Generally each leaf body has around five tips with veins originating from the center of the leaf body. If you can take a look at it carefully, you can observe some details which can be help you identify the type of the trees.
Very few maple trees have compound leaves. One example is paperbark maple tree which have more than three leaflets in one stock. This feature is obvious and easy to identify by common sense. Some maple trees such as Japanese maple trees have different leaf body and their leaves are very similar to compound leaves. All leaf lobes are radiated from the center point of the body.
Some maple species have large five lobe leaf shapes. The two examples of this kind are Norway maple and sugar maple trees. Usually sugar maple has large lobe spaces between two adjacent lobes. If picked up from the branch, the Norway maple will have some milky liquid at the end of the leaf. If you want to find a silver maple tree, just go to search the soft white covering on the back of the leaf body. The edge of a red maple will be a saw-like shape and this is the most apparent feature on its leaf body.
Image Provided By Common-Pics (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
|
<urn:uuid:3f940a1c-89bc-4ff9-85f7-02eeaa750fc5>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://treekb.com/types-of-maple-trees-leaves/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397748.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00083-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.95086 | 354 | 3.4375 | 3 |
It was the ceremony for the accession of a new Muisca chief on Lake Guatavita which gave rise to the legend of ‘El Dorado’ - ‘The Gilded Man’.
‘He went about all covered with powdered gold, as casually as if it were powdered salt. For it seemed to him that to wear any other finery was less beautiful, and that to put on ornaments or arms made of gold worked by hammering, stamping, or by other means, was a vulgar and common thing.’ Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, 1535-48
The Muisca towns and their treasures quickly fell to the Conquistadores. Taking stock of their newly won territory, the Spaniards realized that - in spite of the quantity of gold in the hands of the Indians - there were no golden cities, nor even rich mines, since the Muiscas obtained all their gold from outside. But at the same time, from captured Indians, they began to hear stories of El Dorado (‘The Gilded Man’) and of the rites which used to take place at the lagoon of Guatavita. There were Indians still alive who had witnessed the last Guatavita ceremony, and the stories these Indians told were consistent. Every one of the Spanish chroniclers refers to the Gilded Man, but probably the most authoritative account comes from Rodrígues Freyle, who learned it from his friend, Don Juan, nephew of the last independent lord of Guatavita.
‘The ceremony took place on the appointment of a new ruler. Before taking office, he spent some time secluded in a cave, without women, forbidden to eat salt and chilli pepper, or to go out during daylight. The first journey he had to make was to go to the great lagoon of Guatavita, to make offerings and sacrifices to the demon which they worshipped as their god and lord. During the ceremony which took place a the lagoon, they made a raft of rushes, embellishing and decorating it with the most attractive things they had. They put on it four lighted braziers in which they burned much moque, which is the incense of these natives, and also resin and many other perfumes. The lagoon was large and deep, so that a ship with high sides could sail on it, all loaded with an infinity of men and women dressed in fine plumes, golden plaques and crowns… As soon as those on the raft began to burn incense, they also lit braziers on the shore, so that the smoke hid the light of day.’
‘At this time they stripped the heir to his skin, and anointed him with a sticky earth on which they placed gold dust so that he was completely covered with this metal. They placed him on the raft ... and at his feet they placed a great heap of gold and emeralds for him to offer to his god. In the raft with him went four principal subject chiefs, decked in plumes, crowns, bracelets, pendants and ear rings all of gold. They, too, were naked, and each one carried his offering .... when the raft reached the centre of the lagoon, they raised a banner as a signal for silence. The gilded Indian then ... (threw) out all the pile of gold into the middle of the lake, and the chiefs who had accompanied him did the same on their own accounts. ... After this they lowered the flag, which had remained up during the whole time of offering, and, as the raft moved towards the shore, the shouting began again, with pipes, flutes, and large teams of singers and dancers. With this ceremony the new ruler was received, and was recognized as lord and king.’
El Dorado became a myth and a dream; a city, personage or kingdom, it always lay beyond the next range of mountains, or deep in the unexplored forests. The search for this other, non-existent, El Dorado, in various parts of South America, was to occupy men’s efforts for another two centuries.
Lázaro Fonte and Hernán Perez de Quesada. The very first to try was Lázaro Fonte, Quesada’s lieutenant, but achieved little for lack of money and resources. In 1545 or so, Hernán Perez de Quesada, brother of the Conquistador, made an attempt. During the dry season he formed a bucket chain of labourers with gourd jars, and in three months’ work managed to lower the water level by about three metres - enough to expose the edges of the lake bed, though not its centre. According to contemporary reports, between 3000 and 4000 pesos of gold were found.
Antonio de Sepúlveda. A rich merchant of Santa Fe de Bogotá, Antonio de Sepúlveda made one of the most serious attempts. In the 1580’s he built houses on the lake shore and took soundings from a boat. Using eight thousand Indian workman, he cut a great notch in the rim of the lake, lowering the water level by 20 metres before the cut collapsed, killing many of the labourers and causing the abandonment of the scheme.
A report in the Archive of the Indies for 1586 notes that, after deducting what belonged to him under the terms of the contract, Sepúlveda sent the royal share of the gold to King Philip 11 in Madrid, and also an emerald weighing 2 onzas (nearly 60 grammes) and valued at 50 pesos by the experts in Bogotá. His finds included ‘breastplates or pectoral discs, serpents, eagles’, a staff covered with gold plaques and hung with little golden tubes, and an emerald the size of a hen’s egg, ‘making a total of five or six thousand ducats for the royal treasury’. One of his old friends said of him… ‘He said that,from the part of the lake margin that he managed to uncover, he obtained more than 12,000 pesos. Much later, the desire came over him to make another attempt at drainage, but he could not, and in the end he died poor and tired. I knew him well, and I helped to bury him in the church at Guatavita.’
Another attempt was made in 1625. A consortium of twelve partners made a contract with the authorities using the same terms given to Sepúlveda but the results of the attempt went unrecorded. Interestingly, Indian workmen used were to be paid the same amounts as Spanish soldiers.
Alexander von Humboldt. The foremost natural scientist of his day, Alexander von Humboldt visited Guatavita in 1801 and measured Sepúlveda’s cut and the heights of the mountain rim. Back in Paris after his travels, he tried to calculate how much gold the lake might contain. Estimating that one thousand pilgrims might have visited Guatavita each year over a period of one hundred years, and that each visitor threw in five objects, he arrived at the figure of about 500,000 offerings, worth, in 1807, some 300 million dollars. This was later recalculated, and by 1825 travel literature had it that: ‘According to a calculation, made from a basis laid down by Monsieur de la Kier, of the Royal Institute of Paris, who particularly examined every document relating to the lagoon, there ought to be gold and precious stones yet buried in it to the amount of one billion one hundred and twenty millions sterling.’ - Captain Charles Stuart Cochrane, son of the Admiral who commanded the Chilean fleets during the Wars of Independence.
José Ignacio Paris. Don ‘Pepe’ Paris, a prominent citizen of Bogotá and a friend of Bolivar, formed a company to drain lake Guatavita by once again making a cut in the rim. It caused a lot of interest in the 1820’s but failed due to poor excavating techniques. It was the first attempt, however, from which a proper archaeological specimen remains.
‘The Company for the Exploitation of the Lagoon of Guatavita’ was formed in 1898, quickly passing on the right to excavate to ‘Contractors Ltd.’ of London. The broker in this deal was Hartley Knowles, a British resident in Colombia. The Company’s aim was simple - to drain away the water through a tunnel that would come up in the centre of Guatavita, with sluices to regulate the outflow and mercury screens to catch any gold objects or emeralds. It worked - the tunnel came up as planned, the water flowed out - and there is a photograph to prove it.
But when the lake bed was first exposed, it was several feet deep in mud and slime, so that no one could walk on it and the next day, the sun baked the mud to the consistency of cement so hard that it could not be penetrated. The baked mud blocked the sluices, the tunnel was sealed and the lagoon filled up again to its former level.
Objects worth £500 had been found, and were auctioned at Sotheby’s, but bankruptcy followed and despite two further attempts to float the Company, it eventually died in 1929. Several more attempts were made, using drills, mechanical drags and airlifts, until the Colombian Government brought Guatavita under legal protection in 1965 as part of the nation’s historical and cultural heritage.
|
<urn:uuid:3976e8d5-6336-4413-a039-51f31c5ddfa8>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://tairona.myzen.co.uk/index.php/history/the_legend_of_el_dorado/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00065-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.978498 | 2,029 | 3.015625 | 3 |
(Content Warning: Suicide, police brutality, violence)
You might have come across the term “gender binary” in discussions on transgender issues.
But do you know what it really means to call everyone either a “man” or a “woman” – and how it affects you?
Here’s Justin Hubbell’s excellent summary of what the gender binary is, how it shows up in our everyday lives, and how it’s led to all of us suffering from outdated ideas.
This shows exactly why it’s so important to respect everyone’s individual gender expression. How do you defy traditional gender norms?
The Editors at Everyday Feminism
Click for the Transcript
Justin stands facing the reader smiling and waving.
Justin: Hi, I’m Justin! Let’s talk about the Gender Binary.
The perspective has changed, and the reader views Justin from a different viewpoint.
Justin: But let’s look at it from another angle…
A cat and dog’s faces float happily in space.
Text: Suppose we grew up “knowing” there were only two animals – dogs and cats.
A diagram shows eight distinctly different animals: a jellyfish, mouse, frog, millipede, gorilla, humming bird, whale, and microorganism. Each animal is split randomly into two sides of the diagram which labels them either as dogs or cats.
Text: We’d have to sort completely different animals into two camps!
Text: Silly, isn’t it?
A second diagram now shows eight distinctly different people of various skin colors: a rugged cisgender man with a full beard, a cisgender man who is very effeminate, an infant child, a transgender woman, a transgender man, a twelve-week old human fetus, a cisgender woman, a cisgender woman who is very masculine. Each person is split into two sides of the and labeled as either “Man” or “Woman.” It is clear that either not everyone is properly assigned, and that some shouldn’t be assigned at all.
Text: But that’s what we’ve done with gender!
Text: We do this for rather arbitrary reasons.
A banana rests harmlessly.
Text: The most common argument is that our genitals…
A peach sits there, also harmlessly.
Text: …correspond to our gender.
Text: We do this all the time.
A cisgender white man holds an axe.
Man: This can kill!
Text: We value the physical…
The same man now holds a nondescript book.
Man: This is just paper!
Text: …over the abstract.
Text: This all made sense when I was child. After all:
A five-year-old Justin speaks to a smaller four-year-old girl with dark skin. Justin is grinning with satisfaction while she looks on with dismay.
Justin: I’m big, you’re small!
Justin now jeers at a latino boy in wheelchair. Justin doesn’t notice the boy’s feelings are hurt when he says…
Justin: I’m faster than you!
Justin looks astonished and speaks to a fat/larger girl. Once again, he doesn’t realize that he is being insensitive, the girl appears upset. She has tan skin.
Justin: You’re heavier than me!
The young Justin now addresses an impoverished boy who is rooting through a trashcan. He turns up his nose not wishing to associate with him. He also has tan skin.
Justin: You’re poor!
Text: As a kid, I was proud to state all the things I knew were “true.”
Text: But as I aged, I realized my understanding had an impact on those around me!
Justin is now 19 years old. He speaks to a smaller 18-year-old girl, but his casual insult is interrupted when, fed up, she stamps on his foot. The girl has dark skin.
Justin: I’m big, you’re sm—OUCH!
Justin is about to tell another person in a wheelchair that he is faster but sees that they look annoyed and stops himself mid-sentence, realizing what he is doing is hurtful.
Justin: I’m faster tha—wait.
Justin is about to compare his weight to that of another larger/fat queer (we know she is queer because she has a queer pride tattoo!) person of Asian heritage, but interrupts his thought and apologizes before he can finish it.
Justin: You’re heavier th—Ack! I’m sorry!
Justin is talking to a man his age, but dressed similarly to how the poor boy was dressed before. He has similar tanned skin as the boy did. This time Justin has no problems being friendly.
Justin: You can crash at my place whenever you need to, okay? Say the word.
Text: My values evolved!
Text: And yet? Most people are still “stuck” on gender.
A five-year-old white cis male looks bold/defiant.
Male: I’m a man cuz I can go pee standing up!
Text: We get ideas about gender.
The five-year-old is now in his thirties, still looking bold/defiant.
Male: I stand up when I pee! I’m a man!
Text: And somehow they remain stagnant!
An image of Earth floats over a grid of many different kinds of people but they all look upset. Emotions range from crying, shouting, general anger, or malaise to people covering their faces entirely.
Text: This has lead to an entire planet…
Text: …full of people suffering over outdated ideas!
A young Latino boy is sobbing, covered in bruises.
Text: We have boys who aren’t boyish enough.
Boy: They were all kicking me and calling me ‘maricón!’
A young girl of Indian decent overhears a bully talking about her. She looks extremely upset by their words, which are intended for her to overhear.
Text: Girls not girlish enough.
Bully: She’s got a mustache! Ha ha!
A young Black boy stands submissively in front of a white teacher who is yelling at him.
Text: Boys who are too boyish (or simply not white enough):
Teacher: You’re a thug! Just like your brother!
A young white girl pauses nervously as a parent yells at her from another location. Her attire is especially feminine: a pink tank top, earrings, a choker necklace, and blue eyeshadow.
Text: Girls who are too girlish:
Parent: No way are you going out looking like that.
Text: And they all grow up with serious problems!
The Latino boy is now a grown man and appears to be beating someone in a rage. He’s shirtless with angry tattoos, his entire physical presence meant to persuade us of his masculinity.
Man: WHAT DID YOU FUCKING CALL ME?!
The Indian girl is now a woman. She looks glamorous, trying to retreat as far from the features of her childhood as possible. Her attitude toward other women is now toxic.
Woman: I hate all these fake bitches!
The Black boy has grown to be a man – one who has been shaped by constant accusation. He is dressed in the type of “thug” attire that many police and citizens racially profile. Once again, he is submitting to an abusive authority that refuses to look beyond his appearance, his hands are cuffed behind his back as a police officer has him in a choke hold from behind. If he is struggling, it is only for breath.
Officer: We all know it was you!
The young white girl is now a woman. She is professionally dressed, but seems unhappy with herself. She’s about to joylessly light up a cigarette.
Woman: I would kill for plastic surgery. Anything to help this ass.
Text: They’re all victims!
Text: Meanwhile, us queer people catch hell just for being queer!
A photo of Kiesha Jenkins with a caption that reads “Murdered, Oct 2015.”
Text: If people aren’t going out of their way to harm us?
A photo of Adam Kizer with a caption that reads “Suicide, June 2015.”
Text: We tend to harm ourselves.
A contemporary/modern Justin appears. Their hair is tied in a pony tail. They’re sporting fish earrings, but otherwise are wearing a rather androgynous outfit.
Justin: And it’s all because of this silly, antiquated, dangerous, shallow gender binary!
Text: It’s time to try something new.
A garbage can sits there, its lid open to expose grossness. Flies gather.
Text: Let’s put the gender binary where it belongs.
A Black cis man proudly sports a new business suit.
Text: Let’s express our gender as we please.
An Asian trans genderqueer looks equally proud, sporting a blend of masculine and feminine styles.
Text: No matter what gender that is.
All kinds of gendered accessories are splayed out floating in space: cowboy boots, makeup, a pink necklace, a baseball cap, fingerless gloves, a man’s wrist watch, briefs (the male underwear), a bra, a purple pocketbook.
Text: And let’s respect everyone’s choice to do so!
Text: Is there a sustainable alternative to maintaining the gender binary?
Justin speaks lying on their back.
Justin: Because I don’t think there is!
Reader now sees that Justin is resting on a psychiatrist’s sofa.
Justin: What we’re doing now sure isn’t working for me!
Justin sits up and addresses the reader.
Justin: Has it done you any favors?
Additional text outside of the comic: Justin Hubbell is a cartoonist and super nerd. justinhubbell.com patreon.com/justinhubbell
To learn more about this topic, check out:
- 3 Ways Gender and Sexuality Are More Fluid Than We Think
- The Gender Playbook: A Guide to Figuring Out Your Non-Binary Identity
Justin Hubbell is a cartoonist and freelance artist from upstate New York. In an attempt to serve the greater good, he aims to create volumes of work revolving around the social politics that govern our daily lives. He posts his cartoons weekly at justinhubbell.com. He has also been featured on The Good Men Project, UpWorthy, Digital America, Kabooooom, and submits comics regularly to local publications. He has no preferred pronouns, she is a unapologetic nerd.
|
<urn:uuid:6f4dfc6a-5476-4cc2-9f2c-b1ec8890721b>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/02/gender-binary-hurts-us-all/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00157-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.934961 | 2,335 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Green building is becoming increasingly popular in the United States, but there is no single, comprehensive federal green building program. LEED has become the default standard for green building, but there are other groups, like the Green Building Initiative and the aggressive Architecture 2030 initiative, that have their own green building practices. The federal government has offered tax breaks to those who comply with green building improvements, like a $300 credit for replacing an old water heater or air conditioner, and credit for 10 percent of the cost of insulation materials.
Individual states are also increasingly involved in developing green programs, but the programs vary. California leads much of the green building movement, with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signing an executive order that says all new and renovated state facilities must have a silver LEED certification or higher.
As of October 2007, 22 states and 75 towns and cities have adopted policies to require or encourage LEED's green building practices. New York City kicked off its green building movement with the reconstruction of the World Trade Center. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs' Division for Sustainable Development focuses on cooperation among its members to encourage green building techniques in developing countries.
Asian buildings have traditionally been designed and constructed with the land in mind. One of the best examples is the Miho Museum near Kyoto, Japan. Eighty percent of the structure, designed by Chinese architect I.M. Pei, is underground to preserve the natural landscape.
Green building is popular in Europe, too, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, and the European Union has a jump start on the United States in terms of regulations. In the mid-1990s, it adopted requirements for energy usage in any new construction on the continent. The European Commission instituted a voluntary green building program in 2005.
The United States is just now catching up with Europe and Japan, which have used innovations like tankless water heaters for years. But with current energy costs and the dip in the housing market, homeowners looking to save -- or make -- money on their homes are quickly catching on to going green.
For more information about green building, check out the links on the next page.
|
<urn:uuid:51d50b0a-4750-48d0-b3fb-3b41a5daa120>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/construction/green/green-building3.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00035-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.957147 | 432 | 3.046875 | 3 |
LInC Prerequisites: Computer Basics
To benefit from a LInC class, you should be familiar with the basics of operating a PC (Mac or Windows), sending and receiving e-mail, and using a web browser. If you will be participating in sessions at Fermilab, you will need to know how to do these things on a Mac, as well as on whatever system you have at home or at school.
These skills are important for using nearly any computer application, and can be learned from the online tutorial that comes with your computer. If you will be participating in sessions at Fermilab, you will need to know how to do these things on a Mac, as well as on whatever system you have at home or at school. You should know:
- How to turn the computer on, shut it down, and reboot it.
- How to create, move, name, find, and discard files and folders/directories.
- How to start and exit software applications, how to use the standard file menu to save or print files, and how to save files under another name.
- How to use the standard file dialog box to select a file or folder.
- What the "currently active application" is, and how to change it.
- How to move, resize, bring forward, and close windows on the screen.
- How to arrange two application windows side-by-side on the screen.
- How to cut, copy, and paste from one place or application to another.
- Prior experience with any word processing program.
Electronic mail is an integral part of your LInC coursework. Related skills can be learned from a tutorial. In order to successfully complete even the first few classes, you need to know:
- How to configure your e-mail application to use your Internet Service Provider (ISP).
- How to send an e-mail message.
- How to check for e-mail.
- How to read e-mail messages.
- How to reply to an e-mail message.
- How to send and receive e-mail attachements.
A World Wide Web browser will be another important tool needed for your LInC class. In order to have access to critical class materials, you need to know:
- What a Web page is, what a link is.
- How to recognize a link, how to follow a link, how to tell whether you have followed a link before.
- How to use the Forward, Back and Home buttons to get around.
- How to use a navigation bar of links on a Web site to find your way around the site.
- How and when to use Stop.
- How to print a page.
- How to use the Open button or Location field to type in an Internet address (go to a URL directly).
- What a Bookmark or Favorite is; how to add a bookmark; how to visit a link that you have bookmarked.
|
<urn:uuid:9c589eb1-c1c0-4e15-af20-862b42aa9f7f>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://ed.fnal.gov/lincon/intro_prereqs.shtml
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00123-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.903697 | 622 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, by Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsh, [1857-78], at sacred-texts.com
Judgment upon All the World, and upon Judah in Particular - Zephaniah 1
The judgment will come upon all the world (Zep 1:2, Zep 1:3), and will destroy all the idolaters and despisers of God in Judah and Jerusalem (Zep 1:4-7), and fall heavily upon sinners of every rank (Zep 1:8-13). The terrible day of the Lord will burst irresistibly upon all the inhabitants of the earth (Zep 1:14-18).
Zep 1:1 contains the heading, which has been explained in the introduction. Zep 1:2 and Zep 1:3 form the preface. - Zep 1:2. "I will sweep, sweep away everything from the face of the earth, is the saying of Jehovah. Zep 1:3. I will sweep away man and cattle, sweep away the fowls of heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the offences with the sinners, and I cut off men from the face of the earth, is the saying of Jehovah." The announcement of the judgment upon the whole earth not only serves to sharpen the following threat of judgment upon Judah and Jerusalem in this sense, "Because Jehovah judges the whole world, He will punish the apostasy of Judah all the more;" but the judgment upon the whole world forms an integral part of his prophecy, which treats more fully of the execution of the judgment in and upon Judah, simply because Judah forms the kingdom of God, which is to be purified from its dross by judgment, and led on towards the end of its divine calling. As Zephaniah here opens the judgment awaiting Judah with an announcement of a judgment upon the whole world, so does he assign the reason for his exhortation to repentance in Zep 2:1-15, by showing that all nations will succumb to the judgment; and then announces in Zep 3:9., as the fruit of the judgment, the conversion of the nations to Jehovah, and the glorification of the kingdom of God. The way to salvation leads through judgment, not only for the world with its enmity against God, but for the degenerate theocracy also. It is only through judgment that the sinful world can be renewed and glorified. The verb אסף, the hiphil of sūph, is strengthened by the inf. abs. אסף, which is formed from the verb אסף, a verb of kindred meaning. Sūph and 'âsaph signify to take away, to sweep away, hiph. to put an end, to destroy. Kōl, everything, is specified in Zep 1:3 : men and cattle, the birds of heaven, and the fishes of the sea; the verb 'âsēph being repeated before the two principal members. This specification stands in unmistakeable relation to the threatening of God: to destroy all creatures for the wickedness of men, from man to cattle, and to creeping things, and even to the fowls of the heaven (Gen 6:7). By playing upon this threat, Zephaniah intimates that the approaching judgment will be as general over the earth, and as terrible, as the judgment of the flood. Through this judgment God will remove or destroy the offences (stumbling-blocks) together with the sinners. את before הרשׁעים cannot be the sign of the accusative, but can only be a preposition, with, together with, since the objects to אסף are all introduced without the sign of the accusative; and, moreover, if את־הרשׁ were intended for an accusative, the copula Vv would not be omitted. Hammakhshēlôth does not mean houses about to fall (Hitzig), which neither suits the context nor can be grammatically sustained, since even in Isa 3:6 hammakhshēlâh is not the fallen house, but the state brought to ruin by the sin of the people; and makhshēlâh is that against which or through which a person meets with a fall. Makhshēlōth are all the objects of coarser and more refined idolatry, not merely the idolatrous images, but all the works of wickedness, like τὰ σκάνδαλα in Mat 13:41. The judgment, however, applies chiefly to men, i.e., to sinners, and hence in the last clause the destruction of men from off the earth is especially mentioned. The irrational creation is only subject to φθορά, on account of and through the sin of men (Rom 8:20.).
The judgment coming upon the whole earth with all its inhabitants will fall especially upon Judah and Jerusalem. Zep 1:4. "And I stretch my hand over Judah, and over all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and cut off from this place the remnant of Baal, the name of the consecrated servants, together with the priests. Zep 1:5. And those who worship the army of heaven upon the roofs, and the worshippers who swear to Jehovah, and who swear by their king. Zep 1:6. And those who draw back from Jehovah, and who did not seek Jehovah, and did not inquire for Him." God stretches out His hand (יד) or His arm (זרוע) to smite the ungodly with judgments (compare Zephaniah 6:6, Deu 4:34; Deu 5:15, with Isa 5:25; Isa 9:11, Isa 9:16, Isa 9:20; Isa 10:4; Isa 14:26.). Through the judgment upon Judah and Jerusalem He will cut off שׁאר הבּעל, the remnant of Baal, i.e., all that remains of Baal and of idolatry; for Baal or the Baal-worship stands per synecdochen for idolatry of every kind (see at Hos 2:10). The emphasis lies upon "the remnant," all that still exists of the Baal-worship or idolatry, even to the very last remnant; so that the emphasis presupposes that the extermination has already begun, that the worship of Baal no longer exists in undiminished force and extent. It must not be limited, however, to the complete abolition of the outward or grosser idolatry, but includes the utter extermination of the grosser as well as the more refined Baal-worship. That the words should be so understood is required by the parallel clause: the name of the consecrated servants together with the priests. Kemârı̄m are not prophets of Baal, but, as in Kg2 23:5 and Hos 10:5, the priests appointed by the kings of Judah for the worship of the high places and the idolatrous worship of Jehovah (for the etymology of the word, see at Kg2 23:5). The kōhănı̄m, as distinguished from these, are idolatrous priests in the stricter sense of the word (i.e., those who conducted the literal idolatry). The names of both the idolatrous priests of Jehovah and the literal priests of the idols are to be cut off, so that not only the persons referred to will disappear, but even their names will be heard no more. Along with the idols and their priests, the worshippers of idols are also to be destroyed. Just as in Zep 1:4 two classes of priests are distinguished, so in Zep 1:5 are two classes of worshippers, viz., (1) the star-worshippers, and (2) those who tried to combine the worship of Jehovah and the worship of idols; and to these a third class is added in Zep 1:6. The worship of the stars was partly Baal-worship, the sun, moon, and stars being worshipped as the bearers of the powers of nature worshipped in Baal and Asherah (see at Kg2 23:5); and partly Sabaeism or pure star-worship, the stars being worshipped as the originators of all growth and decay in nature, and the leaders and regulators of all sublunary things (see at Kg2 21:3). The worship took place upon the roofs, i.e., on altars erected upon the flat roofs of the houses, chiefly by the burning of incense (Jer 19:13), but also by the offering of sacrifices (Kg2 23:12; see the comm. in loc.). "They offered the sacrifices upon the roofs, that they might be the better able to see the stars in the heavens" (Theodoret). Along with the star-worshippers as the representatives of literal idolatry, Zephaniah mentions as a second class the worshippers who swear partly to Jehovah, and partly by their king, i.e., who go limping on two sides (Kg1 18:21), or try to combine the worship of Jehovah with that of Baal. Malkâm, their king, is Baal, who is distinctly called king in the inscriptions (see Movers, Phnizier, i. pp. 171-2), and not the "earthly king of the nation," as Hitzig has erroneously interpreted the Masoretic text, in consequence of which he proposes to read milkōm, i.e., Moloch. נשׁבּע with ל signifies to take an oath to Jehovah, i.e., to bind one's self on oath to His service; whereas נשׁבּע with ב (to swear by a person) means to call upon Him as God when taking an oath. The difference between the two expressions answers exactly to the religious attitude of the men in question, who pretended to be worshippers of Jehovah, and yet with every asseveration took the name of Baal into their mouth. In Zep 1:6 we have not two further classes mentioned, viz., "the vicious and the irreligious," as Hitzig supposes; but the persons here described form only one single class. Retiring behind Jehovah, drawing back from Him, turning the back upon God, is just the same as not seeking Jehovah, or not inquiring after Him. The persons referred to are the religiously indifferent, those who do not trouble themselves about God, the despisers of God.
This judgment will speedily come. Zep 1:7. "Be silent before the Lord Jehovah! For the day of Jehovah is near, for Jehovah has prepared a slaying of sacrifice, He has consecrated His called." The command, "Be silent before the Lord," which is formed after Hab 2:20, and with which the prophet summons to humble, silent submission to the judgment of God, serves to confirm the divine threat in Zep 1:2-6. The reason for the commanding Hush! (keep silence) is given in the statement that the day of Jehovah is close at hand (compare Joe 1:15), and that God has already appointed the executors of the judgment. The last two clauses of the verse are formed from reminiscences taken from Isaiah. The description of the judgment as zebhach, a sacrifice, is taken from Isa 34:6 (cf. Jer 46:10 and Eze 39:17). The sacrifice which God has prepared is the Jewish nation; those who are invited to this sacrificial meal ("called," Sa1 9:13) are not beasts and birds of prey, as in Eze 39:17, but the nations which He has consecrated to war that they may consume Jacob (Jer 10:25). The extraordinary use of the verb hiqdiish (consecrated) in this connection may be explained from Isa 13:3, where the nations appointed to make war against Babel are called mequddâshı̄m, the sanctified of Jehovah (cf. Jer 22:7).
The judgment will fall with equal severity upon the idolatrous and sinners of every rank (Zep 1:8-11), and no one in Jerusalem will be able to save himself from it (Zep 1:12, Zep 1:13). In three double verses Zephaniah brings out three classes of men who differ in their civil position, and also in their attitude towards God, as those who will be smitten by the judgment: viz., (1) the princes, i.e., the royal family and superior servants of the king, who imitate the customs of foreigners, and oppress the people (Zep 1:8, Zep 1:9); (2) the merchants, who have grown rich through trade and usury (Zep 1:10, Zep 1:11); (3) the irreligious debauchees (Zep 1:12, Zep 1:13). The first of these he threatens with visitation. Zep 1:8. "And it will come to pass in the day of Jehovah's sacrifice, that I visit the princes and the king's sons, and all who clothe themselves in foreign dress. Zep 1:9. And I visit every one who leaps over the threshold on that day, those who fill the Lord's house with violence and deceit." The enumeration of those who are exposed to the judgment commences with the princes, i.e., the heads of the tribes and families, who naturally filled the higher offices of state; and the king's sons, not only the sons of Josiah, who were still very young (see the Introduction), but also the sons of the deceased kings, the royal princes generally. The king himself is not named, because Josiah walked in the ways of the Lord, and on account of his piety and fear of God was not to lie to see the outburst of the judgment (Kg2 22:19-20; Ch2 34:27-28). The princes and king's sons are threatened with punishment, not on account of the high position which they occupied in the state, but on account of the ungodly disposition which they manifested. For since the clauses which follow not only mention different classes of men, but also point out the sins of the different classes, we must also expect this in the case of the princes and the king's sons, and consequently must refer the dressing in foreign clothes, which is condemned in the second half of the verse, to the princes and king's sons also, and understand the word "all" as relating to those who imitated their manners without being actually princes or king's sons. Malbūsh nokhrı̄ (foreign dress) does not refer to the clothes worn by the idolaters in their idolatrous worship (Chald., Rashi, Jer.), nor to the dress prohibited in the law, viz., "women dressing in men's clothes, or men dressing in women's clothes" (Deu 22:5, Deu 22:11), as Grotius maintains, nor to clothes stolen from the poor, or taken from them as pledges; but, as nokhrı̄ signifies a foreigner, to foreign dress. Drusius has already pointed this out, and explains the passage as follows: "I think that the reference is to all those who betrayed the levity of their minds by wearing foreign dress. For I have no doubt that in that age some copied the Egyptians in their style of dress, and others the Babylonians, according as they favoured the one nation or the other. The prophet therefore says, that even those who adopted foreign habits, and conformed themselves to the customs of the victorious nation, would not be exempt." The last allusion is certainly untenable, and it would be more correct to say with Strauss: "The prophets did not care for externals of this kind, but it was evident to them that 'as the dress, so the heart;' that is to say, the clothes were witnesses in their esteem of the foreign inclinations of the heart." In Zep 1:9 many commentators find a condemnation of an idolatrous use of foreign customs; regarding the leaping over the threshold as an imitation of the priests of Dagon, who adopted the custom, according to Sa1 5:5, of leaping over the threshold when they entered the temple of that idol. But an imitation of that custom could only take place in temples of Dagon, and it appears perfectly inconceivable that it should have been transferred to the threshold of the king's palace, unless the king was regarded as an incarnation of Dagon, - a thought which could never enter the minds of Israelitish idolaters, since even the Philistian kings did not hold themselves to be incarnations of their idols. If we turn to the second hemistich, the thing condemned is the filling of their masters' houses with violence; and this certainly does not stand in any conceivable relation to that custom of the priests of Dagon; and yet the words "who fill," etc., are proved to be explanatory of the first half of the verse, by the fact that the second clause is appended without the copula Vav, and without the repetition of the preposition על. Now, if a fresh sin were referred to there, the copula Vav, at all events, could not have been omitted. We must therefore understand by the leaping over the threshold a violent and sudden rushing into houses to steal the property of strangers (Calvin, Ros., Ewald, Strauss, and others), so that the allusion is to "dishonourable servants of the king, who thought that they could best serve their master by extorting treasures from their dependants by violence and fraud" (Ewald). אדניהם, of their lord, i.e., of the king, not "of their lords:" the plural is in the pluralis majestatis, as in Sa1 26:16; Sa2 2:5, etc.
Even the usurers will not escape the judgment. Zep 1:10. "And it will come to pass in that day, is the saying of Jehovah, voice of the cry from the fish-gate, and howling from the lower city, and great destruction from the hills. Zep 1:11. Howl, inhabitants of the mortar, for all the people of Canaan are destroyed; cut off are all that are laden with silver." In order to express the thought that the judgment will not spare any one class of the population, Zephaniah depicts the lamentation which will arise from all parts of the city. קול צעקה, voice of the cry, i.e., a loud cry of anguish will arise or resound. The fish-gate (according to Neh 3:3; Neh 12:39; cf. Ch2 33:14) was in the eastern portion of the wall which bounded the lower city on the north side (for further details on this point, see at Neh 3:3). המּשׁנה (= העיר משׁנה, Neh 11:9), the second part or district of the city, is the lower city upon the hill Acra (see at Kg2 22:14). Shebher, fragor, does not mean a cry of murder, but the breaking to pieces of what now exists, not merely the crashing fall of the buildings, like za‛ăqath shebher in Isa 15:5, the cry uttered at the threatening danger of utter destruction. In order to heighten the terrors of the judgment, there is added to the crying and howling of the men the tumult caused by the conquest of the city. "From the hills," i.e., "not from Zion and Moriah," but from the ills surrounding the lower city, viz., Bezetha, Gareb (Jer 31:39), and others. For Zion, the citadel of Jerusalem, is evidently thought of as the place where the howling of the men and the noise of the devastation, caused by the enemy pressing in from the north and north-west, are heard. Hammakhtēsh, the mortar (Pro 27:22), which is the name given in Jdg 15:19 to a hollow place in a rock, is used here to denote a locality in Jerusalem, most probably the depression which ran down between Acra on the west and Bezetha and Moriah on the east, as far as the fountain of Siloah, and is called by Josephus "the cheese-maker's valley," and by the present inhabitants el-Wâd, i.e., the valley, and also the mill-valley. The name "mortar" was probably coined by Zephaniah, to point to the fate of the merchants and men of money who lived there. They who dwell there shall howl, because "all the people of Canaan" are destroyed. These are not Canaanitish or Phoenician merchants, but Judaean merchants, who resembled the Canaanites or Phoenicians in their general business (see at Hos 12:8), and had grown rich through trade and usury. Netı̄l keseph, laden with silver.
The debauchees and rioters generally will also not remain free from punishment. Zep 1:12. "And at that time it will come to pass, that I will search Jerusalem with candles, and visit the men who lie upon their lees, who say in their heart, Jehovah does no good, and no evil. Zep 1:13. Their goods will become plunder, and their houses desolation: they will build houses, and not dwell (therein), and plant vineyards, and not drink their wine." God will search Jerusalem with candles, to bring out the irreligious debauchees out of their hiding-places in their houses, and punish them. The visitation is effected by the enemies who conquer Jerusalem. Jerome observes on this passage: "Nothing will be allowed to escape unpunished. If we read the history of Josephus, we shall find it written there, that princes and priests, and mighty men, were dragged even out of the sewers, and caves, and pits, and tombs, in which they had hidden themselves from fear of death." Now, although what is stated here refers to the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus, there can be no doubt that similar things occurred at the Chaldaean conquest. The expression to search with candles (cf. Luk 15:8) is a figure denoting the most minute search of the dwellings and hiding-places of the despisers of God. These are described as men who sit drawn together upon their lees (קפא, lit., to draw one's self together, to coagulate). The figure is borrowed from old wine, which has been left upon its lees and not drawn off, and which, when poured into other vessels, retains its flavour, and does not alter its odour (Jer 48:11), and denotes perseverance or confirmation in moral and religious indifference, "both external quiet, and carelessness, idleness, and spiritual insensibility in the enjoyment not only of the power and possessions bestowed upon them, but also of the pleasures of sin and the worst kinds of lust" (Marck). Good wine, when it remains for a long time upon its lees, becomes stronger; but bad wine becomes harsher and thicker. Shemârı̄m, lees, do not denote "sins in which the ungodly are almost stupefied" (Jerome), or "splendour which so deprives a man of his senses that there is nothing left either pure or sincere" (Calvin), but "the impurity of sins, which were associated in the case of these men with external good" (Marck). In the carnal repose of their earthly prosperity, they said in their heart, i.e., they thought within themselves, there is no God who rules and judges the world; everything takes place by chance, or according to dead natural laws. They did not deny the existence of God, but in their character and conduct they denied the working of the living God in the world, placing Jehovah on the level of the dead idols, who did neither good nor harm (Isa 41:23; Jer 10:5), whereby they really denied the being of God.
(Note: "For neither the majesty of God, nor His government or glory, consists in any imaginary splendour, but in those attributes which so meet together in Him that they cannot be severed from His essense. It is the property of God to govern the world, to take care of the human race, to distinguish between good and evil, to relieve the wretched, to punish all crimes, to restrain unjust violence. And if any one would deprive God of these, he would leave nothing but an idol." - Calvin.)
To these God will show Himself as the ruler and judge of the world, by giving up their goods (chēlâm, opes eorum) to plunder, so that they will experience the truth of the punishments denounced in His word against the despisers of His name (compare Lev 26:32-33; Deu 28:30, Deu 28:39, and the similar threats in Amo 5:11; Mic 6:15).
This judgment will not be delayed. To terrify the self-secure sinners out of their careless rest, Zephaniah now carries out still further the thought only hinted at in Zep 1:7 of the near approach and terrible character of the judgment. Zep 1:14. "The great day of Jehovah is near, near and hasting greatly. Hark! the day of Jehovah, bitterly crieth the hero there. Zep 1:15. A day of fury is this day, a day of anguish and pressure, a day of devastation and desert, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of cloud and cloudy night. Zep 1:16. A day of the trumpet and battering, over the fortified cities and high battlements." The day of Jehovah is called "the great day" with reference to its effects, as in Joe 2:11. The emphasis lies primarily, however, upon the qârōbh (is near), which is therefore repeated and strengthened by מהר מאד. מהר is not a piel participle with the Mem dropped, but an adjective form, which has sprung out of the adverbial use of the inf. abs. (cf. Ewald, 240, e). In the second hemistich the terrible character of this day is described. קול before yōm Yehōvâh (the day of Jehovah), at the head of an interjectional clause, has almost grown into an interjection (see at Isa 13:4). The hero cries bitterly, because he cannot save himself, and must succumb to the power of the foe. Shâm, adv. loci, has not a temporal signification even here, but may be explained from the fact that in connection with the day the prophet is thinking of the field of battle, on which the hero perishes while fighting. In order to depict more fully the terrible character of this day, Zephaniah crowds together in Zep 1:15 and Zep 1:16 all the words supplied by the language to describe the terrors of the judgment. He first of all designates it as yōm ‛ebhrâh, the day of the overflowing wrath of God (cf. Zep 1:18); then, according to the effect which the pouring out of the wrath of God produces upon men, as a day of distress and pressure (cf. Job 15:24), of devastation (שׁאה and משׁואה combined, as in Job 38:27; Job 30:3), and of the darkest cloudy night, after Joe 2:2; and lastly, in Zep 1:16, indicating still more closely the nature of the judgment, as a day of the trumpet and the trumpet-blast, i.e., on which the clangour of the war-trumpets will be heard over all the fortifications and castles, and the enemy will attack, take, and destroy the fortified places amidst the blast of trumpets (cf. Amo 2:2). Pinnōth are the corners and battlements of the walls of the fortifications (Ch2 26:15).
In the midst of this tribulation the sinners will perish without counsel or help. Zep 1:17. "And I make it strait for men, and they will walk like blind men, because they have sinned against Jehovah; and their blood will be poured out like dust, and their flesh like dung. Zep 1:18. Even their silver, even their gold, will not be able to save them on the day of Jehovah's fury, and in the fire of His wrath will the whole earth be devoured; for He will make an end, yea a sudden one, to all the inhabitants of the earth." והצרתי reminds of the threat of Moses in Deu 28:52, to which Zephaniah alluded in Zep 1:16. And in הלכוּ כּעורים the allusion to Deu 28:29 is also unmistakeable. To walk like the blind, i.e., to seek a way out of the trouble without finding one. This distress God sends, because they have sinned against Him, by falling away from Him through idolatry and the transgression of His commandments, as already shown in Zep 1:4-12. But the punishment will be terrible. Their blood will be poured out like dust. The point of comparison is not the quantity, as in Gen 13:16 and others, but the worthlessness of dust, as in Kg2 13:7 and Isa 49:23. The blood is thought as little of as the dust which is trodden under foot. Lechūm, which occurs again in Job 20:23, means flesh (as in the Arabic), not food. The verb shâphakh, to pour out, is also to be taken per zeugma in connection with this clause, though without there being any necessity to associate it with Sa2 20:10, and regard lechūm as referring to the bowels. For the fact itself, compare Kg1 14:10 and Jer 9:21. In order to cut off all hope on deliverance from the rich and distinguished sinners, the prophet adds in Zep 1:18 : Even with silver and gold will they not be able to save their lives. The enemy will give no heed to this (cf. Isa 13:17; Jer 4:30; Eze 7:19) in the day that the Lord will pour out His fury upon the ungodly, to destroy the whole earth with the fire of His wrathful jealousy (cf. Deu 4:24). By kol-hâ'ârets we might understand the whole of the land of Judah, if we looked at what immediately precedes it. But if we bear in mind that the threat commenced with judgment upon the whole earth (Zep 1:2, Zep 1:3), and that it here returns to its starting-point, to round off the picture, there can be no doubt that the whole earth is intended. The reason assigned for this threat in Zep 1:18 is formed after Isa 10:23; but the expression is strengthened by the use of אך־נבהלה instead of ונחרצה, the word round in Isaiah. Kâlâh: the finishing stroke, as in Isaiah l.c. (see at Nah 1:8). אך, only, equivalent to "not otherwise than," i.e., assuredly. נבהלה is used as a substantive, and is synonymous with behâlâh, sudden destruction, in Isa 65:23. The construction with 'ēth accus. as in Nah 1:8.
|
<urn:uuid:f0977690-fd81-484a-a7e5-f0270eae9418>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/cmt/kad/zep001.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00132-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.95579 | 6,831 | 2.546875 | 3 |
If water is good for plants, maybe other liquids can be beneficial as well. What does pouring soda pop on plants do? Are there any beneficial effects of soda on plant growth? If so, is there a difference between the effects of diet soda and plants and regular soda pop when used as fertilizer? Read on to learn more about pouring soda on plants.
