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Navinder Singh Sarao is a self-employed UK trader. He stands accused of manipulating futures markets so much that he contributed to the five-minute, 1,000-point plunge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on May 6, 2010.
Now, he is wanted in the US after he was charged by the Justice Department there with wire fraud, commodities fraud and manipulation.
But why did it take so long to track a rogue trader? And what does it take for stock markets worldwide to protect themselves?
Presenter: Martine Dennis
Nick Leeson - The original rogue trader, who was formerly with Barings Bank
Michael Hewson - Chief Market Analyst for CMC Markets
Andrew Schiff - Investment consultant and co-author of "How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes"
Source: Al Jazeera | <urn:uuid:62ec213d-fdd8-49f7-a486-a6261cdf8eee> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2015/04/stock-markets-police-150423191215750.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283689.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00344-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949451 | 167 | 1.625 | 2 |
Outlook is a productivity application made by Microsoft. You can use Outlook to manage your e-mail, contacts, calendar and tasks. When you are creating Web content for a marketing campaign that you want to e-mail to a list of potential clients or a weekly Web-based newsletter, you can easily insert the HTML code in the body of an e-mail in Outlook.
- Skill level:
- Moderately Easy
Other People Are Reading
Open your Outlook application.
Click "Tools" in your main menu bar. Scroll down and click "Options."
Hit the "Mail Format" tab. In the "Message Format" section, use the drop-down menu and pick "HTML." Click "Apply" and click "OK."
Open a blank e-mail message. Click "Insert" and scroll down and click "File."
Find your HTML file that you want to insert in the body of the email message. Highlight the file in the "Insert File" window and click the small arrow next to the "Insert" button at the bottom of the window. Scroll down and select "Insert as Text."
Finish your e-mail and click send.
- 20 of the funniest online reviews ever
- 14 Biggest lies people tell in online dating sites
- Hilarious things Google thinks you're trying to search for | <urn:uuid:1b6cf200-8058-4e81-9255-96ea78b2514e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_6003097_insert-file-outlook-email-body.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279224.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00478-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.850686 | 276 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Determining on a college is the initial stage in the direction of turning out to be impartial. The listing of universities that you would want to go to can be random, or comprise of those establishments that you have extensively investigated. The process of choosing out a university that is ideal suited for you can be a small overwhelming. Subsequent are some ideas that can support speed up the method and lessen the pressure.
1. Opting for the Subject matter of Your Selection
Choosing a program that passions you retains the utmost significance. You will not only be researching it for the next handful of years but, it will decide your future successes. In order to 1st pick a topic, you want to carry out study by means of the web and attend as numerous university open houses as achievable to learn, and collect data on which subject of examine appeals to you. In Yurtdışında Ekonomi to that, surfing the net for electives, or occupation abundance can also assist in generating the proper selection.
2. Hunting Up University Rankings
Each and every known university will have a standard position obtainable on the internet. The very best universities have individual tables for each topic, even though some have calculated averages on exhibit. For a scholar, comparing the ratios of one college with another, will bear fruit. For example, the student to workers ratio in diverse universities will figure out the sum of person interest that a teacher can give. The decrease this ratio is, the far better it is for a pupil.
3. Scaling the Library
When you are heading to a university to examine, it is a provided that you will commit most of your time in the library. Going to the library while on campus tour is extremely advisable as it will support you judge your setting. Checking out cafes that run 24 hrs a day need to also be on your checklist of issues to contemplate just before choosing that distinct college.
4. Studying the Programs
Right after deciding on a training course, gathering data on its parts will be the next phase. The university internet site can serve to be very useful when a college student decides to delve into the particulars of the system that they have chosen. Moreover, universities often have a number of channels by way of which they can be contacted, should any queries arise.
five. College student Daily life at a College
The major purpose for attending a university is to get a diploma, but that does not suggest you cannot get pleasure from your lifestyle on campus by indulging into various other activities that the college has to supply. Pupil Unions can support carry you up to speed on the functions held or structured by the users of the modern society that passions you, or any additional-curricular pursuits. The identical details can also be looked up on the college internet site.
Probably the most crucial factor when choosing a college is its accessibility. Since getting to be impartial is part of the university encounter, you don’t want a college which is as well close to residence and not 1 that is way too far both. The costs that you could incur when traveling to and from residence and the time consumed, are also variables that will decide your selection of college. | <urn:uuid:3670d257-1764-479b-b927-b1f8d22d3127> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.comoqueporque.com/helpful-guidelines-on-how-to-decide-on-the-very-best-college/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570871.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808183040-20220808213040-00269.warc.gz | en | 0.960018 | 652 | 1.914063 | 2 |
DescriptionAre you looking for a game that rouses your feelings and strikes your mind? Japanese Pai Gow Poker is what you really need! Just look at the settings: a fool moon, as you know, promises extraordinary events.
Those events started a few days before when a vessel sailed to the open sea. There were ten seamen and a captain on the board. They transferred cargo of scientific books and manuscripts. Nothing boded ill: the sea was calm and the wind had the right direction. But a sudden storm broke out. That storm was the heaviest people ever saw. Sailors clew down and tied the cargo and themselves w... | <urn:uuid:55bf61e2-e93d-4a75-8b24-f4e1e8e382cb> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://welovebees.com/game.php?id=6513 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570879.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809003642-20220809033642-00666.warc.gz | en | 0.971515 | 140 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Using Compression Therapy During Pregnancy
Preparing for Changes
During pregnancy, women’s bodies go through many changes, some are noticeable—the baby bump—but others you may be less aware of. Pregnant women experience an increase in blood volume and fluid. This fluid can remain in the interstitial spaces of the tissues, which may cause swelling, often in the legs, ankles and feet.
Pregnancy and Varicose Veins
Hormonal changes and weight gain are two factors that contribute to the increased development of varicosities (causing varicose veins) during pregnancy. Many times varicose veins will become apparent during pregnancy and disappear soon after the baby is born.
Pregnancy and Deep Veins
A less common, but very serious, condition a woman may develop during pregnancy is Deep Vein Thrombosis (Blood Clot). A DVT is a blood clot (thrombus) that has formed in a deep vein. Although a DVT can occur anywhere in your body, it usually forms in your leg. If a DVT breaks loose and travels to the lungs it is called a pulmonary embolism (PE). A pulmonary embolism is a very serious condition and often fatal. Diagnosis and treatment of a DVT is meant to prevent PE.
Symptoms of DVT could be silent or could be symptomatic, such as pain or discomfort in the leg, or if blood clot travels to the to lung, you could experience a shortness of breath or a rapid heartbeat. Contact a medical professional immediately if you notice any of these symptoms.
Managing Varicose Veins during Pregnancy
- Exercise daily – perhaps by taking a brisk walk. Movement is important to improving your circulation.
- Maintain a healthy diet.
- Elevate your feet and legs above the level of your heart at the end of a long day on your feet.