Soda Pop as Fertilizer
Sugary soda pops are not the most ideal choices for use as fertilizer. Just like salt, sugar prevents plants from absorbing the water. Not what we’re looking for. However, plain carbonated water introduced for a short period of time does encourage plant growth over the use of tap water. Club soda or carbonated water contains the macronutrients carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorous, potassium sulfur, and sodium that are essential for healthy plant growth. The absorption of these nutrients encourages more rapid growth in the plant.
Therefore, pouring soda on plants, such as Classic Coca Cola, is inadvisable. Coke has a jaw dropping 3.38 grams of sugar per ounce, which would certainly kill the plant as it would certainly be unable to absorb water or nutrients. Other varieties of Coke such as Coke Zero, Coca Cola C2 and Coke Black have little to no sugar but neither do they seem to have any added benefits over tap water, and they are significantly more costly than tap water.
Sprite has almost as much sugar as Coca Cola and is, therefore, not useful as a soda pop fertilizer. It is, however, useful to lengthen the life of cut plants and flowers. I’ve heard 7-Up works just as well to increase the life for cut flowers in vases.
Effects of Soda on Plant Growth
Basically, the end conclusion is that sugary sodas do not aid in a plant’s development and, in fact, can retard the absorption of nutrients and water, resulting in death.
Diet sodas may be helpful in stimulating plant growth since the lack of sugar will allow the water molecules to move to the roots easily. However, the effects of diet soda and plants are generally negligible over tap water and, in my opinion, far more costly.
Club soda does seem to have some benefits due to its high concentration of nutrients favored for plant growth. Also, its lack of sugar allows the plant to absorb them into its root system.
While water is really the best choice for plants, carbonated club soda will certainly not harm your plants and may even result in larger, healthier, and more vividly green specimens.
|
<urn:uuid:a0505b4e-831c-4a87-8f6c-f0bb4ef6d376>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/soil-fertilizers/using-soda-on-plants.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392159.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00059-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.957054 | 528 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Energy Fundamentals and Future Outlook (短片:SJTU&ME or PDF-PDF Presentation)
Presented at Energy Research Institute (CCET), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU)
in Shanghai, China on 6 January 2009.
A modified version:
Energy Fundamentals and Applications (短片-OR: ZJU-CEU or PDF-PDF Presentation)
Presented at Institute for Thermal Power Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Clean Energy Utilization, Zhejiang University (ZJU)
in Hangzhou, China on 8 January 2009.
Professor M. Kostic,
Illinois University * More
about China Trip at
NOTE: If any PDF file you try to access appears blank, use <BACK then FORWARD> browser key to display it, or copy PDF file and then display it!
Energy is a fundamental property of a physical system and refers to its potential to maintain a material system identity or structure (forced field in space) and to influence changes (via forced-displacement interactions, i.e. systems' re-structuring) with other systems by imparting work (forced directional displacement) or heat (forced chaotic displacement/motion of a system molecular or related structures). Energy exists in many forms: electromagnetic (including light), electrical, magnetic, nuclear, chemical, thermal, and mechanical (including kinetic, elastic, gravitational, and sound); where, for example, electro-mechanical energy may be kinetic or potential, while thermal energy represents overall potential and chaotic motion energy of molecules and/or related micro structure. Energy is the ‘‘building block’’ and fundamental property of matter and space and, thus, the fundamental property of existence. Energy exchanges or transfers are associated with all processes (or changes) and, thus, are indivisible from time.
At present, most of the World energy consumption is supplied by the fossil fuels (about 85%). However, the proven fossil fuel reserves are limited, and if continued to be used at the present rates, they will be depleted in relatively short period of time. At present, a substantial amount of World electricity is obtained from nuclear and hydro energy (close to 20% each), respectively, and use of other renewable energy resources is increasing, namely geothermal, wind, biomass and solar, as well as development of alternative synthetic fuels, including hydrogen, etc. It is worth noting that some countries produce almost all or most of their electricity from hydro energy (like Norway, Brazil, New Zealand, Austria and Switzerland), and France produces most of its electricity from nuclear fuel (close to 80%). The nuclear fuel reserves are orders of magnitude higher than fossil fuels, and nuclear plants do not contribute to CO2 green-house pollution. Furthermore, advances in energy conversion and utilization technologies and increase in efficiency, including computerized control and management, contribute to energy conservation, increase in safety, and reduction of related environmental pollution. Actually, per capita energy use in the U.S. and other developed countries is being reduced in recent years. However, the increase of World’s population and continuous growth of many fast developing and very populated countries, like China, India and others, will influence continuous increase of the World energy consumption.
Energy conservation “with existing technology” has real immediate potential to SUBSTANTIALLY reduce energy dependence on fossil fuels until new, yet-to-be-invented technology is available long-run. For example, at present, the Toyota Prius, commercial hybrid car makes double mileage than classical comparable car (double efficiency, 46 mpg vs. 23 mpg), and commercial Combined-Cycle-Power-Plant (CCPP), combining gas-steam turbines cycles, is about two times more efficient than classical comparable power-plant (about 60% vs. 30%), all commercial products with existing technology - thus it could be done for any car and any power plant – energy consumption could be halved on global scale – two times less energy and pollution than current. We just have to make it a priority: invest resources in existing and new infrastructures and businesses and create new jobs to substantially improve equipment/product/process efficiencies in energy production and consumption sectors, while investing strategically in research and development.
The two things
are certain in not distant future: (1) the world population and their
living-standard expectations will substantially increase, and (2) fossil
fuels’ economical reserves, particularly oil and natural gas, will
substantially decrease. The difficulties that will face every nation and the
world in meeting energy needs over the next several decades will be more
challenging than what we anticipate now. The traditional solutions and
approaches will not solve the global energy problem. New knowledge, new
technology, and new living habits and expectations must be developed to
address both the quantity of energy needed to increase the standard of living
world-wide and to preserve and enhance the quality of our environment.
However, regardless of imminent shortages of fossil fuels, the outlook for
future energy needs is encouraging. There are many diverse and abundant energy
sources with promising future potentials, so that mankind should be able to
enhance its activities, standard and quality of living, by diversifying energy
sources, and by improving energy conversion and utilization efficiencies,
while at the same time increasing safety and reducing environmental pollution.
the life may be happier after
the fossil fuel era!
See the Energy Pyramid: www.kostic.niu.edu/energy/energy_pyramid.htm and also The Bridge*
Brief Biography of the Speaker (more at: www.kostic.niu.edu):
Professor Kostic's teaching and research interests are in Thermodynamics (a science of energy, the Mother of All Sciences), Fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer and related fluid-thermal-energy sciences; with emphases on physical comprehension and creative design, experimental methods with computerized data acquisition, and CFD simulation; including nanotechnology and development of new-hybrid, POLY-nanofluids with enhanced properties, as well as design, analysis and optimization of fluids-thermal-energy components and systems in power-conversion, utilizations, manufacturing and material processing. Dr. Kostic came to Northern Illinois University from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he supervised and conducted a two-year research program in heat transfer and viscoelastic fluid flows, after working for some time in industry.
Kostic received his B.S. degree with the University of Belgrade Award as the best graduated student in 1975. Then he worked as a researcher in thermal engineering and combustion at The Vinca Institute for Nuclear Sciences, which then hosted the headquarters of the International Center for Heat and Mass Transfer, and later taught at the University of Belgrade in ex-Yugoslavia, Serbia now (MFB). He came to the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1981 as a Fulbright grantee, where he received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in 1984. Subsequently, Dr. Kostic worked several years in industry. In addition, he spent three summers as an exchange visitor in England, West Germany, and the former Soviet Union.
Dr. Kostic has
received recognized professional fellowships and awards, including multiple
Marquis' "Who's Who in the World"
"Who's Who in Science and Engineering."; the
NASA Faculty Fellowship; Sabbatical Semester at
Guest Scientist; and the summer
Faculty Research Participation Program at
National Laboratory. He is a frequent reviewer of professional
works and books in Thermodynamics and Experimental Methods. Dr. Kostic is a
professional engineer (PE)
in Illinois and a member of the
Society of Rheology. He has a number of
publications in refereed journals, including invited
state-of-the-art chapters in the
Advances in Heat Transfer, Volume 19, and "Viscosity"
Measurement, Instrumentation and Sensors Handbook; as well as
invited reference articles:
Work, Power, and Energy in
Academic Press/Elsevier's Encyclopedia of Energy;
Extrusion Die Design in Dekker's Encyclopedia
of Chemical Processing; and
Energy: Global and Historical Background, and
Physics of Energy,
both in Taylor & Francis/CRC Press
Encyclopedia of Energy Engineering and Technology. Professor Kostic
is a member of the Graduate Faculty at
"Who's Who in the World" and "Who's Who in Science and Engineering."）并获得多项奖励资助，如富布莱特基金资助、美国宇航局职员奖金等。Kostic教授还是专业领域多个期刊的特约审稿人和特约撰稿人，曾发表出版多篇（部）论文和著作。
M. Kostic教授就任于美国北伊利诺斯大学（NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY）机械工程系，是热力学，流体力学和传热传质研究领域的知名学者，研究重点包括传热工艺设计、计算机数据采集和CFD模拟、聚合纳米材料技术、流体热系统能量转换利用的设计和优化等。
Kostic 教授1975年于Belgrade大学取得学士学位，并被评为优秀毕业生。在Vinca核科学研究所担任研究员后又任教于前南斯拉夫贝尔格莱德大学。1981年他作为Fulbright grantee就读于芝加哥伊利诺斯大学，1984年取得机械工程博士学位。其后，Kostic博士在工业界工作了几年，并作为交换访问者出访英国，西德，和前苏联。
M. Kostic教授是费米实验室的客座科学家，美国阿贡国家实验室研究参与计划成员，美国机械工程师协会、美国工程教育协会以及美国物理学会流变学协会会员，曾入选马奎斯世界名人录和科学工程名人录（Marquis' "Who's Who in the World" and "Who's Who in Science and Engineering."）并获得多项奖励资助，如富布莱特基金资助、美国宇航局职员奖金等。Kostic教授还是专业领域多个期刊的特约审稿人和特约撰稿人，曾发表出版多篇（部）论文和著作。
|
<urn:uuid:671c0c25-95d4-4725-a720-913e71609ae7>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.kostic.niu.edu/energy/energy_fundamentals_and_future_outlook.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00165-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.831913 | 2,860 | 2.875 | 3 |
Children’s grasp of history is under threat as schools cut the amount of lesson time devoted to the subject, ministers were warned today.
Research shows that rising numbers of pupils are receiving just two years of compulsory lessons during secondary education instead of the recommended three because of pressure on school timetables.
According to figures, many schools fail to offer history as a discreet subject at all – often merging it with geography to form generic “humanities” lessons.
It also emerged that some head teachers ban pupils from choosing history at GCSE-level amid fears they will fail to gain good grades – damaging schools’ league table rankings.
The disclosure is made in a study by the Historical Association that will raise fresh fears over the future of the subject in English state schools.
It follows the publication of separate figures this summer showing that the overall proportion of pupils studying the subject in state comprehensives dropped by almost a fifth under Labour. more
|
<urn:uuid:02a3b65c-21cb-458e-ada7-3d810e7af474>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://thecomingcrisis.blogspot.com/2011/09/history-lessons-squeezed-out-of-crowded.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00117-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.969324 | 191 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Temporal range: Carboniferous (Middle Mississippian) to Recent
|A baby tortoise leaves its amniotic egg.|
The 'invention' of the cleidoic egg, and its embryonic membranes, is the main reason why the eggs of an amniote do not need to be laid in water.
Thus, as distinct from the amphibians, amniotes are truly terrestrial. Secondarily, many reptiles and mammals returned to water, and mammals bear the young live, as do some reptile groups. This evolutionary flexibility is much less common in amphibians.
Evolutionary history[change | change source]
The first amniotes, such as Casineria, looked like small lizards. They evolved about 340 million years ago, in the Mississippian or Lower Carboniferous. Their eggs could survive out of the water. This let amniotes move into environments that had less water. The amniotes moved across the Earth. Most vertebrates that live on land are amniotes, as are most of the air-breathing animals of the sea.
The oldest known fossil synapsid is Protoclepsydrops from about 320 million years ago, while the oldest known sauropsid is probably Paleothyris, in the order Captorhinida, from the Middle Pennsylvanian epoch (about 306–312 million years ago).
Eggs[change | change source]
One can assume the ancestors of the amniotes laid their eggs in moist places, as such modest-sized animals would not have difficulty finding depressions under fallen logs or other suitable places in the ancient forests, and dry conditions were probably not the main reason why the soft shell emerged.
In fish and amphibians there is only one inner membrane, also called an embryonic membrane. In amniotes the inner anatomy of the egg has evolved further and new structures have developed to take care of the gas exchanges between the embryo and the atmosphere, as well as dealing with the waste problems. To grow a thicker and tougher shell required new ways to supply the embryo with oxygen, as diffusion alone was not enough.
After the egg developed these structures, further sophistication allowed amniotes to lay much bigger eggs in much drier habitats. Bigger eggs allowed for bigger offspring, and bigger adults could produce bigger eggs, so amniotes grew bigger than their ancestors. Real growth was not possible, however, until they stopped relying on small invertebrates as their main food source and started to eat plants or other vertebrates, or returned to the water. New habits and heavier bodies meant further evolution for the amniotes, both in behavior and anatomy.
There are three main lines of amniotes, which may be distinguished by the structure of the skull and in particular the number of temporal fenestrae (openings) behind the eye. In anapsids (turtles) there are none, in synapsids (mammals and their extinct relatives) there is one, and in most diapsids (non-anapsid reptiles, including dinosaurs and birds) there are two.
The skeletal remains of amniotes can be identified from their Labyrinthodont ancestors by their having at least two pairs of sacral ribs, a sternum in the pectoral girdle (some amniotes have lost it) and an astragalus bone in the ankle.
Classification[change | change source]
A simplified phylogeny of tetrapods goes like this:
Traditional taxonomy[change | change source]
Related pages[change | change source]
References[change | change source]
- Mammalian embryos have the same structures.
- Stewart J.R. 1997. Morphology and evolution of the egg of oviparous amniotes. In: S. Sumida and K. Martin (eds) Amniote origins: completing the transition to land. London: Academic Press. 291-326
- Romer A.S. & Parsons T.S. 1985. The vertebrate body. 6th ed, Saunders, Philadelphia.
- Gauthier J; Kluge A.G. and Rowe T. 1988. The early evolution of the Amniota. In Benton M.J. (ed) The phylogeny and classification of the tetrapods, volume 1: amphibians, reptiles, birds. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 103-155
- Clack Jennifer A. 2002. Gaining Ground: the origin and evolution of tetrapods. Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN. ISBN 0-253-34054-3
Other websites[change | change source]
|Wikispecies has information on: Amniota.|
|
<urn:uuid:f4453722-23b1-48e5-abd8-0b63725041a8>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amniote
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00048-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.88564 | 995 | 4.03125 | 4 |
October 14th, 2011 by Webmaster
On Friday, October 7, 2011, Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 376, the California Shark Protection Act into law. As of July 1, 2013, it will be illegal to possess, sell, trade and/or distribute shark fins in California. This effectively shuts down the shark fin trade in the U.S. Pacific as California joins Oregon, Washington and Hawaii in banning shark finning. The California Shark Protection Act passed both houses of the Legislature with bi-partisan support.
Every year, tens of millions of sharks are killed for the tasteless, “luxury” shark fin soup. This unnecessary dish has been a major contributor to the near collapse of many shark species world-wide. As the top predator in the marine food web, sharks maintain the natural balance in our oceans. Without them, other ocean species will disappear and ocean ecosystems will collapse. Scientists are warning that the massive decline of sharks is having a devastating effect on the marine ecosystem and they say that an estimate 34% of the world’s sharks are near extinction, and almost all shark species are in decline.
IDA would like to thank Governor Brown and all the legislators who voted for this ban. California is the 2nd largest consumer of shark fin in the world but will now be a leader in the global effort to end the practice of finning and in the preservation of the ocean ecosystem for generations to come.
|
<urn:uuid:8536471b-c7ea-49a8-a679-6091476eb17a>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.idausa.org/victory-for-sharks/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00136-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.930341 | 290 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Friday, February 22, 2013
This was important to my practice because I felt like I had lost touch with what the kids were actually learning and if I was teaching to the bigger picture objective of the unit. Kids typically have a lot of schema on this topic and I wanted to check in to see where I needed to go. I also needed to find out if there were reteaching opportunities.
This impacted my work because I felt that the kids were right on track. I was surprise by the details that students had picked up along the way. It was also interesting how many kids wrote their headlines as questions to express their wonderings or misconceptions. One student wrote in response to our hatching and raising triops, "Triops... Why Are They All Dying?" This lead to a great discussion in the third grade about the scientific process and that everything does not always go as planned. What if you set up an experiment with the triops and in the middle of your observations, they die? What do you do next? What can you conclude from this? What could be a reasonable hypothesis for why they are dying? Another student wrote, "Only Two of Nine Seeds Sprouted, Why?"
I think this was a good thinking break for my students. We were "doing" a lot. We were observing four different organisms in my classroom (triops, mealworms, caterpillars and sweet pea plants) and this was a good break in the "doing" so we could reflect on why we were doing it and to reset for what we were going to do next.
In thinking about how I will use this routine in the future, it reminds me of the importance of slowing down. I get caught up in worrying about how I am possibly going to get everything done, but it is so important to slow down to make sure the learning is on target and that we all know where we are going next. There is a difference between the amount that I am teaching, and the amount the students are learning. Sometimes I teach like mad and, upon reflection, wonder if they are really learning what I had intended. I was also impressed with the output of the students. This was a fairly simple routine and yet their little headlines were very profound.
|
<urn:uuid:8439b4ea-9f5d-4afa-916a-29a46a329dfb>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://visiblethinkingroutines.blogspot.com/2013/02/headlines.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397428.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00190-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.992087 | 455 | 2.921875 | 3 |
In 1809, thanksgiving ceremonies and feasts across Britain ushered George III into his fiftieth year as king. This was the first British celebration of a royal jubilee and set the tone for the five that have followed since: processions, fireworks, construction of monuments, the striking of special coins and medals, and, of course, the sale of commemorative mugs. Queen Victoria marked her golden and diamond jubilees in 1887 and 1897 amid throngs of patriotic subjects from all over the world, and celebrations were also held for George V’s silver jubilee in 1935. Following the festivities in 1977 and 2002, Queen Elizabeth II is the first British monarch ever to celebrate her third jubilee, as she begins her seventh decade on the throne.
Judith Millidge describes the handful of British royal jubilees across 200 years, examines how they have been commemorated, their similarities and differences, and the myriad souvenir products that have accompanied them.
The National Jubilee, 1809
Queen Victoria’s Jubilees
The Silver Jubilee of George V, 1935
The Jubilees of Elizabeth II
Places to Visit
This product has not yet been reviewed.
|
<urn:uuid:73e8942d-3199-464d-b50c-0d6ea1c65a33>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://bookshop.nationalarchives.gov.uk/9780747811671/Royal-Jubilees/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00017-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.94056 | 251 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Ten years ago, the world was confronted by a country whose suspected nuclear weapons program was causing acute concern. The international community expended considerable time and effort on inducing Iraq to comply with UN-mandated measures designed to provide assurance that Baghdad was not developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
During the summer of 2002, Iraq and the United Nations discussed possible terms for resuming inspections and monitoring of Iraqi weapons programs. On September 16, Iraq agreed to re-admit UN inspectors into the country and subsequently began discussions with the UN on practical inspection details. The United States and United Kingdom, however, pushed the UN Security Council to adopt a new resolution governing Iraq’s disarmament, arguing that the existing resolutions did not provide the inspectors with adequate authority. On November 8, the council adopted Resolution 1441, which required the Iraqi government to complete a series of disarmament requirements contained in previous council resolutions, the first of which was adopted in 1991 following the Persian Gulf War.
These events took place against a backdrop of indications from U.S. officials, including President George W. Bush, that Washington might use military force against Iraq to end what they portrayed as the threat posed by Baghdad’s nonconventional weapons.
Despite Baghdad’s subsequent cooperation with UN weapons inspectors, who found no evidence of ongoing prohibited weapons programs, the United States led an invasion of Iraq in March 2003 without council approval. The world subsequently learned that Baghdad had destroyed its nonconventional weapons and related programs following the 1991 war.
Thus, the UN disarmed Iraq, but did not prevent a war. A partial explanation for that result lies in three elements of the Security Council process: the erosion of international support for sanctions, the mismatch between the resolutions’ goals and mandates, and the circumvention of the council process by the United States and the United Kingdom. These factors warrant consideration by the international community as it continues to debate the proper course of action regarding nuclear programs of concern.
Following the 1991 war, the Security Council adopted a series of resolutions, beginning with Resolution 687, that required Iraq to declare its programs for nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, as well as missiles with ranges exceeding 150 kilometers, and to destroy the weapons and related materials under UN monitoring (see box, page 46). The resolutions also required Baghdad to accept an ongoing UN monitoring regime to prevent Iraqi reconstitution of its prohibited weapons programs.
The story of Iraq’s interference with the inspectors during the 1990s has been told in detail elsewhere. In brief, Iraq interfered with the inspections by, for example, lying to UN inspectors about its WMD programs and destroying weapons and related materials without proper UN supervision. Baghdad decided to cooperate with inspectors in 1995, but never fulfilled all the requirements of the Security Council resolutions.
Iraq continued to exhibit inconsistent cooperation with the inspectors, whom the UN withdrew in December 1998 shortly before the United States and the United Kingdom conducted air strikes on suspected Iraqi weapons facilities. For several years afterward, the council struggled unsuccessfully to induce Baghdad to accept renewed weapons inspections. Iraq finally agreed to admit inspectors in response to Resolution 1441.
The November 2002 resolution gave Iraq “a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations” under relevant council resolutions. The resolution required Baghdad to give the inspectors, whom the resolution provided with enhanced authority, a “currently accurate, full, and complete declaration of all aspects” of the country’s WMD programs and to grant the inspectors “immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access to any and all” locations and personnel.
By mid-March 2003, the inspectors had not yet completed their task, and Iraq had not fully complied with the requirements of Resolution 1441. Yet, Baghdad had admitted UN inspectors and allowed them to operate freely, albeit after some initial resistance; provided them with information on its past WMD programs; and begun destroying its al Samoud-2 missiles. Moreover, the inspection leaders told the Security Council shortly before the invasion that they needed only a short time to complete their tasks. Nevertheless, on March 19, 2003, the United States led an invasion of Iraq.
A September 2004 report from the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), the U.S.-led task force charged with coordinating the search for Iraqi nonconventional weapons, as well as a 2006 CIA report, makes clear that the combination of sanctions and inspections imposed by the Security Council beginning in 1990 and 1991, respectively, prevented Iraq from reconstituting its programs to develop such weapons. “The compounding economic, military, and infrastructure damage caused by sanctions—not to mention their effect on internal opinion in Iraq—focused Saddam [Hussein] by the mid-90s on the need to lift sanctions before any thought of resuming WMD development could be entertained,” the ISG report said.
Until the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, however, Security Council and worldwide public support for the sanctions was eroding, partly because of concerns about the sanctions’ impact on Iraqi civilians. Moreover, some governments were circumventing council-imposed prohibitions on the sale of Iraqi oil, and Baghdad was importing weapons-related materials. Iraq was pursuing what the ISG report described as a strategy to “outlast the containment policy of the United States imposed through the UN sanctions.”
Indeed, the Bush administration was sufficiently concerned that it, along with the United Kingdom, began a campaign in the spring of 2001 to persuade the Security Council to expand the range of goods that Iraq could import. The erosion of sanctions contributed to some observers’ claims that the international community could not contain Hussein’s suspected weapons ambitions.
Iraq initially defied the disarmament requirements of Resolution 687. Shortly after the inspections began in 1991, Hussein chose to withhold information about the country’s WMD programs. Later that year, Iraq destroyed illicit weapons and related materials outside the inspectors’ presence in an effort to maintain the capacity to develop chemical and nuclear weapons in the future. These unilateral destruction efforts were inconsistent with Resolution 687 and greatly complicated the council’s ability to determine that Iraq had actually destroyed the weapons.
In 1995, Iraq decided to “cease efforts” to retain nonconventional weapons and comply with the inspections, according to the 2006 CIA report. After these 1995 efforts were met with “added UN scrutiny and mistrust,” however, Hussein’s regime believed that “inspections were politically motivated and would not lead to the end of sanctions,” said the CIA report, which added that Iraq viewed concerns about nonconventional weapons as a “pretense to bring about regime change.” Consequently, Baghdad turned to “illicit economic efforts to end its isolation, eliminate sanctions,” and protect civilian infrastructure that also could be used in illicit weapons production. These actions “increased suspicions that Iraq continued to hide” nonconventional weapons, according to the report.
These suspicions, coupled with Iraq’s failure to allow the inspectors to verify the destruction of its nonconventional weapons, Baghdad’s subsequent ejection of the inspectors, and its approximately four-year refusal to re-admit them, created an information vacuum that understandably was filled by suspicion. In some quarters, this suspicion evolved into firm convictions that Iraq still had active WMD programs in 2002.
The failure of the UN-formulated incentive structure—the end of sanctions in return for verified disarmament and follow-on monitoring—contributed to this outcome because Iraqi disarmament did not equate with Iraqi compliance and because the Security Council did not effectively adapt to Iraq’s partial compliance and the changed status of the country’s illicit weapons programs.
Security Council Resolutions on Iraq
The following list summarizes the relevant UN Security Council resolutions adopted following the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
RESOLUTION 687: CEASE-FIRE TERMS (APRIL 3, 1991)
Established the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) to verify that Iraq complied with these requirements and called for placing all weapons-grade nuclear material under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) control “for custody and removal” with UNSCOM assistance.
Required the UN secretary-general, with the cooperation of UNSCOM and the IAEA, to develop plans for the “future ongoing monitoring and verification of Iraq’s compliance” with the ban on nonconventional weapons and certain missiles.
Maintained the economic embargo against Iraq established by Resolution 661 in 1990 after Iraq invaded Kuwait. Specified that the Security Council would lift the embargo when the council agreed that Iraq had met all its disarmament obligations.
RESOLUTION 715: ONGOING MONITORING AND VERIFICATION (OCTOBER 11, 1991)
RESOLUTION 986: CREATION OF THE OIL-FOR-FOOD PROGRAM (APRIL 14, 1995)
RESOLUTION 1284: CREATION OF UNMOVIC (DECEMBER 17, 1999)
RESOLUTION 1409: SMART SANCTIONS (MAY 14, 2002)
Circumventing the Security Council
The adoption of Resolution 1441 and Iraq’s subsequent decision to admit UN inspectors provided an opportunity to resolve reasonable concerns about Iraq’s suspected WMD programs. It now is known that Hussein ordered his military to comply with the inspections. Indeed, as noted above, Iraq had mostly complied with the resolution’s provisions by the time of the U.S.-led invasion. Moreover, the inspection leaders reported to the Security Council in March 2003 that their teams had found no biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons in Iraq and that resolving the “remaining disarmament tasks” would take only “months.” That month, some Security Council members, such as France, proposed measures for improving the inspections process in lieu of military action.
It has long been clear that the Bush administration planned to invade Iraq regardless of whether Baghdad complied with Resolution 1441’s disarmament requirements. Indeed, Washington’s disdain for the Security Council process was evident before UN inspectors even entered Iraq. For example, a White House spokesman claimed on November 18, 2002, that Iraq had violated the resolution by shooting at U.S. planes that were enforcing no-fly zones over Iraq. Although the resolution prohibited Baghdad from taking “hostile acts” against any UN member state “taking action to uphold any [Security] Council resolution,” the zones had never been authorized by the council. Even the British government said the zones were not supported by the resolutions.
Moreover, U.S. officials claimed, inaccurately, that U.S. intelligence contradicted the inspectors’ findings. For example, Secretary of State Colin Powell, citing unnamed intelligence sources, stated on March 5, 2003, before the invasion, that Iraq was evading UN inspections by moving banned chemical and biological materials. He dismissed Iraq’s destruction of its al Samoud missiles, asserting that Baghdad had ordered “the continued [covert] production” of such missiles. Notably, the United States withheld intelligence from the inspectors.
Lastly, at least some Bush administration officials wished to overthrow Iraq’s government. The administration had a “menu of arguments” for invading Iraq, such as removing the regime in order to end the government’s human rights violations and to “score a geopolitical victory,” Richard Haass, the Department of State’s policy planning director at the time of the invasion, said during a television interview on September 5, 2003. Iraqi compliance with Resolution 1441 presumably would not have satisfied these goals because Hussein would have remained in power.
The Security Council failed in its mission to eliminate Iraq’s illicit weapons programs peacefully. The resolutions did not convince Hussein’s government that it would be rewarded for compliance, and the sanctions were losing their ability to compel such compliance. In addition, the council did not adapt its compliance mechanism to the uncertainty created by Baghdad’s unilateral weapons destruction, which, although ill considered and illegal, did eliminate Iraq’s illicit weapons. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to believe that the Security Council could have devised a method for resolving this situation, had the United States and United Kingdom allowed the process to continue.
One lesson that can be drawn from the Iraq experience is that UN-mandated sanctions and inspections can effectively manage international concerns about illicit nonconventional weapons programs, but the durability and effectiveness of these tools depend on a variety of factors, including the support of council members, cooperation by the target country, and an incentive structure that properly aligns means and ends.
The Iraq experience also suggests that Security Council resolutions may have a better chance of succeeding if they can adapt to changed circumstances. Maintaining flexibility may be necessary in order to resolve satisfactorily whatever WMD issues may be of concern, especially if the target government has satisfied some or all of the resolution’s goals, even while failing to follow the mandated procedures.
As the international community continues to employ and refine sanctions and inspections to help address the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, it is worth noting that Iraq is the only other case in which the Security Council has placed sanctions on a country for reasons relating to proliferation of nonconventional weapons. One also could consider the major powers’ relationships with India and Pakistan following those governments’ 1998 nuclear tests. The Security Council responded to those tests by adopting Resolution 1172, which imposed no sanctions but required India and Pakistan to end their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Although both governments have continued those programs, the United States and other governments have not imposed sanctions for more than a relatively brief period and overall have maintained and increased ties with them. Governments, such as those of Iran and North Korea, have surely considered all three of these cases. Perhaps they have learned that noncompliance, rather than its opposite, may yield favorable results.
3. Directorate of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, “Misreading Intentions: Iraq’s Reaction to Inspections Created Picture of Deception,” Iraq WMD Retrospective Series, January 5, 2006, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20120905/CIA-Iraq.pdf; Charles Duelfer “Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD,” September 30, 2004, https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/index.html.
8. Security Council Resolution 1284, adopted in late 1999, may have further obscured the process. The resolution stated that, following Iraq’s compliance with “key remaining disarmament tasks,” the council would “suspend” sanctions for 120-day periods, renewable by the council. UN Security Council, S/RES/1284, December 17, 1999.
9. Iraqi military leaders “were instructed at a meeting in December 2002 to ‘cooperate completely’ with the inspectors, believing full cooperation was Iraq’s best hope for sanctions relief in the face of U.S. provocation.” Duelfer, “Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI.”
10. Hans Blix, “Oral Introduction of the 12th Quarterly Report of UNMOVIC,” March 7, 2003, http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/SC7asdelivered.htm; Mohamed ElBaradei, “The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq: An Update,” March 7, 2003, http://www.un.org/News/dh/iraq/elbaradei-7mar03.pdf
11. For example, the British Secret Intelligence Service chief noted in July 2002 after meeting with U.S. officials in Washington that the Bush administration intended to overthrow Hussein based on the justification that the regime had illicit weapons programs and had supported terrorism. See Memorandum to David Manning from Matthew Rycroft, Iraq: Prime Minister’s Meeting, 23 July, July 23, 2002, http://downingstreetmemo.com/memotext.html
14. Memorandum to Prime Minister Tony Blair from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, “Iraq: Legal Background,” March 8, 2002. http://downingstreetmemo.com/iraqlegalbacktext.html
15. The CIA acknowledged this in a letter to Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.). Letter from Stanley M. Moskowitz to Senator Carl Levin, January 20, 2004, http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_cr/cia012004.pdf
|
<urn:uuid:b4caea5d-09c3-464f-83f1-72980c0c8dd5>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2013_01-02/Looking-Back-Iraq-Disarmament-Without-Resolution
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393442.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00055-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.950865 | 3,466 | 2.75 | 3 |
AP U.S. History Lesson Plans...
The reform movements that swept through American society after 1820 were reactions to a range of factors: the Second Great Awakening, the transformation of the American economy, industrialization, urbanization, and lingering agendas of the revolutionary period. As a way of introducing students to the variety of reform movements, this lesson looks at two reform movements: antislavery and women's rights. In addition to learning about the beliefs and motivations of each group, we will seek the cultural connections among the various reform impulses.
- To understand the fundamental beliefs of abolitionism and the range of antislavery positions.
- To understand the activities of women of different racial and social groups within the women's rights movement in antebellum America.
- To explore the use of visual and audio sources as a means to understand reform movements in antebellum America.
In order to get a sense for abolitionists and their debates, both among themselves and with others, students should begin with readings about the American Colonization Society (ACS). They might first read Henry Noble Sherwood's 1917 article on the origins of colonization in The Journal of Negro History. The Africans in America Resource Bank Colonization site includes the ACS 1820 memorial to Congress, as well as several documents by free-black ACS members. A Web site devoted to the Nineteenth Century in Print contains the full text of some interesting, less-well-known works relating to colonization. Daguerreotypes of ACS members are available at the Library of Congress's American Memory site. Students might also want to look at another Library of Congress site with images of pamphlets, letters, and membership certificates, as well as other images, including important manuscript records. A site devoted to other abolitionists' criticism of colonization includes the famous 1834 debate at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati. You should encourage students to study the 1839 constitution adopted by the ACS for the Commonwealth of Liberia, in order to make a direct comparison with William Lloyd Garrison's "Declaration of Sentiments."
Henry Noble Sherwood's 1917 Article
ACS 1820 Memorial to Congress
Nineteenth Century in Print Web Site
Daguerreotypes of ACS Members
Library of Congress ACS Special Collection
Abolitionists' Criticism of Colonization
William Lloyd Garrison's "Declaration of Sentiments"
The gradualism of colonization was swept aside by calls for immediate emancipation. To convey a sense of this transformation, ask students to read John G. Whittier's account of the founding convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The site maintained by Africans in America on William Lloyd Garrison and the American Anti-Slavery Society has links to articles from The Liberator, including an editorial on David Walker's Appeal and a letter from Harriet Beecher Stowe. Students should also read Garrison's inaugural editorial. Ask students to account for colonization's failure to ignite the public, despite the support of national leaders like Thomas Jefferson and Henry Clay. You might also ask students to draw connections between reformist impulses and Garrison's absolutist immediatism. For further information, students could consult the Nineteenth Century in Print site, which includes interesting minor texts relating to antislavery in general, or the Abolition and Slavery Web site, which contains a wide variety of resources, including background articles, slave narratives, landmark legislation, and court cases.
John G. Whittier's Account of American Anti-Slavery Society Founding Convention
William Lloyd Garrison
Garrison's Inaugural Editorial
Nineteenth Century in Print Web Site
Abolition and Slavery Web Site
Just as there were prominent African Americans in the colonization movement, black voices also emerged in other antislavery groups. In order to illustrate the absence of consensus, even within the black community, you should ask students to read the following documents. They might begin with these excerpts from David Walker's 1829 Appeal . . .to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly to Those of the United States of America. An online version of Frederick Douglass's Narrative is also available at Berkeley. Web images of Douglass's two newspapers allow students to make a comparison between Douglass's North Star and Garrison's Liberator. Two of Douglass's public addresses are available. For an interesting compare-and-contrast exercise, students could read both the autobiography of Samuel Ringgold Ward, another fugitive-slave-turned-abolitionist, and the Douglass Narrative. You should visit this site for more full texts of major abolitionist writings, including Reverend William Goodell's Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A History of the Great Struggle in Both Hemispheres; with a View of the Slavery Question in the United States.
David Walker's 1829 Appeal
Frederick Douglass's Narrative
Image of Douglass's North Star Newspaper
Image of Frederick Douglass' [sic] Paper
Autobiography of Samuel Ringgold Ward
Major Abolitionist Writings
The scripturally argued An Anti-Slavery Manual by Reverend John G. Fee might provide an effective counterpoint to Douglass, Ward, and Goodell, as well as to Garrison's antislavery positions. The images in the Anti-Slavery and Civil War section of the LOC's Printed Ephemera Collection help trace the activities of the antislavery movement. Of particular use is a printer's specimen book showing various "stages" in a slave's realistic or hoped-for life: a free man in Africa, a man for sale, a runaway, married, and a fugitive. This specimen page would be a great primary source around which you could frame a discussion over the respective goals of colonization and immediatist abolition. Finally, ask students how black and white abolitionists differed.
Reverend John G. Fee's An Anti-Slavery Manual
LOC's Printed Ephemera Collection Anti-Slavery and Civil War Section
Printers' Specimen Book
For yet another set of perspectives, students should also read the works of women in the antislavery movement, such as Angelina Grimké's Appeal to the Christian Women of the South. The Online Archive of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women's Writings Web site has several works by Lydia Maria Child. A selection of her letters has been collected by the Women's History Web site. The experience of a black, female abolitionist is represented in Olive Gilbert's 1850 Narrative of Sojourner Truth. The Sojourner Truth Archives Web site includes several secondary works about her; furthermore, students may look at a facsimile of the 1850 Narrative at the Digital Schomburg African American Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century Web site. A good student exercise after reading Gilbert's Narrative would be to construct the ways in which Gilbert's narration has changed both Sojourner Truth's presentation and reception, including the current arguments over the famous phrase, "Ar'n't I a woman?"
Angelina Grimké's Appeal to the Christian Women of the South
Online Archive of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women's Writings Web Site
Lydia Marie Child's Letters
Olive Gilbert's 1850 Narrative of Sojourner Truth
19th Century American Women Writers Web
Narrative of Sojourner Truth
The e-text library maintained by the University of Virginia's Mid-Century Woman's Rights Movement site contains the "Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions" proclaimed at Seneca Falls, as well as pieces by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Emily Collins, Sojourner Truth, and Lucy Stone. You can find information on the interactions between women and men and among various reform impulses at the Women and Social Movements in the United States 1830-1930 Web site. This site maintains folders containing documents and topical discussions about such subjects as the appeal of moral reform to women, Lucretia Mott's combined interest in antislavery and women's rights, and men's support for women's rights. Julia Louisa Lovejoy's Selected Letters from Kansas (1855-1863) gives us the perspective of an abolitionist pioneer in Kansas. Following up on the exercises in Part 1, students should compare the Seneca Falls "Declaration of Sentiments" with Garrison's AAAS "Declaration of Sentiments." How and why was the Seneca Falls document modeled on Garrison's? What further connections can be made with the "Declaration" proclaimed in Philadelphia in 1776? The essays at the Women and Social Movements site should work as springboards to a discussion about the connections between the various reform movements.
Mid-Century Woman's Rights Movement Web Site
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1775-2000
Julia Louisa Lovejoy's Selected Letters from Kansas
The exercises in this section have been selected to encourage students to apply their knowledge of antebellum reform to popular images and songs of the times.
Encourage students interested in the connections between women, abolitionism, and women's rights to look at the printer's specimen type of a supplicant female slave.
Printer's Specimen Type
You could ask students to brainstorm a list of all social problems related in any way to alcohol. Then, the students could, in large or small groups, compare and contrast their lists with any of the following temperance cartoons:
"The Way of Good and Evil"
"A Case of Infectious Fever"
"A Swell Head"
"Tree of Intemperance"
The songs of Henry Clay Work (1832-1884) offer another approach to the interconnections among reform movements. Work wrote popular songs, several of which enjoyed wide currency in his times; one, "Marching through Georgia," remains widely known today. Have your students read or listen to Work's songs; the site holds audio versions as well as the words. Have students pay particular attention to the following songs: "Marching Through Georgia," "Babylon Is Fallen," "Kingdom Coming," and "Come Home, Father." These songs conflate several reform impulses, especially temperance and antislavery. How are these songs representative of the reformers? How do they combine more than one impulse?
Songs of Henry Clay Work
You might want to print out the words to these songs and lead sing-alongs, accompanied by the synthesizer score provided by the site.