- Don’t sit or stand for long periods of time or cross your legs.
Use Compression Therapy
Worn during the day, compression stockings counteract swelling and protect you from developing varicose veins by applying a light, soothing pressure to the exterior portion of your legs, which helps prevent fluid from accumulating.
Compression stockings also help support the calf muscle, which is also known as the second heart. The calf muscle is the main source in moving blood through the deep venous system in your legs back to the heart.
Juzo maternity graduated compression stockings are specially designed to expand with you during pregnancy, so there is no restriction in the abdominal region. You also can wear knee-high stockings in your last trimester. They are easier to get on and off.
If you’re pregnant and experiencing varicose veins, tired, aching legs or excessive swelling in the lower legs and ankles, ask your OB/GYN or primary care provider if you should wear graduated compression stockings. You also may want a vein specialist to evaluate your symptoms. | <urn:uuid:b0aef3df-c801-43d0-91c8-994fcb99cf72> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://juzousa.com/Your-Health/Pregnancy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572198.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815175725-20220815205725-00267.warc.gz | en | 0.946566 | 617 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Chicory - Cichorium Intybus
Chicory has a very distinctive sky-blue flower in the second summer. It is a hardy perennial, which reaches a height of 75cm. It can be seen throughout the UK. The plant has a variety of uses, including the leaves in a salad and the dandelion like tap root which can be dried treated, and like coffee beans, roasted and ground. It is generally added to coffee.
Sow the seed in the spring, directly into the soil. It is important to keep the soil moist. They can also be sown in late summer for early flowers the following year. | <urn:uuid:65ca7b2d-46c1-4c66-98c5-81e062ec9474> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://justseed.com/products/wfchic001 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00071.warc.gz | en | 0.968639 | 134 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Hungary Dissatisfied with Democracy, but Not Its Ideals
by Richard Wike, Associate Director, Pew Global Attitudes Project
With parliamentary elections approaching, Hungarians are in a funk. Nearly unanimously, they say the economy is in bad shape, and a stunning 72% say most Hungarians are actually worse off now economically than they were under communism. But Hungary’s malaise is not all about economics — most are frustrated with politics too. Overwhelmingly, Hungarians are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working and discontent with political elites, with about three-in-four saying political corruption is a major problem. A fall 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project highlights the degree to which, even in a region where disillusionment is common, Hungarians stand out.
All of this bodes well for the electoral prospects of Fidesz, the right-of-center opposition party, which is expected to soundly defeat the incumbent social democrats in the upcoming elections.1 However, these findings do not mean Hungarians are rejecting democratic values. In fact, as the survey illustrates, they are more likely than other former Eastern bloc publics to say it is very important to live in a country with democratic rights and institutions. But few believe Hungary currently has these democratic freedoms.
Widespread Economic Discontent
Prior to the revolutions of 1989, Hungary was an economic pioneer among Eastern bloc countries, practicing “goulash communism,” which mixed aspects of the free market with a planned economy. As a result, Hungarians enjoyed somewhat better living standards than their Iron Curtain neighbors. Two decades later, however, Hungarians give their economy dismal ratings, and they are generally less enthusiastic about the free market than others in the region.
The global economic crisis had a powerful effect across much of Central and Eastern Europe, and it hit especially hard in Hungary, which was forced to seek a financial bailout from the IMF, World Bank and European Union. The fall 2009 survey revealed the extent of Hungarian economic gloom: 94% described the country’s economy as bad, nosing out Lithuania (93%) and Ukraine (91%) for the most negative assessment among the countries included in the poll.
When asked to evaluate their nation’s switch to capitalism, Hungarians are divided — 46% said they approve of the move from a state-controlled economy to a market economy, while 42% disapproved. In 1991, when the Times Mirror Center (the forerunner of the Pew Research Center) asked this same question, 80% had approved of the change. In another sign that support for the free market is relatively weak in Hungary, only 31% in the 2009 poll agreed with the statement “Most people are better off in a free market economy, even though some people are rich and some are poor,” a lower percentage than in any other former Eastern bloc country surveyed.
Remarkably, 72% said most people in Hungary are actually worse off today economically than they were under communism, while only 8% said most people are better off and 16% said things are about the same. Again, Hungary stands apart from the other post-communist societies surveyed — in no other country did so many believe that economic life is worse now than during the communist era.
As in much of the region, many Hungarians had hoped that accession to the European Union would result in major economic benefits and improved living standards. However, most have been disappointed. Roughly seven-in-ten (71%) say their country’s economy has been weakened by the economic integration of Europe. Bulgaria (63%) is the only other post-communist EU member in which a majority held this view.
Disillusionment With Politics Too
But Hungarians are not only disappointed with the economic transition their country has experienced — they are also disappointed with the transition to democratic politics. The 1991 Times Mirror poll found that 74% of Hungarians approved of the change from a one-party system to a multiparty system; by 2009 a slim 56%-majority expressed this view.
In the 2009 poll, more than three-in-four (77%) said they were dissatisfied with the way democracy is working in Hungary, the highest percentage on the survey. In the other former Eastern bloc nations, there were notable generation gaps on this question, with people under age 40 — essentially, the “post-communist” generation — more likely to be satisfied than older respondents. Not so, however, in Hungary, where old and young alike tended to give the current state of democracy a grim assessment.
As in much of Central and Eastern Europe, Hungarians are clearly disenchanted with political elites. Nearly nine-in-ten (89%) said politicians have benefited a great deal or a fair amount from the changes since 1989, but only 17% believed ordinary people have benefited. And concerns about corruption are common — 76% said corrupt political leaders are a very big problem in Hungary.
However, when reviewing these gloomy findings about the state of democracy in Hungary, it is worth remembering that they do not mean Hungarians are abandoning democratic values. To the contrary, Hungarians continue to want democratic rights and institutions — in fact, they place a higher premium on these things than their post-communist neighbors. When asked to rate the importance of six key features of democracy, Hungarians stand out for their strong embrace of democratic values.
Among the eight Central and Eastern European publics surveyed, Hungarians are the most likely to say it is very important to live in a country with honest multiparty elections, freedom of religion, free speech, and civilian control of the military (tied with Czech Republic). Meanwhile, only Bulgarians are more likely to say it is very important to live in a country with a fair judiciary; and the Czech Republic and Bulgaria are the only countries more likely to rate a free media as very important. Overall, across the six values tested, a median of 66% in Hungary rated these features of democracy as very important. By this measure, Bulgaria is next, with a median of 60%, followed by the Czech Republic (52%), Poland (52%) and Ukraine (50%). Lithuania (43%) and Slovakia (43%) rate somewhat lower, while Russians (39%) are less likely than others to consider these elements of democracy very important.