AP U.S. History Lesson Plans...
|
<urn:uuid:fe9fee53-322b-4ebc-a43b-f6438da2c86b>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/members/courses/teachers_corner/22541.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00121-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.925961 | 2,173 | 4.03125 | 4 |
This course will introduce students to applied anthropology methods for doing research that can change policy and practices. Examples of policy and practice change include clinical practices in health care settings, social welfare policy, and legal advocacy. Students will be trained in multiple anthropology research methods, including brief participant-observation, qualitative interviewing, life story interviewing, and ethnographic content analysis of textual material. Students will also learn how to use NVivo software for analyzing qualitative and some quantitative data from their field notes, interviews, and analysis of popular articles/websites. Finally, students will practice writing products for non-academic audiences, such as policymakers, the media, and the general public. The course will emphasize using anthropology research methods to address real-world problems in policy and practice. Students will each complete their own research project and presentation, on a topic of their own choosing, with support from course faculty. The course will be taught by an anthropologist-physician with experience applying qualitative research methods to address health and policy issues.
Benjamin Franklin Seminars
This course that brings together the recent literature from the social sciences and health sciences as well as other disciplines to explore how philanthropy impacts health care in society at large, and in particular, the health of the donor and volunteer. Furthermore, the course will include an “ideas in action” component. Students will examine philanthropic donations at work in Philadelphia, as well as engage in philanthropic activities alongside the instructor. The course consists of three parts:
Part 1) Philanthropy and Healthcare in Society: The US has a long tradition of channeling philanthropic resources to augment healthcare in society, as the demand for health care exceeds the capacity of individuals or government to fully satisfy the demand. Philanthropic resources, which include both time and money, are emerging as significant means by which the capacity of the healthcare sector is fortified; these include resources for service providers, health care researchers, and health care policy advocates. To understand the heterogeneous impact of philanthropy on healthcare, this part of the course will examine the “who, what, when, where, and how” of philanthropic inputs into healthcare and their impact.
Part 2) Health Effects on the Individual Philanthropist: The second part of the course examines individuals who give of their time and money. From decreased mortality to better health outcomes, researchers have carefully documented the effects on individual givers. Recent findings from the health sciences also show what mechanisms might be involved in an individual’s psychology and physiology that can explain the beneficial health effects of philanthropic behavior. We will examine recent experimental research along these lines provides further evidence along these lines.
Part 3) Ideas in Action: The course will include three specific volunteering events and do so by selecting a healthcare related organization of their choice that uses philanthropic resources. Students will gain first-hand experience as volunteers (and if feasible, as donors) and discuss their experiences with philanthropy in class presentations and relate them to the course content.
Homer's Iliad presents a dark and difficult vision of the world, but one that nonetheless inspires. Casual cruelty, divine caprice, and savage violence test heroes and lesser folk and provoke a reckoning with the stark realities of both human vulnerability and capability. It inspires kind of terror, but still also somehow provides a kind of comfort, albeit one whose character seems almost beyond comprehension. By a close and careful reading of Homer's text, along with some reflections on more contemporary wars, including the current ones, we will try to examine these issues with one eye on the past and one on the present. Our goal will be to achieve some further understanding of war and human experience.
Before the universities established public-service programs in the twentieth century, many Americans prepared themselves for public life by studying Greek and Latin authors in school and college. In this course, using English translations, students survey an eighteenth-century classical curriculum and trace its influence in the political activity of Madison and others who guided the development of American governmental institutions.
An introduction to game theory and its applications to Economic analysis. The course will provide a theoretical overview of modern game theory, emphasizing common themes in the analysis of strategic behavior in different social science contexts. The economic applications will be drawn from different areas including trade, corporate strategy and public policy.
Although Shakespeare's plays are usually studied as high canonical literature, they were originally written as playscripts designed for the entertainment of a disorderly, socially heterogeneous crowd and the financial profit of the players. This course will attempt to resituate the plays in their original theatrical setting. We will study a representative selection of Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, and histories (to be chosen by the class at the first meeting) along with background material on Shakespeare's theater and his culture. There will be one or two hour-exams, one or two short papers, and a final exam. In addition, students are expected to meet in study groups outside of class and to make thoughtful, well-informed contributions to the class listserv and discussions.
Epistolary fiction is fiction presented in the form of letters ("epistles"). Often epistolary fictions invite readers to take voyeuristic pleasure in reading supposedly personal, even intimate, letters not "addressed" to us. Sometimes an epistolary writer pose as an "editor" without responsibility for the content of the letters he or she makes public. Some epistolary fictions look much like other kinds of novels except for the inclusion of a letter-convention "frame." In all cases, epistolary fictions incorporate specific kinds of distance between tales and readers, suggest the possibility of readerly transgression, complicate the supposedly clear space between public and private, and make peculiar authenticity claims.
The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the great age of English-language epistolary fiction. The form proliferated starting in the late 1660s, but by the beginning of the nineteenth century its popularity had dwindled markedly. Epistolary fiction was considered largely atavistic for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, though it never really disappeared. Remarkably, it is making something of a comeback today.
This course will consider the functions and appeal of epistolary fiction. We'll concentrate largely on texts from the form's hey-day between the mid-seventeenth and late-eighteenth centuries, but we'll also look at examples from the 19th and 20th centuries and consider some recent works. We'll ask what is at stake -- in aesthetic, political, moral/religious, and market terms -- in writing and publishing novels that pretend to be collections of private letters. Why did the epistolary form take off to such a spectacular extent during the "long eighteenth century" and why did its appeal dwindle when it did? What might account for the strong eighteenth-century association of epistolary fiction with women's voices and experiences? What part does epistolary fiction play in later British and American literary history, including contemporary fiction? Authors will include Aphra Behn, Elizabeth Singer Rowe, Samuel Richardson, Nick Bantock, and Lydia Davis, among others.
This seminar has a bold aim: it seeks to understand better what has happened in our world since the era of decolonization, by considering the term “politics” in its very broadest and most dramatic connotations: as the dream of social change and its failures. Another way of describing its subject matter is to say that it is about revolution and counterrevolution since the Bandung Conference. Together we will investigate the way in which major historical events, including the struggle for Algerian independence, the coup in Indonesia, the Cuban Revolution, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in Congo, the Vietnam War, Latin American and African dictatorships, the Israeli Palestinian conflict, the Iranian revolution, the fall of the Soviet Union, the end of apartheid in South Africa, 9/11, the Iraq War, and its aftermath, have been represented in some of the most innovative and moving films of our time. Attention will therefore be paid to a variety of genres: including cinema verité, documentary, the thriller, the biopic, animation, the global conspiracy film, hyperlink cinema, and dystopian science fiction.
The ongoing and fraught question of race in America, as well as the American fixation on elections (which sometimes seems the be all and end all of politics here) may also come under scrutiny; but the idea is to have a more global reach. We will study 12 to 15 of the following titles (here grouped in terms of thematic connections), along with a rich collection of critical essays: Battle of Algiers, The Year of Living Dangerously/The Act of Killing, The Motor Cycle Diaries/Y Tu Mama Tambien, Lumumba/The Last King of Scotland, The Official Story/Missing/!No, The Lives of Others/Goodbye, Lenin, Persepolis, A Very British Coup, Invictus/ Endgame/ More than Just a Game, Mississippi Burning/American History X/ Crash, Caché, The Fog of War/W, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, The Ghost Writer, In the Valley of Elah, Waltz with Bashir, The Edukators/Die Welle/ Election, Children of Men.
Note also that this course will be taught in a way quite similar to my earlier seminar on Cinema and Globalization: students will view the set film on their own in advance and read the accompanying critical articles; occasional and voluntary in-class presentations are possible. Requirements: a midterm paper of around 8-10 pages and a final paper of around 8-12.
Childhood Lead poisoning can lead to cognitive impairments, learning disabilities, impaired hearing, behavioral problems, and at very high levels, seizures, coma and even death. Children up to the age of six are especially at risk because of their developing systems. They often ingest lead paint chips and inhale dust particles while playing in their home and yards in pre-1978 housing. In ENVS 404, Penn undergraduates learn about the epidemiology of lead poisoning, the pathways of exposure, and methods for community outreach and education. Penn students collaborate with middle school and high school teachers in West Philadelphia to engage school age children in exercises that apply environmental health research relating to lead poisoning in their homes and neighborhoods.
The goal of the course is to explore the interconnection between conceptual thinking and material form—how can visual representation inform and structure your thoughts.
Students will choose their topics, and then both write and make a book, though not necessarily in that order.
By devising and self-directing a long-term personal project, the students will gain an insight into the concept of authorship. They will become aware of the challenges posed by the open-ended nature of any creative process and learn how to address these challenges. They will learn how to give—and seek—meaningful input, and how to navigate the line between one’s intuition and the advice of peers.
By the end of the course, each student will have produced an original book.
This course will explore the vitality and range of photography as a discursive practice by analyzing the way images are structured and deployed in contemporary art and wider media culture. Students will be introduced to the key issues surrounding photography now- led through these questions by lectures, readings, group discussion and project-based work. A series of photo-assignments challenge the students to integrate critical thought with practice, exploring a range of formal strategies and thematic frameworks that affect the meaning of their images. Students should have a strong interest in philosophy and art histories (especially the history of photography.) They should be motivated to work independently & experiment creatively. There are no prerequisites for this course. It is intended for all different levels of technical experience, but the minimum requirements are a digital camera, a basic familiarity with Photoshop and access to a computer with imaging software.
Books have many powers. All too rarely, however, do they shape public opinion and change history.
The greatest works of the Enlightenment are perhaps the most striking exception ever to this rule. Our seminar will attempt to understand what the Enlightenment was and how it made its impact. We will read above all the works of the three individuals who, more than anyone else, defined the age of Enlightenment: Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. We will see, for example, how Voltaire used his works to teach Europeans to believe in such concepts as brotherhood and the fraternity of man. We will retrace Rousseau’s invention of autobiography and his redefinition of education. And we will explore the construction of perhaps the most characteristic of all Enlightenment masterpieces, the Encyclopédie edited by Diderot and d’Alembert.
We will pay particular attention to the risks each of these authors ran in making such controversial works public: they were constantly threatened by censorship from both church and state; Voltaire was exiled; Diderot was sent to prison. The seminar will meet on the 6th floor of Van Pelt Library so that we can have access during our meetings to the original editions of many Enlightenment classics. We will thus be able to discuss both ways in which these works were shaped by the fear of censorship and techniques devised by their authors to elude censorship.
We will also consider topics such as what the Enlightenment meant for women and the Enlightenment’s global influence in the 18th century, particularly on the founding fathers of this country. We will thus read works by the greatest women authors of the age, as well as the most read author in the colonies, Montesquieu.
The seminar will be taught in English. Students who wish to receive French credit will do the reading in French.
"Jewish woman, who knows your life? In darkness you have come, in darkness do you go." J. L. Gordon (1890)
This course will bring into the light the long tradition of women as readers, writers, and subjects in Jewish literature. All texts will be in translation from Yiddish and Hebrew, or in English. Through a variety of genres -- devotional literature, memoir, fiction, and poetry -- we will study women's roles and selves, the relations of women and men, and the interaction between Jewish texts and women's lives. The legacy of women in Yiddish devotional literature will serve as background for our reading of modern Jewish fiction and poetry from the past century.
The course is divided into five segments. The first presents a case study of the Matriarchs Rachel and Leah, as they are portrayed in the Hebrew Bible, in rabbinic commentary, in pre-modern prayers, and in modern poems. We then examine a modern novel that recasts the story of Dinah, Leah’s daughter. Next we turn to the seventeenth century Glikl of Hamel, the first Jewish woman memoirist. The third segment focuses on devotional literature for and by women. In the fourth segment, we read modern women poets in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English. The course concludes with a fifth segment on fiction written by women in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English.
Underneath the grandeur of empires, war, revolutions, history eventually is about people’s life. This seminar explores how the boundaries of private life in China intersect with the public arena and how such an intersection has significantly re-shaped Chinese private life between the 16th century and the present. The first half of the seminar will explore how the private realm in late imperial China was defined and construed by Confucian discourses, architectural design, moral regulation, cultural consumption, and social network. Moving into the twentieth century, the remaining part of the seminar will examine how the advent of novel concepts such as modernity and revolution restructured the private realm, particularly in regard to the subtopics outlined above.
Organizing questions include: How did female chastity become the center of a public cult which then changed the life paths of countless families? How did the practice of female foot-binding intersect with marriage choices, household economy, and social status? How did print culture create a new space for gentry women to negotiate the boundaries between their inner quarters and the outside world? What was the ideal and reality of married life in late imperial China? How did people’s life change when the collective pursuit for Chinese modernity placed romantic love, freedom to marry and divorce at the center of public debates? How was “Shanghai modern” related to the emerging middle class life style as evidenced in advertisement posters? How has the ideal of gender equality been re-interpreted and realized under the Communist regime? How have the current market reforms reformulated the contours of private life in China?
This course is designed to introduce students to the religious experiences of Africans and to the politics of culture. We will examine how traditional African religious ideas and practices interacted with Christianity and Islam. We will look specifically at religious expressions among the Yoruba, Southern African independent churches and millenarist movements, and the variety of Muslim organizations that developed during the colonial era.
The purpose of this course is threefold. First, to develop in students an awareness of the wide range of meanings of conversion and people's motives in creating and adhering to religious institutions; Second, to examine the political, cultural, and psychological dimensions in the expansion of religious social movements; And third, to investigate the role of religion as counterculture and instrument of resistance to European hegemony.
Topics include: Mau Mau and Maji Maji movements in Kenya and Tanzania, Chimurenga in Mozambique, Watchtower churches in Southern Africa, anti-colonial Jihads in Sudan and Somalia and mystical Muslim orders in Senegal.
Legal Studies & Business Ethics
This course presents law as an evolving social institution, with special emphasis on the legal regulation of business. It considers basic concepts of law and legal process, in the U.S. and other legal systems, and introduces the fundamentals of rigorous legal analysis. An in-depth examination of contract law is included.
This course introduces students to important legal and ethical challenges they may face in business. Its focus includes theories of ethics and their application to case studies in business, including current business ethics events. We begin with questions about individual value, purpose, and responsibility. We then look at concrete questions about the obligations of corporations, managers and employees. Do corporations have any obligations besides making money for their shareholders? If a multinational operates in a country where child labor is the norm, does that make it acceptable for the company to hire children? The material covered is intended to help prepare students to recognize and manage ethical issues as they arise. Class sessions will consist of collaborative case discussions, exercises, debates, and discussions of theoretical frameworks for interpreting ethics. An emphasis will be placed on class discussion.
This multidisciplinary course surveys the history of American health care through the multiple perspectives of race, gender, and class, and grounds the discussions in contemporary health issues. It emphasizes the links between the past and present, using not only primary documents but materials from disciplines such as literature, art, sociology, and feminist studies that relate both closely and tangentially to the health professions and health care issues.
Discussions will surround gender, class-based, ethnic, and racial ideas about the construction of disease, health and illness; the development of health care institutions; the interplay between religion and science; the experiences of patients and providers; and the response to disasters and epidemics. Skills for document analysis and critique are built into the course as is the contextual foundation for understanding the history of health care.
This course parallels and extends the content of PHYS 150, at a significantly higher mathematical level. Recommended for well-prepared students in engineering and the physical sciences, and particularly for those planning to major in physics. Classical laws of motion: interaction between particles; conservation laws and symmetry principles; rigid body motion; noninertial reference frames; oscillations.
All classes. Prerequisite(s): MATH 104 or permission of the instructor. Corequisite(s): MATH 114 or permission of instructor. Benjamin Franklin Seminar.
Credit is awarded for only one of the following courses: PHYS 008 PHYS 101, 150, or PHYS 170. Students with AP or Transfer Credit for PHYS 91 or PHYS 93 who complete PHYS 170 will thereby surrender the AP or Transfer Credit.
Advances in cognitive science have enlarged and challenged traditional concepts of mind, will, and self. This seminar explores the nature of mind as embodied without sacrificing respect for the significance of immediate experience, personal agency, and social responsibility. The seminar takes its name from a foundational text published twenty five years ago (Varela, Thompson & Rosch, MIT Press, 1991).
Working from their combined expertise in neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology, these authors provided a framework including principles of phenomenology and Buddhism. Because the book is now 25 years old, its technical presentations are no longer current. But the framework it established remains sturdy, and has been elaborated by Thompson in his recent book Waking, Sleeping, Being (Columbia U. Press, 2014), which we will use as a primary text.
The seminar will allow students to comprehend this framework and contrast it with alternatives both traditional and novel. Students will have the opportunity to practice meditations with guidance.
This course explores the ways Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) portrays the "inner world(s)" of his characters. Dostoevsky's psychological method will be considered against the historical, ideological, and literary contexts of middle to late nineteenth-century Russia. The course consists of three parts External World (the contexts of Dostoevsky), "Inside" Dostoevsky's World (the author's technique and ideas) and The World of Text (close reading of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov). Students will write three essays on various aspects of Dostoevsky's "spiritual realism."
Theatre began as a form that excluded women entirely. The plays of ancient Greece and Elizabethan England were written and performed only by men, beginning a long tradition of theatre that represented women only from male perspectives. Has that tradition been so dominant for so long that women's voices on stage are still a novelty? This course focuses on a wide range of plays and performances by and about women; the work we read (and view) will evidence artistic attempts to represent women's lives, experiences and perspectives on the stage. Among the issues encountered and examined in these works are the roles of love, sexuality, friendship, career, community, marriage, motherhood, family, and feminism in women's lives - as well as the economic and political position(s) of women in society. The course will also offer contextual background on feminist theatre history, theory, and literature, as well as the diverse (and divergent) creative efforts of female artists to use use live performance as a means of creating social and political change.
One of the seminar’s aims is to help students develop their capacity to solve strategic, real world problems by working collaboratively in the classroom and in the West Philadelphia community. As members of research teams, students identify how Penn can help to contribute to solving universal problems (e.g., poverty, poor schooling, inadequate health care, etc.) as they are manifested in the university’s local geographic community of West Philadelphia.
Additionally, seminar students are expected to work approximately 2 hours/week at one of the Netter Center’s partner high schools (Sayre or West Philadelphia). They will be matched with juniors or seniors at the high school and work one-on-one on issues of college access, including the application process and financial aid.
Another goal of the seminar is to help students develop proposals as to how a Penn undergraduate education might better empower students to produce, not simply “consume,” societally-useful knowledge, as well as function as lifelong, active, contributing democratic citizens of a democratic society.
|
<urn:uuid:d8a4d7ba-b141-411a-ab9e-0cbe88f5d4d9>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.upenn.edu/curf/bfs/bfs-current-courses
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399425.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00080-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948734 | 4,932 | 2.59375 | 3 |
The Freedom of Information Act is wonderful when it comes to unexplained
reports of extraterrestrial visits. The Federation of American Scientists, a
Washington-based science advocacy group, recently discovered through the
Freedom of Information Act that reports of UFO activity also corresponded
with the flights of top-secret American spy aircraft.
In the 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Air Force
worked very hard to generate UFO cover stories for secret aircraft. The
result was a hysterical joke on the world that echoes through to this day.
Keep in mind; this was during the height of the Cold War when the USA and
USSR were on the verge of nuclear combat. The aircraft involved were
certainly alien with their incredible performance. The silver long-winged
U-2 aircraft could fly 14 miles high and stay aloft for hours, while the
blackened, delta-shaped SR-71 could fly even higher at speeds exceeding
2,000 miles an hour.
Flying a UFO can also be hazardous to your health. Brave U-2 and SR-71
crews flew mission after mission over Russia, China, Cuba, Israel, Germany,
Korea, Vietnam and other hot global spots. Most came home safe. Some lost
their lives. Many veterans still suffer today from the long-term effects of
space flight in the early, unshielded aircraft.
Today, the SR-71 Blackbird has been retired, relegated to the history
books and removed from active service. The highflying U-2 lives on in an
improved version called the TR-1. Yet, there are rumors of even more exotic
vehicles that still await the first public viewing. The stories of UFOs and
UFO-like performance continue to persist, along with missing billions in the
world of black projects.
The first rumors of a follow-on aircraft to the Blackbird came at the end
of the Cold War. Reports of a highflying aircraft using the call sign
“Stove-pipe” became the now-legendary “Aurora” project. Although, never
publicly confirmed to exist, Aurora has been sighted and photographed
escorting U.S. strike aircraft.
The large diamond shaped aircraft is reported to be capable of exceeding
8,000 miles an hour and was originally designed to attack Moscow with
nuclear bombs. Aurora’s extreme performance does not come cheap. Aurora is
also reported to be more expensive than a Space Shuttle.
Some of the experimental U.S. aircraft tested during the Cold War
obtained their performance using propulsion systems driven with volatile and
dangerous fuels. One secret U.S. project included an atomic ramjet. The
deadly engine, a radioactive ramjet, heated air in the radioactive core of a
miniature atomic reactor. The atomic jet engine was developed to fly a giant
missile carrying a multi-megaton thermonuclear bomb deep into the Soviet
Union. The atomic ramjet was never deployed but U.S. nuclear engineers did
successfully test the lethal radioactive engine in the open desert air
before the project was finally canceled.
How about an invisible airplane? Stealth aircraft such as the B-2 and the
F-117A are not new. It is well known that the B-2 and F-117A are practically
invisible to radar but the aircraft themselves can be seen. One reported
robot plane project was also nearly invisible to the naked eye in broad
Ironically, the concept is not new. In the 1940s, the U.S. Navy developed
operation “Yahootie” the first practical attempt to create an invisible
aircraft. U.S. Navy bombers were considered too slow to visually spot a
German U-boat cruising on the surface and attack in daylight. Submarine
commanders often spotted the lumbering bombers and dove safely away before
the planes could attack.
In response, a string of bright lights were arrayed on the wings and
propeller hubs of the sub-hunter planes. The bomber crews adjusted the
lights to match the natural background light behind the aircraft, masking
itself against the sky. The so-called “isoluminous” principle is based upon
the perception that different objects displaying the same brightness seem
indistinguishable from each other. The principle worked very well until
1942, when the Navy introduced airborne radar, allowing bombers to spot and
kill submarines beyond visual ranges.
Yahootie returns? An advanced version of Yahootie, a robot driven
surveillance aircraft is reported to use a combination of lights, low noise
engines, and radar absorbing skin to render itself practically invisible in
daylight. The robot aircraft is not only invisible to radar but its skin is
layered with an array of high intensity lights that broadcast the same
output as the sky around it.
Still, what good is an invisible flying saucer without a ray gun? The
USAF is already working on the ABL or “Airborne Laser” project. The concept
is simple; mate a Boeing 747 with the most powerful laser the huge airliner
can carry. The result, according to the Air Force, is a plane that can knock
down hostile ballistic missiles from hundreds of miles away.
The ABL project is well under way toward an early test and looks very
promising. So promising that, according to Aviation Week and Space
Technology, the Russians have demanded they be allowed
to fly on-board any active ABL 747 to make sure it does not target Russian
missiles, in violation of the SALT treaties. Russia has also been working
for many years on laser projects. The
Agency recently made public drawings of Russian anti-satellite and anti-missile laser systems in test.
|Defense Intelligence Agency drawing of a Russian laser weapon under development. Courtesy of the DIA.|
However, it appears the U.S. Air Force is not too worried about the Russians. Instead, the Air Force is keeping a budgetary laser eye focused on the U.S. Marine Corps. The U.S. Marines, ever quick to catch on, have proposed arming the new Joint Strike Fighter with a laser weapon. The Air Force views the Marine concept as a threat to the ABL budget.
It would seem that the only hostile actions between blue and green are not extraterrestrials doing battle for control of the earth, but military officers inside the Pentagon fighting over budget figures. We know more about Mars than the black accounts inside the Pentagon books. I am here to assure you there are no UFOs; it’s all a Hollywood fantasy and a CIA conspiracy.
So, The next time you see a UFO, don’t look up; it’s one of ours.
|
<urn:uuid:d08175f0-731f-42cb-9a2f-d7352e63cf4f>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.wnd.com/2000/07/7109/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395621.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00002-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.938425 | 1,425 | 2.546875 | 3 |
A recent paper published by Professor G. Fanti (University of Padua) in the Journal of Imaging Science and Technology arguing that the Shroud of Turin’s image may have been caused by the corona discharge effect (a form of electrical discharge). Fanti told the Italian, La Stampa, newspaper that:
[Ever] since the Italian photographer Secondo Pia obtained the first photographic reproductions of the Shroud in 1898, many researchers have put forward image formation hypotheses, many interesting hypotheses have been examined to date, but none of these is able to explain the mysterious image fully. None of the reproductions obtained manages to portray characteristics that are similar to the ones found on the Turin Shroud.
During my research I also considered the possibility of the combination of more than one mechanism in the image’s formation, returning to the ideas of those who, as of the second half of the last century, started to doubt the authenticity of the Shroud and therefore started suggesting image reproduction techniques used by medieval artists.read more »
|
<urn:uuid:ed3f3508-d1c2-4196-81e5-dbdbbe0d0f74>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://sententias.org/2012/03/11/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396459.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00027-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.951865 | 209 | 2.671875 | 3 |
|13. McIntosh Development|
13. While gathering the nectar, the bees move the pollen from one tree to the blossoms of another tree where they rub it on another structure in the center of the flower, the stigmas on the very tip of a long styles that are attached to an ovary far below the attachment point of the petals. The movement of this pollen is called "pollination" and without it the fruit and the seeds would not develop on the apple tree. After shedding their pollen, the anthers darken and begin to shrivel up while the petals begin to wilt. If we look closely, we can see the stigma, the pronged structure in the center of the blossom where the pollen was deposited.
|
<urn:uuid:2c962b2e-2698-4f4b-a315-c10d2f8453f3>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.botany.org/bsa/misc/mcintosh/mcinto13.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404826.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00179-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.92475 | 156 | 3.984375 | 4 |
Positive Change Through Policy
This guide features examples of policies that schools, localities, and states across the United States have implemented to create safer communities.
The examples provided are meant to promote your interest in policies that can help make your community safer, particularly for young people. Also included are descriptions of programs that are a result of policy. After the examples are questions to help you learn more about local policies and your community’s needs. However, this document makes no claim as to the effectiveness of any of the policies or programs it presents.
How can this guide help me?
You may be a parent who has taught children to say no to drugs. You may be a teacher who has implemented a bullying prevention program in your school. You may be a law enforcement officer who promotes neighborhood safety. Or you may work at a community center that gives young people a safe afterschool program.
Your work with these types of crime prevention activities helps make young people and communities safer. Implementing crime prevention policies is another way to enhance community safety. Working with programs, schools, the local city council, and state lawmakers to create crime prevention policies can benefit the community in several ways:
- Policies can be far-reaching. Policies often impact large numbers of people - everyone in a community or all schools in a district. This creates consistency and an understanding that everyone is on the same page.
- Policies can be long lasting. Sometimes programs or projects exist because one individual puts in the time and effort to run the program. If that individual can no longer work on the program, the program may stop. For a policy to be implemented, it generally must have the support of many people. Even if an individual leaves a job, a policy will continue to exist.
- Policies can make individuals accountable. Once a policy is enacted, everyone is responsible for following it. If a policy is broken, the group who created the policy may impose negative consequences on anyone who violates it.
- Policies can guide future decisions. Working to create crime prevention policies today paves the way for future activities and projects that will implement the policy.
- Policies signal a commitment. Policies are not made based on the passion of a single individual but on the combined commitment of many. All individuals who support a crime prevention policy must devote time, energy, and other resources to implement that policy and ensure its success.
What is a policy?
A policy is a defined course of action that helps guide decisions. A school district may have policies that create safe learning environments for students. City-wide programs and initiatives may develop and use policies to create change and build safer communities. A state government may have certain policies that help guide the creation and implementation of laws regarding anything from preventing youth from abusing drugs to forming safe schools. To learn about policies in your community, contact your local government or school board.
In the topics below, read examples of policies that have addressed the issue as it relates to young people. Following the examples are questions to help you learn more about policies in your community.
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Drugs
On July 17, 1984, Ronald Reagan signed a law proclaiming 21 as the minimum drinking age in the United States. This legislation helped prevent young people from drinking alcohol and driving irresponsibly. According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, teenage deaths in fatal car crashes dropped considerably - in some cases up to 28 percent - when laws moved the minimum drinking age to 21. Many states and communities have enacted a variety of policies to help prevent underage drinking as well as underage cigarette use and drug use.
- Fremont, NE, no longer allows people to bring their own booze to events held on public property. Due to numerous complaints concerning underage drinking and intoxicated people at receptions, reunions, and other celebrations held at city-owned facilities, individuals can no longer purchase and serve their own alcohol at these events. Municipal leaders passed legislation (PDF) that allows only licensed caterers, nonprofit organizations, and onsite retailers to serve alcoholic beverages on public property.
- Rhode Island passed legislation prohibiting the sale and distribution of tobacco products to minors via the mail. Since the legislation was approved, those selling tobacco through the mail or on the Internet must verify that the buyer is over 18 years old via current, government-issued identification or face a minimum fine of $1,000 per package delivered.
- Wisconsin legislature, concerned about the growing use of methamphetamines, recently enacted a law to reduce the availability of the materials used in drug production. The law requires that anyone wishing to purchase products that could be used to make methamphetamine present a photo ID. Moreover, children under the age of 18 are prohibited from purchasing such products.
Think about alcohol, tobacco, and drug policies for minors in your area and the preventive measures you can take in order to keep youth safe. The questions below are provided to help you find out more about policies in your community.
- How does local law enforcement ensure that businesses comply with minimum-age-to-purchase policies and laws?
- Are there policies regarding the availability of alcohol at community events or on public property?
- Does the local school have a policy related to educating young people about alcohol, tobacco, and drugs?
Bullying is the repeated and systematic harassment of an individual or group by another and can include a variety of harmful behaviors such as hitting, teasing, threatening, spreading rumors, damaging belongings, and excluding others from social groups. Read more information on bullying. Due to increased awareness of bullying and in the wake of school shootings, school boards and lawmakers devised policies that address bullying in schools and communities. Thousands of schools have implemented bullying prevention policies that include activities and programs designed to improve school climate and safety.
- Schools in Southern Westchester County, NY, developed a policy that signaled a commitment to bullying prevention. The policy pushed school officials to provide counseling for children who bully and provide incentives for bullies to change their behavior, cooperate with peers, and empathize with victims. Moreover, the program works with victims of bullying to bolster self-assertive behavior (From NCPC’s 350 Tested Strategies to Prevent Crime).
- To promote a healthy and safe academic environment, the West Virginia state legislature enacted a law requiring county school boards to develop and adopt a policy prohibiting harassment, intimidation, or bullying on school property and at school-sponsored events.
- Texas state legislature goes beyond promoting anti-bullying policies in schools to allow the parents of bullied students to request that their children be transferred to another classroom or school. The bill also requires that all schools display a student code of conduct that delineates disciplinary actions for young people who bully.
Contact your local school to ask if it has a specific anti-bullying policy. The questions below are meant to spark your thoughts on youth safety by learning about the anti-bullying strategies and preventive activities offered in your school district.
- How does the policy define bullying?
- Does the policy list consequences for bullying behaviors?
- Has the policy prompted the school to adopt bullying prevention activities?
- Has the policy led the school to offer preventive training for its teachers, staff, and students?
Graffiti has a negative impact on community members’ sense of safety because it can signal the presence of gangs and be used to intimidate others. The populace may feel that there is little caring and respect within the community when a building that has been vandalized with graffiti is not cleaned. Potential criminals may view the community similarly, prompting other delinquent acts. Many communities have adopted policies to combat graffiti, which have allowed them to devote resources and create programs to address the problem.
- In 1984 New York City developed a graffiti-prevention initiative by implementing the Clean Car Program to rid the subway system of graffiti. Although the program began over 20 years ago, it remains one of the most well-known anti-graffiti efforts. The program developed in order to combat the fear of criminal activity on subway cars. Previous attempts to clean the subway, as well as punish taggers, were unsuccessful. The program was based on the notion that the key to graffiti prevention is timely removal because spaces that have been visibly tagged are more likely to be tagged again. The New York program aimed to remove graffiti from cars within two hours of application. Within five years of the program’s implementation, all of New York City’s subway cars were graffiti free. The initiative was determined a success because officials were committed to rid the subway of graffiti, used a problem-solving approach to crime reduction, and coordinated the administering institutions.
- Kansas City, MO government officials adopted a policy in an attempt to prevent delinquent youth from acquiring the supplies necessary to make graffiti. The policy prohibited minors from purchasing spray paint and broad tip markers and forbade minors to possess these tools for tagging while on public or private property from 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.
- The city of Anaheim, CA, recently adopted an anti-graffiti ordinance that will require individuals who are arrested for vandalism be charged for the cost of graffiti removal. In a further attempt to combat tagging, business owners must keep aerosol sprays or other items that could be used to make graffiti behind sales counters.
Think about graffiti and vandalism in your community. If you don’t know about graffiti policies in your area, consider posing the questions below to local law enforcement officials and community leaders.
- What is your community’s policy related to graffiti?
- Does the policy state what will happen if graffiti is spotted? Does it state who is responsible for its removal?
- Does the policy include a commitment to educate young people about graffiti and how it can damage a community?
Federal law (PDF) defines a hate crime as a criminal act committed against someone because of that person’s race, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, gender, or disability. Hate crimes can include assault, vandalism of property, threats, and harassment. Not only do they cause emotional and psychological harm, but they also can exacerbate racial, religious, or ethnic tensions in the community. Enacting legislation to address hate crimes can allay community members’ fears and put in place ways communities can prevent hate crimes. Federal legislation to combat hate crimes prohibits specific intimidating actions and general behavior motivated by bias, and enhances penalties for criminal acts motivated by bias. Some states and communities have elaborated on the federal hate crime definition in order to protect and support more minority groups.
- California legislature passed a bill requiring the state Department of Education to create a standard school reporting form that includes hate-motivated incidents and hate crimes. The legislature hoped that hate crime reporting would spotlight bias-based crime, allowing school officials to properly combat these crimes in a manner different from other student-related conflicts, such as bullying.
- In December 1999 the San Fernando Valley Hate Crimes Alliance was formed in San Fernando Valley, CA, to organize the community and effectively combat bias-motivated crime. The alliance has united local police officers with community volunteers to offer training and education to increase hate crime reporting, to develop a community support network for victims of hate acts, and to prevent acts of intolerance through education and respect for diversity. The Hate Crimes Alliance has developed programs for students to learn about diversity.
- In 2002 Pennsylvania amended its existing hate crime legislation (the Ethnic Intimidation Act). The initial anti-hate crime law coincided with the federal definition, but the state legislature amended the law (PDF) to include malice toward others due to their gender identity. This hate crime legislation is more extensive than federal law, as it protects transgender persons from bias-based crime.
Become aware of hate crime policies in your local school and community. The questions below are to help you learn more about hate crimes and diversity awareness in your community.
- Does your local school offer diversity awareness programs?
- Is an anti-hate crime policy part of your local school’s rules?
- Is there a policy related to reporting and documenting hate crimes?
Children and youth who are left unsupervised after school and in the evenings are more at risk of becoming victims of crime, engaging in delinquent behavior, and developing academic problems than those young people who are supervised. Children need safe and constructive afterschool activities to help prevent their involvement in dangerous or delinquent behavior. According to Frances Kemper Alston of New York University’s Child Study Center, “unsupervised children are more likely to become depressed, smoke cigarettes and marijuana and drink alcohol; they are also more likely to be the victims of crimes.” City-wide curfews and afterschool programs are constantly developing as one way to prevent youth-related crime and victimization.
- The city of Charlottesville, VA, adopted a curfew for minors in 1996. While the community was not riddled with crime or youth gang violence, city officials and law enforcement officers wanted to protect youth who were riding bicycles or loitering on the streets at night. The curfew ordinance (PDF) was designed to “promote the safety and well-being of the city’s youngest citizens, whose inexperience renders them particularly vulnerable to becoming participants in unlawful activities, especially unlawful drug activities, and to be victimized by older perpetrators of crime.” The ordinance also underscores the need for parents to be responsible for their children’s safety.
- In 1998 the city of Boston, MA, developed the After School for All initiative to decrease juvenile crime, reduce the number of children who are victims of crimes, increase academic achievement, improve school attendance, and decrease school dropout rates. The organization works to expand access to afterschool programs for children, sustain funding for programs, and improve student learning. The success of the After School for All program allowed for the 2004 development of the Boston After School & Beyond program, which works to build community awareness of both the necessity and the availability of afterschool programs.
- To safeguard students during the critical hours from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., the Los Angeles mayor developed the afterschool program LA’s BEST (Better Educated Students for Tomorrow). The nationally recognized program offers free afterschool care and education to students ages five to 12 throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District. Aside from daily homework help, recreation, and learning activities, LA’s BEST offers arts, science, fitness, and literacy programs. The University of California, Los Angeles, evaluated the program and found that students with higher levels of participation in the LA's BEST program had better school attendance and higher scores on standardized tests of mathematics, reading, and language arts.
What do you know about community afterschool programs, curfew ordinances, and truancy laws? Ask local schools or council members the following questions if you are unaware of programs and policies regarding unsupervised youth.
- How are parents and young people educated about curfew policies in your community?
- Do schools or community centers have policies regarding afterschool time?
- Have the policies helped establish programs or activities that give young people safe places to go and positive things to do?
The following resources will provide you with more information on policies that affect children and youth and their safety. Also, read lesson plans on various crime prevention issues.
ACLU.org – The American Civil Liberties Union has extensive information on writing and negotiating effective policy available on its website.
SafeYouth.org – The National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center has information for parents on bullying, gang violence, and substance abuse.
|
<urn:uuid:2e1e1b78-0539-4660-8b58-c8b450660154>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.ncpc.org/topics/home-and-neighborhood-safety/positive-change-through-policy
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399117.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00085-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.945295 | 3,157 | 3.703125 | 4 |
Food In Smaller Pieces May Help Control Weight
The 2012 meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior, which runs from 10 to 14 July in Zurich, Switzerland, heard how the researchers concluded that humans, like animals, seem to find eating food as smaller pieces more enjoyable and satisfying.
In a press release issued on Tuesday, lead author Devina Wadhera, from the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University in the US, suggests:
"Cutting up energy-dense meal foods into smaller pieces may be beneficial to dieters who wish to make their meal more satiating while also maintaining portion control."
Previous studies have already suggested that larger portions lead people to eat more. For this study, Wadhera and colleagues focused on the number and size of food pieces, because it is also known that humans and other animals judge food quantity using several cues, of which number is one, with larger numbers usually taken to mean larger amounts.
For instance, in 1989, a team of researchers ran a series of intriguing experiments with rats in mazes. In the first experiment they trained rats in a T-maze using 4 x 75 mg food pellets in one arm of the T, and a single 300 mg pellet in the other arm.
The rats developed a preference for the 4 x 75 mg arm, and when the researchers reversed the arms, the rats also switched their preference. This indicated, when faced with the same weight of food, the rats preferred the four-pellet alternative to the single pellet one.
In a slightly different version of the experiment, the researchers put 4 x 45 mg pellets in one arm and a single 300 mg pellet in the other. But this time the rats showed a preference for the 300 mg arm, indicating they were choosing weight over number of pieces. This was confirmed in a third experiment, when the choice was either 4 x 45 mg, or 4 x 75 mg pellets.
The researchers in that study concluded that rats prefer multiple to single food units, and judge a given weight of food as greater when the number of units is greater. They proposed that this apparent "failure of conservation" may be common to other species, including humans.
So to test the idea in humans, Wadhera and colleagues invited 301 college students to take part in an experiment where they gave each an 82 g bagel, either uncut or cut into four.
Twenty minutes after eating the bagel, the students were invited to eat as much as they wanted from a measured amount of food at a free lunch (the test meal).
Any left over bagel or test meal was then measured to assess what each student had eaten.
The results showed that the students who ate the single, uncut bagel, ate more calories from both the bagel and the test meal, than their fellow counterparts who were given the bagel as four pieces.
Wadhera said this showed that eating food cut into several pieces may be more satiating than eating it as a single, uncut portion.
The idea of manipulating perception to fool the body about food, was also taken up in another study reported in February 2012, where researchers from the Netherlands found that manipulating the aroma of food caused people to take smaller bites, resulting in up to 10% reduction in intake per bite. They suggested aroma control combined with portion control could fool the body into thinking it was full with a smaller amount of food.
Recommended related news
EJ Capaldi and others (1989); "Multiple-food-unit-incentive effect: Nonconservation of weight of food reward by rats" Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes.
Additional source: Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior.
Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:
Paddock, Catharine. "Food In Smaller Pieces May Help Control Weight." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 12 Jul. 2012. Web.
24 Jun. 2016. <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/247693.php>
Paddock, C. (2012, July 12). "Food In Smaller Pieces May Help Control Weight." Medical News Today. Retrieved from
Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.
Contact our news editors
For any corrections of factual information, or to contact our editorial team, please see our contact page.
Copyright Medical News Today: Excluding email/sharing services explicitly offered on this website, material published on Medical News Today may not be reproduced, or distributed without the prior written permission of Medilexicon International Ltd. Please contact us for further details.
|
<urn:uuid:722ad996-e051-447a-8b32-c48d7c23bf4d>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/247693.php
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00038-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.947432 | 968 | 3.40625 | 3 |
At the university there, coin-sized disks are being produced from the cocoon of the tasar silkworm (Antheraea mylitta). According to Chinmoy Patra, an Indian scientist who now works in Engel’s laboratory, the fibre produced by the tasar silkworm displays several advantages over the other substances tested. “The surface has protein structures that facilitate the adhesion of heart muscle cells. It’s also coarser than other silk fibres.” This is the reason why the muscle cells grow well on it and can form a three-dimensional tissue structure. “The communication between the cells was intact and they beat synchronously over a period of 20 days, just like real heart muscle,” says Engel.
Despite these promising results, clinical application of the fibre is not currently on the agenda. “Unlike in our study, which we carried out using rat cells, the problem of obtaining sufficient human cardiac cells as starting material has not yet been solved,” says Engel. It is thought that the patient’s own stem cells could be used as starting material to avoid triggering an immune reaction. However, exactly how the conversion of the stem cells into cardiac muscle cells works remains a mystery.
Disks cut from the cocoon of the tasar silkworm grub provide a basic scaffold for heart muscle
If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks
|
<urn:uuid:387120ae-9618-4670-a590-aedb89ee5391>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/01/cardiac-muscle-cells-have-been-loaded.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398216.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00125-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.944798 | 302 | 3.296875 | 3 |
When The Dalles City Council was asked to ban tobacco use from the Lewis and Clark Festival Area earlier this month, one local resident stood up to declare that such a move would constitute another example of the “nanny state” at work, specifically because it included snuff and chew, which don’t produce smoke for others to inhale.