The challenge for Hungary is that, while most Hungarians want democratic values and institutions, few think they have them. For instance, 70% think it is very important to live in a country with honest multiparty elections, but only 17% believe this describes Hungary very well. Taking the median percentage saying these values are very important in each country and comparing it with the median percentage saying these values describe their country very well gives us an overall “democracy gap” for each country. The gap is large throughout Eastern Europe, but is widest in Hungary — evidence that Hungarians, who once pioneered the transition away from communism, are not turning their backs on democracy. Instead, they are frustrated by the fact that democracy has yet to fully flourish in their country. | <urn:uuid:c82e2633-ce38-4e5a-9b30-51e5c6370422> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.pewglobal.org/2010/04/07/hungary-dissatisfied-with-democracy-but-not-its-ideals/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720238.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00188-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970582 | 1,449 | 2.265625 | 2 |
LEVIN, HIRSCHEL BEN ARYEH LÖB (called also Hirschel Löbel and Hart Lyon):(Redirected from LEVIN, ẒEBI HIRSCH.)
German rabbi; born at Rzeszow, Galicia, in 1721; died at Berlin Aug. 26, 1800. His father (known also as Saul Levin) was rabbi at Amsterdam; and on his mother's side Hirschel was a nephew of JacobEmden. Although he occupied himself also with secular sciences and philosophy, Levin paid special attention to Hebrew grammar and literature, and composed several Hebrew poems. Levin was a distinguished Talmudist, and in 1751, when he was only thirty years old, he threw himself into the struggle between Emden and Eybeschütz, naturally siding with the former. His epistles against Eybeschütz made such an impression that in 1756 he was elected chief rabbi of the London congregation of German and Polish Jews. In 1760 Jacob Ḳimḥi having published at Altona a responsum in which he charged the London butchers ("shoḥeṭim") with negligence in regard to their duties, Levin warmly defended them. The wardens of his synagogue, however, refused him permission to make a public reply to Ḳimḥi's charges; he therefore resigned in 1763, and accepted the rabbinate of Halberstadt. It would appear, from the letter in which the community of Halberstadt offered him the rabbinate, that Levin's resignation was occasioned by the neglect of Biblical and Talmudic studies by the Jews of London. He afterward became rabbi of Mannheim; and in 1772 he was appointed chief rabbi of Berlin. He was a great friend of Mendelssohn.
In 1778 Levin gave his approbation to Mendelssohn's German translation of the Pentateuch. In the preceding year the Prussian government had ordered Levin to make a résumé in German of the Jewish civil laws, such as those on inheritance, guardianship, and marriage, and to present it to the royal department of justice. Levin, not having a thorough knowledge of the German language, applied to Mendelssohn to do the work. Mendelssohn, accordingly, wrote his "Ritualgesetze der Juden," printed under Levin's superintendence, 1778.
Despite his toleration and enlightenment, Levin, instigated by the rabbis of Glogau and Lissa, began in 1782 to persecute Naphtali Herz Wessely for his "Dibre Shalom we-Emet" (Landshuth, "Toledot Anshe ha-Shem," p. 85; Kayserling, "Mendelssohn," p. 307). He prohibited the printing of that work, and insisted upon the expulsion of the author from Berlin. But Wessely's friends prevailed on Levin to desist from attacking Wessely, while Mendelssohn at the same time gave Levin to understand that the press in Germany was free to everybody.
Levin wrote: Epistles against Eybeschütz, printed by one of Emden's pupils, in the "Sefat Emet u-Leshon Zehorit," Altona, 1752; glosses on Pirḳe Abot, printed with Emden's commentary to Pirḳe Abot, Berlin, 1834; notes to the "Sefer Yuḥasin" and "Sefer ha-Ḥinnuk," some of which were published in Kobak's "Jeschurun." Some of his poetry was published in "Ha-Maggid" (xiv.) under the title "Naḥalat Ẓebi." Finally, three manuscript volumes of his responsa are to be found in the library of the London Bet ha-Midrash, bearing the numbers 24 to 26.
- Grätz, Gesch. 2d ed., xi. 41, 89, 151;
- H. Adler, in Publ. Anglo-Jew. Hist. Exhibition, 1887, pp. 280 et seq.;
- Landshuth, Toledot Anshe ha-Shem, pp. 72-78;
- Kayserling, Moses Mendelssohn, pp. 282, 291, 311;
- Auerbach, Gesch. der Israelitischen Gemeinde Halberstadt, pp. 89 et seq., Halberstadt, 1866;
- Fuenn, Keneset Yisrael, p. 284. | <urn:uuid:2be78e6e-256e-46fb-9c60-533284198789> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9853-levin-zebi-hirsch | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280929.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00421-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96729 | 979 | 2.609375 | 3 |
When new users sign up for Snapchat, there's a cute way that the app verifies that you're not a robot: by picking out Snapchat's white ghost out of a series of nine images.
This is good news, as Snapchat spam has become more of a problem lately.
But then there's the bad news. Unfortunately for Snapchat, one hacker, Steven Hicks, was able to write fewer than 100 lines of code that cracked the new person verification method in less than 30 minutes.
In fact, he writes in his blog that he could've written something to crack the verification in less time, he was just too lazy to do it.
Looks like Snapchat's security team might have to go back to the drawing board. The ghosts sure are cute, though. | <urn:uuid:2a8243da-aeb5-4d45-a3d8-af278f923107> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-person-identification-defeated-2014-1?op=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279410.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00162-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981267 | 156 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Wellington Regional Economic Development Plan
Collaboration and partnerships will help to shape future growth in the Wellington-Wairarapa-Horowhenua region
The Wellington-Wairarapa-Horowhenua region needs a regional economic development plan to guide the long-term direction and focus implementation activities over the next five to 10 years.
The Wellington Regional Leadership Committee is made up of mayors, government ministers, iwi leaders and an independent chair. They are working together to help the region set the direction, prioritise, fund and enable high impact economic initiatives.
Together they provide a platform to positively influence and drive the region’s future, unlock opportunities and address shared challenges.
Now, WellingtonNZ, as the region’s economic development agency, has been called in to co-ordinate and develop that plan to help the region, Central Government and other funders realise the regional priorities it could back.
Aim of the Plan
The plan aims to guide the long-term direction and help the region to prioritise, fund and deliver high impact economic initiatives over the next five to 10 years, that in turn will help to:
- Create some of the 100,000 new (decent) jobs needed in the region over the next 30 years in line with the population growth projections (200,000) in the Wellington Regional Growth Framework
- Improve the quality of life of residents by making the region more productive, resilient, inclusive, sustainable and have thriving Māori and Pasifika communities
- Elevate about 20 to 40 regionally-significant initiatives and complement individual local development plans.
Phase 1 – insights and data
What: Collate, index and summarise more than 300 plans. Identify priority sectors and enablers.
When: Already completed
Phase 2 – develop a regional economic development plan
What: Engage and confirm key sectors and enablers. Identify and prioritise high impact regional economic initiatives.
When: August 2021-July 2022
Phase 3 – implement the plan
What: Support priority initiatives and ensure integration and co-ordination across multiple delivery agencies.
When: August 2022-2032
July Progress Update
A thorough process has been undertaken to develop the plan over the last 12 months. Recent activities include:
- The key components of the plan, including the regional data snapshot, overarching Wellington regional economic development framework, and positioning diagram, were approved by the Wellington Regional Leadership Committee in May
- Steering group members, with support from WellingtonNZ, have developed the sector and enabler chapters of the plan
- Initiatives that address some of the issues and opportunities identified in each chapter and contribute to the aims of the plan have been shortlisted
- The final draft plan has been endorsed by the Steering Group and will be presented to the Wellington Regional Leadership Committee for approval on 26 July 2022.
Once the Wellington Regional Leadership Committee approve the plan, the design will be finalised, the plan will be published, and we will shift our focus to supporting project leads and finding pathways to implement the shortlisted initiatives.
The plan is a living document that will evolve and adapt as conditions change, relationships are built, and new initiatives arise. We would like to hear from you if you have ideas for the pipeline of initiatives that address some of the issues and opportunities highlighted in the plan. Please get in touch with our relevant contacts to discuss any initiatives.
Workshop Summary Report
This report summarises the Regional Economic Development Planning (REDP) workshop held on 6 December 2021 with Wellington regional leaders from businesses, iwi, central and local government.
The workshop was an opportunity to hear from a broad range of stakeholders about economic development, opportunities, barriers, and initiatives to shape the Wellington Regional Economic Development Plan. | <urn:uuid:50df6d07-fe36-4860-ba00-4dfb4768454c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.wellingtonnz.com/wellington-regional-economic-development-plan/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570868.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808152744-20220808182744-00070.warc.gz | en | 0.898904 | 774 | 1.65625 | 2 |
HÀ NỘI — The energy section has not been spared from the impact of COVID-19 restrictions, as demand for gas fell dramatically in the first eight months of this year, reports PetroVietnam.
The demand for gas for electricity generation is significantly lower than this time last year. The southeastern region of Việt Nam recorded only 87.5 per cent comparatively, and the southwest only 72.7 per cent.
The demand for gas has fallen since the end of April 2021, when the latest outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic swept through Việt Nam. This has been especially felt in the southern cities and provinces that have recorded the most cases, particularly in July and August.
It is thought that the COVID-19 pandemic will remain unpredictable for the rest of the year and that a return to normal work is unlikely.
Some agencies have predicted that Việt Nam’s economic growth in the remaining months of the year will remain low compared to the start of the year.
Domestic power plants are now the main consumers of the gas industry, accounting for 80 per cent of gas output. The decline in demand gas has reduced the capacity of gas producers, which will, in turn, lead to a reduction in gas production in offshore oil and gas fields.
The impact of this will be a major loss of revenue for the state that is collected through environmental tax, corporate income, value-added and export taxes. Budget revenue will also fall due to the decrease in gas transportation activities.
Because of low demand, gas buyers are required to pay in advance with a large amount of cash. This in turn causes an impact on the cash balance of the buyers.
Low gas demand will also lead to a significant decrease in budget revenues for cities and provinces against last year. The southern Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu province alone is expected to see a decline of VNĐ435 billion in its budget revenue. This will be mirrored across other towns and cities.
Forecasts speculate that demand for electricity production will continue to decline in 2022. Gas for power production in the southeast region is forecast at a maximum of 2.8 billion m³, while gas input will drop to 755 million m³ in the southwest region. This will cause a strong decline in tax revenue in these cities and provinces next year.
This fall in demand is reflected in the low load demand across the electricity market. The power industry is facing an excess power problem, as businesses minimise or halt their production activities amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ironically, this issue is antagonised further by the number of renewable energy projects that have recently been put into operation, increasing supply to the national grid.
Currently, electricity prices offered by renewable energy plants are much higher than from gas-fired power plants. According to industry insiders, the decline in gas mobilisation and the introduction of new, renewable sources has lead to higher electricity prices.
Profits of many businesses in the oil and gas sector dropped in the third quarter of this year due to impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Petrovietnam Gas Joint Stock Corporation (PV Gas) suffered a drop of 11.5 percent and 7 percent in pre-tax and after-tax profit in the third quarter of this year to 2.29 trillion VND and VND1.86 trillion, respectively.
In the first nine months of this year, demand for gas of its customers decreased. Particularly,Idemand for gas for power generation was equal to only 72 percent of that in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, due to stagnant production situation, the domestic demand fell 35-40 percent year for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), 30 percent for low-pressure gas and compressed natural gas compared to that before COVID-19 broke out.
National energy security
Natural gas is considered a clean source of energy for electricity production with low greenhouse gas emissions. Using gas for the country’s power production does help minimise the negative impacts on the environment.
The fall in demand for energy has harmed domestic oil and gas exploration and exploitation, especially in deep water and offshore areas. Failure to make full use of the country’s natural resources will negatively affect foreign investment into liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, which are important in addressing the growing energy demand on the national power grid.
The rapid decline in gas mobilisation for power generation has made impacted imports of LNG, following Decision No. 2233/QĐ-TTg dated December 28, 2020, in which the Prime Minister approved a plan to develop a competitive energy market by 2030.
In the short term, this impacts investment and construction of LNG projects to meet national energy demands. At the same time, as restrictions are relaxed, energy demand will increase, leading to a shortage of energy supplies. Infrastructure constraints will also limit LNG imports.
Việt Nam has a favourable geographical location and convenient LNG transportation route including many deep-water ports and existing gas infrastructure systems that can be used. Developing the LNG sector is an inevitable trend for Việt Nam to diversify fuel sources for electricity generation and contributing to ensuring energy security for Việt Nam. — VNS | <urn:uuid:abfd8f22-4aff-438f-8cbc-700cee9da26c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://vietnamnews.vn/economy/1055352/covid-19-impacts-viet-nam-s-gas-sector.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572833.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817001643-20220817031643-00273.warc.gz | en | 0.944725 | 1,102 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Bacteria are the smallest living organisms known to exist.
Bacteria can come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.
Not all kinds of bacteria will cause disease. In fact there is some good bacteria in your digestive system.
Cows use bacteria to digest the grass they eat.
Bacteria can be found everywhere.
The best way to protect yourself against dangerous bacteria is to wash your hands.
You can prevent bad bacteria from spreading by covering your mouth when you sneeze.
Vitamins will help you fight bad bacteria, so you need to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. | <urn:uuid:8ea7257f-f0bc-4c52-a1f3-92629594b9e6> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://kidsenglishcollege.com/b-is-for-bacteria/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573172.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818063910-20220818093910-00278.warc.gz | en | 0.912283 | 127 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Since 2010, nearby Stillhouse Hollow Lake received around 72 percent of its normal amount of rainfall, meaning it is short about a year’s worth of water, said Daniel Huckaby, meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
However, residents should still keep an eye out for dangerous flooding that might occur when rain comes. Huckaby said the speed and duration of a rainfall mixed with the hard compact ground a drought can produce can cause the perfect storm, so to speak.