But that’s not strictly true, given the public costs of addictions.
Even before discussing actual tobacco addictions, it’s fair to point out that even smokeless tobacco can have an impact at a public space like the festival park: like tobacco butts, chew leaves a byproduct behind in the form of spit. And not every user is courteous enough to bring and remove a receptacle for that byproduct.
Just as most people don’t appreciate the discomfort of sitting downwind from a smoker, they don’t much care for stepping — or worse sitting — in a brown puddle of spit.
Tobacco, like other addictive substances, has social costs, too.
It contributes to an epidemic of costly illnesses later in life that most often affect Medicare recipients in their severest forms, including heart disease, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Smokeless tobacco varieties can cause cancers of the mouth, esophagus and pancreas, as well as heart disease, gum disease and oral lesions.
These and other preventable so-called “lifestyle diseases” are the heaviest burden of modern health care.
Food addictions have similar consequences, including heart disease and diabetes, among other ailments. Recent studies, including one from Yale University, suggest many of the packaged foods heavily promoted in today’s marketplace are so heavily sweetened in contrast to the whole foods humans evolved to eat that they act on the body’s dopamine receptors in the same manor as pleasure drugs.
Drug addicts, of both the illegal and legal variety, also experience a variety of costly ailments that often end up the burden of the public, or their fellow insurance premium payers.
The economics of addiction cuts both ways. Many businesses and organizations benefit from addictive behaviors. Tobacco lines the pockets of large tobacco corporations (just as addictive foods, legal and illegal drugs line the pockets of their manufacturers and sellers) and the governments at state and federal levels that exact “sin” taxes on their users. Likewise, advertising organizations benefit from supplying ads to convince people to use addictive substances.
Health care organizations benefit from performing more surgeries and other procedures related to the consequences of addictions, but they also pay when they can’t turn away uninsured sufferers or when health care insurance turns from a procedure-pay system to a wellness system.
And, in the case of illegal drugs, law enforcement must employ many more workers to address drug-related crimes, at a high cost to the public and a benefit to the workers employed.
Yes, indeed, the economics strongly suggest that many addictions exact public tolls. And seeing these addictions reduced can result in a reduction of the public costs involved in dealing with them.
At the same time, no one wants to envision a world like “1984” where the government monitors every aspect of individual action, behavior and thought.
People with addictions have the same individual rights as those without, and shouldn’t be subjected to societal judgment. Addictions are not just the result of bad willpower, they are chemical compulsions that many parts of the economy have a vested interest in seeing continue.
We, as a society, need to disrupt the economic engines that feed — and feed on — addictions. Part of that is to start early in teaching and modeling healthy life choices, so people have enough information to help them avoid addiction. Part is helpingto motivate people to break their addictions. And part is somehow persuading the profiting economic sectors that selling addiction is no longer good for business.
|
<urn:uuid:19334fb7-0ed1-4bde-9e94-7b006aeefdc0>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.thedalleschronicle.com/news/2013/sep/24/editorial-economics-addiction/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398628.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00111-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.947984 | 810 | 2.625 | 3 |
The World Heritage Centre is at the forefront of the international community’s efforts to protect and preserve.
From emergency assistance to safeguard properties in danger, to long term conservation, management planning, technical assistance, professional training, public and youth education, and awareness-building, the World Heritage Centre and its partners have developed a series of initiatives and have been actively involved in the implementation of projects, participatory workshops, seminars and training courses.
There exist a great variety of Landscapes that are representative of the different regions of the world. Combined works of nature and humankind, ...
Small Island Developing States Programme
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are islands of the Caribbean Sea and ...
Earthen architecture is one of the most original and powerful expressions of our ability to create a built environment with readily available ...
|
<urn:uuid:959f280b-96bc-4dbe-a752-9a67c3258aa0>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://whc.unesco.org/en/activities/search_region=3&pattern
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00172-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.927843 | 168 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Tarja Trygg, of Finland is mapping out the sun all over the world. In her amazing pinhole project, she sends her pinhole cameras all over the world to record the paths of the sun all over the world.
Solargraphs or solargraphics or solarigraphics are photographs people had never seen before until the first most surprising images were published on the Internet in November 2000 by the project
led by the inventors of this unique photographic technique, Slawomir Decyk, Pawel Kula and Diego Lopez Calvin. They called this kind of images "Solarigraphics" which come into being in cameras without lenses and light-sensitive material is exposed in such a way that the image is revealed directly, without the use of further chemical processes. Solarigraphy and heliography mean Photography of the Sun. I prefer to use the term in English "solargraphy" because "solar" means Sun and in my native language Finnish, I use "solarigrafia". Solargraphy is a photographic method for recording the paths of the Sun.
The most famous of my solargraphs has been exposed for 180 days in Helsinki. It can be seen on the web gallery of Solaris, too.
The solargraph received considerable public attention of taking published in the notable daily newspaper called Helsingin Sanomat on March 23rd 2004. The image was placed in the pages on Science & Nature. This solargraph has spread all over the world via Internet, too. In the same year Serbian Photo Magazine REFOTO June 2004 published it in the second part of the article about Pinhole Photography. It included three of my solargraphs. The original print has been exhibited in Helsinki, Finland, and in Wellington, New Zealand, in 2005.
Why do so many people regard the solargraph as amazing?
Solargraphs are unusual photographs, taken by means of a pinhole camera.
We are not used to see this kind of image with our naked eyes. The weather during half a year can be re-coded into a single image. The sun’s slow path across the sky is beautifully captured by this unique process.
Its peak is reached during midsummer on the 21st of June in the northern hemisphere. Every day the Sun leaves one line after one. The tracks of the moving Sun are visible and increase progressively from December through to June. The missing tracks are due to the Sun being obscured on overcast days.
What else can be seen in the image? There are the ghosts of the cars in the parking place. Several cars have been parked in the same places one day after another during the long exposure and so the cars have merged into one model or the arch type of the cars.
Although the movements of the boat traffic go daily in front of the camera we cannot see any track of the boats in the solargraph due to their short exposure time to the light-sensitive emulsion. The same phenomena photographing with a long exposure was noticed already in the early history of Photography in 1838 or 1839 in one of the most famous daguerreotype,
Boulevard du Temple ,
taken by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) from Paris where a shoe polisher is working but all the pedestrians have disappeared from the crowded boulevard. The exposure was one day of about eight hours.
Nowadays people are used to see frozen moments in photographs but in solargraphs the exposures are extremely long which often last months, from one day up until half a year, recording the tracks of the Sun.
Solargraphy is a new approach to photography and it can be defined as an "anti-technological" means of photographic expression.
With the simplest pinhole camera the tracks of the sun can be caught on an emulsion of photosensitive materials as a piece of black and white photographic paper. Solargraphy is an ecological way to take photographs. In that the photographs are neither developed nor fixed in any way. Light may cause the darkening of photosensitive emulsion and eventually for the images to disappear. It sounds unbelievable but all the tracks can be safely viewed only in dimmed light after exposing. Solargraphy discovers the surprising results achieved by the pinhole cameras. Solargraphy is a reality in itself. The Sun burns the traces of reality on the emulsion. Solargraphy can be called the Art of Pinhole Photography and Space-time Art, too.
Using a paper negative is nothing new. In the early history of Photography according to William Henry Fox Talbot he found a new method to produce the negative-positive process on paper for producing the multiple images that he invented in 1840 and patented a year later. Fox Talbot called these kind of images calotypes or talbotypes. (From the Greek kalos, meaning ‘beautiful’.)
Since photography was still very much a novelty and many people unfamiliar with the concept, Talbot felt compelled to insert the following notice into his book called
The Pencil of Nature
, published between 1844 and 1846:
"The plates of the present work are impressed by the agency of Light alone, without any aid whatever from the artist’s pencil. They are the sun-pictures themselves, and not, as some persons have imagined, engravings in imitation."
Solargraphy involves the combination of analogical and digital photography. Although a piece of black and white photographic paper is used inside the pinhole cameras the results can be seen in colour. Which seems magical. Processing the paper negatives forward with the aid of the computer is a very exciting and creative act. Solargraphing is very surprising and that is why it is so interesting. You can never be sure what the results will be.
Collaboration with the "can assistants" is a key to build the map of solargraphs from different latitudes.
My first touch to solargraphy happened in May 2002. I was invited to participate in an international photographic workshop of PROFILE 2002 in Skoki, Poland. The theme of the workshop was "solarigrafie". A black curve line on the emulsion of the piece of black and white photosensitive material was an example from the new approach to an "anti-technological" means of photographic expression. I was fascinated with this method. I began photographing the Sun and testing different photographic papers and as I continued to test this method my fascination increased, like a rolling snowball. I wanted to have solargraphs that had up to half a year’s exposure time for different latitudes. The idea of the map of solargraphs came to my mind. But it was not possible to do this alone. I needed some volunteers my first camera assistants were my friends, relatives, colleagues, students, people I met at conferences or just about anyone who was willing and interested in my project. The invitation to participate in this global art project for filling in the gaps of the world map of solargraphs has been open to everybody. The tracks of the Sun are different depending on where we are located in the world. I wanted to see how different they could be. The project became worldwide since the first website was published. The project is still under way. The best results of the solragraphs are publishing on the website www.solargraphy.com. Thanks to all can assistants around the world, pupils in Scotland, participation of amateur astronomic clubs in California and the Czech Republic, students from Tama Art University, people I have met at conferences, including an array of pinhole photographers have helped me to fill in the gaps of the solargraph map.
The second solargraph I chose comes from Montréal. It looks so excellent with several movements of the Sun in green or blue colours in the sky. I wonder what is the reason for that. Does it come from air pollution or the colour temperature of the atmosphere? The white lines came in June during many sunny days. Montréal, a big city, seems to fit into the one image. I like this solargraph very much and my curiosity is in the different movements of the Sun around the world. In the northern hemisphere the Sun does not go below the horizon in summer at all and in December, wintertime, the Sun does not go above the horizon. The directions of the Sun paths are vertical in the equator but are they always similar? It is possible to illustrate how the sun shines on various latitudes during the four seasons during a half year of the exposure. Catching landscapes around the world with the tracks of the Sun taken with the aid of the simplest lensless pinhole camera brings new understanding and seeing something in ways that we are not used to see with our naked eyes.
(In French héliographie) is the photographic process invented by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce around 1825, and which he used to make the earliest known permanent photograph from nature, View from the Window at Le Gras (c. 1826). The process used bitumen, as a coating on glass or metal, which hardened in relation to exposure to light. When the plate was washed with oil of lavender, only the hardened image area remained. He called his process "heliography". http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/wfp/)
REFOTO June 2004: 68-69 FOTO – KLASIKA: "PINHOLE" FOTOGRAFIJA 2
"Photograph on metal, usually consisting of a copper pate covered with a fine layer of silver, giving it the appearance of a mirror. Depending on the angle from which it is viewed, it can appear both negative or positive and is sometimes coloured using pigments…" Bajac (2002:150-151)
Quentin Bajac (2002: 150): The Invention of Photography. The First Fifty Years. New Horizons. Thames & Hudson Ltd, London.
From pinhole to print – Inspiration, instructions and insights in less than an hour
by Gary Fabbri, Malin Fabbri and Peter Wiklund
The quick and easy way to learn how to build a pinhole camera!
From pinhole to print will guide you from drilling your first pinhole to printing your first pinhole photograph. It is an easy to read, step-by-step guide to making a pinhole camera and creating images.
Strongly recommended for beginners
|
<urn:uuid:687843d0-9d06-40e0-9b12-db7160ab6336>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/processes/pinholes/solargraphy-catching-the-suns-path-pinhole-camera
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396147.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00139-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.958539 | 2,173 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Magnesium helps keep heart arteries healthy
by Newsletter Editor
Earlier lab and animal studies found magnesium may prevent plaque buildup in arteries, but doctors know little of its effect in humans. In this study, 2,695 participants, aged 42 to 64, without cardiovascular disease, reported their diets and underwent X-ray CT scans to measure coronary artery calcification and abdominal aortic calcification, two key areas where plaque builds up.
Doctors adjusted for differences in health and family histories, lifestyle, and other factors, and found that a 50 mg increase in total magnesium per day lowered chances of coronary artery calcification by 22 percent and chances of abdominal aortic calcification by 12 percent. Comparing those with the most magnesium in the diet to those with the least, chances for having any coronary artery calcification at all were 58 percent lower, and for any abdominal aortic calcification at all, 34 percent lower. Women seemed to benefit most from better levels of magnesium in the diet.
|
<urn:uuid:8ee34fc7-7d86-421f-b576-49848d2d6cf4>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.nutritionexpress.com/article+index/newsletters/june+2014/showarticle.aspx?id=2090
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393442.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00043-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.947578 | 199 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Is Famine the New Norm?
When global food prices spiked in 2007–2008, 100 million people were added to the ranks of the world's hungry, pushing the total number over 1 billion for the first time in history. Now, just two years later, we are seeing another food price hike, and more famine is likely to follow.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently published its global food price index for January 2011. The agency's index was at its highest level (both in real and nominal terms) since the FAO started measuring food prices in 1990. Food riots have already begun in Algeria. As history repeats itself and the second major global food crisis in two years takes shape, it is vital that we learn the lessons of the first crisis, and address fundamental causes.
Food security depends on stable and predictable weather and markets, and access to resources, all of which have been knocked dangerously off balance in the past few decades. Since the 1970s, human-caused climate change has brought more frequent extreme weather events worldwide. Farmers who were used to dealing with the prospect of a lost harvest once every ten seasons now experience flood or drought or major pest infestations every second or third year. In 2010 and early this year, Argentina, Australia, China, Pakistan, and Russia have all seen extreme weather events disrupt their agricultural production.
The second source of instability is an increasingly chaotic marketplace. In the name of free trade, the U.S. government and the World Bank have spent the past three decades forcing open developing country markets to cheap imports, which undermined local food production. In a cruel irony, poor countries were also pressured to cut support for their own farm sectors, and even forced to sell off emergency food reserves, under the rationale that it would be more efficient to simply buy food on international markets.
By 2006, more than two-thirds of the world's poorest nations were dependent on food imports. Then came the wave of financial deregulation over the past decade, unleashing speculators into commodity markets, and creating index funds that tied together commodity market prices for food, oil, and metals like never before. But the leveraging, bundling, and "innovative instruments" that were supposed to reduce risk in these markets have had the opposite effect. The result has been a wildly volatile global food market, where factors unrelated to actual supply and demand often drive prices.
This global double whammy of climate and financial instability has not hurt everyone. Volatility is good for the biggest players. Many agribusiness companies are experiencing record profits now and did so during the last food crisis as well. There has been a spike in "land grabbing," in which large areas of arable land in developing countries are bought up by outside investors, and converted to non-food crops, including feedstocks for biofuels.
On the other hand, some African countries won't be hit as hard this time precisely because they insisted on boosting local production instead of relying on global markets. But for the most part, poor farmers are struggling in a hostile and volatile climate. No wonder famine has become the new normal.
If we truly consider world hunger to be an abomination, and not merely an investment opportunity, big changes need to be made. Nearly everyone from the World Bank to the UN to the G-20 recognizes the need to support small-scale farmers, particularly women, in countries facing hunger. Globally, 70 percent of the world's food is grown on farms less than two hectares (4 acres) in size, tended in large part by women.
Development aid, as well as developing country government policies, should focus on helping build the productivity and resilience of these farmers. Instead of leaving small farmers powerless in the face of global forces, we should build on the wisdom of traditional farming systems which combine the best of ecological science with on-the-ground farmer knowledge to encourage practices that reduce costly inputs, produce higher yields, and increase farm incomes. And food production for meeting domestic needs must take priority over cash cropping for export.
But there is much more to do. Countries and regions struggling with hunger need greater policy space at the national level to protect domestic food production, prevent dumping, and stabilize supplies. Some of their flexibility has been curtailed by World Trade Organization rules.
Food reserves should be reexamined as a key tool for addressing shortages, as well as for stabilizing food supplies and prices for farmers and consumers. Land grabbing must stop, and it is time again to support the redistribution of arable land to small farmers who will use it to grow food. Funding to assist developing country farmers in adapting to climate change is woefully inadequate.
Governments need to get serious about implementing rules to curb excess speculation. The U.S. financial reform bill known as Dodd-Frank is a good start, but Wall Street lobbyists are going full force to weaken it during the rulemaking process.
Destabilization of the global food supply over the past several decades can be undone. But that won't happen unless we learn from the past and support new approaches to improve stability and resilience in farming, markets, and food systems.
Jim Harkness is President of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
Read More: Agriculture, Aid, Business, Development, Economy, Ethics, Food, Globalization, Health, Human Rights, Poverty, Trade, Algeria, Argentina, Australia, China, Pakistan, Russia, Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Global, Middle Eastblog comments powered by Disqus
|
<urn:uuid:7a43a9a9-07f0-4146-965e-e67110dc278a>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/commentary/data/000209
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00160-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.958833 | 1,120 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Sea Duty - And Commitment to a Cause
following tale is from the history of the oldest commissioned Warship in the
world, the USS Constitution. It comes by way of the National Park Service,
as printed in "Oceanographic Ships, Fore and Aft", a periodical
from the oceanographer of the US Navy.
23 August 1779, the USS Constitution set sail from Boston, loaded With 475
officers and men, 48,600 gallons of water, 74,000 cannon shot, 11,500 pounds
of black powder and 79,400 gallons of rum. Her mission: to destroy and
harass English shipping.
6 October, she made Jamaica, took on 826 pounds of flour and 68,300 gallons
of rum. Three weeks later, Constitution reached the Azores, where she
provisioned with 550 pounds of beef and 2,300 gallons of Portuguese wine.
18 November, she set sail for England where her crew captured and scuttled
12 English merchant vessels and took aboard their rum. By this time,
Constitution had run out of shot. Nevertheless, she made her way unarmed up
the Firth of Clyde for a night raid. Here, her landing party captured a
whiskey distillery, transferred 13,000 gallons aboard and headed for home.
20 February 1780, the Constitution arrived in Boston with no Cannon shot, no
food, no powder, no rum and no whiskey. She did, however, still carry her
crew of 475 officers and men and 18,600 gallons of water.
math is quite enlightening: Length of cruise: 181 days. Booze consumption:
1.26 gallons per man per day (this does NOT include the unknown quantify of
rum captured from the 12 English merchant vessels in November).
historians say that the re-enlistment rate from this cruise was 92%.
Gallons consumed since 9 April 2003
FastCounter by bCentral
|
<urn:uuid:eccc67fc-e616-43eb-8718-527330adbb3c>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.ship25bsa.org/sea_scout_humor/serious_sea_duty.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00141-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.930546 | 404 | 3.375 | 3 |
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, more than one in five children in the United States are overweight. The problem is creeping downward on the age scale, threatening even preschoolers. At the same time, type 2 diabetes — once called adult-onset diabetes — is affecting children as young as 4, while attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is also on the rise.
Are the problems linked? David Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children's Hospital Boston, thinks they may be. He lays the blame squarely on diets heavy in processed and fast foods — a situation made worse by the constant barrage of TV commercials that make bad foods look so good to kids.
Young children are particularly vulnerable to media messages, as this is the age when they learn eating habits that will stay with them for a lifetime. The key, Dr. Ludwig says in an interview with Scholastic's Parent & Child magazine, is to send your own messages about smart eating by modeling healthy choices and habits.
Parent & Child: How much influence do TV commercials really have on young children's diets? Children aren't making food choices on their own.
Dr. Ludwig: While it's true that parents control what young children eat, children are nonetheless absorbing messages from TV. You can't underestimate the nag factor, when parents give in and buy stuff that's bad for their children. Unhealthy foods and snacks are presented to kids as being cool, appealing, and desirable. And, once they do go to school, they'll be trading foods they brought from home, and seeing the "cool" stuff other kids have.
P&C: So what can parents and teachers do to help?
Dr. Ludwig: If you start early and use this time to teach good eating habits, you can help prevent problems. By the time a child becomes overweight and parents become alarmed, food habits are already well established, and parent-child power struggles can arise.
Young children need to learn about a healthful diet and lifestyle from the people who love them and who have their best interests at heart. Children imitate adult behavior. Parents, in particular, should not only be supportive, they should also live a healthful lifestyle that includes eating nutritious foods and participating in regular exercise.
P&C: What contributes to poor eating habits and unhealthy lifestyles?
Dr. Ludwig: Families are busy, often working long hours and eating out or getting take-out more often. Children have less opportunity to see their parents preparing and eating nutritionally sound meals. Research shows that when meals are not eaten at home, the nutritional quality of the food goes down, and the number of calories consumed goes up.
Also, kids are eating more junk than they used to. Things that used to be rare treats are now daily indulgences. During any given week, three out of four children eat a fast-food meal one or more times a day. Rates of fast-food consumption may be lower for younger kids, but again, the youngest kids are laying down habits that will take hold later. Soda is another example: In the last two decades, soft drink consumption has gone up threefold. Kids used to drink three servings of milk for every serving of soda. Now those numbers are reversed.
P&C: We hear a lot about how the lack of exercise contributes to obesity and related health problems. What role does physical activity play?
Dr. Ludwig: You can partly blame a lack of exercise, but I think that incessant TV commercials are a bigger offender. The average child watches 10,000 TV commercials a year, the majority of which are for poor-quality, low-nutrition foods. Even if a child is getting decent physical activity, that's not enough to counteract the ill effects of eating too much fast food. For example, just one super-size fast-food meal contains a day's worth of calories for a child. Gym class or soccer practice can't reverse that. The child would have to run a marathon!
P&C: Are school meals a potential problem, too?
Dr. Ludwig: Many meals served at schools are not very nutritious. Parents can play an important role by becoming active in the PTA and writing to the school board to request improvement in the quality of food served.
Parents should also write their Congressional representatives. It's shortsighted of our government to scrimp on school spending; we end up paying a lot more in the long run with health problems related to obesity, such as type 2 diabetes.
P&C: How have recent diet trends among adults affected children's eating habits?
Dr. Ludwig: The single clearest trend in childhood diets has been the relative decline in fat as a percentage of total calories. It's the same thing that's happened with adult diets: We have gotten the message that all fat is bad. But It should be noted that some fats are very healthy, such as the fat in nuts, avocados, olive oil, and omega-3 fatty acids found in fish like salmon. When you cut all fat out of the diet, you miss out on healthy fats, too.
We've replaced fat with carbohydrates — and not the good kind. Instead of vegetables, fruits, beans, and other legumes, all of which are healthy carbs, we're eating more processed foods and refined starches — white bread, potatoes, white rice and pasta, and breakfast cereals. These foods all have what is called a high glycemic index. That means they cause a spike in blood sugar. You get a quick burst of energy, but then the blood sugar level drops quickly, stimulating more hunger and, in turn, overeating and weight gain. By contrast, foods with a low glycemic index, such as vegetables, grains, legumes, and other complex carbs, are gentler on blood sugar levels.
P&C: You've suggested a link between children's diets and the diagnoses of ADHD. Please explain.
Dr. Ludwig: It's not that foods with a high glycemic index cause ADHD, but we have observed that the percentage of refined starch and sugar in children's diets has increased along with the prevalence of ADHD.
Here's what happens: A child eats a breakfast that has no fat, no protein, and a high glycemic index — let's say a bagel with fat-free cream cheese. His blood sugar goes up, but pretty soon it crashes, which triggers the release of stress hormones like adrenaline. What you're left with, at around 10 a.m., is a kid with low blood sugar and lots of adrenaline circulating in his bloodstream. He's jittery and fidgety and not paying attention. That's going to look an awful lot like ADHD to his teacher. The possibility exists that in children predisposed to ADHD, quality of diet may have additional impact.
P&C: So what would constitute a healthy diet for kids, one that would help prevent obesity as well as behavioral problems?
Dr. Ludwig: Rather than focus on the amounts of fat and carbohydrates in the diet, it's much more sensible to recognize that both carbs and fat differ in quality. Parents should be sure their kids eat a diet heavy in good carbohydrates — whole grains, vegetables, most fruits, beans, legumes. And they should not lump all fats together as "bad." While you should certainly cut way down on saturated fats, like those in fast-food meals, don't completely cut out the beneficial fats mentioned earlier. That's good advice for all of us.
Recommended Products for Your Child Ages 8-10
|
<urn:uuid:525dafe7-38d2-44c5-9c17-afed0e8b35cf>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.scholastic.com/parents/resources/article/health-nutrition/turn-tv-to-fight-fat-and-adhd
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00169-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.961113 | 1,559 | 3.03125 | 3 |
"WORSCH," is a word game. When playing "WORSCH," a player may win or lose "wordPoints" for using letters from one word, called a "keyWord," to make another (valid) word, a "newWord." Play begins at the zeroSquare and moves towards the centerCircle relative to wordPoints won or lost.
"WORSCH," is a contemporary board game that brings family and friends together. It is fun to play; it entertains, educates, and promotes language skills and learning. The game is adaptable to virtually every written language with ongoing work in languages as diverse as Arabic and Zulu to Chinese and Cherokee.
A trademark of Worsch is "The World's Most Popular Board Game." This is reflective of the inventor's goal of creating versions of the game in at least one language of every country in the world.
The WORSCH Language Preservation Project seeks to promote the survival and continuing vitality of endangered minority languages by making available versions of Worsch in these threatened languages.
Ken B. Williams created and demonstrated the game in March of 1995.
|
<urn:uuid:f6dcb902-5057-4e22-8440-0d92bb9115c5>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.worsch.com/about.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00114-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.958385 | 230 | 2.703125 | 3 |
We have now discussed jagat and Brahman. As we said in the introduction, every philosophy tries to understand the relation between universe, God and the individual. Understanding jIva (individual) is the remaining entity in our study of advaita vEdAnta. advaita starts from our current understanding of what we are - adhyArOpa (our secular understanding is that we are body, mind and intellect); it then presents the scriptural view of the svarUpa of jIvas ; Finally vEdAnta helps us negate (apavAda) our delusional understanding based on the shruti pramANa, to clearly help us understand our svarUpa.
sharIra Thraya - Three Body Forms.
Three body forms are associated with the jIva - sthUla sharIra or gross body, sUkShma sharIra or subtle body and kAraNa sharIra or causal body.
sthUla sharIra or gross body:
Four kinds of gross bodies are classified; - chaturvidha sharIrANi tu jarAyuja, anDaja, svEdaja, udbIjjA khyAni. They are
- jarAyujAni jarAyubhyah jAtAni manushya pashvAdIni - taking birth in a womb, like humans, mammals.
- anDajAni anDEbhyO jAtAni pakShi pannagAdIni - taking birth through an egg like birds and reptiles.
- svEdajAni svEdEbhyah jAtAni yUkAmashakAdani - taking birth through moisture like some flies and insects.
- udbbijAni bhUmim udbhidya jAtAni latA-vrikShAdIni - taking birth by breaking the earth like plants and trees.
A jIva can take birth in any one of the four gross bodies, in accordance with his karma and karma phala.
There are similarities in the different gross bodies, as well as some differences. The jarAyuja is the most evolved sthUla Sharira. We will focus our attention on this sthUla sharIra in the discussion below.
shIryate iti sharIrah - that which decays or is lost is the gross body. The physical body with limbs, head and body is the gross body. All names and forms - man or woman, Hindu, Christian etc., young and old are the descriptors of this body. This body consisting of bones, skin, flesh, blood, fat, bone marrow, and excretions is born and bred of food; so is called the body of food - annamaya sharIra. The source of these body components are the five great elements - earth, water, fire, air and space. The gross body communicates with the jagat through nine outlets - two eyes, two nasal nostrils, two ears, mouth and two lower outlets. This body goes through six changes (shadvikAra) - (1) asti or present in the womb, (2) jAyate or born, (3) vardhatE or grows, (4) pariNamate or becomes old, (5) apakShIyate or decays and (6) vinashyati or dies.
Among the animals and humans, the gross body is animated by the vital airs and mind. The plants possess only vital airs and no mind.
The gross body is also called the annamaya kOsha- Food Sheath - because of its dependence on food for birth as well as growth. The annamaya kOsha is the outermost sheath or casing. The other kOshas in the order are prAnamaya kOsha - sheath of vital airs, manOmaya kOsha - sheath of mind, vijnyAnamaya kOsha - sheath of knowledge, and Anandamaya kOsha - sheath of happiness. We will learn more about these in appropriate contexts.
What is the purpose of the gross body? - The gross body is the medium for the jIva to communicate with the outside world or jagat. The jIva needs this medium to experience the fruits of action of previous lives.
The previous life was for the experience of fruits of its previous life or lives. So the life experience for the jIva is beginningless - having a gross body anytime is a result of a previous life existence. So there is no description of first life. The jIva, through the body, experiences the fruits of the previous life only or do more karma, guaranteeing a future life with another gross body. Good deeds only beget a divine body, mixed deeds beget a human body or bad deeds only beget an animal or plant body. Suffering from continuous births and deaths, at some point, the jIva recognizes the futility of the cycle of birth and death from the beginning-less time; he then begins the quest for liberation from this cycle of birth and death and over time will become a realized person or jnyAni.
Is the jIva, the gross body? - If the jiVa is acquiring new bodies every time he is born, obviously the gross body is not the jIva. Just as humans discard old torn clothes and acquire new clothes, the jIva discards old and frail bodies and acquires new bodies to experience the fruits of his action (gIta 2-22 - vAsAmsi jIrNAni yathA vihAya..). Just as a human does not change when he acquires new clothes, so the jIva does not change with the acquisition of a new body.
This is also obvious from our life experiences. As the individual is growing from child to adolescent to adult to oldage, the individual is the same individual. During sleep the individual has no association with the body. During surgery under anesthesia, the individual has no experience of cuts on his body. So the jiVa is not the gross body. This rejects or negates (apavAda) the understanding that the jIva is the gross body(adhyArOpa)
We will discuss sUkShma sharIra (subtle body) in the next unit.
Om shAntih, shAntih, shAntih ( Om peace, peace, peace).
|
<urn:uuid:0e0755b8-766d-4d00-94fc-ba6cc2fb3c45>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/kramakrishna/unit_20.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00170-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.894527 | 1,369 | 2.71875 | 3 |
The atmosphere of exoplanet HD 189733b, about 60 light-years from Earth, changed dramtically after a violent flare on its parent star bathed it in intense X-ray radiation. Result: A powerful burst of evaporation.
The Hubble Space Telescope caught the whole thing during two periods in early 2010 and late 2011 as it was silhouetted against its parent star - known as the the transit method of observation (see Planet Hunters - How They Do It for various ways planet discoveries and observations are made). While backlit in this way, HD 189733b’s atmosphere 'imprinted' its chemical signature on the starlight, allowing astronomers to decode what was happening on scales that are too tiny to image directly.
HD 189733b has a blue sky like our planet, though that’s where the similarities with Earth stop. It is a huge gas giant similar to Jupiter, but lies extremely close to its star, just one thirtieth the distance of the Earth to the Sun. HD 189733A is slightly smaller and cooler than the Sun but that is still an extremely hot climate, above 1000 degrees Celsius, and the upper atmosphere is battered by energetic extreme-ultraviolet and X-ray radiation. It orbits every 53 hours.
CLICK FOR LARGER SIZE. Star field image showing the star HD 189733 in the center. To the right of the star is planetary nebula Messier 27. The field-of-view is approximately 0.9 x 0.6 degrees. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)
“The first set of observations were actually disappointing,” said astronomer Alain Lecavelier des Etangs, “since they showed no trace of the planet’s atmosphere at all. We only realised we had chanced upon something more interesting when the second set of observations came in.”
The team’s follow-up observations, made in 2011, showed a dramatic change, with clear signs of a plume of gas being blown from the planet at a rate of at least 1000 tonnes per second. “We hadn’t just confirmed that some planets’ atmospheres evaporate,” Lecavelier explains, “we had watched the physical conditions in the evaporating atmosphere vary over time. Nobody had done that before.”
Why the change?
Despite the extreme temperature of the planet, the atmosphere is not hot enough to evaporate at the rate seen in 2011. Instead the evaporation is thought to be driven by the intense X-ray and extreme-ultraviolet radiation from the parent star, HD 189733A, which is about 20 times more powerful than that of our own Sun. Taking into account also that HD 189733b is a giant planet very close to its star, then it must suffer an X-ray dose 3 million times higher than the Earth.
Evidence to support X-ray driven evaporation comes from simultaneous observations of HD 189733A with the Swift satellite which, unlike Hubble, can observe the star’s atmosphere-frying X-rays. A few hours before Hubble observed the planet for the second time, Swift recorded a powerful flash of radiation coming from the surface of the star, in which the star briefly became 4 times brighter in X-rays.
“X-ray emissions are a small part of the star’s total output, but it is the part that it is energetic enough to drive the evaporation of the atmosphere,” explains Peter Wheatley from the University of Warwick and one of the co-authors of the study. “This was the brightest X-ray flare from HD 189733A of several observed to date, and it seems very likely that the impact of this flare on the planet drove the evaporation seen a few hours later with Hubble.”
X-rays are energetic enough to heat the gas in the upper atmosphere to tens of thousands of degrees, hot enough to escape the gravitational pull of the giant planet. A similar process occurs, albeit less dramatically, when a space weather event such as a solar flare hits the Earth’s ionosphere, disrupting communications. While the team believes that the flash of X-rays is the most likely cause of the atmospheric changes they saw on HD 189733b, there are other possible explanations. For example, it may be that the baseline level of X-ray emission from the star increased between 2010 and 2011, in a seasonal process similar to the Sun’s 11-year sunspot cycle.
Regardless of the details of exactly what happened to HD 189733b’s atmosphere, which the team hope to clarify using future observations with Hubble and ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope, there is no question that the planet was hit by a stellar flare, and no question that the rate of evaporation of the planet’s atmosphere shot up.
This research has relevance not only for the study of Jupiter-like planets. Several recent discoveries of rocky “super Earths”, like Kepler-10b and CoRoT-7b, near their parent stars are thought to be the remnants of planets like HD 189733b, after the complete evaporation of their atmospheres.
“Temporal variations in the evaporating atmosphere of the exoplanet HD189733b” will be published in a forthcoming issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
- PHYSICAL SCIENCES
- EARTH SCIENCES
- LIFE SCIENCES
- SOCIAL SCIENCES
Subscribe to the newsletter
Stay in touch with the scientific world!
Know Science And Want To Write?
- A Billion Years Ago, What Did Earth's Ancient Magnetic Field Look Like?
- How A Former Naturopath Can Help Unravel The Trickery of Alternative Medicine
- Can A New Rule Trigger A Second EU Referendum? Petition Signatures Over 11% Of Total Votes Cast
- Insects Were Already Using Camouflage 100 Million Years Ago
- Finding All-Hadronic Top - Again
- Better Brains With Beer
- Some Celiac Disease May Be Due To Viruses
- "Thanks for your understanding!Cheers,T...."
- "As for comparing America and Europe, I am reminded of “Pyramid” by Robert Abernathy. ..."
- "Just a link to add to this article at some point. A good Google document about the sorts of issues..."
- "Oh, okay - there's no reason for them to add up, indeed it's a bit of a coincidence that it turned..."
- "Robert, Out of curiosity I added totalled the Ashcroft figures of both Leave and Remain age groups..."
- Researchers open new path of discovery in Parkinson's disease
- A shampoo bottle that empties completely -- every last drop
- Radioactive cesium fallout on Tokyo from Fukushima concentrated in glass microparticles
- Meet the biohackers
- Seeds of black holes could be revealed by gravitational waves detected in space
|
<urn:uuid:2eaf836e-2a85-4c2e-ad4c-10167426cc6b>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.science20.com/news_articles/hd_189733b_dramatic_change_spotted_faraway_exoplanet-91503
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00045-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.919195 | 1,483 | 3.546875 | 4 |
Monday's Post by Daniel Olivas...
On January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr. was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had been graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955 In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.
In 1954, Martin Luther King accepted the pastorale of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.
In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "I Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.
At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement. On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.
From Nobel Lectures, Peace 1951-1970, Editor Frederick W. Haberman, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1972
POETRY MAGAZINE TAKEN TO TASK REDUX: We recently noted that the New York Sun published a letter by Francisco Aragón where he took to task Poetry Magazine for its failure to cover Latino/a poets. He revisits this issue in a letter published yesterday in the Boston Globe (in italics):
Reading between the lines at Poetry magazine
January 15, 2006
I APPRECIATED Wesley Yang's informative and objective portrait on the work the Poetry Foundation is attempting to do with its ample financial resources (''Poets, Inc.," Ideas, Jan. 8).
Among the points he conveys is how the president of the foundation, John Barr, ''doesn't hesitate to use the language of corporate marketing to talk about his outreach efforts, speaking of 'demographic groups.' "
Yang also quotes the magazine's editor, Christian Wiman, who says there should ''be a broad band of poetry available to common readers."
In the September 2005 issue of Poetry, Wiman, explaining which books get assigned for review, states: ''We try to cover a range of books."
It is troubling, therefore, that to the best of my knowledge not one book by a Latino or Latina author has been reviewed since he took over.
Titles by Latino and Latina poets continue to appear in the magazine's online list of books received but have not garnered a single word of commentary.
So much for representing the mosaic of American poetry.
Notre Dame, Ind.
The writer is director of Letras Latinas, the literary component of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
NUEVO LIBRO: Rigoberto González reviews Ray González's most recent poetry collection, Consideration of the Guitar (BOA Editions). He notes that "this rich and significant book reads like an epic love poem to the Southwest and the Texas borderlands."
FROM UCLA'S CHICANO STUDIES RESEARCH CENTER PRESS:
News from CSRC Press:
I Am Aztlán: The Personal Essay in Chicano Studies. Scholars, writers, and artists reflect on the role of the “I” in Chicano and Latino culture and the diverse ways in which personal voice and experience inform their research. Praise for for this new book of essays:
Book News (August 2005): "These twelve essays … approach the subjects of exile and going home, home and work, family, and testifying by sharing memories of first learning English and white culture, what [the authors] thought of their parents' role in culture in the past and how they perceive it now, how family secrets that transcend culture still become involved in it, how life as a Chicano/Latino is confined or liberated by conflicts in culture, how machismo is machismo, sometimes, how finding a kindred spirit in print can save a life, and how professions can be created or broken on perceptions of others. Field reports from the classroom and the U.S. Hispanic market are included, along with a bibliography of autobiography and personal essays in Spanish and English.”
Early Chicano Art Documentaries. This DVD combines two pioneering documentaries about Chicano artists of East Los Angeles during the crucial decade of the 1970s. Library Journal says: “Highly recommended for Latino and culturally diverse collections.”
CSRC Press Information:
If you are interested in buying books, click here.
If you are interested in buying DVDs, click here.
If you are interested in subscribing to the CSRC journal, email your postal address to [email protected].
Information about all CSRC Press publications is available at the CSRC Press website.
NUEVO CUENTO: The new issue of Del Sol Review includes my cuento de fantasma, Chock-Chock. Drop on by and take a peek at the other stories, poems and essays from an array of authors.
All done. So, until next Monday, enjoy the intervening posts from my compadres y comadre at La Bloga. ¡Lea un libro!
|
<urn:uuid:867c6fe8-9ddf-4b32-8f5c-22b50ef7546d>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://labloga.blogspot.com/2006/01/martin-luther-king-jr.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395548.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00172-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.9696 | 1,683 | 3.34375 | 3 |
The results led a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel to recommend last month that the agency approve ocriplasmin. And ThromboGenics Inc., the Belgium start-up that sponsored the studies, believes the drug, brand name Jetrea, holds promise for treating other debilitating eye diseases, including age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy.
"It's exciting and an entirely new approach," Haller said.
The disorder ocriplasmin was tested on, vitreomacular adhesion, involves the vitreous, the clear, jellylike substance in the center of the eyeball.
The jelly contains fibrous proteins that act like a biological glue, keeping the vitreous attached to the back of the eye at vital points, including the optic nerve and the macula, the region of sharpest vision.
By late middle age, however, this glue weakens and the vitreous becomes more watery, causing it to separate from the back of the eye.
This separation is normal and natural.
"The vast majority of people will hardly notice it happen," said ThromboGenics chief executive Patrik De Haes. "You may see a light flare or a floater."
It is only when the separation is incomplete that problems occur. The spot of the vitreous that keeps sticking - the adhesion - can tug on delicate eye structures. As a result, the retina may swell or bleed, the optic nerve's signals to the brain may be disrupted, or the macula may be torn.
Patients often see double or distorted images, like looking in a funhouse mirror, Haller said. If the macula has a hole, they see blank spots - a face with no nose, a word missing letters. Untreated, the complications can lead to blindness.
Surgery to remove the vitreous and substitute saline is the only available treatment. Recovery often requires the patient to lie face downward for a week or more, and serious complications are common.
An estimated 250,000 Americans a year - 850,000 worldwide - ultimately resort to vitreous-removal surgery.
"Currently, we often wait until there is irreversible damage before we operate," Haller said. "If we could safely intervene earlier," vision loss could be prevented.
Ocriplasmin, a concentrated form of a natural enzyme, works by dissolving the biological glue that causes the unwanted adherence of the vitreous to the back of the eye.
Although adhesions went away in only 26.5 percent of eyes injected with the drug, macular holes closed in 40 percent of treated eyes. This suggests that reducing the tugging is helpful, even if the adhesion persists.
"The macular hole closure was an astonishing result," Haller said. "Just getting some slack was apparently enough for the hole to close."
Maureen Kearney, a clinical psychologist in Rockville, Md., noticed vision improvement within hours of the ocriplasmin injection she received at a study site in Lawrenceville, N.J.
"The next day, the newsprint had gone back to the regular size, with no distortion," she recalled. "The missing letters resolved after a month. And there was no down time. The next day I was out and about. Talk about a small miracle."
In stark contrast, she said, a friend had vitreous-removal surgery "and now her eye is nonfunctional."
The ThromboGenics studies found that 18 percent of the ocriplasmin group wound up having surgery, vs. 27 percent with placebo.
The researchers also evaluated the sharpness of patients' vision using standard eye charts. Among patients who started out with poorer vision, a gain of three lines was more likely with ocriplasmin than placebo. But overall, there was no significant difference between the two groups after six months.