“The ground gets so hard sometimes that if you get a really heavy rain, really quickly, like the storms we could see in spring, the water can just run off and that can result in flooding and overflows in areas that otherwise wouldn’t flood,” he said.
As flood prevention week ends Saturday, Copperas Cove Fire Department Deputy Chief and Emergency Management Coordinator Gary Young offered some advice to help residents prepare. He said the point of flood awareness is to first prevent the loss of life and then property.
“Floods can occur anywhere in the nation. Being prepared ahead of time can reduce the risk of a person being injured or killed,” Young said.
According to the National Weather Service’s flood prevention website, steps residents can take to prepare for a flood beforehand include establishing a communications plan with friends and family, which should include a meet-up spot in case phones are unavailable; preparing a three-day emergency kit with clean water, food and medicine for all members; and knowing if you are in a floodplain.
Additional ways to protect property include marking all electrical breakers clearly, installing check-valves in plumbing to prevent floodwaters from backing up into the drains of your home, and purchasing flood insurance.
Kevin Keller, spokesman for the city, said low-lying areas in Copperas Cove are more at risk for flooding.
“There’s been a known issue with flooding in Copperas Cove right along Nolan Creek,” said Ted Ryan, meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “It’s probably one of the worst flash-flood locations in north Central Texas.”
The city recently finished several projects to help improve drainage. This year, it completed the $270,000 Western Hills drainage project near Saddle Drive, a project started after a 2007 flood.
Contact Courtney Griffin at [email protected] or 254-501-7559 | <urn:uuid:fb77e46f-b248-4ffa-9c41-5942ea5273d3> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://kdhnews.com/copperas_cove_herald/news/flood-prevention-still-applicable-in-drought/article_e1e8a340-b070-11e3-8a98-0017a43b2370.html?mode=story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281574.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00025-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946512 | 499 | 2.59375 | 3 |
From time to time, we all forget where we left our keys. The responsibilities of life sometimes get so overwhelming that we show up late to work or school on rare occasion as well. Most of us procrastinate to some extent, and the vast majority of us wait until April 14 to do our taxes. Certainly, everyone has blurted out something inappropriate in class or at a meeting at one time or another. Are we all ADHD?
The truth is that the traits of ADHD are, by and large, extreme forms of behaviors that almost all of us exhibit from time to time. Spontaneity is called “impulsivity” when it prevents us from getting along with others, or gets us into trouble. Imagination is called “short attention span” or “distractibility” when we spend so much time in our own world that we do not fulfill what is expected of us as students or workers in the here and now. Energetic people are called “hyperactive” when their behaviors become extreme enough to make others around them uncomfortable, and thus cause disruptions. So, ADHD behaviors are extreme forms of traits that have great utility. However, the parts of the brain responsible for channeling and harnessing the strengths of ADHD people do not function optimally. So while the average person might struggle to remember appointments or the location of personal items, these are daily and constant struggles for a person with ADHD. Genetic and cerebral differences underlie this reality.
Evidence continues to mount that ADHD can be correlated with genetic variants. Yes, variations in DNA seem to underlie the symptoms of ADHD. Many of the gene variants, or polymorphisms, associated with the disorder relate to the operation of norepinephrine and dopamine, two neurotransmitters involved in learning, attention, and memory, among many other important functions. A recent study found that children with ADHD have nearly 50 percent less of a protein that is important for attention and memory. Another study from last month found specific genes that are related to important aspects of the brain’s signaling pathways, in which the above-mentioned neurotransmitters are involved. The science continues to support one very important supposition: ADHD behaviors are associated with distinct and meaningful differences in the brain.
I could list hundreds of studies, but my purpose is simply to get you to consider the neurobiological and genetic underpinnings of ADHD. It is not a choice. It is not an outgrowth of laziness. It is simply the product of changes in the brain. The good news is that this “different” brain often has unique strengths and aptitudes that, with proper mentoring and guidance, can be used to great effect. We need to first offer ADHD people compassion, and from that place, we have a good shot at helping them. I urge you to approach ADHD first and foremost from a place of understanding. | <urn:uuid:c204d136-3af1-42fe-ba32-e059478e24a7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://kevinjroberts.net/tag/focalin/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00219-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963687 | 590 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Anyone who has read about real estate in India over the past couple of years has likely come across the terms REITs. REIT stands for Real Investment Trust. To understand what REITs are, one needs to understand how institutional investors make their investments in the real estate sector.
So how does Institutional Equity Investing in Real Estate work?
Institutional investors typically make investments through one of the following investment methods: » Traditional Real Estate Private Equity - Direct Investments into Projects
» Investments into Private or Publicly Traded Development Companies
» Investments in yield generating Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)
» Real Estate Mutual Funds (served as kind of a proxy to REITs in India until the REIT legislation opened out)
Regardless of which aforementi8o9oned method they use; institutional equity investors need to pick a strategy depending on their risk vs return profile.
The different kinds of strategies are:
Investing in existing leased out income or yield generating retail, industrial, apartment, and office properties, mostly in metropolitan areas. These deals tend to be the most expensive for funds given that they are the least risky.
Investing in core properties that require some value-added enhancements, minor modifications and capital expenditure, which are expected to result in higher yields (rental income) from the asset.
Investments in assets that require significant changes: namely operational changes, physical improvements, or capital restructuring.
Investments in distressed assets or redevelopment properties. Typically takes place in niche sectors and in developing economies where there is an opportunity to add value to the acquired asset. In this case, the PE firm takes on both a financial and developmental risk; however, the returns are typically the highest.
Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)
A REIT by definition is "any corporation, trust or association that acts as an investment agent specialising in real estate and real estate mortgages" under the US Internal Revenue Code.
Simply put, REITs are securities that are traded on stock exchanges. For someone new to investing, a REIT works like a mutual fund. The underlying asset in the REIT is real estate, such as a building or commercial property, whereas the underlying asset for a mutual fund is the share of a company. REITs use the money that is collected from investors to buy real estate instead of using it to buy bonds or shares of company. Just like a mutual fund, which receives periodic dividends from its owned companies, a REIT receives rental income (referred to as yield) from the operations/leasing of asset or development.
One major attraction of REITs – they get special dividend distribution tax benefits in most countries. In many countries REITs pay out close to 90 percent of their profits to investors as dividends and qualify for special tax considerations on the dividend distribution.
Once a REIT is listed on a public stock exchange, it allows any size or type of investor to invest in real estate by buying units of the REIT. Small investors, who typically cannot afford to invest in expensive yield generating real assets can indirectly invest in them via REIT structures. For developers, REITs provide another avenue to raise funds for projects.
REITs typically follow a specific asset strategy and are classified accordingly.
Key Stakeholders of a REIT:
Trustees are responsible for taking custody of the assets owned by the REIT and its unit holders. They typically ensure that legal compliances related to the asset are in order and that the rights of the unit holders stand protected. Trustees are appointed and paid a fee for their duties.
The sponsor is the company that supplies or sources the underlying real estate that is then rolled into the REIT. Developers with a large portfolio of real estate or Institutional Real Estate Funds generally act as sponsors of REITs.
These are the people appointed to manage the underlying investments of the REIT, i.e. the properties held by the REIT. They are like general partners of a private equity fund. Managers are responsible for the REIT's performance, investments and strategy. They ensure that the underlying properties are generating maximum yield by efficiently monitoring property management and leasing activities. REIT managers typically appoint asset or property managers to oversee activities such as leasing and property operations.
There are retail and institutional investors that own units (similar to stocks) of the REIT once it is listed on an exchange.
So how does a REIT make a profit?
The profit a from a REIT = The income generated from renting out the underlying assets less (-) the cost of operating all the assets for during a given period.
The costs typically include those of running the facilities, utilities, leasing, marketing, the fees paid to the REIT Managers and to the Trustees.
REITs in India
REITs have been a successful investment vehicle in developed capital markets since the late 1990s. However, the first draft of REIT Regulations in India was issued by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in 2007. A revised version of the draft was amended and issued in September 2013 and REITs were formally announced in the Union Budget for FY15. Sebi has issued guidelines that need to be adhered to for REIT listings – specific requirements from each of the above-mentioned stakeholders.
REITs will soon be listed on the Indian stock exchanges, giving retail investors a chance to include Real Estate in their asset portfolios.
The author is a Co-Founder and Director at SILA.
The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.
Check out our end of season subscription discounts with a Moneycontrol pro subscription absolutely free. Use code EOSO2021. Click here for details. | <urn:uuid:285e8606-eb5b-4962-9bb5-92962d262487> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.forbesindia.com/blog/entrepreneurship/real-estate-investment-trusts-101/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570868.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808152744-20220808182744-00071.warc.gz | en | 0.949525 | 1,203 | 2.53125 | 3 |
An overview of the current state of the baseline we’re developing for the machine learning challenges
We’re currently developing the baseline processing that challenge entrants will need. This takes a random listener and a random audio sample of speech in noise (SPIN) and passes that through a simulated hearing aid (the Enhancement Model). This improves the speech in noise. We then have an algorithm (the Prediction Model) to estimate the Speech Intelligibility that the listener would perceive (SI score). This score can then be used to drive machine learning to improve the hearing aid.
A talk through the baseline model we’re developing.
The first machine learning challenge is to improve the enhancement model, in other words, to produce a better processing algorithm for the hearing aid. The second challenge is to improve the prediction model using perceptual data we’ll provide. | <urn:uuid:6b256f97-dd63-4520-ba5c-98d725293832> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://claritychallenge.org/blog/tags/processing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571989.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813232744-20220814022744-00470.warc.gz | en | 0.876348 | 174 | 2.53125 | 3 |
U.S. Slaps Sanctions On Iran Space Program Over Missile Work
September 03, 2019
The United States has imposed sanctions on Iran's civilian space agency and two of its research institutes, saying they are being used to advance Tehran's missile program.
The new sanctions target the Iran Space Agency, the Iran Space Research Center, and the Astronautics Research Institute, the U.S. Treasury Department said on September 3, accusing these entities of developing ballistic missiles under the cover of a civilian program to launch satellites into orbit.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement that Washington "will not allow Iran to use its space launch program as cover to advance its ballistic missile programs."
"These designations should serve as a warning to the international scientific community that collaborating with Iran's space program could contribute to Tehran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon delivery system," Pompeo said.
The state secretary said Iran's attempt last week to test a space launch vehicle underscored "the urgency of the threat."
Iran on September 2 confirmed an August 29 explosion at one of its launch pads at the Imam Khomeini Space Center in the north of the country, saying it was due to a technical malfunction.
The explosion is believed to be the third failure involving an Iranian rocket this year.
Washington accuses Tehran of using the technology to launch satellites into orbit as part of its effort to develop ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
Iran denies the accusation.
The country has sent several satellites into orbit over the past decade, and in 2013 claimed to have launched a monkey into space.
The sanctions are part of a U.S. campaign of "maximum pressure" on Iran to force Tehran to the negotiating table over its nuclear and missiles programs.
Washington last year withdrew from a landmark nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers and reimposed crippling sanctions on the Iranian economy
With reporting by Reuters and AP
Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
|Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list| | <urn:uuid:0a8f1bd4-fe6c-48c7-b550-6f9cf670da0c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iran/2019/iran-190903-rferl01.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571745.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812170436-20220812200436-00469.warc.gz | en | 0.935672 | 455 | 2.078125 | 2 |
There are two ways to create tests in Testim—record them using the Testim Extension or code them in your IDE. Actually, there's a third and recommended approach for those who want to code—record the test, export it as code and modify it in your IDE.
Record a test - Generally, the fastest way to write a test is to record it. This is fairly easy to do, using the Testim Extension. You simply start a recording within the Testim visual editor, record steps in your application by clicking, selecting menu options, typing in text, etc. The result is a step-by-step test that can be edited within the visual editor. The great part about recording a test is that it uses Testim's algorithm to uniquely identify each element and its parameters. Our AI uses what we call, Smart Locators to evaluate hundreds of attributes and score them so that if elements change, your tests don’t break.
Testim has many features built into the visual test editor to help you customize your tests. You can also export your test as code and customize it your IDE, the choice is yours.
We've built a lot of features right into the editor so there's no need to write code if you don't want to. Here are a few examples (Hint: There are waaaay more, just search for what you need):
- Groups - You can group steps and reuse them. You can nest groups within groups. Grouping helps you architect tests so that you aren't repeatedly creating the same steps. You can also create more efficient test architecture by reusing proven steps.
- Validations - Ensure the output of a test matches the expected output. You can configure validations for data, PDFs, email, Word docs, and much more.
- Conditions - Configure a step or group of steps to run (or skip) if certain conditions are met (or absent).
- Smart Locators - These make your tests stable. However, you may want to adjust the settings so that they are more or less strict, or even prioritize different attributes. We give you the information to see how Smart Locators are weighting attributes and the ability to override.
- Loops - Run the same step multiple times until you get the expected output.
- Data-driven testing - Integrate test data to push input or boundary conditions. Link a CSV, Excel, or JSON file to reference your data.
- Custom actions through code - Okay, for this one you do need to write some code. But it does give you the flexibility to execute code on any step.