Side effects such as eye pain or flashes of light were more common with ocriplasmin (68 percent vs. 54 percent with placebo), but were mostly transient and mild.
The FDA is scheduled to decide whether to approve the drug by Oct. 17. ThromboGenics has not yet set a price for Jetrea, De Haes said.
The company is now testing the drug in patients with macular degeneration - the leading cause of blindness over age 55 - because about a third of them have an adhesion, he said.
Another area of research is diabetic retinopathy, in which tiny blood vessels in the eye grow out of control, impairing vision. Adhesions are believed to contribute to this disease process in many patients, De Haes said.
Contact Marie McCullough
at 215-854-2720 or [email protected].
|
<urn:uuid:ba25c139-2f5f-4dee-9072-29a770f123a4>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://articles.philly.com/2012-08-17/news/33233604_1_vision-disorder-ocriplasmin-thrombogenics
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398869.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00131-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948345 | 1,002 | 2.546875 | 3 |
According to several educational research studies the United States is falling behind other countries in math and science achievement by middle school and high school students. Now, there's a push by several U.S. federal government agencies - including the U.S. space agency NASA - to create programs that will encourage students to study for careers in science and technology.
These students are taking part in experiments designed to test their knowledge and inspire them to concentrate on science, technology, engineering and math. Charles Bolden, the head of the U.S. space agency, NASA, and Lisa Jackson from the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, came to this Washington, D.C. middle school to encourage these youngsters to focus on math and science careers.
"If you want to be competitive the more study you have done the better," Bolden said. "The critical part at the end of whatever the level of study you are going to do is to get yourself involved in something that puts you into a laboratory."
In the 2011 U.S. federal budget, both NASA and the EPA propose to spend more than $146 million on programs to increase student and teacher proficiency in science and technology disciplines.
"We really need to reach down into the schools as low as possible," he said. "We want middle school kids and their teachers to increase their level of achievement in science and math and for their teachers to increase their level of performance in teaching those subjects."
Efforts to strengthen math and science education come at a time when 15-year-old U.S.students rank 25th in math literacy and 30th in science literacy - among the 57 countries participating in the Program for International Student Assessment.
Administrator Bolden says other studies indicate the United States is not preparing enough students and teachers to meet the demand in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
"The nations that lead everybody in math and science education are Finland and the Scandinavian countries and we [the United States] are well behind. President Obama's efforts and his emphasis on education particularly technical ducation science and math, to want to have every kid in college by 2020, is to be applauded and that's a goal that we at NASA are really going to make sure that he can accomplish," Bolden stated.
NASA is launching a three-year program called "Summer of Innovation." It will target middle school students during their summer recess to take part in intensive math and science learning programs. Those will include follow-on activities during the school year. Educators say the goal will be to improve student academic performance in math, science and technology courses, while giving them the tools they need to build lasting professional careers in a 21st-century, knowledge-based economy.
|
<urn:uuid:4261dede-bfe5-435f-bedb-e115b736b936>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.voanews.com/content/us-government-agencies-propose-spending-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars-on-math-and-science-educational-programs-93298309/169471.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396949.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00111-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.970625 | 555 | 3.25 | 3 |
If you have high blood pressure, you aren't alone: more than half of everyone between the ages of 55 and 74 has blood pressure higher than 120/80.
But just because it's common, don't take high blood pressure lightly.
High blood pressure - also known as hypertension - is dangerous because it makes your arteries and your heart work too hard. It also increases your risk for cardiac disease and stroke.
While there are no obvious symptoms and no cure for hypertension, here are some tips to help you maintain healthy blood pressure for a lifetime:
Swallow your medicine - if your health care provider prescribes medication to lower your pressure, take it as directed;
No butts about it - smoking is tough on your arteries, so if you smoke, quit;
Limit alcohol - excess alcohol use has been linked with high blood pressure, so drink only in moderation. For women, that is a maximum of one drink daily while for men, that is a maximum of two drinks daily;
Eat smart - a healthful diet, including reduced salt intake, can reduce blood pressure. Visit the National Institutes of Health's Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, or DASH, eating plan for pointers at NIH.gov;
Weigh your options - being overweight raises your blood pressure, so ask your doctor if you need to drop some pounds;
Fit for life - exercise helps to lower your blood pressure. Try to include 30 minutes of moderate activity almost every day;
Westfield Memorial Hospital offers free blood pressure screening the first and third Wednesday of each month from 2 to 4 p.m., in the hospital's front lobby. For more information, call 326-4921.
|
<urn:uuid:c006015e-b210-4e08-a2c1-0a6d63ac2151>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.westfieldrepublican.com/page/content.detail/id/517003/Make-high-blood-pressure-a-high-priority.html?nav=5063
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00168-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.937967 | 343 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Domestic Violence shelters, and Mental Health Centers where help is
available. Please get help. In some extreme cases, getting out is a life or death
There are several sites that advise women (mostly) about protecting themselves:
(http://www.usdoj.gov/ovw/) then click on publications, and Why Women Stay
799-7233 or 1-800-787-3224] is a source of information and place to get referrals to
a local clinic or shelter for women.
There are, of course, sites attempting to help abusers: Treatment for
Resources (http://www.daniel-sonkin.com/), and others. Counselors working
with abusers have compiled long lists of excuses and rationalizations often
used by the out-of-control partner. Such a list of excuses can sometimes
dramatically illustrate to the abuser how many ways his mind distorts and
denies reality. (See other books and groups above.)
Finally, there are sites about many different kinds of abuse: Online Abuse
Exploitation (http://www.advocateweb.org/hope/default.asp). Remember, books
about verbal and emotional abuse are cited above. Norcross, et al. (2000) also
provide several additional sites concerned with abuse by a priest, therapist, lesbian
or gay partner, religious leader, self, elder caretaker, etc.
Two older publications can help you understand anger and marital fights (Wile,
1993; Maslin, 1994). Both books suggest ways to resolve the cognitive origins of
anger and reestablish love in the marriage.
McKay, Paleg, Fanning & Landis (1996) have studied the effects of parents'
anger on their children. It is a serious problem that parents can hopefully handle
with better self-control, especially by giving up false beliefs that fuel anger and by
learning problem-solving or communication skills (see chapters 13 and 14). The
effects on children of domestic violence are covered in detail in the next section.
Child abuse is our next topic. There is ample evidence that a degrading,
hostile, violent family has negative influence in many ways on a child
throughout life (more later), that is true even if the child him/herself has not
been physically abused. Rape will be dealt with later in this chapter, because
the act of rape is a hostile, cruel, aggressive, demeaning act, not primarily a
sexual experience. In chapter 9, child sexual abuse, such as incest, is
briefly discussed. It is located there because sexual abuse is often a family
|
<urn:uuid:e2e876c6-2836-46d6-9794-ae5f4e16f41d>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://psychologicalselfhelp.org/Chapter7/chap7_68.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00032-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.925591 | 550 | 2.671875 | 3 |
This diagram shows different regions of the ultraviolet (UV) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. There are several named regions of the UV spectrum corresponding to different wavelengths of the electromagnetic waves. Some of the regions overlap. Short wavelengths correspond to higher frequencies and higher energies, while longer waves oscillate at lower frequencies and carry less energy. Visible light and the start of the infrared (IR) spectrum are shown for comparison.
Windows to the Universe original artwork by Randy Russell.
|
<urn:uuid:4e5db339-b364-41f2-94c5-e6f6c4c7eb15>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.windows2universe.org/physical_science/magnetism/images/uv_spectrum_regions_big_gif_image.html&nl=10
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00035-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.892413 | 93 | 2.9375 | 3 |
The ALERT Flood Detection System is supported by a subscription-based weather information/graphics display system consisting of a computer workstation running MxVision Weather Sentry software. The system receives National Weather Service forecast products, weather maps, GOES weather satellite images, and both single site and composite NEXRAD weather radar images through continuous broadcasts from a commercial communication satellite. Broadcasts are received through the internet and a one-meter satellite dish located at the Glassell Street facility.
GOES weather satellite images are automatically updated every hour, NEXRAD composite images every 15 minutes, and local radar images every 6 minutes. The computer software is configured to display enhancements to the last image in display loop including: 1) watch boxes, 2) icons indicating the issuance of a NWS watches and warnings, and 3) arrows indicating the distance and direction of storm cell movement. Storm movement is also visualized by running sequences of weather satellite/radar images.
GOES Weather Satellite Images
The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) provide visible and infrared satellite images of the earth's surface. There are currently two GOES weather satellites in geostationary orbit about 22,000 miles above the equator, GOES-West (currently GOES-15) and GOES-East.
Visible satellite images record visible light from the sun that is reflected back to the satellite by cloud tops, land surfaces and ocean surfaces. These black-and-white images show what the naked eye would see from space (if color blind) and hence represent nothing fancier than ordinary black-and-white photographs of the earth from space. The brightness of any feature on a visible satellite images depends on (1) how directly light from the sun strikes it, and (2) how reflective the feature is. Cloud tops and snow and ice surfaces tend to reflect visible light best, so they tend to be the brightest (i.e., whitest) features on a visible satellite image. Ocean surfaces tend to reflect the least visible light, so they tend to be the darkest features. Visible images are unavailable during the night when the sun is down.
Infrared satellite images record invisible infrared radiation emitted directly by cloud tops, land surfaces or ocean surfaces. The warmer an object is, the more intensely it emits radiation, so the intensity with which a feature on earth emits infrared radiation tells us about that feature's temperature. Unlike visible images, infrared images are available during the night when the sun is down.
Using computer software, the intensities of infrared radiation can be translated into different shades of gray and/or different colors, and overlaid onto maps.
On the color-enhanced infrared images, colors other than gray are assigned to some of the coldest temperatures. Far from the polar regions, the coldest features invariably comprise the tops of clouds in the upper troposphere or lower stratosphere and are often associated with thunderstorms, hurricanes or mid-latitude cyclones. Hence, color-enhanced infrared images help highlight storms of various types.
NEXRAD WEATHER RADAR IMAGES
In July of 1996, the last US Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) WSR-88D Doppler radar system was built in Santa Ana Mountains. The system was accepted by the NWS in February 1997. This local NEXRAD system (KSOX) provides storm intensity monitoring over Orange County and the Upper Santa Ana River Watershed. The addition of the local system to the existing NEXRAD systems located in Santa Barbara (Vandenberg AFB), Ventura (Sulfur Mountain), and San Diego Counties provide coverage for metropolitan Southern California. The color images can be displayed, printed and saved. Storm rainfall intensity and movement is monitored by running sequences of mosaic images. Mosaic images consist of imaging data from multiple radar sites overlaid onto a regional map. The storm maps and images are displayed in multiple colors representing radar reflectivity from water droplets in the atmosphere.
|
<urn:uuid:362bc838-0a00-43f7-b141-4f54fd085fbd>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://ocpl.org/gov/pw/watersheds/rainrecords/dataresources/rainfalldata/alertsystem/weatherimaging.asp
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00055-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.880706 | 818 | 3.140625 | 3 |
What You May Not Know About Hamster Scent Glands
Owners and veterinarians should be aware of hamsters' scent glands' normal appearance and odor.
Microbiologist Elizabeth Johnson, a fourth-year student of veterinary medicine and surgery at Glasgow University School of Veterinary Medicine in Scotland, said her love for furry little creatures, including hamsters, has led to an unexpected discovery.
"They are not generally very well understood by owners and even by some vets," she said.
Johnson estimates she's had 60 to 70 pet hamsters throughout her life.
About Scent Glands
Owners and veterinarians should be aware of hamsters' scent glands' normal appearance and odor, Johnson said.
Even practitioners who treat exotics on a regular basis often admit not knowing much about hamsters, and perhaps most perplexing are hamsters' scent glands.
Melissa A. Kling, DVM, of Macon, Ga., is secretary of the Assn. of Exotic Mammal Veterinarians and has treated exotic pets for 20 years. Dr. Kling says hamsters' scent glands are also known as flank glands or hip spots.
"The scent glands are more prominent in males than females. When the male is excited, it will lick its scent glands until the entire area is wet. It will also scratch and rub itself as if the area is irritated."
In addition to differences between the sexes, there is also variation among species.
"Scent glands are bilateral, and situated on the flanks of Syrian hamsters," Johnson said.
"On all of the domestic dwarf species-including Roborovskis, Campbells, winter whites and Chinese-they are single and situated on the ventral midline close to the umbilicus."
The appearance often varies further between species.
"In Syrians, the scent glands are flat, often greasy or wet looking, sometimes pigmented, and with some longer hairs over them," Johnson said.
"In dwarf hamsters, the glands are quite protuberant, sometimes hairless, often showing a greasy to waxy yellow secretion."
Kling said there is evidence that the secretions are used for territorial marking by males.
"Females also have these glands but they are not as easily identified, and the secretions are associated with the estrous cycle," she said.
Still, despite their biological functions, hamsters' scent glands can be unattractive.
"They look quite unclean in some hamsters," Johnson said, especially in Campbells and winter whites, also referred to as Russian dwarfs.
Warning Signs for Clients
Hamsters' scent glands, especially males', are enlarged and are sometimes mistaken for tumors. Here are some warning signs you can provide clients that indicate something may really be wrong:
— Reluctance to be held or picked up
— Unusual aggression or nippiness
— Change in behavior/temperament
— Hunched-over posture
— Redness or bleeding
— Pus buildup
— Unusual swelling
— Unusual discharge
Development and Odor
In all species, males' scent glands tend to be more prominent.
"The glands are fully developed at the time the hamster reaches sexual maturity," Kling said.
So is their smell, according to Johnson.
"The glands become most obvious at puberty and the odor is most obvious then too," she said. Some people could be put off by this smell, but it's really quite normal and natural.
"The scent glands' smell varies from unnoticeable in some hamsters to quite a strong, musky scent in others. It may be especially noticeable after handling dwarfs, when the ventral gland has brushed up against its handler's hand."
The smell of some female Syrians can often be potent.
Tumor "False Alarms"
The scent glands' appearance often causes concern and can appear to be tumor-like growths. And as a result of the lack of readily available information about hamsters' scent glands, owners and even practitioners can mistake the glands for tumors.
"One of the most common reasons hamsters are presented to a veterinarian is the owner mistakes the scent gland for a tumor," Kling said.
"Dwarf glands always look like tumors and often vets are not aware of the ventral location," Johnson said. "Syrian glands look less worrisome but again, owners notice the pigment or wetness and worry that there may be something wrong."
Treatment and Maintenance
"It complicates matters that scent glands, particularly in dwarfs, get infected sometimes and also develop tumors, which are usually malignant," Johnson said.
It is important, therefore, that owners know what the scent glands are and become familiar with the unique appearance of their own pet's glands.
Owners who notice an increase in size, unusual discharge, redness or bleeding, should be advised to see a veterinarian.
"Indication of a problem would be reluctance on the part of the hamster to be held or picked up; unusual aggression or nippiness; change in behavior and temperament," Johnson said.
"Pain in hamsters is often indicated by a hunched posture and reluctance to move. Also, look for localized inflammation, crusting, ulceration, bleeding or pus."
"If the gland becomes infected or inflamed from constant irritation by the hamster, castration may need to be considered along with appropriate topical therapy," Kling said.
Besides tumors, other medical problems related to hamsters' scent glands may arise. In older hamsters, neoplasia can occur, the most common being melanomas and hemangiosarcomas.
Male hamsters often bite each other's scent glands if housed together.
Advise owners to check them if there has been a fight. But male hamsters' squabbling can be more severe than just biting.
"Sometimes if male hamsters are housed together they may cannibalize each other's glands," Kling said.
Barring any of these problems, however, hamsters' scent glands don't require much maintenance.
"Healthy scent glands need no more attention than a look-over as often as possible to check for problems," Johnson said.
This article first appeared in the October 2004 issue of Veterinary Practice News.
|
<urn:uuid:0d12b5b7-a24f-441e-a4f1-91b71dd93955>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.veterinarypracticenews.com/March-2012/What-You-May-Not-Know-About-Hamsters-Their-Scent-Glands-Often-Fool-Owners-And-Even-Some-Veterinarians./
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395166.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00094-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.961529 | 1,298 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Site Map: MAIN / A Reader's Journal, Vol. 1/ This Page
A READER'S JOURNAL, Vol. 1
The Inner Nature of Music and the Experience of Tone by Rudolf Steiner
Seven Selected Lectures 1906 through 1923
Published by Anthroposophic Press in 1983
A Book Review by Bobby Matherne ©2002
To glimpse the importance of music, one must come to understand that all the other arts "actually have models in the physical world." The models for music originated in the higher spiritual worlds, not the physical worlds. Instead of trying to prove this is not true by coming up with exceptions you can think of right away, try asking instead the question: How does one enter these spiritual worlds? Steiner says it begins in meditation, a "great stillness", in which the meditator "excludes the memories and experiences of the outer sense world". With extended periods of meditation, his dreams take on a regularity and "when he awakens in the morning, it feels as if he arose out of a flowing cosmic ocean." In his dreams he begins to experience a world of light and color, of beings composed of light and color. Soon he comes to see that "The physical world is a kind of condensation that has been crystallized out of the astral world". In the next higher stage, he remains conscious during the non-dreaming portion of his sleep and enters a new world, "not one of light and colors but . . . a world of tone." The world of tone is added to the world of light and one can bring back the experience of tone and create it in the physical world. Steiner sums this up by saying,
All objects have a spiritual tone at the foundation of their being, and, in his deepest nature, man himself is such a spiritual tone. On this basis, Paracelsus said, 'The realms of nature are the letters, and man is the word that is composed of these letters.'
There is much more in this book than any brief review can do justice to, much more than a single reading can do justice to, in fact, one must almost read and understand most of Steiner's other works before one can begin to comprehend the depths of information contained in this small volume. Erika V. Asten says in the Foreword, "This volume contains the only two sets of lectures that Rudolf Steiner gave primarily on musical subjects."
How does the experience of tone affect us today? Steiner says of man, "The world of tones draws my 'I' and my astral body out of my physical and etheric bodies." This describes rather well what the lyrics of this popular song seems to be saying, "Give me the beat boys, and fill my soul; I want to get lost in your Rock and Roll and drift away . . ."
To Obtain your own Copy of this Reviewed Book, Click on SteinerBooks Logo below and order a copy of this book.
~^~ Over One Million Good Readers A Year as of 2004 ~^~
Are you unhappy with your life? Fearful? Angry? Anxious? Feel down or upset by everyday occurrences? Plagued by chronic discomforts like migraines or tension-type headaches? At Last! An Alternative Approach to Removing Unwanted Physical Body States without Drugs or Psychotherapy!
Click on Faces Below.
|
<urn:uuid:64ec7c3b-20af-4f84-9096-c07cb6ae7589>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.doyletics.com/_arj1/innernat.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394605.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00144-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.911149 | 702 | 2.765625 | 3 |
I am 23 years old and was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes 2 years ago. However, I was wondering if I would eventually become Type 1. I discussed this with my family doctor and requested a test be done of the presence of autoantibodies to islet cells which I understand to be the only way to know for sure. My doctor apparently has not heard of this test and insisted I was Type 2 because I'm not insulin dependent. Is there a name for this test? I'm from Canada and my doctor was wondering if this was a test only done in the United States? Knowing for sure what to expect in the future would take a lot of pressure off my mind.
Whether you have Type 1 diabetes (which is an autoimmune disorder), or Type 2 (which has unknown causes or causes), is usually decided on clinical grounds: age at onset, weight at onset, and need for insulin to avoid severe hyperglycemia and ketoacidosis. However, there also are several other less-well-understood varieties of diabetes, one called "slowly evolving Type 1 diabetes," and another, "Type 1.5 diabetes," that clearly show that the standard definitions are inadequate.
Testing for antibodies is being done in a few commercial laboratories in the USA (and presumably elsewhere), but the testing methods are really not very well worked out, and therefore many endocrinologists still view the concepts as investigational and best done in a medical research setting. Also, HLA testing can be done, and combined with testing for ICA's and other antibodies to help analyze the situation better.
By the way, Type 2 diabetes does not become Type 1; perhaps some of the cases that seem to be this way really are cases of slowly-evolving Type 1 diabetes.
You can review previous questions and answers about the Causes and Prevention of diabetes for more information.
Original posting 8 Feb 97
Last Updated: Tuesday April 06, 2010 15:08:54
This Internet site provides information of a general nature and is designed for educational purposes only. If you have any concerns about your own health or the health of your child, you should always consult with a physician or other health care professional.
This site is published by T-1 Today, Inc. (d/b/a Children with Diabetes), a 501c3 not-for-profit organization, which is responsible for its contents. Our mission is to provide education and support to families living with type 1 diabetes.
© Children with Diabetes, Inc. 1995-2016. Comments and Feedback.
|
<urn:uuid:fc57630b-2d57-40ae-bd10-c9789e45fb2f>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/dteam/1997-02/d_0d_1jb.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395546.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00186-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.964832 | 518 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Last modified: 2009-12-11 by ian macdonald
Keywords: isabel | santa isabel | triangle: hoist (yellow) | triangle: top hoist (green) | triangle: bottom fly (yellow) | disc (blue) | axe |
Links: FOTW homepage | search | disclaimer and copyright | write us | mirrors
1:2 image by Blas Delgado
Searching in the Internet I found the flag of Isabel province here.
Falko Schmidt, 10 November 2001
Similar elements and colours as in the flag which was reported in 1996 but differently arranged two stripes and hoist triangle instead of two diagonal halves and central disc. Do we have any additional information on the date when these two flags were adopted?
Santiago Dotor, 13 November 2001
From the Administrative Divisions of Countries ("Statoids") website:
Isabel includes Santa Isabel, San Jorge, Barora Fa, Barora Ite, the Ghizunabeana Islands, and others.
Santiago Dotor, 18 May 2004
1:2 image by Pascal Gross
Source: Flags of Paradise 1996.
Pascal Gross, October 1998
|
<urn:uuid:b3521ff5-46bf-4bbc-bd34-8db0e5513732>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.flagchart.net/flags/sb-is.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402516.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00039-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.874252 | 244 | 2.578125 | 3 |
The first major section of Psalm 68 (verses 4-18) continues with these words in verses 11-14:
"The Lord [Yahweh] gives the command;
great is the company of those who bore the tidings:
'The kings of the armies, they flee, they flee!'
The women at home divide the spoil,
though they stay among the sheepfolds--
the wings of the dove covered with silver,
its pinions with green gold.
When the Almighty scattered kings there,
snow fell on Zalmon."
1. After describing Yahweh bringing his people into the land of Canaan to conquer the peoples there and settle there as their land (verses 9b-10a), the psalmist now describes victories over the Canaanites which the Israelites enjoyed because of Yahweh's intervention. As Yahweh led his armies (here the Israelites--see 1 Samuel 17:45), "commanding" them on the battlefield as a field general would command his troops, the "kings" of the different Canaanite city-states fled before them. See, for example, Israel's defeat of the five kings of Jerusalem, Hebron, Yarmuth, Lachish, and Eglon described in Joshua 10.
2. When an army in the ancient Near East went off to battle, the wives and daughters of the fighting men waited anxiously at home for their husbands and fathers to return with spoil taken from their defeated foes--verse 12b. See the interesting description of Sisera's mother and her friends in Judges 5:28-30.
3. The identity of the "dove" mentioned in verse 13b-c is uncertain. It may refer to: (a) part of the spoils the Israelites took from their enemies--perhaps a "trinket" in the shape of a dove made of wood and covered with silver and gold; (b) Israel--as in Psalm 74:19; Hosea 7:11; 11:11; (c) the release of doves to celebrate the victory.
4. If "Zalmon" is a place, no one knows where it is located. On the other hand, "snow fell on Zalmon" may be a popular saying, like "stars fell on Alabama," denoting joy that accompanied Israel's victory over her enemies.
When God's people win victories over powerful enemies, it is never because of their weapons, superior strategy or planning, or personal ingenuity or fortitude; it is because Yahweh intervenes and gives his people the victory. Praise God, our universal king.
John T. Willis
|
<urn:uuid:5c9b6129-ec82-4081-b81b-080fbc0c9066>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://professorwillis.blogspot.com/2005_06_12_archive.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399117.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00102-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.955267 | 559 | 2.953125 | 3 |
If the giant hominoids from the 12th Planet inspired the myths about the Gods of Mount Olympus, were they also the inspiration for the Viking Gods or tales of the Germanic Visigoths? They were indeed, and left their mark in legend wherever they stationed themselves on Earth. Where their preferred garb looks something like what an ancient Roman Legionnaire might have worn, they adjusted their garb to the climate. Northern Europe, during many eras in the past, was as bitterly cold as it is today, and thus fur robes were standard. Like the Gods of Mount Olympus, the Viking Gods and Visigoths were fierce and did not back away once a conflict had begun. As with their human counterparts, they used all means of transporting themselves, and where mountains abut the sea, ships prove the most effective. What were these giant hominoids doing in northern Europe? Exploring, in the same manner that took them to South American and thence across the Pacific. They were looking for gold, and went prospecting everywhere.
|
<urn:uuid:a9497192-ae47-431c-900c-604ba5be5110>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.zetatalk4.com/myths/m36.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00005-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.988626 | 208 | 3.046875 | 3 |
These video lectures of Professor Gilbert Strang teaching 18.06 were recorded in Fall 1999 and do not correspond precisely to the current edition of the textbook. However, this book is still the best reference for more information on the topics covered in each lecture.
Instructor/speaker: Prof. Gilbert Strang
OK, this is linear algebra lecture nine.
And this is a key lecture, this is where we get these ideas of linear independence, when a bunch of vectors are independent -- or dependent, that's the opposite.
The space they span.
A basis for a subspace or a basis for a vector space, that's a central idea.
And then the dimension of that subspace.
So this is the day that those words get assigned clear meanings.
And emphasize that we talk about a bunch of vectors being independent.
Wouldn't talk about a matrix being independent.
A bunch of vectors being independent.
A bunch of vectors spanning a space.
A bunch of vectors being a basis.
And the dimension is some number.
OK, so what are the definitions?
Can I begin with a fact, a highly important fact, that, I didn't call directly attention to earlier.
Suppose I have a matrix and I look at Ax equals zero.
Suppose the matrix has a lot of columns, so that n is bigger than m.
So I'm looking at n equations -- I mean, sorry, m equations, a small number of equations m, and more unknowns.
I have more unknowns than equations.
Let me write that down.
More unknowns than equations.
More unknown x-s than equations.
Then the conclusion is that there's something in the null space of A, other than just the zero vector.
The conclusion is there are some non-zero x-s such that Ax is zero.
There are some special solutions.
We know why.
I mean, it sort of like seems like a reasonable thing, more unknowns than equations, then it seems reasonable that we can solve them.
But we have a, a clear algorithm which starts with a system and does elimination, gets the thing into an echelon form with some pivots and pivot columns, and possibly some free columns that don't have pivots.
And the point is here there will be some free columns.
The reason, so the reason is there must -- there will be free variables, at least one.
That's the reason.
That we now have this -- a complete, algorithm, a complete systematic way to say, OK, we take the system Ax equals zero, we row reduce, we identify the free variables, and, since there are n variables and at most m pivots, there will be some free variables, at least one, at least n-m in fact, left over.
And those variables I can assign non-zero values to.
I don't have to set those to zero.
I can take them to be one or whatever I like, and then I can solve for the pivot variables.
So then it gives me a solution to Ax equals zero.
And it's a solution that isn't all zeros.
So, that's an important point that we'll use now in this lecture.
So now I want to say what does it mean for a bunch of vectors to be independent.
OK. So this is like the background that we know.
Now I want to speak about independence.
OK. Let's see.
I can give you the abstract definition, and I will, but I would also like to give you the direct meaning.
So the question is, when vectors x1, x2 up to -- Suppose I have n vectors are independent if.
Now I have to give you -- or linearly independent -- I'll often just say and write independent for short.
OK. I'll give you the full definition.
These are just vectors in some vector space.
I can take combinations of them.
The question is, do any combinations give zero?
If some combination of those vectors gives the zero vector, other than the combination of all zeros, then they're dependent.
They're independent if no combination gives the zero vector -- and then I have, I'll have to put in an except the zero combination.
So what do I mean by that?
No combination gives the zero vector.
Any combination c1 x1+c2 x2 plus, plus cn xn is not zero except for the zero combination.
This is when all the c-s, all the c-s are zero.
Then of course.
That combination -- I know I'll get zero.
But the question is, does any other combination give zero?
If not, then the vectors are independent.
If some other combination does give zero, the vectors are dependent.
Let's just take examples.
Suppose I'm in, say, in two dimensional space.
I give you -- I'd like to first take an example -- let me take an example where I have a vector and twice that vector.
So that's two vectors, V and 2V.
Are those dependent or independent?
Those are dependent for sure, right, because there's one vector is twice the other.
One vector is twice as long as the other, so if the word dependent means anything, these should be dependent.
And they are.
And in fact, I would take two of the first -- so here's, here is a vector V and the other guy is a vector 2V, that's my -- so there's a vector V1 and my next vector V2 is 2V1.
Of course those are dependent, because two of these first vectors minus the second vector is zero.
That's a combination of these two vectors that gives the zero
vector. OK, that was clear.
Suppose, suppose I have a vector -- here's another
example. It's easy example.
Suppose I have a vector and the other guy is the zero vector.
Suppose I have a vector V1 and V2 is the zero vector.
Then are those vectors dependent or independent?
They're dependent again.
You could say, well, this guy is zero times that one.
This one is some combination of those.
But let me write it the other way.
Let me say -- what combination, how many V1s and how many V2s shall I take to get the zero
vector? If, if V1 is like the vector two one and V2 is the zero vector, zero zero, then I would like to show that some combination of those gives the zero vector.
What shall I take?
How many V1s shall I take?
Zero of them.
Yeah, no, take no V1s.
But how many V2s?
OK. Or five.
Then -- in other words, the point is if the zero vector's in there, if the zero -- if one of these vectors is the zero vector, independence is dead, right?
If one of those vectors is the zero vector then I could always take -- include that one and none of the others, and I would get the zero answer, and I would show dependence.
Now, let me, let me finally draw an example where they will be independent.
Suppose that's V1 and that's V2.
Those are surely independent, right?
Any combination of V1 and V2, will not be zero except, the zero combination.
So those would be independent.
But now let me, let me stick in a third vector,
V3. Independent or dependent now, those three vectors?
So now n is three here.
I'm in two dimensional space, whatever, I'm in the plane.
I have three vectors that I didn't draw so carefully.
I didn't even tell you what exactly they were.
But what's this answer on dependent or independent?
How do I know those are dependent?
How do I know that some combination of V1, V2, and V3 gives me the zero vector?
I know because of that.
That's the key fact that tells me that three vectors in the plane have to be dependent.
What's the connection between the dependence of these three vectors and that fact?
OK. So here's the connection.
I take the matrix A that has V1 in its first column, V2 in its second column, V3 in its third column.
So it's got three columns.
And V1 -- I don't know, that looks like about two one
to me. V2 looks like it might be one two.
V3 looks like it might be maybe two, maybe two and a half, minus one.
OK. Those are my three vectors, and I put them in the columns of A.
Now that matrix A is two by three.
It fits this pattern, that where we know we've got extra variables, we know we have some free variables, we know that there's some combination -- and let me instead of x-s, let me call them c1, c2, and c3 -- that gives the zero vector.
Sorry that my little bit of art got in the way.
Do you see the point?
When I have a matrix, I'm interested in whether its columns are dependent or independent.
The columns are dependent if there is something in the null space.
The columns are dependent because this, this thing in the null space says that c1 of that plus c2 of that plus c3 of this is zero.
So in other words, I can go out some V1, out some more V2, back on V3, and end up zero.
So let -- here I've give the general, abstract definition, but let me repeat that definition -- this is like repeat -- let me call them Vs now.
V1 up to Vn are the columns of a matrix A.
In other words, this is telling me that if I'm in m dimensional space, like two dimensional space in the example, I can answer the dependence-independence question directly by putting those vectors in the columns of a matrix.
They are independent if the null space of A, of A, is what?
If I have a bunch of columns in a matrix, I'm looking at their combinations, but that's just A times the vector of c-s.
And these columns will be independent if the null space of A is the zero vector.
They are dependent if there's something else in there.
If there's something else in the null space, if A times c gives the zero vector for some non-zero vector c in the null space.
Then they're dependent, because that's telling me a combination of the columns gives the zero column.
I think you're with be, because we've seen, like, lecture after lecture, we're looking at the combinations of the columns and asking, do we get zero or don't we?
And now we're giving the official name, dependent if we do, independent if we don't.
So I could express this in other words now.
I could say the rank -- what's the rank in this independent case?
The rank r of the, of the matrix, in the case of independent columns, is?
So the columns are independent.
So how many pivot columns have I got.
All n. All the columns would be pivot columns, because free columns are telling me that they're a combination of earlier columns.
So this would be the case where the rank is n.
This would be the case where the rank is smaller than n.
So in this case the rank is n and the null space of A is only the zero vector.
And no free variables.
No free variables.
And this is the case yes free variables.
If you'll allow me to stretch the English language that far.
That's the case where we have, a combination that gives the zero column.
I'm often interested in the case when my vectors are popped into a matrix.
So the, the definition over there of independence didn't talk about any matrix.
The vectors didn't have to be vectors in N dimensional space.
And I want to give you some examples of vectors that aren't what you think of immediately as vectors.
But most of the time, this is -- the vectors we think of are columns.
And we can put them in a matrix.
And then independence or dependence comes back to the null space.
OK. So that's the idea of independence.
Can I just, yeah, let me go on to spanning a
What does it mean for a bunch of vectors to span a space? space.
Well, actually, we've seen it already.
You remember, if we had a columns in a matrix, we took all their combinations and that gave us the column space.
Those vectors that we started with span that column space.
So spanning a space means -- so let me move that important stuff right up.
So vectors -- let me call them, say, V1 up to -- call you some different letter, say Vl -- span a space, a subspace, or just a vector space I could say, span a space means, means the space consists of all combinations of those vectors.
That's exactly what we did with the column space.
So now I could say in shorthand the columns of a matrix span the column space.
So you remember it's a bunch of vectors that have this property that they span a space, and actually if I give you a bunch of vectors and say -- OK, let S be the space that they span, in other words let S contain all their combinations, that space S will be the smallest space with those vectors in it, right?
Because any space with those vectors in it must have all the combinations of those vectors in it.
And if I stop there, then I've got the smallest space, and that's the space that they span.
OK. So I'm just -- rather than, needing to say, take all linear combinations and put them in a space, I'm compressing that into the word span.
So if I think of a, of the column space of a
I've got their -- so I start with the columns.
I take all their combinations.
That gives me the columns space.
They span the column space.
Now are they independent?
Maybe yes, maybe no.
It depends on the particular columns that went into that
matrix. But obviously I'm highly interested in a set of vectors that spans a space and is independent.
That's, that means like I've got the right number of vectors.
If I didn't have all of them, I wouldn't have my whole space.
If I had more than that, they probably wouldn't -- they wouldn't be independent.
So, like, basis -- and that's the word that's coming -- is just right.
So here let me put what that word means.
A basis for a vector space is, is a, is a sequence of vectors -- shall I call them V1, V2, up to let me say Vd now, I'll stop with that letters -- that has two properties.
I've got enough vectors and not too many.
It's a natural idea of a basis.
So a basis is a bunch of vectors in the space and it's a so it's a sequence of vectors with two properties, with two properties.
One, they are independent.
And two -- you know what's coming?
-- they span the space.
OK. Let me take -- so time for examples, of course.
So I'm asking you now to put definition one, the definition of independence, together with definition two, and let's look at examples, because this is -- this combination means the set I've -- of vectors I have is just right, and the -- so that this idea of a basis will be central.
I'll always be asking you now for a basis.
Whenever I look at a subspace, if I ask you for -- if you give me a basis for that subspace, you've told me what it is.
You've told me everything I need to know about that subspace.
Those -- I take their combinations and I know that I need all the combinations.
OK, so examples of a basis.
Let me start with two dimensional space.
Suppose the space -- say example.
The space is, oh, let's make it R^3.
Real three dimensional space.
Give me one basis.
One basis is?
So I want some vectors, because if I ask you for a basis, I'm asking you for vectors, a little list of vectors.
And it should be just right.
So what would be a basis for three dimensional space?
Well, the first basis that comes to mind, why don't we write that down.
The first basis that comes to mind is this vector, this vector, and this vector.
OK. That's one basis.
Not the only basis, that's going to be my point.
But let's just see -- yes, that's a basis.
Are, are those vectors independent?
So that's the like the x, y, z axes, so if those are not independent, we're in trouble.
Certainly, they are.
Take a combination c1 of this vector plus c2 of this vector plus c3 of that vector and try to make it give the zero vector.
What are the c-s?
If c1 of that plus c2 of that plus c3 of that gives me 0 0 0, then the c-s are all -- 0, right.
So that's the test for independence.
In the language of matrices, which was under that board, I could make those the columns of a matrix.
Well, it would be the identity matrix.
Then I would ask, what's the null space of the identity matrix?
And you would say it's only the zero vector.
And I would say, fine, then the columns are independent.
The only thing -- the identity times a vector giving zero, the only vector that does that is zero.
OK. Now that's not the only basis.
Far from it.
Tell me another basis, a second basis, another basis.
So, give me -- well, I'll just start it out.
One one two.
Two two five.
Suppose I stopped there.
Has that little bunch of vectors got the properties that I'm asking for in a basis for R^3?
We're looking for a basis for R^3.
Are they independent, those two column vectors?
Do they span R^3?
Our feeling is no.
Our feeling is no.
Our feeling is that there're some vectors in R3 that are not combinations of those.
So suppose I add in -- I need another vector then, because these two don't span the space.
OK. Now it would be foolish for me to put in three three seven, right, as the third vector.
That would be a goof.
Because that, if I put in three three seven, those vectors would be dependent, right?
If I put in three three seven, it would be the sum of those two, it would lie in the same plane as those.
It wouldn't be independent.
My attempt to create a basis would be dead.
But if I take -- so what vector can I take?
I can take any vector that's not in that plane.
Let me try -- I hope that 3 3 8 would do it.
At least it's not the sum of those two vectors.
But I believe that's a basis.
And what's the test then, for that to be a basis?
Because I just picked those numbers, and if I had picked, 5 7 -14 how would we know do we have a basis or don't we?
You would put them in the columns of a matrix, and you would do elimination, row reduction -- and you would see do you get any free variables or are all the columns pivot columns.
Well now actually we have a square -- the matrix would be three by three.
So, what's the test on the matrix then?
The matrix -- so in this case, when my space is R^3 and I have three vectors, my matrix is square and what I asking about that matrix in order for those columns to be a basis?
So in this -- for R^n, if I have -- n vectors give a basis if the n by n matrix with those columns, with those columns, is what?
What's the requirement on that matrix?
Invertible, right, right.
The matrix should be invertible.
For a square matrix, that's the, that's the perfect answer.
So that's when, that's when the space is the whole space R^n.
Let me, let me be sure you're with me here.
Let me remove that.
Are those two vectors a basis for any space at all?
Is there a vector space that those really are a basis for, those, that pair of vectors, this guy and this 1, 1 1 2 and 2 2 5?
Is there a space for which that's a basis?
Sure. They're independent, so they satisfy the first requirement, so what space shall I take for them to be a basis
of? What spaces will they be a basis for?
The one they span.
It's a plane, right?
It'll be a plane inside R^3.
So if I take this vector 1 1 2, say it goes there, and this vector 2 2 5, say it goes there, those are a basis for -- because they span a plane.
And they're a basis for the plane, because they're
independent. If I stick in some third guy, like 3 3 7, which is in the plane -- suppose I put in, try to put in 3 3 7, then the three vectors would still span the plane, but they wouldn't be a basis anymore because they're not independent anymore.
So, we're looking at the question of -- again,
OK. the case with independent columns is the case where the column vectors span the column space.
They're independent, so they're a basis for the column space.
OK. So now there's one bit of intuition.
Let me go back to all of R^n.
So I -- where I put 3 3 8.
The first message is that the basis is not unique, right.
There's zillions of bases.
I take any invertible three by three matrix, its columns are a basis for R^3.
The column space is R^3, and if those, if that matrix is invertible, those columns are independent, I've got a basis for R^3.
So there're many, many bases.
But there is something in common for all those bases.
There's something that this basis shares with that basis and every other basis for R^3.
And what's that?
Well, you saw it coming, because when I stopped here and asked if that was a basis for R^3, you said no.
And I know that you said no because you knew there weren't enough vectors there.
And the great fact is that there're many, many bases, but -- let me put in somebody else, just for variety.
There are many, many bases, but they all have the same number of vectors.
If we're talking about the space R^3, then that number of vectors is three.
If we're talking about the space R^n, then that number of vectors is n.
If we're talking about some other space, the column space of some matrix, or the null space of some matrix, or some other space that we haven't even thought of, then that still is true that every basis -- that there're lots of bases but every basis has the same number of vectors.
Let me write that great fact down.
Every basis -- we're given a space.
Given a space.
R^3 or R^n or some other column space of a matrix or the null space of a matrix or some other vector space.
Then the great fact is that every basis for this, for the space has the same number of vectors.
If one basis has six vectors, then every other basis has six vectors.
So that number six is telling me like it's telling me how big is the space.
It's telling me how many vectors do I have to have to have a basis.
And of course we're seeing it this way.
That number six, if we had seven vectors, then we've got too many.
If we have five vectors we haven't got enough.
Sixes are like just right for whatever space that is.
And what do we call that number?
That number is -- now I'm ready for the last definition today.
It's the dimension of that space.
So every basis for a space has the same number of vectors in
it. Not the same vectors, all sorts of bases -- but the same number of vectors is always the same, and that number is the dimension.
This is definitional.
This number is the dimension of the space.
Let's do some examples.
Because now we've got definitions.
Let me repeat the four things, the four words that have now got defined.
Independence, that looks at combinations not
being zero. Spanning, that looks at all the combinations.
Basis, that's the one that combines independence and spanning.
And now we've got the idea of the dimension of a space.
It's the number of vectors in any basis, because all bases have the same number.
Let's take examples.
Suppose I take, my space is -- examples now -- space is the, say, the column space of this matrix.
Let me write down a matrix. 1 1 1, 2 1 2, and I'll -- just to make it clear, I'll take the sum there, 3 2 3, and let me take the sum of all -- oh, let me put in one -- yeah, I'll put in one one one again.
So that's four vectors.
OK, do they span the column space of that matrix?
Let me repeat, do they span the column space of that matrix?
By definition, that's what the column space --
Yes. where it comes from.
Are they a basis for the column space?
Are they independent?
No, they're not independent.
There's something in that null space.
Maybe we can -- so let's look at the null space of the matrix.
Tell me a vector that's in the null space of that matrix.
So I'm looking for some vector that combines those columns and produces the zero column.
Or in other words, I'm looking for solutions to A X equals zero.
So tell me a vector in the null space.
Maybe -- well, this was, this column was that one plus that one, so maybe if I have one of those and minus one of those that would be a vector in the null
space. So, you've already told me now, are those vectors independent, the answer is -- those column vectors, the answer is -- no.
They're not independent.
Because -- you knew they weren't independent.
Anyway, minus one of this minus one of this plus one of this zero of that is the zero vector.
OK, so they're not independent.
They span, but they're not independent.
Tell me a basis for that column space.
What's a basis for the column space?
These are all the questions that the homework asks, the quizzes ask, the final exam will ask.
Find a basis for the column space of this matrix.
OK. Now there's many answers, but give me the most natural answer.
Columns one and two.
Columns one and two.
That's the natural answer.
Those are the pivot columns, because, I mean, we s- we begin systematically.
We look at the first column, it's OK.
We can put that in the basis.
We look at the second column, it's OK.
We can put that in the basis.
The third column we can't put in the basis.
The fourth column we can't, again.
So the rank of the matrix is -- what's the rank of our matrix?
And, and now that rank is also -- we also have another word.
We, we have a great theorem here.
The rank of A, that rank r, is the number of pivot columns and it's also -- well, so now please use my new word.
This, it's the number two, of course, two is the rank of my matrix, it's the number of pivot columns, those pivot columns form a basis, of course, so what's two?
It's the dimension.
The rank of A, the number of pivot columns, is the dimension of the column space.
Of course, you say.
It had to be.
But just watch, look for one moment at the, the language, the way the English words get involved here.
I take the rank of a matrix, the rank of a matrix.
It's a number of columns and it's the dimension of -- not the dimension of the matrix, that's what I want to say.
It's the dimension of a space, a subspace, the column space.
Do you see, I don't take the dimension of A.
That's not what I want.
I'm looking for the dimension of the column space of A.
If you use those words right, it shows you've got the idea
right. Similarly here.
I don't talk about the rank of a subspace.
It's a matrix that has a rank.
I talk about the rank of a matrix.
And the beauty is that these definitions just merge so that the rank of a matrix is the dimension of its column space.
And in this example it's two.
And then the further question is, what's a basis?
And the first two columns are a basis.
Tell me another basis.
Another basis for the columns space.
You see I just keep hammering away.
I apologize, but it's, I have to be sure you have the idea of basis.
Tell me another basis for the column space.
Well, you could take columns one and three.
That would be a basis for the column space.
Or columns two and three would be a basis.
Or columns two and four.
Or tell me another basis that's not made out of those columns at all?
So -- I guess I'm giving you infinitely many possibilities, so I can't expect a unanimous answer here.
I'll tell you -- but let's look at another basis, though.
I'll just -- because it's only one out of zillions, I'm going to put it down and I'm going to erase it.
Another basis for the column space would be -- let's see.
I'll put in some things that are not there.
Say, oh well, just to make it -- my life easy, 2 2 2.
That's in the column space.
And, that was sort of obvious.
Let me take the sum of those, say 6 4 6.
Or the sum of all of the columns, 7 5 7, why not.
That's in the column space.
Those are independent and I've got the number right, I've got two.
Actually, this is a key point.
If you know the dimension of the space you're working with, and we know that this column -- we know that the dimension, DIM, the dimension of the column space is two.
If you know the dimension, then -- and we have a couple of vectors that are independent, they'll automatically be a
basis. If we've got the number of vectors right, two vectors in this case, then if they're independent, they can't help but span the space.
Because if they didn't span the space, there'd be a third guy to help span the space, but it couldn't be independent.
So, it just has to be independent if we've got the numbers right.
And they span.
OK. Very good.
So you got the dimension of a space.
So this was another basis that I just invented.
OK. Now, now I get to ask about the null space.
What's the dimension of the null space?
So we, we got a great fact there, the dimension of the column space is the rank.
Now I want to ask you about the null space.
That's the other part of the lecture, and it'll go on to the next lecture.
So we know the dimension of the column space is two, the rank.
What about the null space?
This is a vector in the null space.
Are there other vectors in the null space?
Yes or no? Yes.
So this isn't a basis because it's doesn't span, right?
There's more in the null space than we've got so far.
I need another vector at least.
So tell me another vector in the null space.
Well, the natural choice, the choice you naturally think of is I'm going on to the fourth column, I'm letting that free variable be a one, and that free variable be a zero, and I'm asking is that fourth column a combination of my pivot columns?
Yes, it is.
And it's -- that will do.
So what I've written there are actually the two special solutions, right?
I took the two free variables, free and free.
I gave them the values 1 0 or 0 I figured out the rest.
So do you see, let me just say it in words.
This vector, these vectors in the null space are telling me, they're telling me the combinations of the columns that give zero.
They're telling me in what way the, the columns are dependent.
That's what the null space is doing.
Have I got enough now?
And what's the null space now?
We have to think about the null space.
These are two vectors in the null space.
Are they a basis for the null space?
What's the dimension of the null space?
You see that those questions just keep coming up all the
time. Are they a basis for the null space?
You can tell me the answer even though we haven't written out a proof of that.
Yes or no?
Do these two special solutions form a basis for the null space?
In other words, does the null space consist of all combinations of those two guys?
Yes or no?
The null space is two dimensional.
The null space, the dimension of the null space, is the number of free variables.
So the dimension of the null space is the number of free variables.
And at the last second, give me the formula.
This is then the key formula that we know.
How many free variables are there in terms of R, the rank, m -- the number of rows, n, the number of columns?
What do we get?
We have n columns, r of them are pivot columns, so n-r is the number of free columns, free variables.
And now it's the dimension of the null space.
That's the key spaces, their bases, and their dimensions.
This is one of over 2,200 courses on OCW. Find materials for this course in the pages linked along the left.
MIT OpenCourseWare is a free & open publication of material from thousands of MIT courses, covering the entire MIT curriculum.
No enrollment or registration. Freely browse and use OCW materials at your own pace. There's no signup, and no start or end dates.
Knowledge is your reward. Use OCW to guide your own life-long learning, or to teach others. We don't offer credit or certification for using OCW.
Made for sharing. Download files for later. Send to friends and colleagues. Modify, remix, and reuse (just remember to cite OCW as the source.)
Learn more at Get Started with MIT OpenCourseWare
|
<urn:uuid:2a57af62-5531-4cea-8526-6a425d0690ce>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010/video-lectures/lecture-9-independence-basis-and-dimension/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00143-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.943736 | 7,725 | 3.4375 | 3 |
About this image
M45, a portion of the Pleiades open star cluster in the constellation Taurus, at a distance of some 410 light-years. The glow around the stars is interstellar dust which shines by reflected starlight. The entire group is contained within a span of 20 light-years, and is believed to be 20 million years old. KPNO 4-meter Mayall telescope, 1975.
Minimum credit line: NOAO/AURA/NSF
Comments by e-mail to [email protected]
|
<urn:uuid:cdc90517-b6b3-4c4c-9ba6-5fde221814c8>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/im0137.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397565.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00117-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.898777 | 111 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Robert Miller: The flame-orange planet evokes fantasies
Updated 11:12 pm, Friday, April 4, 2014
It will be a Martian spring.
For most of the next month, Mars will be a beacon -- the red planet that to the naked eye sparkles with a flame-orange light.
It's closer to Earth than it has been since 2007. On April 8, Earth and Mars will be in opposition -- they'll be in a straight line with Earth between Mars and the sun. By April 14, they draw even closer.
"But basically, the difference will be so slight we won't be able to tell,'' Alan MacRobert, senior editor of Sky & Telescope Magazine said of naked-eye viewing. "Mars will be very bright throughout the month of April.''
Which may serve to remind us that the planet -- once thought to harbor canals and a civilization, and our favorite place to posit as home for little green men and galactic warrior princesses -- is the closest thing we know of to Earth at present.
MacRobert said it's also the only planet where humans could contemplate living, other than our own terra firma.
Unlike the gas planets -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune -- Mars has a solid surface. Unlike Mercury and the moon, it has an atmosphere.
"On Mercury, you have your feet on the ground and your head in space.'' MacRobert said.
Venus has an atmosphere, but it's so thick and dense, it swathes the planet in clouds. Mars would give us sunrises and sunsets.
And, MacRobert said, it's got ice at its pole -- both water ice and dry ice, made of frozen carbon dioxide.
"It the winter, it may snow dry ice,'' MacRobert said.
Underneath that ice, there may be water. Any human colony would have something to drink.
It also has at least some gravitational forces -- about 40 percent of what we experience on Earth. That's important, MacRobert said, because our experience with long-term stays at the International Space Station are proving humans lose bone mass and muscle mass when subjected to long interludes of zero gravity.
What it wouldn't offer is much protection against solar radiation -- the Martian atmosphere is very thin. The dust that blows constantly through the air there is probably corrosive, if not carcinogenic.
We wouldn't want to breathe it. So if we lived there, we'd have to live underground, or in a dome covered with a few feet of Martian soil.
And because Mars is about 21.7 million miles farther away from the sun than Earth, solar panels would produce less electricity.
"You'd really need to bring a miniature nuclear power plant with you,'' MacRobert said.
You can ponder these things while looking at Mars at night this month. It's the brightest object in the southeast sky. It will be the only thing there with an orange tint.
MacRobert said that right now, Sirius -- the dog star, the brightest star in our night sky -- is in the southwest. It gives off a pure white light. So does Jupiter, the brightest object in the night sky.
Underneath Mars, in the southeast sky, is the star Spica, in the constellation Virgo. It burns with a blue-white flame.
"You can look at all of them and get a nice contrast,'' MacRobert said.
|
<urn:uuid:dcc2c985-a576-41f8-9290-69257eb526d2>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Robert-Miller-The-flame-orange-planet-evokes-5377498.php
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396875.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00190-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.93579 | 703 | 2.625 | 3 |
Science engagement in Australia is trapped in the 20th century. It operates under an outdated model that aims to promote and celebrate science, rather than encouraging the public to participate in, and critically evaluate, scientific endeavours.
According to the first ever national audit of science engagement activities, with a report published last month, most activities are still about one-way communication, from scientists to lay audiences.
Australia is stuck in what theorists call the deficit model, in which the all-knowing scientists impart their knowledge to the empty vessels known as “the public”.
This engagement generally dismisses any lay knowledge as being useful, and sees scientific knowledge as an end in itself. Proponents believe that if only the public knew about and understood the science, they would be willing to accept it.
But international studies show that knowing science does not necessarily lead to support for science. This is demonstrated by a cursory examination of public debates on stem cell or genetic modification research.
When “mad cow disease” struck Britain in the late 1980s and scientists and politicians famously proclaimed the meat safe to eat, there was a backlash against the deficit model of science communication and a call for more dialogue between scientists and the general public.
It was hoped by scientists that such transparency would bring new support for science.
Since then, theorists have suggested science needs to move even further from a dialogue with the public to a process that directly involves the public in shaping science questions and participating in and reviewing the science that gets done.
More recently, theorists agree there is a place for all modes of science engagement: deficit, dialogue, and participation. In other words:
- there’s a time when people need to be told the most recent scientific knowledge
- there’s a time when people need to be consulted about the science that’s being done
- there’s a time for people to be more actively engaged in directing the scientific process
So what sort of science engagement is happening in Australia? And what should be happening?
According to the national audit of science engagement activities, most activities are still about one-way communication, from scientists to lay audiences: the classic deficit model.
The audit, funded by the Federal Government’s Inspiring Australia program, recorded 411 science engagement activities happening between January 2011 and June 2013.
Most were recorded by science communicators – people employed by research institutes such as CSIRO to help scientists communicate with various groups. As a result, the audit tended to focus on discrete formal activities that were easy to record.
While every attempt was made to try and encourage participation in the audit from various sectors of the science engagement community, it’s very likely that some of the informal and formal science engagement activities were missed.
The direct engagement happening between researchers and industry, a central element of programs such as the Australian government’s Cooperative Research Centre, is not well represented in the audit.
Despite this, a critical mass of science engagement activities across Australia was entered, and the analysis of the data is disturbing.
We found that few activities aimed to encourage critical thinking about scientific issues or participation in shaping the questions that scientific research seeks to answer.
A major part (almost 60%) of engagement activities could be categorised as deficit model activities: about “learning from watching, listening, viewing lectures, media and/or exhibits”. This one-way engagement compares with only 12% that involve people in “producing recommendations or reports” about the science.
Most of the audited activities seek to raise awareness or improve knowledge about science. Even innovative science-art engagement activities appear to be about increasing knowledge of science rather than participation in science.
Concept Radical, an art competition that called for artists’ impressions of free radicals, held public workshops alongside the art competition to educate artists on the subject.
While such activities may be laudable and of interest to general audiences, they are not involving people in directly participating in the creation of science and its products.
They are unlikely to help ordinary people to make more informed decisions about the world around them.
When respondents to the audit were asked how they involved people in their activities, about half said that interactive inquiry was a major part of the activity. But only one third said their engagement activities involved consulting with, or sharing views with, their target groups.
This suggests that while some activities attempt to involve people in a dialogue about science, many are a thin veneer of one-way communication where scientists give lectures, seminars or science tours.
Inspiring Australia, a report which set a new direction for science communication when it was issued two years ago, listed four aims:
- inspire target groups and get them to value scientific endeavour
- encourage young people to pursue scientific studies and careers
- critically engage target groups with key scientific issues
- attract increasing national and international interest in science
Participants in the audit were asked how important the four outcomes of the Inspiring Australia strategy were to their activity. By far, the most important outcome was the first listed above – “inspire target groups and get them to value scientific endeavour” with others following in the order as presented above.
“Critical thinking” or “behaviour change” are missing from the IA strategy’s desired outcomes from science engagement. And when looking at the audit’s engagement activities, it is of particular concern, given current science issues such as climate change and water management, that few engagement activities sought to change or influence specific behaviours or policies.
Why is Australia’s science engagement stuck in 20th century modes of thinking?
Why is science engagement still mostly about the promotion and celebration of science rather than about getting people to participate in it and critically evaluate it?
As part of the national audit we also conducted focus groups with professional science communicators around Australia. Analysis of this data showed that most people favour participatory, critical approaches to science engagement but feel hindered by a lack of resources and organisational support for such engagement.
Science engagement that involves letting people direct what science happens and how it happens is risky and expensive. It seems science communicators know what makes for a more rounded approach to science engagement, but they don’t yet have the influence within science institutions to garner the support to make it happen.
It is incumbent on scientists, science institutions and science communicators to move into the 21st century and look for new ways to engage people in science so that it truly becomes part of our national culture – rather than an isolated ivory tower.
|
<urn:uuid:b5d2da3f-cdb7-4ac6-b992-458166da94c4>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://theconversation.com/science-engagement-in-australia-is-a-20th-century-toy-12456
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396959.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00167-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.956626 | 1,342 | 3 | 3 |
47, XYY syndrome
Other Names for this Disease
- YY syndrome
- XYY syndrome
- XYY Karyotype
- Jacobs syndrome
See Disclaimer regarding information on this site. Some links on this page may take you to organizations outside of the National Institutes of Health.
Y chromosome in each cell. Signs and symptoms can vary and range from barely noticeable to more severe; many men with the extra Y chromosome are completely unaware of its presence. Appearance and intelligence are usually normal, but learning disabilities may be present. Other signs and symptoms may include autism spectrum disorder (usually on the milder end); speech or motor delay; low muscle tone; asthma; tall stature; impaired social skills; ADHD; and/or anxiety or mood disorders. While sexual development and infertility is usually normal, some adolescents and adults have testicular failure. 47, XYY syndrome usually is not inherited, occurring due to a random event in the formation of a sperm cell prior to conception. Management depends on the symptoms in each person and may include intervention or therapies for developmental delays, behavior or mood disorders; and/or special education.47, XYY syndrome is a condition in males characterized by features that occur due to having an extra copy of the
Last updated: 4/12/2016
- Frequently Asked Questions Related to 47, XYY. Klinefelter Syndrome and Associates (KS&A). 2013; http://www.genetic.org/Portals/0/Public/Docs/XYY%20FAQ%20-%20FINAL%20-%20Rev%208-2-12.pdf.
- XYY. Unique. 2014; http://www.rarechromo.org/information/Chromosome_Y/XYY%20FTNW.pdf.
- 47,XYY syndrome. Genetics Home Reference. January 2009; http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/47xyy-syndrome. Accessed 4/29/2011.
- The Association for X and Y Chromosome Variations (AXYS) provides answers to frequently asked questions about 47, XYY syndrome. Click on the link above to view this information.
- Genetics Home Reference (GHR) contains information on 47, XYY syndrome. This website is maintained by the National Library of Medicine.
- The Merck Manuals Online Medical Library provides information on this condition for patients and caregivers.
- The National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) is a federation of more than 130 nonprofit voluntary health organizations serving people with rare disorders. Click on the link to view information on this topic.
- The Pacific Northwest Regional Genetics Group has developed a fact sheet on 47, XYY syndrome, including prenatal diagnosis. Click on the link above to view this information page.
- The Monarch Initiative brings together data about this condition from humans and other species to help physicians and biomedical researchers. Monarch’s tools are designed to make it easier to compare the signs and symptoms (phenotypes) of different diseases and discover common features. This initiative is a collaboration between several academic institutions across the world and is funded by the National Institutes of Health. Visit the website to explore the biology of this condition.
- Orphanet is a European reference portal for information on rare diseases and orphan drugs. Access to this database is free of charge.
- PubMed is a searchable database of medical literature and lists journal articles that discuss 47, XYY syndrome. Click on the link to view a sample search on this topic.
|
<urn:uuid:890095bb-fdcd-46b0-bdfe-a8321819a4f5>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
https://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/gard/5674/47-xyy-syndrome/resources/1
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392527.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00071-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.87487 | 729 | 3.140625 | 3 |
What if low-lying Gulf Coast communities could gauge the impact of future storms? Well, now there’s an app for that.
Under the direction of Dr. Jorge Brenner, associate director of marine science, The Nature Conservancy in Texas has developed a web portal and series of tools that will help coastal managers, scientists, the conservation community and people within the Gulf of Mexico Governor’s Alliance predict how hurricanes, storm surges and sea level will affect their cities and coastal habitats in the future. Nearly 90 years into the future, to be exact; this online tool utilizes maps and models along with different inundation levels, ranging from a few inches to several feet, to assess coastal conditions in the years 2025, 2050, 2075 and 2100.
Brenner and his team ran analysis in five different locations in three different Gulf Coast states:
- Galveston Bay area and southern Jefferson County, Texas: As the largest bay system in Texas, Galveston Bay encompasses 1.4 million acres and spans six different counties. The area is situated in the northern portion of the Texas east coast and includes drainage of the Trinity and San Jacinto rivers.
- Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Mississippi: The GBNERR spans 18,400 acres in far southeast Mississippi, adjacent to the Alabama border in the Mississippi Sound. It was established in 1999 to promote estuarine research and education within Mississippi's Coastal Zone.
- Corpus Christi Bay, Texas: The bay is located in the coastal bend region of Texas and encompasses the City of Corpus Christi, Padre island and Port Aransas, among other localities. This study area was chosen because it will help us understand the impacts of the flooding of the Nueces River Delta area and the Padre and Mustang Barrier Islands.
- Choctawhatchee Bay and St. Andrews Bay, Florida: Located in the Emerald Coast region of the Florida Panhandle, these bays are loosely bordered by Pensacola Bay to the northwest and Apalachicola Bay to the southeast. Panama City is a major city located within St. Andrews Bay, while the popular vacation spots of Destin and Fort Walton Beach sit along Choctawhatchee Bay.
Such a tool couldn’t come at a better time; the Gulf of Mexico is a workhorse, pumping more than $230 billion a year into our national economy and supporting upwards of 20 million jobs. If the five Gulf Coast states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida) were considered a country, they would comprise the seventh largest economy in the world. But despite the region’s economic power, we’ve seen the devastation Mother Nature can bring.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts sea rise of three millimeters per year in the Gulf of Mexico, an important factor in future storm preparedness. The results of Brenner’s model, along with scenario maps and online tools, link to the Conservancy’s Gulf of Mexico Resilience Decision Support Tool, and this suite of tools can, in turn, be can be combined with geographic information systems data to understand the impacts of those rising sea levels.
Read peer-reviewed publications about this work here and here.
|
<urn:uuid:ed6742a5-a818-4e8f-ad06-1b79e846f0cc>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/unitedstates/texas/explore/texas-gulf-tools.xml
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00077-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.923744 | 664 | 3.375 | 3 |
According to Wired’s laundry list of technical and political issues with getting humans to Mars by the year 2030 or so, exploring another planet many millions of miles away won’t be Apollo 2.0 in many ways. It will be an order of magnitude more expensive per launch, require 30 months for a round trip, and needs to be financed, overseen, and executed by an international group that will include space agencies and ambitious aerospace companies with plans and launch vehicles of their own. And yet, the designs being drawn up sound remarkably like Apollo on steroids. We’re basically working with the same basic mission plans we had in the 1980s with a few workarounds for handling fuel and oxygen. Come on folks, this is another planet. It’s not just a status symbol and we don’t need to rush there just to say we went. Really, we don’t. Flag planting is great for propaganda and PR purposes, but it’s disastrous for long term exploration, which needs to be a very boring, consistent, and yes, expensive effort. We need a better plan than this.
Now, as much as this blog will support my assertion that I’m all about space exploration and will go as far as to advocate augmenting humans to travel into deep space (which led to numerous arguments with the Singularity Institute’s fellows), we don’t have to go to Mars as soon as we’re able to launch. It’s been there for 4.5 billion years. It’s not going anywhere for at least another five billion, and we owe it to ourselves to do it right. This is why instead of sending a much bigger capsule or an updated ISS for a 30 month round trip, we need to send inflatable, rotating space stations powered by small nuclear reactors. Instead of landers, we need to send self-assembling habitats. Instead of going to Mars to stick a flag into the ground, collect rocks, and do some very brief and limited experiments to look for traces of organic compounds, we need to commit to an outright colonization effort, and we need to test the basics on the Moon before we go. We won’t fulfill our dreams of roaming the stars and living on alien worlds if we don’t get this right.
Yes, it sounds downright crazy to propose something like that, especially thanks to the political climates of today. And it is. But at the risk of repeating myself, when we have trillions of banks to erase their bad bets from the books and nothing to aid the paltry budgets of space agencies or labs working on the technology of the future, the issue isn’t money. It’s priorities, vision, and will, and today’s politicians have the first one skewed, and more often than not either lack the other two, or envision our society going backwards as if this is a good thing. And we can keep right on placating ourselves by saying that we’ll at least get to roam around the solar system a bit like we did once, but that’s not how we should be exploring space. We know it’s not. if you want to really reach out into space, you go in for the long term with your eye on the spin-offs and benefits that will rain down from massive, ambitious, integrated projects that try to do what’s never been done before not by reinventing the wheel, but by attaching said wheel to a new airplane.
|
<urn:uuid:132d3150-d696-49d4-a37d-1a985547935b>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://worldofweirdthings.com/2013/06/10/why-mars-is-not-the-next-apollo/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396147.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00184-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.952136 | 723 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Objective theory of contract is a doctrine which states that a contract is not an agreement in the sense of a subjective meeting of the minds. However, a contract is instead a series of external acts giving the objective semblance of agreement. This principle states that the existence of a contract is determined by the legal significance of the external acts of a party to a purported agreement, and not by the actual intent of the parties. American law had adopted the objective theory by the late nineteenth century. This doctrine is often shortened to and known as objective theory.
|
<urn:uuid:08890278-ce9c-4341-8ac7-d816f721ef21>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://definitions.uslegal.com/o/objective-theory-of-contract/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00201-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.973268 | 108 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Viruses and Honey Bees
Bee Culture (August) Vol. 136: 19-21.
In a previous column, I discussed the role of emerging pathogens in the phenomenon now called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). One of those areas I listed that is becoming more and more prominent is concern about the effect of honey bee viruses. A paper in Bee World over a decade ago sought to catalog the incidence and world distribution of honey bee viruses.1 Since then, several others have come into focus as potential problems. In order to understand viruses better, it is necessary to be more informed about their origins, biology and potential treatment. :
“A virus (from the Latin virus meaning "toxin" or "poison"), is a sub-microscopic infectious agent that is unable to grow or reproduce outside a host cell. Each viral particle, or virion, consists of genetic material, DNA or RNA, within a protective protein coat called a capsid. The capsid shape varies from simple helical and icosahedral (polyhedral or near-spherical) forms, to more complex structures with tails or an envelope. Viruses infect cellular life forms and are grouped into animal, plant and bacterial types, according to the type of host infected.
“Biologists debate whether or not viruses are living organisms. Some consider them non-living as they do not meet all the criteria used in the common definitions of life. For example, unlike most organisms, viruses do not have cells. However, viruses have genes and evolve by natural selection. Others have described them as organisms at the edge of life. Viral infections in human and animal hosts usually result in an immune response and disease. Often, a virus is completely eliminated by the immune system. Antibiotics have no effect on viruses, but antiviral drugs have been developed to treat life-threatening infections. Vaccines that produce lifelong immunity can prevent viral infections.” The above two paragraphs come from the Internet’s open encyclopedia(Wikipedia.org) and the links (underlined words) are left in the document here on purpose so readers can see what other information might be available.2
To reiterate, most people talk about viruses as if they are living organisms, but this challenges in fundamental ways how biology text books define “life.” For example viruses do not respire; move nor grow. They also do not display irritability. However, viruses do reproduce and adapt to new hosts. If one considers that the only real criterion for life is the ability to replicate, then viruses must be included, even though they require another living host to do so.3
Honey bee viruses generally have not been considered problematic for bees or in beekeeping. Some, like the sacbrood virus (SBV), appeared randomly and did not cause significant damage. That all changed, however, as the Varroa mite became an integral part of the world’s honey bee colonies. “There is increasing evidence that the global spread of Varroa destructor has resulted in significant change in the type and prevalence of viruses causing mortality in honey bee colonies. This is primarily because the mite has provided new routes of transmission for naturally occurring, endemic virus infections. Adult female mites pierce the thin membranous areas of the adults bee’s body or pupal skin, to feed on the haemolypmph. At the feeding site there is some exchange of fluids between the parasite and its host, so the mite acts effectively like a hypodermic syringe.”4
Although the Varroa mite is implicated in the spread of viruses because it is a primary transporting agent or vector, it is not the only organism that can do this job. Another is the tracheal mite (Acarapis woodi). This organism also makes holes in the intersegmental membrane when feeding on bee blood or haemolymph. Mites don’t necessarily have to transport viruses. Many, it appears, are already present in honey bee populations and are benign (latent), but can be activated by mite feeding activity. Viruses can also be spread in two ways, horizontally and vertically. The former is the case with most contagious diseases where susceptible individuals are in contact with others such as in human respiratory flu viruses (spread by sneezing) or HIV (through exchange of body fluids). Honey bee viruses have been documented to spread from bee-to-bee, bee-to-mite, mite-to-mite, and mite-to-brood.
Vertical transmission is a special case where a virus may be spread within a colony from the queen to her offspring, affecting the next generation. A recent study concludes: “:Our work has provided substantial evidence for the vertical transmission of viruses in honeybees, but a number of factors that may play important roles in the efficiency of virus transmission are far from being understood. For example, the host immune responses and virus pathological features that facilitate the vertical transmission of individual viruses are not known. The roles of vertical transmission of viruses in bee disease epidemiology need to be determined. This will be especially relevant for honeybees, where viruses normally persist as latent infections and group living can possibly drive high levels of horizontal transmission or amplification of existing infections. Further studies of host-virus interactions might give some insight into these issues.”5
Multiple viruses can also be found in honey bee colonies. “Using uniplex RT-PCR we screened honey bee colonies for the presence of several bee viruses, including Black Queen Cell virus (BQCV), Deformed Wing virus (DWV), Kashmir Bee virus (KBV), and Sacbrood virus (SBV), and described the detection of mixed virus infections in bees from these colonies. We report for the first time that individual bees can harbor four viruses simultaneously. Results from field surveys of these viruses indicate that mixed infections of BQCV, DWV, KBV, and SBV in the honey bee probably arise due to broad geographic distribution of viruses.6
As noted elsewhere, the spread of viruses appears to be continuing around the globe helped along by mite vectors and other risk factors. Recently, two are of particular concern and are thought to be associated with significant bee losses.
The first is deformed wing virus (DWV), which by most accounts has become ubiquitous in European honey bee populations. Beekeepers can often recognize symptoms of DWV by simply examining affected worker bees, the wings of which are not well developed or abnormal in some way. At one time these symptoms were thought to be simply the result of feeding by parasitic mites. Deformed wing virus is endemic among honey bees in the U.S., although when the European bees became historically infested with this virus, is unknown. However, simply having deformed wing virus does not appear to cause bees to emerge from the pupal state with deformed wings, nor does it cause colony deaths. In addition, a group of Japanese researchers found that a virus that is 99 percent the same as deformed wing, appears in the brains of aggressive guard bees so there may be some positive effect in this virus that allows it to persist in a colony.7
The other virus that is becoming of interest to researchers is Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV). It burst onto the scene when it was given wide publicity at the World Apicultural Congress in Melbourne, Australia (Apimondia 2007) as “strongly correlated with CCD.” Australian package bees that had just begun to be imported into the U.S. the last few years, therefore, were implicated. This brought a storm of protest from Australian scientists and package producers, concluding that the virus had also been found in hives not suffering from CCD, and asking why if it was so closely linked to the phenomenon, that there are no hives in Australia suffering from
CCD.8 Still, as one U.S. researcher has said, “…the stats are very convincing, with literally every colony showing symptoms of CCD also harboring the virus. We don't find data that plain usually."9
Ian Parnell, a professional biologist and environmental writer, provides an intensive analysis of the controversy on his blog, which is mandatory reading for anyone interested in this issue.10
A subsequent U.S. investigation concluded: “Our results show that IAPV in the U.S. predates both the latest incarnation of CCD and the importation of Australian package bees. Nevertheless, we caution that much work is still needed to absolve or implicate this virus, or specific imports, in CCD. Most importantly, experimental studies are ongoing to determine the relative virulence of imported or domestic IAPV strains, and such studies will provide the best evidence for making importation and management choices. Viruses with minimal genome sequence differences can show greatly different levels of virulence, and all isolates of IAPV we studied showed at least some sequence variation. Given its observed association with CCD, this virus remains an important candidate for honey bee disease.”11
Besides being inconspicuous to beekeepers, other reasons exist for the relatively little work on honey bee viruses by scientists over the years. They are not easy to detect, and even if there was any evidence viruses were doing harm to honey bee colonies, there were few if any treatment options.
Virus detection methods are now becoming much more available given new genetic technologies. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture have reported on their efforts in this arena: “We also developed a multiplex RT-PCR assay for the simultaneous detection of multiple bee viruses. The feasibility and specificity of the multiplex RT-PCR assay suggests that this assay is an effective tool for simultaneous examination of mixed virus infections in bee colonies and would be useful for the diagnosis and surveillance of honey bee viral diseases in the field and laboratory. Phylogenetic analysis of putative helicase and RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) encoded by viruses reveal that DWV and SBV (sacbrood virus) fall into a distinct group, whereas KBV (Kashmir Bee Virus) and BQCV (black queen cell virus) belong to a distinct lineage with other picorna-like viruses that infect plants, insects and vertebrates.”12
Another detection method described at the January 2008 National Beekeeping Conference in Sacramento, CA is the Integrated Virus Detection System (IVDS), pioneered by the military, but now being used by civilian scientists in a number of disciplines. “This new invention utilizes the physical properties of virus, virus-like and other nanometer (nm) particles to determine a concentration, distribution and information for discrimination and characterization of nanometer particles (1 nm equals one billionth of a meter). This analysis can identify many known virus families pathogenic to man, as well as a new means for detecting unknown and emerging viruses. Another great advantage is that the IVDS instrument does not require complicated chemistry or reagents.”13
Potential treatment of honey bee viruses in many ways seems to parallel the human situation. It is unfortunate that many people confuse bacterial infections with those produced by viruses. The symptoms are often similar, and modern human culture has produced a belief that antibiotics are a “silver bullet” cure for most ailments. Physicians may have some of the same perceptions and also are often under the gun by patients who demand treatment by antibiotics no matter the cause or cost. As a consequence, antibiotics are often prescribed for relatively common conditions that often clear up by themselves. This practice and the improper use of the materials by patients (not taking the full dose as prescribed) create a favorable environment for bacterial resistance. Antibiotics only target bacteria and so viral conditions (common colds, influenza).are not affected. In extreme conditions, antibiotics may be taken as preventatives, causing an escalation of antibacterial resistance such that whole classes of antibiotics may become useless. This has in fact happened in honey bees where presumed overuse of the antibiotic Terramycin® has resulted in American foulbrood (Paenibacillus larvae larvae) bacterial resistance and led to the development of another treatment based on tylosin (Tylan®).
The best way to ward off virus infection is to use the patient's own immune system. As one authority says, “it may be hard to accept when the doctor says the only cure is for 'nature to take its course'.”14 The treatment of virus infections in humans usually involves: drinking plenty of water, staying at home so as not the spread the bug, and perhaps taking something to alleviate pain or reduce temperature. Vaccines are routinely developed to provide the body some help in quickly and effectively fighting viruses. This is the philosophy behind the annual flu shot that is recommended each fall for a large part of the U.S. human population.
The realization that viruses are more and more important in honey bee health has led to a more intense examination of the insect’s immune system. “Viral infections induce unspecific cell defense reactions such as phagocytosis and nodule formation. A small number of viruses or viruses of a low virulence infecting the insect are killed by haemocytes whereas heavy infections or virulent strains can replicate and kill a specific types of haemocytes involved in antiviral defensive reactions.”15
Dr. Clarence Collison has provided a closer look at this important area and reports that honey bees appear to have relatively diminished defense systems compared to other insects.16 It seems reasonable to suggest that creative researchers should come up with a vaccine(s) to help bees develop stronger immune systems to ward off current and future viral threats.
References: All URLs accessed June 14, 2008.
Allen, M. and Brenda Ball. 1996. “The Incidence and World Distribution of Honey Bee Viruses,” Bee World, Vol. 73 (3): 141-162.
Ball, Brenda. V. 2004. “The Trouble With Viruses,” Bee World, Vol. 85 (2): 25.
Chen, Y.P., et al. 2006. Prevalence and Transmission of Honeybee Viruses, APPLIED AND ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY, Jan. 2006, p. 606–611 Vol. 72, No. 1 http://aem.asm.org/cgi/reprint/72/1/606.pdf
Chen, Y. and J. Evans. Historical presence of Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus in the United States, submitted toAmerican Bee Journal 10/29/07 http://www.in.gov/dnr/files/IAPV.pdf
Collison, C. 2008. A Closer Look: Honey Bee Immunity. Bee Culture,Vol. 136 (6): pp. 48-50.
|
<urn:uuid:0f988496-4900-4199-9282-b8c12b92c589>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://apisenterprises.com/papers_htm/BC2008/viruses%20and%20bees.htm.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00017-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.940848 | 3,054 | 3.734375 | 4 |
This article was published originally on 2/13/2013
Small fruits that are commonly grown in home gardens include raspberries, grapes, gooseberries, currants, and blueberries. To obtain maximum yields, small fruit crops need to be pruned in late winter/early spring (March/early April). Proper pruning procedures for raspberries, grapes, gooseberries, currants, and blueberries are outlined below.
The pruning procedures for raspberries are based on the growth and fruiting characteristics of the plants.
Summer-Bearing Red Raspberries
Remove all weak, diseased, and damaged canes at ground level in March or early April. Leave the most vigorous canes, those approximately 1/4 inch in diameter when measured 30 inches from the ground. After thinning, remaining canes should be spaced about 6 inches apart.
Also, prune out the tips of the canes which have died due to winter injury. Cut back to live tissue. If the canes sustained little winter dieback, remove the top 1/4 of the canes. Cane-tip removal or "heading-back" prevents the canes from becoming top heavy and bending over under the weight of the crop.
Red raspberries sucker profusely from their roots. Plants should be maintained in a 1- to 2-foot-wide hedgerow using a rototiller or spade. Remove or destroy those shoots that emerge outside the 1- to 2-foot-wide hedgerow.
Fall-Bearing Red Raspberries (Two Crop System)
Remove all weak, diseased, and damaged canes in late winter/early spring, leaving the most vigorous canes. Prune out the tips of the canes that fruited the previous season. Remove approximately the upper one-third of the canes. The lower portions of the canes will produce the summer crop. Maintain plants in a 1- to 2-foot-wide hedgerow.
Fall-Bearing Red Raspberries (One Crop System)
Prune all canes back to ground level in March or early April. While the plants won't produce a summer crop, the late summer/early fall crop should mature one to two weeks earlier. Also, total crop yield is typically larger utilizing the one-crop system versus the two-crop system.
Maintain plants in a 1- to 2-foot-wide hedgerow.
Black and Purple Raspberries
Remove the small, weak canes, leaving only four or five of the largest, most vigorous canes per clump or plant. Cut back the lateral (side) branches to 12 inches in length for black raspberries and 18 inches for purple raspberries.
Grapevines produce fruit clusters on the previous season's growth. Before pruning, a grapevine may have 200 to 300 buds capable of producing fruit. If the vine is not pruned, the number of grape clusters would be excessive and the grapevine would be unable to ripen the large crop or produce adequate vegetative growth.
To maximize crop yields, grapevines are trained to a specific system. The most common training system used by home gardeners is the four-cane Kniffin system. The four-cane Kniffin system is popular because of its simplicity. In the four-cane Kniffin system, the canes of the grapevine grow on 2 wires, one located 3 feet above the ground and the second 6 feet high.
If utilizing the four-cane Kniffin system, select four canes on the upper wire, two going in each direction. Also, select 4 canes on the lower wire. To aid identification, some gardeners tie brightly colored ribbons or strips of cloth on those canes they wish to retain. All remaining one-year-old canes should be completely removed.
Going back to the upper wire, select two of the remaining four canes (one going in each direction). Prune these canes back to 1 or 2 buds. These short 1 or 2 bud canes are referred to as renewal spurs. The renewal spurs provide the shoots or canes that will produce next year's crop. Prune the remaining two canes on the upper wire back to 8 to 13 buds. The number of buds left on the fruiting canes is determined by plant vigor. If the grapevine is vigorous, leave 13 buds per cane. Leave only 8 buds per cane if the grapevine possesses poor vigor.
Prune the four canes on the lower wire the same as those on the upper wire. When pruning is complete, no more than 60 buds should remain on the grapevine. When counting the number of buds on the grapevine, include both the buds on the fruiting canes and those on the renewal spurs.
Gooseberries and Currants
Gooseberries and currants produce the majority of their fruit on two- and three-year-old shoots. Shoots that are 4 years old and older produce very little fruit. After the first growing season, remove all but 6 to 8 vigorous, healthy shoots. The following year, leave 4 or 5 one-year-old shoots and 3 or 4 two-year-old canes. After the third growing season, keep 3 or 4 shoots each of one-, two-, and three-year-old growth. A properly pruned, established plant should consist of 9 to 12 shoots. Pruning of mature plants consists of pruning out all four-year-old shoots and thinning out some of the previous year's growth.
Blueberry plants are shrubs like currants and gooseberries. Blueberry yields and fruit quality decline when blueberry shoots (stems) reach 5 years of age. In late winter/early spring, prune out any dead or diseased stems. Also, prune out stems that are 5 years old and older. Allow 1 to 2 new shoots to develop each year.
The pruning of small fruits isn't difficult. It requires a basic understanding of plant growth and pruning techniques, proper pruning equipment, and (sometimes) a little bit of courage.
|
<urn:uuid:385809d8-6c7a-4ec6-b018-aa758b8f603e>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/hortnews/2013/02-13/pruning.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00179-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.926279 | 1,275 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Kathy Ceceri of Schuylerville is founder of Crafts for Learning, which brings hands-on programs to schools, libraries, and museums across the region. To hone her creativity, she utilizes the Tech Valley Center of Gravity in Troy. For more information visit www.craftsforlearning.com.
1 What is Crafts for Learning?
Crafts for Learning is the company name I use to promote my hands-on educational workshops and writings for kids and adults.
2 When and how did you start Crafts for Learning?
Around 2007, I decided to build a business I could run at home, on my own schedule, that combined my background in art and journalism with my experience as a homeschooling mom. I had a three-fold approach: I began teaching afterschool educational craft programs at local schools and libraries; I started writing a regular column for Home Education Magazine called “Hands-On Learning” which featured the projects I taught in my workshops; and I used those columns and photos from my workshops to put together a self-published book called Around The World Crafts. I then took that experience and approached some educational publishers, who began giving me assignments to write nonfiction books for kids. I also moved online and started writing about educational family activities for websites like Wired.com and About.com. I contributed over a dozen projects to the bestselling Geek Dad series of books and co-authored Geek Mom: Projects, Tips, and Adventures for Moms and Their 21st-Century Families for Random House. The projects I did with my kids and in afterschool programs became magazine articles, blog posts, and book chapters.