Since you can write tests in your IDE, of course, you can edit them there as well. Add loops, waits, IFs, fors, or whatever coding magic you want, because it's code. See the full Dev Kit API
Run and troubleshoot your tests locally. When you are ready, you can schedule, trigger by CI or run on demand. Tests can be parallelized and across all browsers on our test cloud or any Selenium-compatible test cloud.
Test grid - Also known as a test cloud, test grids allow you to test multiple virtual (and sometimes physical) devices and configurations in parallel. It can greatly speed up test execution.
Cross-browser - You will want to make sure that your application runs the same way in Safari as it does in Edge. Cross-browser support lets you simulate different desktop and mobile web browsers in parallel.
CI integrations - We easily integrate with Continuous Integration tools so that your tests can run automatically at desired process points.
Regardless of how your tests were created (code or codeless) when they run, you will see the results in Testim so you can troubleshoot and capture bugs. You'll also want to show your team all of the great work you've been doing and that releases are ready to ship.
Root cause analysis - We aggregate error types so that you can quickly identify problems that are affecting multiple tests. You'll have tools including screenshots, console logs, and HTML DOM info at your fingertips.
Test results - Measure team and test suite performance. See how tests are trending over time.
Bug capture - Bug reporting is really easy with our capture tool. Capture screenshots, video, add a description of the error and then pop it into a bug tracker—in less than 60 seconds.
TestOps is a set of capabilities within Testim Automate that enable efficient testing operations at scale. The set of features are designed to help managers and teams focused on high-quality code, scale automation initiatives. Using the TestOps features users can establish and maintain control, improve organization and management, and gain insights to help unjumble the growing complexity.
TestOps' features are organized into three categories:
- Control - enables setting policies and controls to ensure tests meet the highest standards.
- Management - helps find the tests faster, reduce switching costs, and improves productivity. The management features also help understand which tests are trusted and CI-ready, and which are temperamental, all while helping balance workload and preventing overlap.
- Insights - gain insights from your testing data that help you understand the current state of quality, build competency, team progress, and process improvement areas.
Updated 10 months ago | <urn:uuid:c9b570db-0e04-4852-b566-febb24ddae95> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://help.testim.io/docs/testim-automate | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573876.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20220820012448-20220820042448-00069.warc.gz | en | 0.921585 | 1,178 | 2.359375 | 2 |
Variation in volatile sesquiterpene emission and terpene synthase transcript levels between different sides of a leaf damaged by herbivory on one side. (A) The cartoon illustrates the different leaf parts collected for volatile and transcript analysis. One S. littoralis larva was enclosed for seven hours on leaf part I of the second fully expanded leaf of maize variety Delprim. (B) Emission of (E)-α-bergamotene and (E)-β-farnesene (TPS10 products) and (E)-β-caryophyllene (TPS23 product) from different leaf parts after herbivory restricted to one section on one side. Volatiles were collected from tissue powder using SPME and analyzed by GC-MS. Data are means of four replications ± SE. Different letters with the same numbered subscripts (e.g. a1 and b1) indicate statistically significant (p<0.05) differences between the volatile measurement among the five distinct sections of one leaf for each set of sesquiterpene products. Control tissue (Ctr) was harvested from an undamaged leaf. (C) Transcript accumulation of tps10 and tps23 in different leaf parts after herbivory restricted to one section on one side. RNA was prepared from an aliquot of the tissue powder used for volatile analysis (see above). The samples were blotted and probes specific for tps10 and tps23 were used for hybridization. The 28S RNA is shown as a loading control on an ethidium bromide stained argarose gel. | <urn:uuid:19ea07c9-131c-43ce-89d3-c5044fe2fc4f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://bmcplantbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2229-13-15/figures/3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570977.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809124724-20220809154724-00475.warc.gz | en | 0.935763 | 335 | 2.640625 | 3 |
This battle not solely crippled Haraldâs forces, but additionally left the two earls incapable of raising one other military that year. At the time of the Norman conquest, the north of England was a community blended of old Anglo-Saxons and Vikings who had developed a shared tradition. The aristocracy was principally Danish in origin, and the north was very separate from the south due to poor street links. Whilst the north technically came underneath rule of southern kings, since 962 the northern earls had been dominated by an autonomous chief who pledged loyalty to the southern king.
He took with him these Englishmen that he felt might catch the attention of insurrection â Edgar Aetheling, Edwin, Morcar and Archbishop Stigand. Williamâs brother Odo of Bayeux and Williamâs shut pal William FitzOsbern had been made regents of England. William started distributing land to these Norman nobles that had include him from Normandy and had fought with him at the Battle of Hastings. Williamâs brother, Odo turned Earl of Kent and was given all the county whereas his greatest pal William FitzOsbern was made Earl of Hereford and given all of Hereford as nicely as the Isle of Wight. The battle began at 9am and lasted until late afternoon when Harold fell most likely because of an arrow hitting him in or near the attention. With Harold useless most of the remaining Saxons left the field.
William gained permission from the Pope who was a very powerful figure at the time for his conquest and so he arrange on the English channel and ready for a conquest of England. Only thing that was stopping him was that the wind was blowing in the wrong direction which prevented William from getting throughout the channel. A number of extraordinary stories surround the battle of Hastings in early accounts, most notably that of the dukeâs chaplain, William of Poitiers, written around 1077. Weâre told that, to counter rumours of his death in the course of the battle, Duke William rode along his frontline along with his helmet up to reassure his troops. Itâs also been claimed that the Norman forces tricked the English into charging down from their strategic hilltop position by feigning retreat before turning and charging them. Then thereâs the idea that Harold was felled by an arrow in his eye.
Search the biggest, most correct site for today in history. Russia was enduring its “time of troubles” – as immortalised within the opera Boris Godunov – and subsequent battle with the highly effective alliance of Poland-Lithuania. Shah Abbas I was constructing an empire in Persia, while early buying and selling expeditions were attempting colonial settlement in Maine, financed by English Catholics. Frances Wood, a former head of the Chinese part at the British Library dug out an early manuscript of this work. The drawback with studying historical past by key dates https://vladimirwrites.com/master-search-intent-click-audience/ and moments is that it provides us a spotlit view of the previous – brilliant stars of main occasions twinkling towards an enormous – but darkish and mysterious – night time sky of historical past. As a end result we lose sense of the context of main occasions, and the methods in which our historical past – and our world – has been, and nonetheless is, linked.
Williamâs wife, Matilda, was crowned Queen of England at Westminster Cathedral by Archbishop Ealdred. Edgar Aetheling, thought by many to be the true King of England took his mother and sister to Scotland to hunt assist of the Scottish King. He realised that he needed to be current in the nation to cease additional rebellions or strikes against him from happening.
As extra Normans flee, some Saxons run out from the protect wall to chase them down the hill. King Harold marches to Stamford Bridge, surprises Hardrada and UTTERLY defeats him. 300 ships brought the Vikings to England; simply 24 ships had been sufficient to take the few survivors residence.