3 What type of work do you do at the Center of Gravity?
Up until 2011 most of the learning activities I taught and wrote about focused on history and culture. Then Nomad Press asked me to write an activity book called Robotics: Discover the Science and Technology of the Future. It was an exciting challenge, because I had to come up with 20 projects using mainly household and recycled materials — and no computers! But it really filled a niche I don’t think anybody realized existed: low-cost, low-tech STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and STEAM (STEM + Art) activities that could be done by anyone, at home or in the classroom, regardless of their background. However, working on that book, I started to wish I had the knowledge and ability to go beyond low-tech projects. I wanted to learn how to incorporate electronics and programming and use some of the new technologies that were just beginning to appear. When the Tech Valley Center of Gravity opened, I realized I had a resource I could use to build that skill set. Most of the members are engineers or tinkerers, and the atmosphere there encourages people to share their expertise and ideas. Plus it has all that cool equipment! I have served on the board of the COG and now I am the Events Coordinator. I’ve taught robotics workshops and organized teen and beginner classes on Arduino (a tiny computer used in robotics), 3D printing and soldering. I arranged for the COG to have a booth at World Maker Faire New York, and in the process got to meet Dale Dougherty, CEO of Maker Faire and Make Magazine. As a result, they will be publishing my next book, Making Simple Robots: Exploring Cutting-Edge Robotics With Everyday Stuff, later this summer. Many of the projects were designed with the input and support of COG members.
4 What is your ultimate goal for Crafts for Learning?
With my younger son off to college, I’m ready to expand my business from a home-based sideline to a full-time endeavor. I’ve been looking at renting space at the Center of Gravity when it moves to the Quackenbush Building this fall, and I’m talking with the building team about setting aside a workshop dedicated to kids. Ultimately, I’d like to reach more families directly through afterschool workshops, summer camps, and birthday parties. But I’d also like to bring my programs into more elementary and middle school classrooms. Low-tech robotics projects are an easy way to introduce kids to the process of invention and get them primed for more elaborate technology programs down the road.
5 What do you like about what you do?
Dale Dougherty has said that the spirit of play and discovery of knowledge is missing from much of formal education. I enjoy giving kids the space to be creative and seeing what amazing ideas they come up! I also get a lot of satisfaction from helping non-techy adults understand the science and technology around them. And I love getting to hobnob with, and learn from, people who know so much more than me. The most important skill I’ve learned at the Center of Gravity is to power through the frustration. All new technology takes time to master. I see my job as giving newbies the tools and encouragement to stick with it to the end. — Lauren Halligan
|
<urn:uuid:d3d62ac1-7189-4838-bb5e-773e95c738fe>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.troyrecord.com/lifestyle/20140718/five-questions-for-kathy-ceceri?source=alsorecommended
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00112-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.965586 | 1,034 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Cluster muscles back from deep hibernation
On 15 September, flight controllers at ESA's Space Operations Centre watched tensely as 'Rumba', No. 1 in the four-spacecraft Cluster fleet, was switched into a low-power, deep hibernation mode. The aim was to survive a challenging eclipse.
Each year, in autumn, the Cluster fleet must pass several times through the Earth's shadow with respect to the Sun. During these eclipses, which last about three hours, sunlight is blocked by the Earth and the spacecraft solar panels cannot generate electricity.
Batteries then generate electrical power, which is used to run heaters - keeping the spacecraft warm - and to operate on-board computers and maintain spacecraft control.
However, the Cluster fleet, launched in mid-2000, has been in orbit for over six years and batteries, in particular, are beginning to age. This year, spacecraft No. 1, Rumba, had the most severe battery problems; three out of five have already been declared non-operational for nominal use and one has a high leakage current.
As a result, mission engineers forecast that only about half of the battery power required by Rumba would be available during eclipse season.
ESOC, ESTEC, industry team solves power shortfall
The pending power shortfall was recognized in 2005, and an interdisciplinary team of engineers comprising representatives from the Flight Control Team at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), scientists at ESA's Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) and the spacecraft's builder was established to devise a solution.
The team created a computer model of the spacecraft's thermal behaviour to identify how, exactly, it could survive eclipses with reduced, or even with no, active heaters. There were also issues with the on-board computer, designed to restart itself automatically in the event that power is ever lost.
"The most difficult aspect was to find a safe method to switch off the onboard computer, deactivating its auto-recovery function and then to be able to wake it up again from its 'artificial coma' after the eclipse," said Juergen Volpp, Spacecraft Operations Manager at ESOC, in Darmstadt, Germany.
A solution was finally found by reducing on-board power usage to just a trickle knowing that the three-hour eclipses wouldn't be long enough for the spacecraft to totally freeze up. Rumba would, in effect, be put into deep hibernation.
But to solve the tricky computer problem, engineers hit upon the idea of maintaining power during the eclipses only to the decoder, which maintains the spacecraft's 'listening' function, or its ability to understand commands. This component needs only a trickle of current and would be essential to command the computer to restart once the eclipse was over.
However, there was no way to fully validate this unique 'decoder-only' hibernation mode from the ground.
Thus, on the night of 15/16 September, spacecraft controllers huddled tensely in the mission's Dedicated Control Room at ESOC for the first live implementation of 'decoder-only' mode. Almost everything onboard Rumba was completely shut down, with power fed only to the decoder so as to receive the wake-up signal.
Tension in the Cluster control room was palpable
Once the command was sent, Rumba powered itself down and then entered the eclipse zone while engineers began a long, two-and-one-half hours of silent waiting. Tension in the Cluster control room was palpable.
When the predicted eclipse passage ended at 22:13 UTC (00:13 CEST), engineers sent commands to wake the on-board computer. They had to wait one minute for the computer to restart itself, plus four seconds of telemetry processing and signal travel time. "We never thought that sixty-four seconds could seem so long," said Volpp.
But the meticulous preparations and months of planning paid off handsomely as Rumba emerged from the shadow, grabbed the wake-up signal and powered up its computer just as expected; controllers quickly verified that nothing onboard had cooled below acceptance temperatures, and all systems were back in operation a few hours later.
The strategy was again proven two days later during the next - and longest - eclipse, early on 18 September. The last eclipse was successfully negotiated on 20 September and the Cluster fleet is now back in nominal operation, continuing one of ESA's most successful astrophysics missions.
|
<urn:uuid:3907ed45-4454-463f-9b2f-886e0a9badc6>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cluster/Cluster_muscles_back_from_deep_hibernation/(print)
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00107-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.96507 | 918 | 3.359375 | 3 |
From Modernism Lab Essays
In a 1924 TLS tribute upon the death of Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf wrote, “He must be lost indeed to the meaning of words who does not hear in that rather stiff and sombre music, with its reserve, its pride, its vast and implacable integrity, how it is better to be good than bad, how loyalty is good and honesty and courage…” Woolf believed that it was Conrad’s celebration of these sailorly virtues – stoical pride in one’s work, a connection to a deep and lasting tradition, action rather than cogitation – that would ensure the writer’s legacy. Beyond his techniques of narrative mediation, beyond his modernist probing of epistemological uncertainty, we are left, Woolf claims, with maritime yarns that celebrate “fidelity, compassion, honour, service,” what Conrad himself describes in Some Reminisces as “a few very simple ideas.” Conrad the moralist and seaman trumps Conrad the modernist and explorer of the dark chasms of psychology.
If Woolf is correct in identifying Conrad’s importance in his dramas of simple but heroic virtues and vices, his crystalline rather than his labyrinthine narratives, then his 1917 The Shadow-Line would seem a key late addition to his corpus. In as bald a statement of Woolf’s thesis as possible, the narrator of The Shadow-Line at one point describes “the sea [as] the only world that counted, and the ships the test of manliness, of temperament, of courage and fidelity – and of love.” Conrad returns to the sea after diverging into other, landlocked spheres in The Secret Agent(1907) and Under Western Eyes(1911), and he frames his thematic return in stark, powerful terms. The Shadow-Line opens with a description of the universal transition from callow boyhood to hardened adulthood: “One knows well enough that all mankind has streamed that way. It is the charm of universal experience from which one expects an uncommon or personal sensation – a bit of one’s own…One goes on. And the time, too, goes on – till one perceives ahead a shadow-line warning one that the region of early youth, too, must be left behind” (3).
This is symptomatic of a generalizing impulse that runs throughout the narrative. The young captain sees his voyage and his world in archetypal fashion, describing in his journal the “stars, sun, sea, light, darkness, space, great waters; the formidable Work of the Seven Days, into which mankind seems to have blundered unbidden” (80), seeing in his journey “that special intensity of existence which is the quintessence of youthful aspirations” (69). The work’s clear echoes of Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” – a ship stalls in the ocean due to some vague sin, prompting feelings of “guilt” (99) and “shame” (97) on the captain’s part – also seem to hint towards a universal sense of guilt, an original, unnamed and unnamable sin that must be atoned for. Like Coleridge’s great poem, like Conrad’s earlier work, The Shadow-Line has the feel of a nightmarish parable that cannot quite be deciphered. The “few very simple ideas” of the novel – youth and experience, sin and expiation – occasionally seem to lock into a coherent, universal pattern, only to slide back into indeterminacy.
If the themes of The Shadow-Line seem chiseled down, even parabolic in nature, then the structure of The Shadow-Line similarly appears simplified in relation to Conrad’s major, earlier works. The plot takes a circular route: the young captain begins in the “Eastern port” (4) of Singapore and ends in the same place. The captain’s first voyage is defined negatively by what doesn’t happen: the ship remains immobile in a calm sea through a good portion of the tale; the captain does not bring the quinine that he believes will save his men from illness.
Formally, The Shadow-Line departs from the formal devices both of Conrad’s earlier work and of modernist writing in general. Unlike in Lord Jim, for instance, there is no gap between sujet and fabula; there are no real analepses or prolepses, as the narrative plods forward (sometimes at an achingly slow pace) without digression. Marlow, that framing figure who foregrounds issues of mediation and narrative indecipherability, has no place in this directly told tale. The Shadow-Line is the presentation of the captain himself, even containing selected pages from his diary. As for the prose style, Conrad seemed constitutionally incapable of writing short, declarative sentences: his sentences accumulate clauses, trade in abstract nouns, revel in circling around their subjects. In The Shadow-Line, though, the abstrusities are at a relative minimum; by Conrad’s standards, the writing is clear and concise.
Jeremy Hawthorn suggests that The Shadow-Line betrays a “general modernist suspicion” of “neat plots (in life and art),” that, as the novella closes with the captain about to embark on other journeys, there is “a characteristically modernist deferral of unambiguous closure.” Hawthorn is right to point out that the novella’s separate plots and voyages are never straightforward: “they wind around, stop before they should, continue when the reader expects them to end, intersect with other travellers heading in a different direction, and generally exhibit that untidiness that is associated with life rather than art.”
The novel does end with the prospect of new journeys opening up into the future, as Hawthorn indicates, but it also ends with a final portrait of the undying, simple virtues of seamen. After asking his faithful mate Ransome to shake hands, the captain describes their parting:
He exclaimed, flushed up dusky red, gave my hand a hard wrench – and next moment, left alone in the cabin, I listened to him going up the companion stairs cautiously, step by step, in mortal fear of starting into sudden anger our common enemy [his weak heart] it was his hard fate to carry consciously within his faithful breast” (109).
Danger still lurks in the background; Ransome’s diseased heart is only a literal manifestation of the hazards that reside in all human breasts. Yet despite this abiding peril, Ransome’s virtues – his “faithful” nature, his “cautiously” plodding determination, his acceptance of his hard fate – form a bulwark, no matter how tenuous, against the annihilating forces that lie behind the everyday in Conrad’s fiction. Earlier, the narrator describes his captaincy as a part of a “dynasty, continuous not in blood, indeed, but in its experience, in its training, in its conception of duty, and in the blessed simplicity of its traditional point of view” (44). The novella’s ending, rather than exhibiting a modernist predilection for complexity, openness, and ambiguity, actually asserts the continuance of this blessed simplicity; in this way, it can be read as a conservative affirmation of tradition rather than a modernist destabilizing of any such norms.
A final and interesting stylistic departure from Conrad’s earlier, more celebrated works lies in his use of what Ian Watt famously called “delayed decoding.” Delayed decoding, Watt writes, is the process by which the reader is put “in the position of being an immediate witness of each step in the process whereby the semantic gap between the sensations aroused in the individual by an object or event, and their actual cause of meaning, was slowly closed in his consciousness.” The most famous instance of delayed decoding occurs in Heart of Darkness, where Marlow describes a man’s reaction to being bombarded from the coast: “Something big appeared in the air before the shutter,” and “the man stepped back swiftly,” as “the end of what appeared a long cane clattered round and knocked over a little camp-stool. It looked as though after wrenching that thing from somebody ashore he had lost his balance in the effort.” It is only later in this same passage that we realize that the “cane” is actually “the shaft of spear,” that the man has not wrenched something precious from somebody else but has been pierced in the “side just below the ribs.” We inhabit the same epistemological gap that Marlow does: we become estranged from the represented reality of the text, caught up in the complex transition from perception to interpretation.
The most exemplary example of delayed decoding in The Shadow-Lineoccurs when, after the heavens turn into a sheet of rain and wind, the captain stumbles over something on the deck:
It was something big and alive. Not a dog – more like a sheep, rather. But there were no animals in the ship. How could an animal…It was an added and fantastic horror which I could not resist. The hair of my head stirred even as I picked myself up, awfully scared; not as a man is scared while his judgment, his reason still try to resist, but completely, boundlessly, and, as it were, innocently scared – like a little child (95).
He continues: “I could see It – that Thing! The darkness, of which so much had just turned into water, had thinned down a little. There It was! But I did not hit upon the notion of Mr. Burns issuing out of the companion on all fours till he attempted to stand up, and even then the idea of a bear crossed my mind first.”
There is an opposite trajectory in this example of delayed decoding from the spear incident in Heart of Darkness. Here, the captain perceives something as nightmarish, bestial, non-human, and only with extended exposure understands that the object is familiar and non-threatening; in Heart of Darkness, Marlow sees a horrid happening first as mundane, even beautiful, before realizing with stark terror the violence of the event. This broad differentiation holds true for the larger structure of the two novellas. In The Shadow-Line, a general demystification occurs: natural causes replace supernatural ones, as sober maturity grows out of superstitious, guilt-ridden adolescence. In Heart of Darkness, on the other hand, we see how the normal becomes the abnormal, how corruption turns Kurtz, that paragon of European civilization and imperialism, into a monstrous demigod.
The Shadow-Line, in its simple plot and unmediated narrative, is a sharp formal departure from Conrad’s earlier, more celebrated work. In many ways, however, it is also a return: a return to the sea, that testing ground of the soul, and a return to the virtues that arise and flourish in this arena. Virginia Woolf claimed that Conrad’s late work was not suited to his particular genius, that it was too concerned with the domestic sphere: “There are no masts in drawing-rooms; the typhoon does not test the worth of politicians and business men.” The Shadow-Line surely complicates such a rigid division. In it, we can see once again what Woolf calls “the old nobilities and sonorities”; in it, we can see Conrad come home to the homelessness of the sea.
- ↑ Virginia Woolf, “Joseph Conrad,” in The Essays of Virginia Woolf: Volume Four, 1925-1929, ed. Andrew McNeillie (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1994), p. 228.
- ↑ Joseph Conrad, “A Familiar Preface,” in Some Reminisences (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1912), 26.
- ↑ Joseph Conrad, The Shadow-Line: A Confession (New York: Oxford Unversity Press, 2002), 34. All future citations will be page numbers in the text of the wiki.
- ↑ Jeremy Hawthorn, “Introduction,” in The Shadow-Line (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), xxx, xxix.
- ↑ Hawthorn, xxix-xxx.
- ↑ Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 270.
- ↑ Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and Other Tales (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 150.
- ↑ Woolf, “Joseph Conrad,” 232.
|
<urn:uuid:3c11c363-01dd-4361-ab23-7da880575a3f>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/The_Shadow-Line
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392159.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00005-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.949076 | 2,708 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Waterpipe Tobacco Smoking: An Emerging Health Crisis in the United States
Abstract:Objective: To examine the prevalence and potential health risks of waterpipe tobacco smoking.
Methods: A literature review was performed to compile information relating to waterpipe tobacco smoking.
Results: Waterpipe tobacco smoking is increasing in prevalence worldwide; in the United States, 1020 of some young adult populations are current waterpipe users. Depending on the toxicant measured, a single waterpipe session produces the equivalent of at least 1 and as many as 50 cigarettes. Misconceptions about waterpipe smoke content may lead users to underestimate health risks.
Conclusion: Inclusion of waterpipe tobacco smoking in tobacco control activities may help reduce its spread.
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: 1 Graduate Student, Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA.
Publication date: May 1, 2010
The American Journal of Health Behavior seeks to improve the quality of life through multidisciplinary health efforts in fostering a better understanding of the multidimensional nature of both individuals and social systems as they relate to health behaviors.
The Journal aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the impact of personal attributes, personality characteristics, behavior patterns, social structure, and processes on health maintenance, health restoration, and health improvement; to disseminate knowledge of holistic, multidisciplinary approaches to designing and implementing effective health programs; and to showcase health behavior analysis skills that have been proven to affect health improvement and recovery.
- Editorial Board
- Information for Authors
- Submit a Paper
- Subscribe to this Title
- Review Board
- Reprints and Permissions
- Ingenta Connect is not responsible for the content or availability of external websites
|
<urn:uuid:b33e66c5-88be-45e2-bbb7-8704a443afad>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/png/ajhb/2010/00000034/00000003/art00003
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404826.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00156-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.890917 | 348 | 2.6875 | 3 |
It’s not enough to teach genetics, says Michael Dougherty, director of education for the American Society for Human Genetics. It has to be taught in the right way.“Current teaching practices may be producing a public that is unprepared to participate effectively as medical consumers in a world where personalized medicine will rely increasingly on genetic testing, risk assessment, predispositions, and ranges of treatment options that include biological and behavioral components,” writes Dougherty in an opinion piece published online today in the American Journal of Human Genetics.Dougherty calls for curriculum reform at all levels, from middle school all the way up through undergraduate education. The key, he says, is for students to understand that the genetics of most human traits and conditions are complex and, with only rare exceptions, not deterministic.Dougherty suggests a new genetics curriculum that begins with lessons on traits that show continuous variation, such as height and weight, and focuses on how multiple inherited and environmental factors can affect these traits. Teachers could then move on to discussions of genes and the molecular details of how they are passed from generation to generation. Only here, in the later stages of their genetics education, would students learn about the rare single gene diseases, such as cystic fibrosis and PKU, that make up the bulk of today’s genetics lessons.“Our incompleteness of understanding and the messiness of complex-trait examples are poor arguments for maintaining the status quo in our genetics classrooms. We know on theoretical grounds that the entirety of phenotype is defined by genes and environment, and substantial uncertainty still characterizes both. To pretend such uncertainty does not exist is to deprive students of an appreciation of both modern genetics and the nature of science.”Dougherty points to the Genes, Environment and Human Behavior module, funded by the Department of Energy and available from BSCS, as an example of the kind of lesson that could help correct the misconceptions that students already have. The National Human Genome Research Institute also has available a Human Genetic Variation curriculum supplement. And of course, you can always check out the Genetics 101 section of the 23andMe website for a basic introduction to genetics.
Curriculum Reform Needed For An Informed Public When It Comes To Genetics, Expert Says
June 25, 2009
|
<urn:uuid:b345ec0c-e4e5-4266-b7b7-008a8f3bf3e8>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://blog.23andme.com/news/curriculum-reform-needed-for-an-informed-public-when-it-comes-to-genetics-expert-says/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395548.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00178-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.93813 | 464 | 3.5 | 4 |
Building a concrete home with insulating concrete forms (ICFs) saves energy and money. The greater insulation, tighter construction, and temperature-smoothing mass of the walls conserve heating and cooling energy much better than conventional wood-frame walls. This reduces monthly fuel bills. It also allows use of smaller heating and cooling equipment, saving money in construction.
How much will I save?
Houses built with ICF exterior walls require an estimated 44% less energy to heat and 32% less energy to cool than comparable frame houses. A typical 2000 square foot home in the center of the U.S. will save approximately $200 in heating costs each year and $65 in air conditioning each year.
The bigger the house the bigger the savings. In colder areas of the U.S. and Canada, heating savings will be more and cooling savings less. In hotter areas, heating savings will be less and cooling savings more.
Estimated Annual Heating Savings
Estimated Annual Cooling Savings
The smaller heating and cooling equipment needed for such an energy-efficient house can cut construction costs by an estimated $500 to $2000. The biggest equipment savings come with the houses that have the most energy savings. How do we know all this?
The energy savings estimates come from a study of single-family houses spread across the U.S. and Canada. Researchers gathered data on 58 houses in all. Half had exterior walls constructed with concrete using ICFs made of expanded polystyrene (EPS) or extruded polystyrene (XPS) foam. The other half were neighboring houses with walls constructed of wood frame. All houses were relatively new (less than 6 years old) and built with modern methods.
The researchers compared the energy bill of each concrete house to its frame counterpart, carefully correcting for important differences to get an “apples-to-apples” comparison.
Estimates of equipment savings are actual numbers reported by contractors that build ICF houses.
Where do the savings come from?
Insulating values for ICF walls using polystyrene foam are R-17 to R-26, compared to wood frame’s R-9 to R-15. So ICF walls are expected to cut the conduction losses through foundation and above-grade walls by about half. And ICF walls are tighter. In tests, ICF houses averaged about 1/2 as much infiltration (air leakage) as frame.
Sources of Energy loss Energy Loss Reduction
ICF walls do more than cut down on the biggest types of energy loss. The concrete gives them the heat-absorbing property, “thermal mass”. This is the ability to smooth out large swings in temperature. It keeps the walls of the house a little warmer when the outdoor temperature hits its coldest extreme, and keeps the house a little cooler when the outdoor temperature is hottest. The walls themselves “add back” heat or cooling to the house when it needs them most. This contributes about 6% of the needed energy to the house for free.
Reduced equipment costs result from the energy savings. Since the energy needed is less, the furnaces and compressors that heat and cool can be smaller. And the more the energy savings, the greater the possible reduction in equipment size—and the equipment cost.
What's the bottom line?
In planning a new house you can estimate that building the walls of concrete using ICFs will save you hundreds of dollars per year in energy costs. As shown in the graphs, the savings are greater the bigger the house. Heating savings are highest in cold climates, and cooling savings highest in warm climates.
You may also save hundreds or thousands of dollars in construction costs for heating and cooling equipment. Talk with an ICF homebuilder for estimates.
VanderWerf, "Energy Consumption Comparisons of Concrete Homes versus Wood Frame Homes". Portland Cement Association. 1997.
VanderWerf, Feige, Chammas, and Lemay, Insulating Concrete Forms for Residential Design and Construction. New York: McGraw-Hill Inc., 1997.
|
<urn:uuid:9c2e2d0d-784b-47d5-afbc-2f27297b3aeb>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://forms.org/index.cfm/Energysavings
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398209.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00127-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.93029 | 843 | 3.09375 | 3 |
From: [email protected] (Chuck McManis) Newsgroups: comp.robotics Subject: R/C Servos 101 Date: 11 May 1995 20:10:37 GMT
[I posted this to the robot-board list and it was suggested I post it here as well. If there is an R/C servo FAQ (or any FAQ maintainer for that matter, you are welcome to include it... --Chuck]
A servo is a motor that is attached to a position feedback device. Generally there is a circuit that allows the motor to be commanded to go to a specified "position". A very common use of servos is in Radio Controlled models. These R/C servos are sold at hobby stores and via mail order by places like Tower Hobbies for anywhere from $5 to $150.
R/C Servos come in standard "sizes" (so that they fit models well) and use similar control schemes. Unlike general purpose motors, R/C servos are constrained from full rotation. Instead they have a limited rotation of about 180 degrees or less. This is sometimes changed (see "Servo Modifications" below).
A typical R/C servo is the Futaba S148. This servo looks like a rectangular box with a motor shaft coming out of one end and a connector with three wires out of the other end. Attached to the motor shaft is usually (but not always) a "control horn". This is a plastic piece with holes in it for attaching push rods or other mechanical linkages to the servo. The three wires are V+, Control, and Ground. R/C servos typically run on 4.8v (four NiCd batteries) but they often work with voltages between 4 and 6 volts. The control line is used to position the servo. In an R/C model, this line it attached to the radio reciever, on robots it is usually attached to the processor.
R/C Servos are controlled by sending them a "pulse" of variable width. The parameters for this pulse are that it has a minimum width, a maximum width, and a repetition rate. These values are not "standard" but there are conventions that are generally accepted. The convention is that a pulse of approximately 1500 uS (1.5 mS) is the "neutral" point for the servo. Given the rotation constraints of the servo, neutral is defined to be the position where the servo has exactly the same amount of potential rotation in the counter clockwise direction as it does in the clockwise direction. It is important to note that different R/C servos will have different constraints on their rotation but they _all_ have a neutral position, and that position is always around 1500 uS.
These servos are "active" devices, meaning that when commanded to move they will actively hold their position. Thus, if a servo is commanded to the neutral position and an external force is present to push against the servo (presumably through the mechanical linkage) the servo will actively resist being moved out of that position. The maximum amount of force the servo can exert is the torque rating of the servo. The Futaba servo is rated around 40 oz/inches or 2.5 pounds of push at 1 inch away from from the shaft of the servo motor. Servos will not hold their position forever though, the position pulse must be repeated to instruct the servo to stay in position. The maximum amount of time that can pass before the servo will stop holding its position is the command repetition rate. Typical values for the command repetition rate are 20 - 30 mS. You can repeat the pulse more often than this, but not less often. When this timeout expires and there hasn't been another pulse the servo de-energizes the motor. In this state in can be pushed out of position and it will not return to the commanded position.
When the pulse sent to a servo is less than 1500 uS. the servo positions and holds its output shaft some number of degrees counterclockwise from the neutral point. When the pulse is wider than 1500 uS the opposite occurs. The minimal width and the maximum width of pulse that will command the servo to turn to a valid position are functions of each servo. Different brands, and even different servos of the same brand, will have different maximum and minimums. Generally the minimum pulse will be about 1000 uS wide and the maximum pulse will be 2000uS wide. However, these are just guidelines and should be checked on the servos you use. In particular if you attempt to command a servo past its maximum or minimum rotation it will use the maximum amount of current trying unsuccessfully to achieve that position.
Another parameter that varies from servo to servo is the slew rate. This is the time it takes for the servo to change from one position to another. The worst case slewing time is when the servo is holding at the minimum rotation and it is commanded to go to maximum rotation. This can take several seconds on very high torque servos. Typically it takes less than two seconds.
The typical R/C servo varies most in its internal mechanics from other servos and this is generally the difference between "good" and "lousy" servos. The servo mechanism subsystems are the motor, the gear train, the potentiometer, the electronics, and the output shaft bearing. The electronics are pretty much all the same and so not an issue. In the motor department however you can get smaller and larger motors which effect the overall size of the servo. "mini" servos are generally more expensive than "standard" servos in part for this reason.
The gears also vary from servo to servo. Inexpensive servos have plastic gears that will wear out after less than 100 hours of use. More expensive servos have metal gears which are much more durable.
The potentiometer is the feedback device and often the first thing to fail in my servos. If it gets dirty, or the contacts get oxidized, the servo will fail to work properly, sometimes by "jittering or hunting" since the feedback is inaccurate, or turning completely to one side and drawing lots of current since the servo doesn't know where its output shaft is pointing. More expensive servos have "sealed" potentiometers, cheaper ones do not. I've found I can extend the life a wee bit of my pots by using some judicious application of silicone sealant around the edge. You can do this with a syringe if your careful. Be sure and not to get it on the gears though as it will cause them to bind.
The last subsystem is the output shaft bearing. Cheap servos invariably have a plastic on plastic bearing that will not take much load. Medium priced servos generally have metal on metal bearings that stand up better under extended use and expensive servos have ball bearings which work best. Many places also sell "ball bearing upgrades" for cheap servos which consist of a new top cover and ball based bearing for the output shaft. Tower Hobbies sells three "standard" servos with the part numbers TS-51, TS-55, and TS-57 whose primary difference is the bearing. (I believe the '57 has metal gears as well as a ball bearings)
Modifing a servo to be a drive motor can use one of two strategies, breaking the feedback loop, or lobotomy.
The most brutal way of modifying a servo is the full lobotomy. You open up a servo, remove the electronics, bringing out the power lines to the motor and remove the potentiometer or modify it so that it can rotate 360 degrees. What you are left with is a DC motor, a gear train, and an output shaft on which you can mount plastic pieces that can be used as wheel mounts. This gives you complete control of the mechanics, but you do have to have a motor driver circuit to drive the DC motor in the servo housing.
Breaking the feedback loop is generally the easier way to modify a servo since it takes advantage of the power switching circuit already present on the servo to turn the motor on and off. This modification involves removing/disabling the potentiometer and replacing it with a voltage divider that convinces the servo electronics that the servo is in the neutral position. (You can figure this out by using the old pot, turned to the neutral position and measuring the resistance.) Now to turn the motor clockwise you send the servo a pulse that is wider than 1500 uS and the motor turns (and never stops because there is no potentiometer to tell the servo circuit it has gone far enough). Or to turn the motor counter- clockwise you send it a pulse less than 1500 uS wide.
This latter technique is fine except that the motor driver circuit in the servo may not be able to handle driving the motor continuously. In normal operation, the motor would be driven for a moment and then idled when the servo reached its position. The intermittent nature of turning the motor on and off allows the servo to use a motor driver that is smaller than one that would be needed for 100% duty cycle operation. If this turns out to be the case, the motor electronics will eventually burn out and you'll end up with the full lobotomy case by default.
So there you have it, nearly everything you wanted to know about servos but were afraid to ask. :-)
--Chuck McManis All opinions in this message/article are Sun Microsystems Inc. those of the author, who may or may not Internet: [email protected] be who you think it is. Crypto-puzzle: *0U0JPFPrWRN9PkWRKeP5WRmIR9wP5QAWuIQP9Pu9tnIZ7AD1SIS
|
<urn:uuid:3fa892cb-e330-43f3-be8c-853fd648c074>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/%7Ebolo/shipyard/servos101.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399425.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00066-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.936169 | 2,066 | 2.875 | 3 |
Many people fantasize about moving to or vacationing in Hawaii. However, those with pre-existing respiratory conditions and visiting the Island of Hawaii (also known as the Big Island) may experience some health issues.
According to the State of Hawaii website, ʺvog is a term that refers to volcanic smog. Vog becomes thicker or lighter depending upon the amount of emissions from Kilauea volcano, the direction and amount of wind, and other weather conditions. People with pre-existing respiratory conditions are more prone to adverse effects of vog.ʺ
Possible health issues related to vog may include:
• Breathing difficulties
• Increased susceptibility to respiratory ailments
• Watery eyes
• Sore throat
Vog conditions mainly exist in the following areas of Hawaii:
• Volcano Village to Hilo
• Kailua-Kona to Ocean View
As a frequent traveler to the Big Island, I can offer you some suggestions of things you can do to protect yourself from vog. These tips are compiled from the Kona and State of Hawaii websites:
• Monitor vog conditions daily. Call the Department of Health’s toll-free VOG help line at 866-767-5044 for daily updates on vog levels.
• Avoid heavy physical activity.
• Stay indoors.
• Close windows at night.
• Stay hydrated. Drink bottled water or hot tea.
• Keep any respiratory and heart medications you use handy. Keep your medication refilled and use your daily (controller) medication as prescribed.
• Have your emergency or evacuation medications available. If you don't have any medications, but feel you might need them, call your physician.
• Drink lots of fluids to loosen mucus and clear lungs. Hot tea may be especially good.
• Don't overexert yourself when vog levels are high. Even better, take it easy.
• Don't smoke and avoid people smoking during vog episodes.
• Purchase indoor plants (especially spider plants) may help clean the air.
• You also can try hanging up sheets that have been soaked in a mixture of one teaspoon of baking soda to one liter of water (which can help trap acid aerosols and gases.)
|
<urn:uuid:3b606410-6df7-4cda-99d6-0f9b54de418e>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.empowher.com/asthma/content/what-vog
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398628.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00057-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.912641 | 461 | 2.609375 | 3 |
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A Guide to the Evelyn Burress Papers, 1939-1946
Daughter of the Republic of Texas member and genealogist Evelyn Burress was actively involved in the preservation and restoration of historic buildings throughout Texas. Along with her husband Walter March Burress, a geologist by profession, they sponsored an annual Texas Independence Day celebration at Washington-on-the-Brazos.
"W. M. Burress, who foretold East Texas Oil Field, dies."Dallas News. October 20, 1950.
Comprising correspondence, printed material, and an historical sketch, the Evelyn Burress Papers, 1939-1946, document Burress’ activities preserving historic buildings as well as her interest in Texas history and genealogy. Correspondence concerns the preservation and restoration of various structures, her research, and the planning of the Texas Independence Day celebration at Washington-on-the-Brazos. Additionally, printed material consists of an article authored by Burress for the Texas Parent-Teacher on teaching Texas history in school and an historical sketch of Thomas Jefferson Rusk and his role in the Texas Revolution.
This collection is open for research use.
Evelyn Burress Papers, 1939-1946, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.
Basic processing and cataloging of this collection was supported with funds from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for the Briscoe Center’s "History Revealed: Bringing Collections to Light" project, 2009-2011.
|
<urn:uuid:dcd0d876-3db1-4408-8abb-8d0faffcf229>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utcah/02709/cah-02709.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399425.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00078-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.920041 | 323 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Credit: Ryan Hannahoe and Rob Gendler
Thanks to Ryan Hannahoe and Rob Gendler for sending this fantastic image of the Cats Paw Nebula (NGC 6334) and the Lobster Nebula (NGC 6357) in Scorpius. These two huge emission nebulae are star forming regions, clouds of hydrogen gas in which gravity is compressing the nebulosity into infant suns.
The nebulae lie in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy at a distance of about 5,500 light-years. In this image, made with telescopes at the Fair Dinkum Skies Observatory in Australia and New Mexico Skies Observatory, north is at top and east to the left. The bright stars Lambda and Nu Scorpii at bottom left, shining at magnitudes 1.6 and 4.0, respectively, mark the end of the Scorpion’s tail.
The scattered suns of the faint cluster Harvard 16 lie just north of the two bright stars.
What a great image — thanks for sharing, guys!
|
<urn:uuid:abca01fe-a223-4604-b280-fe9e3f0a04b7>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://cs.astronomy.com/asy/b/daves-universe/archive/2013/01/23/phenomenal-image-of-two-red-nebulae.aspx
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395992.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00007-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.866916 | 215 | 2.8125 | 3 |
May, which is well into ozone season in many regions in Texas, is also Asthma Awareness Month — an opportunity for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and health partners to educate Americans on asthma health risks and prevention strategies.
Asthma is a condition in which inflamed airways make it difficult for a person to breathe, and smog may be a trigger for asthma attacks. According to the American Lung Association, almost 26 million Americans have asthma, including more than seven million children.
Asthma and other health issues such as lung disease are directly affected by air quality. Asthma Awareness Month is kicked off by Air Quality Awareness Week, a week that health officials use to spread awareness of the effects of air quality on human health. The week included celebrating champions of asthma education and prevention by announcing the winners of EPA’s National Leadership Awards in Asthma Management on May 3rd. These recipients have developed national models for effective asthma care. Read More
By: John Hall, Texas state director, clean energy, and Colin Leyden, senior manager, state regulatory & legislative affairs – natural gas
When it comes to clean air and clean energy, Texas cities – and their encompassing counties – know what’s good for them.
San Antonio’s Bexar County Commissioners, for example, recently approved a resolution supporting the nation’s first-ever limits on carbon pollution from power plants, the Clean Power Plan.
Bexar County includes the City of San Antonio and adjoining areas. By endorsing the plan, the broader San Antonio community joins Texas’ largest cities Houston and Dallas, whose mayors are also supporting the sensible, cost-effective clean air measure. (In fact, Houston and Dallas filed an amicus brief together with a large coalition of cities to support the Clean Power Plan in court).
All of this comes in the face of staunch opposition from Texas state leaders, who have used taxpayers’ money to sue the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over these safeguards. Meanwhile, Bexar County Judge Nelson W. Wolff and commissioners passed the resolution unanimously, meaning members from both sides of the aisle put politics aside and voted for healthier air for our communities and families. Read More
EPA's SmartWay Transport Partnership has been a powerful tool for encouraging operators to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions.
We all know that the Environmental Protection Agency works to make the freight industry more sustainable, but they can’t do it all on their own- partnerships and outreach to industry are key in achieving these goals. So who else is involved in the push for freight transportation efficiency?
Initiated in 2003, the Environmental Protection Agency’s SmartWay Transport Partnership has been one of the agency’s most powerful tools for encouraging freight transportation operators to improve their fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. Since 2004, SmartWay Partners have saved a reported $24.9 billion in fuel costs and eliminated 72.8 million metric tons of CO2 emissions, 1.5 million tons of NOx emissions, and 59,000 tons of PM emissions. Read More
EPA’s decision to grant the Houston region a new deadline to meet clean air standards may delay air pollution mitigation measures.
Last year was a troubling one for Houston air quality. Some areas recorded ozone concentrations not seen since the early 2000s. Overall, more than half of the regional monitors recorded smog at levels that exceeded the 2008 national health standard for at least four days. This unhealthy air affects everyone, but vulnerable populations such as the young and the elderly are especially susceptible to health effects of poor air quality, including asthma and lung disease.
This is why EPA’s recent decision to grant the Houston region a one-year extension to meet the federal health standards represents a missed opportunity for clean air action. The original deadline for Houston to meet the 2008 health standard was July 2015. Often, EPA grants extensions to areas that are close to attaining the standard. In this case, Houston’s air quality had been improving but took a significant step in the wrong direction last year with a large number of exceedance days.
Why Does it Matter? Read More
It seems too early in the year to worry about smog, right? Ozone is typically thought of as just a summertime problem. Unfortunately, not this year – and the health risks are troubling.
March 1 marked the beginning of ozone season in Houston – and April 3 was the first day in 2016 that a regulatory ozone monitor in Houston measured above 70 parts per billion (ppb), which is the level of the health standard established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. No other official air monitor in the state had recorded levels above 70ppb, meaning Houston is winning the early race for unhealthiest Texas air – which isn’t winning at all.
While stratospheric ozone plays a beneficial role by absorbing harmful ultraviolet rays, not all ozone is considered “good.” Ground-level ozone is a form of pollution, also known as smog, which can result in dangerous consequences for public health such as asthma attacks, and heart and lung disease. Read More
When the President announced the first-ever national limits on carbon pollution from power plants last year, he recognized that this policy would not only reduce carbon pollution, but it would boost the development of a clean energy economy that is driving growth and prosperity across the nation.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Dallas Mayor Michael Rawlings are among the many leaders who recognize this opportunity in the Clean Power Plan. The mayors know that states and cities that join the race first, and run it the fastest, will win both more investment in clean technologies and less air pollution for their communities.
Of course, we will all benefit by reducing the impacts of climate change – including extreme heat, dangerous sea level rise, and more powerful storms. That fact was reinforced by new research released last week highlighting that sea-level rise may be happening almost twice as fast as the worst case prediction made by the United Nations just a few years ago. Read More
|
<urn:uuid:7f31f6c7-cbcc-4ee9-af0b-2d1f18738e83>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://blogs.edf.org/texascleanairmatters/category/air-pollution/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00126-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.954357 | 1,235 | 2.734375 | 3 |
The all-seeing eye, also called the Eye of Providence or Eye of God, has origins dating back to the Eye of Horus in Egyptian mythology. It has been adopted as part of the Great Seal of the United States, which shows the all-seeing eye floating on top of a pyramid. This can be seen on the back of the one dollar bill. It is often associated with conspiracy theories involving UFOs, the Illuminati or Freemasonry. It is also featured in the 2004 Disney film, National Treaure, and in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy as the Eye of Sauron.
In cemeteries the all-seeing eye symbol is usually found associated with Freemasonry or the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, like the example here. The letters F, L and T inside the chain links stand for Friendship, Love, and Truth.
Photo: Fairmount Cemetery, Denver, Colorado
|
<urn:uuid:df38de69-856d-4a71-9cc9-1e0fd955360d>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
https://cemeteries.wordpress.com/2006/10/18/all-seeing-eye-eye-of-providence/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=ba53fcffb3
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00116-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948237 | 190 | 2.859375 | 3 |
August 16, 2013
By Alissa Poh
|Steven Weinman, M.D., Ph.D.|
It stands to reason that the human body's largest internal organ — the liver, responsible for myriad functions necessary to our survival — is correspondingly complex. Ancient Greek philosophers, including Plato, thought it housed greed, jealousy and other dark emotions. It's considered vital for the free flow of qi, or life energy, a key tenet of Chinese traditional medicine.
"Strangely subtle and underappreciated" is how Steven Weinman, M.D., Ph.D., describes the liver. "Its importance is often realized only in the wake of liver failure," he says. "You don't kick off suddenly, like you might with a massive heart attack. You waste away — it's a living death and terrible to watch."
Weinman is the director of the University of Kansas Liver Center, founded in 2007 to stimulate collaborative research on various liver-themed mysteries: for instance, why only 15 percent of alcoholics suffer from cirrhosis, or liver scarring, while the majority are unscathed.
Another puzzle is why, in patients with hepatitis C who have undergone a liver transplant, the disease frequently recurs and is much more aggressive the second time around. Instead of being a stealthy, decades-long process, cirrhosis — also a hepatitis C trademark — can destroy a transplant patient's supposed new lease on life in as little as three years. A recent, intriguing observation from one of the Liver Center's researchers may shed new light on this particular question.
Thanks to today's powerful medical technology, tens of thousands of genomic sequences can be rapidly scanned for minute variations — usually single DNA base changes — that might correlate with specific diseases. In 2008, the Dallas Heart Study uncovered one such variation: a single switch from C to G in a gene called PNPLA3. Individuals with this form of the gene are more likely to have higher amounts of liver fat.
"It's associated with more severe non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and, for patients whose liver problems stem from heavy drinking or hepatitis C, more advanced cirrhosis," says Winston Dunn, M.D., a transplant hepatologist at the Liver Center. Intrigued, he decided to find out if this form of PNPLA3 had anything to do with the aggressive return of hepatitis C and accelerated liver scarring often observed post-transplant. To do so, he compared 103 pairs of tissue samples — matching donor with recipient — from KU's Liver Bank. All the recipients had received a liver transplant for hepatitis C.
Dunn found that the recipients whose new liver contained the wildtype, or original, form of PNPLA3 (without the single base change from C to G) were considerably protected from developing advanced fibrosis or requiring a second transplant due to failure of the first. Those whose new liver came with the altered version of PNPLA3, however, were not so fortunate.
"I expected to see a difference between the two genotypes, but not quite as marked," Dunn says. "When it comes to liver transplantation, this could impact how organs are allocated. If you're getting a transplant for liver disease not related to hepatitis C, current indications are that the genotype of the graft you receive doesn't matter - which means it might be possible for us to save grafts with the wildtype form of PNPLA3 for patients where, because they have hepatitis C, genotype actually matters."
The challenge to overcome, Dunn adds, would be logistical: genotyping donor livers — currently not a standard procedure — for information on PNPLA3, in a reasonable time frame that wouldn't hold up organ allocation. Meanwhile, his colleagues at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester are conducting a similar analysis, albeit with a larger number of tissue samples, to corroborate Dunn's findings. A peer-reviewed publication is also in the works.
"Here at KU, 40 percent of our transplant patients have hepatitis C — the very subset that fares worst post-surgery," Weinman observes. "What Dunn has found, once confirmed, could dramatically alter their survival curves. It's one of the first mass uses of the Liver Bank to address a clinical question, and definitely research with exciting potential.
A direct outgrowth of The University of Kansas Hospital's active liver transplant practice, the Liver Bank currently houses more than 2,000 tissue samples from the liver biopsies of over 1,000 patients. It allows researchers to carry out prospective studies and rapidly test ideas in ways that wouldn't be possible otherwise.
The bank had its genesis in a simple request: in 2008, Yvonne Wan, Ph.D., then director of the Liver Center, asked Richard Gilroy, M.D., the liver transplant program's medical director, if she could acquire spare liver cells for her laboratory research.
"All she wanted were some cells," Gilroy says, "but I decided that, instead, this could be a great opportunity to begin building a collection of tissue samples that would enable more researchers to study what happens to livers over time."
Financially supported by both the hospital and the University of Kansas Medical Center, the Liver Bank serves as a multi-year repository for tissue specimens from excess surgical material in liver transplants, resections and biopsies. The samples are carefully categorized and a separate database, with extensive clinical and pathological data, is also maintained.
"Think of the bank as a library," Gilroy says. "Each patient can be represented as a book, and pages get added with every biopsy. If we had multiple books but each was a thin volume, it would be a useless library; ditto if we had just a handful of heavy tomes. What we want — and what I think we're achieving, over time — are multiple books and pages."
There are many questions Gilroy wants to explore, utilizing the Liver Bank. He'd like to use its database, which documents the "chronic rejection cohort" — patients unable, for whatever reason, to tolerate a transplant — to determine how and if immunosuppressive drugs might be modified to address the problem of organ rejection. Then there's what he describes as the $64,000,000 question: why some patients have perfectly normal liver enzymes but remarkably abnormal biopsies.
"We've tended to be somewhat siloed, but the bank is providing great opportunities for translational research," Gilroy says. "The ability to work together is an important measure of the marriage between clinicians and basic scientists. If a flourishing relationship can be built around this bank, our academic prowess will accelerate exponentially."
Weinman agrees. "I think the Liver Bank has reached a critical mass when it comes to tissue collection; its main mission now is to get these samples out to investigators so important questions can be answered," he says. "We've refined the process by which samples can be obtained — it used to be pretty laborious and many people simply gave up. We're also focused on serving KU investigators first, because this resource was created with financial and human capital from here, and we want to promote our liver research."
The liver transplant practice at KU has come a long way since its inception in 1990. Founder and transplant surgeon Jameson Forster, M.D., clearly recalls the program's earliest days where, working with colleague Romano Delcore, M.D., he established a routine surgical procedure — by first practicing on pigs.
"It was a pretty acceptable training model because, when you think about it, we already eat pigs," Forster says. How it worked: the liver of a pig was removed and flushed, and the procedure repeated with a second pig, which then received the donor's liver.
"We spent some time figuring out pig intubation, because their throat is different," Forster says. "This was the training ground for getting our act together as a team — surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists and others — so we could gain experience in working smoothly and efficiently before ever laying hands on a human patient."
"While not set in stone, I'd say the third pig who managed to live for at least a couple of days — instead of dying on the operating table — was a marker of proficiency for a transplant surgeon in training," he adds, before bringing up an image on his computer of the program's original "third pig," Celeste, wandering along a corridor in Wahl Hall, where her ilk were once housed.
Over the last two decades, Forster has seen major changes not only in KU's liver transplant program but, more generally speaking, the field of organ transplantation. "There used to be relatively little federal oversight, but that's no longer the case," he observes. "Which I think is lousy. They're very concerned about how many people we have dying on the wait list. But while having this be a low number is good as far such close scrutiny goes, it may also mean we can't serve patients who are really sick and might make our numbers look bad."
Since Kansas City native Timothy Schmitt, M.D., was recruited from the University of Virginia in October 2011 to serve as the director of transplant surgery, a new Center for Transplantation service line — which Schmitt also heads — has begun taking shape. It encompasses KU Hospital's liver, kidney and pancreas transplant programs, getting everyone within these different disciplines "on the same page with a common mission of care," Schmitt says.
"It puts patients at the center of the wheel instead of drawing a line between departments like Surgery and Medicine," he explains. "We have transplantation specialists within the various academic divisions — hepatology, cardiology, infectious diseases and the like — helping to spearhead this model, so patients aren't shuffled in different directions for the clinical care they need."
Through the Center for Transplantation, protocols for patient work-ups, post-transplant immunosuppression and care are refined and reinforced. "Outcomes data is our measuring stick," Schmitt says. "If the data aren't good, we'll lose patients, transplant contracts and face federal trouble. So we watch over compliance issues and make sure everyone's informed about what's going on. It's mainly quality assessment and improvement, but it also provides accountability."
The factors that determine whether or not a patient with a problematic liver qualifies for a transplant are largely related to age and comorbidities, or the presence of additional disorders on top of the primary disease. "There are complex issues to work through, even for a patient whose liver is clearly failing," Gilroy notes, "because they could be morbidly obese or addicted to drugs, to name two examples — and any good they might derive from a new liver would be short-lived."
"Ethically, everyone with decompensated liver disease benefits from a transplant," he adds. "But in terms of hard economics, having a patient die post-surgery with a healthy liver that would have survived in someone else really means two deaths. It's not your chance of living that's the question at stake in a liver transplant; it's your chance of dying."
Ultimately, when talking about the transplant program that he built from scratch, Forster is proud that it got off the ground and pleased at its burgeoning growth, especially over the last decade. "Our success needed an initial patient," he says. "23 years ago, Kristine Brees was the person who trusted us and really helped get things going."
Decoding liver disease
In his first year as the Liver Center's director, Weinman has focused on facilitating crosstalk between clinicians and basic scientists, to beef up translational research.
"We have the pieces to build a great liver research program, but they've been in separate orbits," he says. "Given the quality and success of our clinical transplant practice, its research component has been underdeveloped. That's what we're trying to change."
On February 4, 2013, Jody Olson, M.D., successfully applied for the center to become a full-fledged member of the Acute Liver Failure Study Group (ALFSG). This multi-center collaboration, based at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, is funded by the National Institutes of Health - specifically, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). Olson is one of the Liver Center's newest members and specializes in caring for critically ill patients waiting to receive a new liver.
Unlike its chronic counterpart, acute liver failure occurs abruptly — often within weeks of a person having perfectly normal liver function — and its mortality rate, at 80 percent, is alarming. Certain viruses, drugs and autoimmune disorders can trigger this problem, but in the U.S., the biggest single cause is overingestion of acetaminophen, or Tylenol.
Prior to the Liver Center being invited on board, two of its faculty were already collaborating with the ALFSG: Hartmut Jaeschke, Ph.D., on the mechanisms of acetaminophen-induced liver injury, for which research he's internationally known; and Udayan Apte, Ph.D., on liver regeneration post-injury and how this influences patient survival. Apte is also a past recipient of the Liver Scholar Award, granted yearly by the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease to a small number of young investigators whose basic research careers are deemed most promising.
"We demonstrated experience with banking tissue and blood samples, outstanding basic science, and we had Olson — both a clinician-investigator and critical care expert — at the helm," Weinman says. "These things helped get us over the bar. The acute liver failure patients we see here will now be part of a national registry, with their clinical data and biological samples stored in a central repository. We'll get first dibs on initiating clinical trials and proposing new studies. It's the first time we've had a major NIH-funded network like this at KU, for liver research."
In 2012, Kenneth Dorko joined KU as technical director of the Biospecimen core laboratory. Dorko's specialty is isolating human hepatocytes, or liver cells, from pieces obtained during resections, when part of the liver is surgically removed. These hepatocytes are then distributed to investigators for research purposes.
"It's particularly important for drug studies, because human hepatocytes behave differently than those from mice or rats," Weinman observes. In February 2013, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that — contrary to popular belief — the genes used by white blood cells in response to sepsis, trauma or burns were completely different in mice versus humans. The study's unexpected findings generated considerable buzz and made the front page of the New York Times.
"It's called into question many other studies based on mouse models," Weinman says, "which is why having Dorko here to make human hepatocytes available for liver research is both timely and therapeutically important."
The Liver Center has "kind of struggled as to its exact purpose," he adds - but changes are afoot, with fresh emphasis on building up and sustaining a culture of academic research.
"There may be better known liver research groups at, say, UC San Francisco or Yale," Weinman says, "but based on the number of NIH-funded investigators we have here and the quality of their work, I'd still rank us as one of the finest liver research groups nationwide. We just need to create a better forum for the intellectual development of ideas between basic scientists and clinicians so, for both communities, collaboration rather than non-interaction is the name of the game."
Note: This story first appeared in the Summer issue of KU Medical Center's magazine Kansas Medicine + Science. You can download the entire issue here.
|
<urn:uuid:f2eb80fb-cc50-4f03-b597-f8f939ba0ebb>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.kumc.edu/news-listing-page/building-a-world-class-liver-bank.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00151-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.9634 | 3,276 | 2.921875 | 3 |
If a fair maiden kisses a frog which instantly changes into a handsome prince we would call it a fairy tale. But if the frog takes 40 million years to turn into a prince we call it evolution.
Time is the evolutionist's magic wand.
Fairy tales come in many forms!
If a fair maiden kisses a frog which instantly changes into a handsome prince, we would call it a fairy tale. But if the frog takes 40 million years to turn into a prince, we call it evolution. Time is the evolutionist's magic wand. Fairy tales do come in many forms!
Darwin taught that many little changes over a long period of time will add up to big changes. Darwin predicted that the fossil record would either prove or falsify his theory. Today, top evolutionists know that Darwin's predictions of what the fossil record would reveal have failed. What then did Darwin observe? He observed physical/genetic variations of the finches on the Galapagos Islands within a single species. For example, hundreds of different breeds of dogs were selectively bread from an original pair. We have variation within a species but no change from one species to another. Scientists today classify all Darwin's finches as belonging to the same subfamily of species. Darwin's observation was scientifically consistent of the first chapter of the Bible. Genesis chapter one states exactly 10 times that each animal will "reproduce after its own kind". Never has science observed one kind evolving into another.
It is a well guarded fact that many evolutionists rejected Darwin's theory of evolution over 20 years ago. Stephen Jay Gould, a professor at Harvard University and one of the foremost authorities on evolution in the world said, "The extreme rarity of transitional forms (missing links) in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontologists,...we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study". Natural History, Vol 86. Gould is still an evolutionist, he just rejects much of Darwin's theory.
Mark Ridley, another evolutionist from Oxford University said in The New Scientist magazine in June 1981 p 831, "a lot of people just do not know what evidence the theory of evolution stands upon. They think that the main evidence is the gradual descent of one species from another in the fossil record. ...In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationalist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation." Because the fossils simply do not support many small changes between kinds over a long period of time, many evolutionists have at least been honest enough to admit this and have come up with a new theory called, "punctuated equilibrium" or the "hopeful monster theory". From the fossil record, they know that change didn't take place in small gradual steps, so they assume that the change took place in quick "quantum leaps" over long periods of time. In Darwin's theory, the changes were so slow and gradual that science cannot observe the evolution. The new theory says the change takes place so quickly it that too cannot be observed. Unobservable science? What a contradiction!
Evolutionists tell us in the new "punctuationalist" theory, that in effect, a lizard laid an egg and out pops a baby bird. Because of the compete lack of missing links, evolutionists now accept as fact what creationists predicted from the Bible all along; namely, that no transitional fossils would be found. Evolutionists that still use Darwin or the fossil record as evidence of their theory in the '90's, are like stubborn and closed minded old country doctors who have not kept up with the latest developments of science. Then there are those who cannot even consider the possibility that there is a creator God. These scientists are so biased that they cannot not see how much better all the scientitic data fits the creation model of origins as opposed to the evolution model.
Although knowledgeable evolutionists buried most of Darwin's theory over 20 years ago, they still cling to a few parts like "time". Lots of time! Darwin and modern evolutionists still have faith that given long enough periods of time, frogs would evolve into handsome princes. Today they just can't explain how! With enough time the impossible becomes probable! What today's evolutionists lack for hard proof in the fossil record they make up for in blind faith in a magic wand called time. God warns us in 1 Timothy 6:20, "Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called science."
Go To Start: WWW.BIBLE.CA
|
<urn:uuid:ca51eb41-668f-4bdf-bb3a-0e7ab0d9ec01>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.bible.ca/tracks/b-time-is-evolutions-magic-wand.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394987.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00122-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.947235 | 942 | 3.09375 | 3 |
We have learned from past laboratories that our vision generally relies on two types of photoreceptors to see light: rods and cones. At the Yerkes Winter Institute, we discovered that our eyes detect change are different rates depending on which photoreceptor is primarily in use. In particular, we measured that the cones respond at least 3 times quicker than the rods in noticing a blinking light source.
We know that there are 3 types of cones (red, green, and blue), but do they all have the same response time? In this laboratory, we investigate this question by using a "Benham disk". This black and white patterned disk, when spun, tricks the brain into seeing patterns of color. Through an analysis of the repeating black and white patterns, using the dynamics of a spinning disk, we seek to answer whether the eye's 3 types of cones respond equally quickly when presented with a changing pattern. In this first part of the lab, we focus on the motion and mathematics behind rigid body motion
|
<urn:uuid:88e4b178-030e-4b4b-a7b5-ee533bd22e56>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://astro.uchicago.edu/~dhatt/week9.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00038-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.908426 | 204 | 3.328125 | 3 |
Uppsala, Sweden [Unpublished] rev.26apr02
Summary - Acrylamide in Heat-Processed Foods
A scientific group at the University of Stockholm, headed by Prof. Margareta Törnqvist, has found that acrylamide is formed during heating of starch-rich foods to high temperatures.
Acrylamide is a "probable human carcinogen", according to international risk assessments.
The Swedish National Food Administration has developed a new, rapid LC/MS/MS-method for the analysis of acrylamide in foods. Analysis has shown that acrylamide is present in a large number of foods, including many regarded as staple foods. The levels of acrylamide differ widely within each food group analysed.
Using information on the levels in different foods and Swedish food consumption data, it seems reasonable to conclude that a significant number, perhaps several hundred, of the annual cancer cases in Sweden can be attributed to acrylamide. The risks associated with acrylamide in foods are not new - we have probably been exposed to acrylamide in food for generations. The new, emerging knowledge may make it possible to reduce the risks that we have so far accepted without discussion. This is a very positive development.
Acrylamide in food is a global problem that requires international action. The National Food Administration has therefore informed the European Commission, other food safety agencies and international organisations about the findings. It is important to obtain much more information through international co-operation in research, in order to be able to reduce the risks associated with acrylamide in foodstuffs.
Detailed studies on the levels of acrylamide in different foods, an extended risk characterisation and knowledge of the mechanisms of formation are vital. Possible specific risk groups in the population have to be identified.
Due to lack of data, it is not possible at present to issue detailed and specific recommendations to consumers or to the food industry and trade. However, since acrylamide is most probably formed during heating of starch-rich foods to high temperatures, some preliminary general recommendations can be made to the food industry and trade and to consumers.
Toxicological aspects of acrylamide
Acrylamide and polyacrylamide are used in the industry for the production of plastics.
It has been supposed that the main exposure for acrylamide in the general population has been through drinking water and tobacco smoking. The exposure via drinking water is small and the EU has determined maximum levels of 0.1 microgram per liter water.
Recent analyses have indicated that the exposure to acrylamide is probably considerably higher (for non-smokers) from consumption of certain foods that have been heated.
Acrylamide is water soluble and is quickly absorbed in the digestive tract. The excreation via the urine is fast and half of the acrylamide is cleared from the body in a few hours.
The toxicological effects of acrylamide are well known. It causes DNA damage and at high doses neurological and reproductive effects have been observed. Glycidamide, a metabolite of acrylamide, binds to DNA and can cause genetic damage. Prolonged exposure has induced tumours in rats, but cancer in man has not been convincingly shown. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified acrylamide as a "probably carcinogenic to humans" (Group 2A).
Acrylamide has been shown to induce gene mutations in cultured animal cells and also in animals treated in vivo. Thus it is assumed that exposure also to very low doses of acrylamide increases the risk for mutation and cancer.
High doses of acrylamide have been applied in the toxicological studies, which is an accepted practice. 25-50 mg per kg body weight is the lowest dose that has been shown to increase the mutation frequency in mouse. Recent studies in the laboratory of the Swedish Food Adminstration have shown that chromosome aberrations are induced in mice at 10-20 times lower doses.
Among the acrylamide metabolites glycidamide is considered the most likely candidate for causing genetic damage. Glycidamide has been found in mice and rats, and also in humans exposed to acrylamide.
Neurological damage was observed when rats were given acrylamide in their drinking water. The lowest effective dose was 2 mg/kg body weight and day, and the highest no-effect dose was 0.5 mg/kg body weight and day. Also humans exposed to high doses of acrylamide have shown neurological damage, e.g. some workers occupied in the building of the tunnel at Hallandsåsen. It is difficult to assess the highest acrylamide dose in humans that does not cause neurological effects (NOEL). The level is probably several times higher than the average acrylamide intake from food.
Decreased fertility was observed in rats exposed to 5-10 mg acrylamide/kg body weight and day.
Cancer studies and comparisons of risk
Epidemiological studies in man have not shown a correlation between exposure to acrylamide and increased cancer rate. These studies have been criticised because the number of studied persons was too low considering the expected effect.
Two long-term studies in rat have shown a substantial increase of tumours in different organs when the animals were exposed to acrylamide in drinking water. Similar studies have been made in mice. The lowest effective dose was 2 mg/kg body weight and day .
In the studies with rat the increase of tumours was most evident in specific organs, e.g. mammary gland, uterus, adrenal gland, scrotal mesothelium. In mice there was an increase of lung and skin tunours. These cancer studies have been used for the assessment of the risk of cancer in humans due to acrylamide exposure.
It should be noted that the genotoxic studies have indicated that there is no threshold value for the risk of cancer induced by acrylamide, i.e. there is no dose of acrylamide so low that it does not increase the risk of cancer. In making these assessments it is assumed that man and rat have the same sensitivity for cancer induction by acrylamide.
The results of the risk assessments are somewhat different since they are based on different mathematical models. By consumption of 1 microgram acrylamide/kg body weight and day the lifetime risk for cancer has been calculated to
- 4.5 per 1000 (U.S. EPA)
- 0.7 per 1000 (WHO)
- 10 per 1000 (Granath et al. 1999, Stockholm University)
These figures for risk should be compared to the total lifetime risk for cancer in Sweden, i.e. one person of three will have cancer during his/her life. For mostly unknown reasons 45 000 Swedes get cancer every year (most cases at high ages). It is assumed that a third of all cases of cancer, are due to the diet. For comparison one can mention other assessments of lifetime cancer risks: 3 per 1000 for ionizing radiation (general background excluding radon), 0.01 per 1000 for aflatoxin (a fungus toxin found in e.g. peanuts) at the EU maximum level, and this last figure is also representative for most carcinogens found in food.
Acrylamide in foodstuffs, consumption and intake
When foodstuffs were analysed at the Swedish National Food Administration (NFA) in Uppsala and at AnalyCen AB in Lidköping it was found that some foodstuffs, which had been heated, could contain relatively high levels of the substance acrylamide. In total, more than 100 food samples have been analysed at the NFA. The food survey comprised bread, pasta, rice, fish, sausages, meat (beef and pork), biscuits, cookies, breakfast cereals and beer, etc as well as some ready-made dishes such as pizza and products based on potatoes, maize and flour.
The levels of acrylamide vary considerably between single foodstuffs within food groups, but potato crisps and French fries generally contained high levels compared to many other food groups. The average content in potato crisps is approximately 1000 mikrogram/kg and in French fries approximately 500 mikrogram/kg. Other food groups which may contain low as well as high levels of acrylamide are crisp bread, breakfast cereals, fried potato products, biscuits, cookies and snacks, e.g. popcorn.
Foodstuffs which are not fried, deep fried or oven-baked during production or preparation are not considered to contain any appreciable levels of acrylamide. No levels could be detected in any of the raw foodstuffs or foods cooked by boiling investigated so far (potato, rice, pasta, flour and bacon).
According to the NFA food survey "Riksmaten 1997-98", which is based on approximately 1200 individuals between the age of 17 to 70 who recorded their food consumption during one week, an average intake of acrylamide of approximately 25 mikrogram per day (maximum intake is approximately six times higher) is obtained, based on the food groups shown below. The remaining food groups are estimated to account for approximately 10-15 mikrogram of acrylamide; in total an average intake of 35-40 mikrogram. The percentage contribution based on an intake of 40 mikrogram akrylamid per day results in:
- potato products: 36 % (French fries 16 %, fried potatoes 10 %, crisps 10 %)
- bread: 16 %
- biscuits, cookies and wafers: 5 %
- breakfast cereals: 3 %
- remaining foodstuffs groups, basicly not investigated yet: 40 %
It should be emphasized that, considering our present knowledge, the contribution from different food groups is extremely uncertain since only foodstuffs which were expected to contain acrylamide have been examined so far. There is also a considerable variation in the measured levels of acrylamide.
Young adults (17 to 34 years of age) have, according to "Riksmaten", a higher consumption of snacks (nuts, chips and popcorn) than other adults. For children under 17 years of age newer data are lacking. In the food survey "Ungdom mot år 2000" (Samuelson et al 1996), which was carried out 1993-94 among 15-year olds in Uppsala and Trollhättan, the consumption of snacks was comparable to that of young adults in Riksmaten. Children have a lower average body weight than the 70 kg generelly assumed when carrying out risk assessments. This implies that the food intake per kg body weight and the exposure to various substances could be even larger for those groups of individuals compared to adults. According to Riksmaten, 10 per cent of the adult population consumes 90 per cent of the snacks consumed in Sweden.
An alternative way of estimating the intake of acrylamide is by adduct measurement, that is to measure a reaction product of acrylamide with the protein of the blood, the hemoglobin (Törnqvist et al 1997). This reaction product seems to occur in all investigated humans at approximately the same levels and is furthermore a measurement of the continously administered dose of acrylamide. The reason is unknown in this case, but workers who were exposed to acrylamide at the tunnel accident at Hallandsåsen in Sweden had higher levels of this reaction product in their blood.
In the general population, although not in smokers (who have a level of this adduct 2-3 times the background level), the background level has been estimated to account for a daily intake corresponding to approximately 100 mikrogram per day.
Other sources than foodstuffs (estimated average intake of 35-40 mikrogram/day), e.g. cosmetics, drinking water, and a possible endogenous formation in the body of acrylamide, could, to a lower extent contribute to the background level. Estimated administered amount of acrylamide for the formation of the background level together with levels of acrylamide in foodstuffs are, however, presently extremely uncertain.
Analytical methodology and survey results for acrylamide in foods
Updated April 26, 2002
Findings of a specific haemoglobin adduct of acrylamide in human subjects, later also in rats fed with fried feed, lead scientists at the University of Stockholm to the discovery that acrylamide can be formed in foods during cooking. At a later stage they also demonstrated high acrylamide levels in some foodstuffs that were heated in laboratory experiments.
Based of this information the SwedishNational Food Administration decided to try to develop a new analytical procedure for acrylamide detection in foods. One important purpose was to enable verification of the presence of acrylamide in food by using alternative methodology, i.e. to confirm the identity of acrylamide and to show that it was not formed as an artefact during the analytical procedure. Moreover, there was a need for a simple and fast method that could be used for extensive investigations of acrylamide in a wide range of foods.
The development work,started in January 2002 and has resulted in a new and significantly improved analytical method. The procedure is presently under validation and accreditation has been requested from the national accreditation authority SWEDAC. The method utilizes liquid chromatography coupled to two-stage mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS). This modern state-of-the-art technology is considered highly reliable for chemical structure identification. Quantification is aided by spiking each sample prior to extraction with an internal standard consisting of an acrylamide molecule where three of the hydrogen atoms have been substituted by the isotope deuterium.
As a complement to the research on acrylamide formation at the University of Stockholm, the National Food Administration has started a broad survey of acrylamide levels in common foods. In order to speed up the investigations, a number of samples were initially sent to a private laboratory (AnalyCen AB, Lidköping, Sweden), also engaged by the University of Stockholm for acrylamide analysis. The analytical method employed was a modification of a procedure originally developed for analysis of acrylamide in water. The major disadvantages compared to the new method include a lower sample throughput and the fact that it is based on indirect detection of acrylamide through volatile derivative.
Up to this date more than a hundred food samples have been collected by the National Food Administration and analysed for acrylamide. No levels could be detected in any of the raw foodstuffs or foods cooked by boiling investigated so far (potato, rice, pasta, flour and meat). A summary of the other results is given in Table 1. Various fried and oven-cooked foods based on meats and flour respectively, corn crisps, muesli, as well as some of the breakfast cereals and crisp breads, were in the concentration interval up to 100 mg/kg. French fries and other fried, deep fried or oven-baked potato products, together with some crisp breads, biscuits, crackers and breakfast cereals, were in the interval 100-1000 mg/kg. About half of the potato crisp samples were also in this group while the levels above 1000 mg/kg were detected in the remaining half.
Individual results for all tested samples are given in Table 2 (link at the bottom of this page). It must be emphasized that the concentration figures in most cases refers only to one single randomly selected package of each specific product. The uncertainty intervals given in the table are statistical estimations of the random errors of the analytical procedure only. Moreover the choice of products within each group is far from complete.
Consequently we would like to stress that knowledge that could provide guidance in consumers' choice between different products and brands within a certain food type is still lacking.
The primary objectives so far have been to provide concentration data for intake estimations of acrylamide from foods and to identify the most important food types. The investigation is in full progress and more data will be published when available.
We are convinced that information now presented by the University of Stockholm and the Swedish National Food Administration will initiate considerable research and investigation activities at official institutions and food industries world-wide. Further studies on the occurrence and formation of acrylamide in foods will hopefully lead to modifications of production methods and raw materials that will eliminate or limit the formation of acrylamide in foods.
page source: http://22.214.171.124/engakrylanalysresultat.htm
New results added April 26, 2002. These results are from new samples of some of the products that in the earlier material showed a relative high concentration of acrylamide, thereby increasing the median figures.
Acrylamide Number of Food group concentration (µg/kg) . samples Median min-max Potato crisps 1200 330-2300 14 French fries 450 300-1100 9 Biscuits and crackers 410 <30-650 14 Crisp breads 140 <30-1900 21 Breakfast cereals 160 <30-1400 15 Corn crisps 150 120-180 3 Soft breads 50 <30-160 20 Various fried foods* 40 <30-60 9 * pizza, pancakes, waffles, fish fingers, meatballs, chickenbits, deep fried fish, vegetarian schnitzel and cauliflower gratin)
Table 2 - Individual results for all tested samples
Updated April 26, 2002
table source: http://126.96.36.199/engakryltabell.htm
NOTE! The concentration figures refer in most cases only to one single randomly selected package of each specific product. The uncertainty intervals given in the table are statistical estimations of the random error of the analytical procedure only. Please note that the choice of products within each group is far from complete.
The National Food Administration would like to stress that these results can not provide guidance in consumers' choice between different products and brands within a certain food type.
Acrylamide Measurement Products . concentration uncertainty (µg/kg) (µg/kg) . Raw foods Wholemeal (Kungsörnen) <30 Rey flour (Kungsörnen) <30 Porridge oats (Axa) <30 Oat-bran (Kungsörnen) <30 Bacon (mixed products) <30 Boiled foods Potato <30 Spaghetti (mixed products) <30 Rice (mixed products) <30 Oatmeal porridge <30 Fried foods, mixed ingredients Pancake (mixed products) <30 Waffles (mixed products) 42 ± 21 Fishfingers (mixed products) 30 ± 15 Chickenbits (Restaurant) 39 ± 20 Deep fried fish (Restaurant) 39 ± 20 Meat balls (mixed products) 64 ± 32 Cauliflower gratin (Restaurant) <30 Vegetarian schnitzel (Restaurant) <30 Pizza (Restaurant) <30 Crispbread Vete (Wasa) <30 Falu rågrut (Wasa) 41 ± 21 Husman (Wasa) 50 ± 25 Mora, original Krögarknäcke (Wasa) 51 ± 26 Havre (Wasa) 60 ± 30 Mora, normalgräddat (Wasa) 65 ± 32 Rågi (Wasa) 86 ± 43 Mora, sprödgräddat (Wasa) 102 ± 20 Runda Björn (Lövånger Bröd) 129 ± 26 Tunnbröd (Gene) 135 ± 27 Mora, brungräddat (Wasa) 142 ± 28 Vika (Vika Bröd AB) 174 ± 35 Finn Crisp (Vasan&Vasan) 177 ± 35 Brungräddat, 830 gram (Leksandsbröd) 185 ± 37 Vetetunnbröd (Mjälloms) 186 ± 37 Sport (Wasa) 214 ± 43 Flatbröd (Wasa) 307 ± 61 Flatbröd (Kavlí) 560 ± 112 Sesam (Ryvita) 1194 ± 239 Råg (Ryvita)* 1453 ± 291 Råg (Ryvita) 1874 ± 375 Bread White bread from wheat (mixed products) <30 Bread from wheat and rye 45 ± 23 (mixed products) Rye bread (mixed products) 89 ± 45 Jättefranska (Pågen) <30 Jättefranska (toast - lightly toasted) <30 Jättefranska (toast - "well done") 60 ± 30 Jätterasker (Pågen) <30 Jätterasker (toast - lightly toasted) 30 ± 15 Jätterasker (toast - "well done") 69 ± 35 Dunkles Vollkornbrot (Purgebacken) <30 Må Bättre havre (Fazer) <30 Må Bättre flerkorn (Fazer) 33 ± 16 Delikatesslimpa (Schulstad) 45 ± 22 Kavring (Europabagaren) 53 ± 27 Må Bättre råg (Fazer) 81 ± 41 Efterugnslimpa (Fazer) 85 ± 42 Fullkorn rågbröd (Pågen) 162 ± 32 Tunnbröd (Änglamark) <30 Hönökaka (Pågen) <30 Tunnbröd (Polarbröd) 36 ± 18 Polarkaka (Polarbröd) 49 ± 24 Citronmuffins (Hägges) <30 Breakfast cereals Corn Flakes (mixed products) 53 ± 27 Rostat Ris (Rainbow) 61 ± 31 Special (KF) 73 ± 37 All Bran plus (Kellog's) 99 ± 50 Start Naturell 164 ± 33 (Ceralia Breakfast Cereals) Cheerios (Nestlé) 207 ± 41 Kalaspuffar (Quaker) 236 ± 47 Rice Krispies (Kellog's) 247 ± 49 Fitness (Nestlé) 254 ± 51 Special (Kellog's) 269 ± 54 Havre Fras (Quaker)* 1031 ± 206 Havre Fras (Quaker) 1346 ± 269 Sunt&Gott Müsli (Finax) <30 Müsli (KF) 31 ± 16 Müsli Bran Flakes (Frebaco) 30 ± 15 Biscuits and crackers Biscuits (mixed products) 230 ± 46 Crackers (mixed products) 534 ± 107 Krisprolls veteskorpor (Pågen) <30 Havreflarn (KF) 73 ± 36 Mjölkchokladflarn (Karen Volf) 128 ± 26 Gammeldags Pepparkakor (Pricks) 129 ± 26 Smörgåsrån (Oxford) 134 ± 27 Riskakor (Friggs) 333 ± 67 Variant (Göteborgskex)* 442 ± 88 Variant (Göteborgskex) 479 ± 96 Digestive (KF)* 539 ± 108 Digestive (KF) 630 ± 126 Guld Marie (Göteborgskex) 642 ± 128 Guld Marie (Göteborgskex)* 652 ± 130 French fries Pommes frites (Saffet's) 306 ± 61 Pommes frites (Saffet's)* 321 ± 64 Pommes frites (McDonald's) 379 ± 76 Pommes frites (mixed products) 450 ± 90 King Fries (Burger King)* 483 ± 97 King Fries (Burger King) 514 ± 103 Pommes frites (McDonald's)* 755 ± 151 Pommes frites 301 ± 60 (deep frozen; briefly heated in oven) Pommes frites 1104 ± 221 (deep frozen; heated longer in oven) Klyftpotatis (Restaurang) 367 ± 73 Potato crisps (chips) Potatischips original (First Price) 332 ± 66 Original (Pringles) 614 ± 123 Grillchips (Estrella) 669 ± 134 Vickningschips (Estrella) 694 ± 139 Original Chips (ICA) 906 ± 181 Naturchips (OLW) 980 ± 196 Svenska Lantchips kantarell 1035 ± 207 (Svenska Lantchips AB)* Potatischips (KF) 1407 ± 281 Grillchips (OLW)* 1418 ± 284 Weekendchips (OLW)* 1573 ± 315 Potatischips dillsmak (KF)* 1594 ± 319 Svenska Lantchips 1833 ± 367 (Svenska Lantchips AB) Grillchips (OLW) 2030 ± 406 Lättsaltade chips (OLW) 2287 ± 457
Other snacks Tortilla chips (OLW) 122 ± 24 Nachips (Old El Paso) 149 ± 30 Tortilla chips (Diva) 184 ± 37 Pop Corn (OLW) 416 ± 83 *New results added April 26, 2002. These results are from new samples of some of the products that in the earlier material showed a relative high concentration of acrylamide.
Recommendations regarding acrylamide in food
The Swedish National Food Administration (NFA) and researchers from Stockholm University have found that acrylamide is formed in many types of food prepared/cooked at high temperatures. No acrylamide formation has been detected in boiled foodstuffs. The NFA has informed the European Commission and other international authorities and organisations about the findings in order to initiate international collaboration in the handling of the problem. Moreover, international initiatives to commence multidisciplinary research are urgently needed, since it is very likely that there are ways of decreasing the formation of acrylamide during the cooking process.
Present knowledge does not allow for a balanced analysis of risks and benefits of staple foods containing acrylamide. The Swedish NFA can currently only issue general advice regarding the risk management of acrylamide to the food industry and consumers.
Current knowledge suggests that acrylamide is formed in carbohydrate-rich foods at high temperatures. It is probable that research into the mechanisms behind this formation may lead to changes in food processing/cooking that will decrease the formation of acrylamide. The Swedish NFA recommends the food industry to investigate whether acrylamide is formed during the production of their food products. If acrylamide is formed, the industry should determine the levels in their products and initiate research to find measures to reduce the concentrations as much as possible.
Wholesalers and retailers
Acrylamide is probably formed in many types of food, many of which have not yet been analysed. It is therefore not possible at present to say which types of food pose the greatest problem. The amount to which the consumer is exposed is governed both by the level of acrylamide in the food and the amount of the food consumed. If eaten in large quantities, foods with low levels of acrylamide may contribute substantially to the total exposure. Foods with high levels may contribute less if the consumption is low. It is therefore not possible to give detailed advice about proper measures for consumer protection. The NFA recommends that wholesalers and retailers collaborate with the authorities and the food industry in their efforts to find means to decrease the formation of acrylamide in food.
Restaurants and consumers
Current research indicates that some simple measures may reduce the acrylamide exposure of the consumer. Cigarette smoking is a source of acrylamide; exposure can be reduced by refraining from smoking. Research on food indicates that more acrylamide is formed at higher temperatures and longer cooking times during frying, deep-frying, broiling and grilling. No acrylamide has been found in boiled foodstuffs.
More knowledge is needed before the dietary advice issued by the NFA can be changed. Currently the NFA advises the public to eat more fruit, vegetables, cereal products and bread, and to reduce consumption of fat-rich products. From a nutritional perspective, boiling is more advantageous than cooking at high temperatures. Avoid burning food during frying, deep-frying, broiling and grilling and do not eat burned food.
April 24, 2002
+ 46 18 17 56 17
Acrylamide is formed during the preparation of food and occurs in many foodstuffs
Fried, oven-baked and deep-fried potato and cereal products may contain high levels of acrylamide, which is a "probable human carcinogen". This has been shown by a scientific group headed by Professor Margareta Törnqvist at the University of Stockholm. No acrylamide has been found in boiled foodstuffs.
This new knowledge has led the Swedish National Food Administration (NFA) to develop a new method for analysis of acrylamide in food. A study of more than one hundred random samples of different foodstuffs has been carried out. The results confirm those of the Stockholm University research group. Many of the analysed foodstuffs are consumed in large quantities, e.g. potato crisps, French fries, fried potatoes, biscuits and bread.
- The discovery that acrylamide is formed during the preparation of food, and at high levels, is new knowledge. It may now be possible to explain some of the cases of cancer caused by food, says Dr. Leif Busk, Head of NFA's Research and Development Department.
- These results open a completely new field of research. The National Food Administration and the University of Stockholm will now continue and expand these studies. The NFA has set up a scientific committee and has initiated international contacts, e.g. with the European Commission.
At present there are not sufficient data to warrant changing the current dietary recommendations issued by the NFA. The advice to eat more fibre-rich foods, such as cereal products, fruit and vegetables, and less fat-rich products, such as French fries and crisps, remain unchanged. Frying at high temperatures or for a long time should be avoided. Mild food preparation methods are preferable also from a nutritional point of view.
The random samples show a considerable variation of acrylamide levels within each food group. This suggests that it may be possible to reduce the levels by changing the methods of production and preparation. The National Food Administration has therefore invited the food industry to a meeting to discuss the matter.
Contact details - acrylamide in food
Get in touch with the persons listed below if you want to know more about acrylamide in food:
Dr Leif Busk
Head of Research and Development Department
The National Food Administration
Tel: +46 18 17 56 89
Mobile: +46 709 24 56 89
Dr Karl-Erik Hellenäs
The National Food Administration
Tel: +46 18 17 57 08
Mobile: +46 709 24 55 50
|
<urn:uuid:ce2a957e-9c68-4ae6-beb1-a1a636f4d99a>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.mindfully.org/Food/Acrylamide-Heat-Processed-Foods26apr02.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404405.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00029-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.916962 | 6,552 | 3.25 | 3 |
Forest Service Worries About Historic Areas
Dubois, Wy – A study shows the U-S Forest service lacks the resources to protect more than 300-thousand places of historic or cultural significance on public land.
The study published last month by the National Trust for Historic Preservation says the Forest Service does not have the budgets or staff to manage prehistoric and Native American sites. Shoshone National Forest Archeologist Jeremy Karchut acknowledges it's difficult to survey the more than two-point-four million acres in Northwestern Wyoming. He says only eight percent of the forest has been surveyed in the past 30 years.
"I know there is lot out there still we don't know where it is or how vulnerable it is. So it's going to take a good chunk of time to get this forest surveyed and good inventory going of what we have."
Karchut says his department has 65-thousand dollars each year dedicated to the Shoshone's heritage program. He says he relies on teams of volunteers from universities across the country to help survey and protect cultural sites. Wyoming has about 10 million acres under Forest Service jurisdiction.
|
<urn:uuid:93c30221-7b17-476a-949a-d4df78776c8c>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://wyomingpublicmedia.org/post/forest-service-worries-about-historic-areas
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395548.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00038-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.953844 | 228 | 2.8125 | 3 |
- About Us
- Local Savings
- Green Editions
- Legal Notices
- Weekly Ads
Connect with Us
Thanks to grant, McMurray middle schoolers will learn about Vashon history
Seventh-graders at McMurray Middle School will get a healthy dose of local history next year, thanks to a grant from 4Culture that will help teachers educate their students about Vashon's past.
The $6,500 grant will pay for the services of a museum educator — an Islander who attended McMurray and graduated from Vashon High School in 1996 — who will put together learning kits of primary documents that teach Vashon's seventh-graders about the history of the place they call home.
Educating Vashon students about the history of the Island — from before European settlers discovered the Island to recent decades — will help ground them in the present day, said Tara McCauley, the museum educator who will work with Vashon teachers to craft lessons about the Island.
"I think community-based learning is so meaningful, because it can really create connections for students," said McCauley, who is the White River Valley Museum's education curator. "The idea is that we'll do a lot of then-and-now comparisons, looking at things like industry on Vashon or the geography of Vashon. ... To make that relevant to a student's own personal experience and personal history, that creates more meaning to the history."
Seventh-graders already have a unit on Pacific Northwest history, so it made sense to add a section about Vashon to the seventh-grade curriculum, said McMurray principal Greg Allison. Their Vashon history section will likely culminate in a research project, he said.
The purpose of teaching Island students about the history of Vashon, Allison said, is to help them better understand the Island and the Pacific Northwest — past and present.
"I think the goal of any history project is to relate those things they learn from the past to the present," he said. "I think it's important for students to know their past. ... They'll better understand our heritage and our history. Any time when you're in a place I think it's important to understand where folks have come before you, and to be able to relate it to your lives today."
Students will analyze primary sources from Vashon's past, like journals, photographs and artifacts, and write about what they learn from the documents and items, Allison said.
The grant from 4Culture, King County's cultural services agency, was awarded to Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Museum, which is partnering with McCauley and McMurray to pull the project together.
As part of the grant and project, all seventh-graders will take a field trip next year to the heritage museum.
"Understanding the history of your community helps create pride in the community," McCauley said. "Not to mention it's interesting — Vashon has such a neat history full of rich stories."
|
<urn:uuid:a25b18b2-53ed-44f8-9677-18c6a0742762>
|
CC-MAIN-2016-26
|
http://www.vashonbeachcomber.com/news/97671784.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392159.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00004-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.955174 | 634 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.