Harold’s dying left the English forces leaderless, and so they began to break down. Many of them fled, however the troopers of the royal household gathered round Harold’s physique and fought to the top. The Normans began to pursue the fleeing troops, and apart from a rearguard action at a web site often recognized as the “Malfosse”, the battle was over. Exactly what occurred at the Malfosse, or “Evil Ditch”, and the place it occurred, is unclear. It occurred at a small fortification or set of trenches the place some Englishmen rallied and significantly wounded Eustace of Boulogne before being defeated by the Normans. Although the feigned flights didn’t break the strains, they most likely thinned out the housecarls within the English protect wall.
Such was his saint-like lifestyle, that he was known as Edward the Confessor. Edward was a really religious man and he ordered the building of the primary Westminster Abbey. However, when he died in January 1066, he left no inheritor to the throne. His nearest surviving blood relative was Edgar â but he was solely a toddler and no-one would respect him.
Discover extra right here concerning the Battle of Hastings itself and its consequences, and find out where you probably can see a few of the spectacular castles and nice abbeys the Normans constructed across the land. It could be great to know that such tales have been true. William of Poitiers had dramatised his masterâs victory â so much so that we can not now tell how a lot is fiction and the way a lot reality. Following the Norman Conquest in 1066, William the Conqueror (reigned 1066 â 1087) established French because the official language of England. However, crucial change was the influence on language. As a results of the Norman Conquest, Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, was reduced to a lesser, retro language that solely match the frequent people. | <urn:uuid:3c918a84-4d9f-41aa-9a2b-d463714f9a39> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://otto.krd/what-occurred-in-1066-flashcards/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570868.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808152744-20220808182744-00071.warc.gz | en | 0.979835 | 1,241 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Register directive is a directive used for registering a user defined control on a web page.
A user control may be embedded in an aspx web page using the @Register directive. A user control cannot be executed on its own independently, but it may be registered
on a web page and then used.
Syntax for registering a user control --
<%@ Register TagPrefix="UC1" TagName="UserControl1" Src="AddEmployeeControl.ascx" %>
TagPrefix attribute is used to specify a unique namespace for the user control.
TagName is used to refer a user control uniquely by its name.
When we want to use this control in a webpage, we may use the following line of code --
<UC1:UserControl1 runat="server" />
Please mark as answer if it solves your query.Maheshvishnu, if this helps please login to Mark As Answer. | Alert Moderator | <urn:uuid:ce272173-caf7-4895-ae0b-72b06bd80f59> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.dotnetfunda.com/forums/show/11602/explain-about-register-tagprefix-atributes-in-aspx-page | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280730.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00251-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.80055 | 201 | 2.21875 | 2 |
If you are considering selling your online business, you might want to realize how to do an internet business valuation. This kind of valuation is more advanced than you might believe. The multiple of an online business differs depending on the sort of business and the specific skills it has. A better multiple ensures that your business includes a brighter potential and is really worth more. But , before you get started, you need to understand the basic concept behind online business value.
When considering a business online, professional appraisers begin by gathering the most recent year’s gross income. Then they average or perhaps total the revenue within the trailing year or so. The amount of walking 12-month income can be found around the balance sheet. Yet , you may not own a balance piece yet. This article give you a sports event figure which you can use to determine the price of your business. If you are www.computerlifehacks.com/top-ways-to-stop-your-mac-overheating unsure of this amount you want to receive, receive professional help and prepare a complete business valuation.
Hiring a specialist business identifier is an excellent option. You get the benefit of all their expertise and objectivity coming from a professional. Many brokers contain contacts with qualified business identifiers. It’s a good idea to decide on a professional who may have earned the Accredited running a business Valuation (ABV) designation. ABV specialists are required to go an exam administered by American Start of Credentialed Public Accountancy firm. In addition , they need to have knowledge and education requirements which might be comparable to those of a business identifier. | <urn:uuid:48017a26-5ce2-44d7-bc9e-eedd8e4aec47> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.edmondotis.co.nz/methods-to-do-a-business-online-valuation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571284.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811103305-20220811133305-00468.warc.gz | en | 0.939727 | 332 | 1.539063 | 2 |
By law, you must report the loss or theft of your passport to us as soon as possible. This will help to prevent criminal misuse of the document and protect your identity (see Passport fraud). Your passport will be immediately and permanently cancelled. It cannot be reinstated and must not be used for travel should you find it later.
If you are in Australia, you can report a loss or theft online or by calling the Australian Passport Information Service (APIS) on 131 232. If overseas, you can report online or at an Australian diplomatic or consular mission.
If your passport has been stolen, you should also report the incident to the police and ensure that you obtain a copy of the police report – this applies in Australia and overseas. See the Smartraveller website for more information.
If you lose control of your passport and it is found by someone else and returned to us, we will immediately and permanently cancel it. This is to protect against misuse of your passport - and your identity - by others. Cancellation cannot be reversed.
When you apply for a new passport, you must provide full details of the loss or theft. Unless we are satisfied that exceptional circumstances exist - that the loss or theft was outside your control and not due to your carelessness - repeated losses will result in reduced validity for your next passport:
- two losses in five years will result in your new document having a validity of five years
- three or more losses in five years will result in the issue of a document valid for a maximum of two years.
If you report your passport as lost or stolen but later find it and present it before, or when, you lodge a new application, the loss may not affect the maximum validity of your new passport.
If, after obtaining a new passport, you find a passport that you have previously reported as lost or stolen, you should still present it to us so that the loss will not affect the maximum validity of any subsequent passports. | <urn:uuid:95efe1c3-63a6-4a61-b704-99208f6cac05> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.passports.gov.au/usingyourpassport/Pages/lostandstolenpassports.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280364.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00031-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95358 | 401 | 1.765625 | 2 |
My alarm goes off and I get up and go for an early morning run or bike ride. Usually for about 45 minutes.
I get back home, have a shower and start getting ready for the day. I have some Weet-Bix or muesli then pack my lunch and fill my drink bottle, making sure I had enough food and water to last me the day.
I am lucky enough to live about a 5-minute walk from work and I like to leave with enough time to get to work about 10 minutes early. I have found walking to and from work is a good way to start and finish the day, helping create a good work/life balance.
When I get to work, the first thing I usually do is make sure the shop is open, gates, and roller doors are open, the lights are on, and the till is full. After this I will sit down and write out a plan for the day and what growers I will check, additionally I will finalise any reports/recommendations leftover from the previous day. Then I sit down with my mentor agronomist and go through the previous day’s crop checks, discuss what crops we will check today and plan out the rest of the week. Because we are working with clients, our schedules often change, we go over the week’s plan every day and sometimes next week’s plan to ensure we cover every client. I often use this time to send away any soil or water tests.
Depending on the day, I will either be with my mentor agro or I will be by myself. At the start of my grad program, we would always check crops together until I found my feet, learnt more about the crops and earned the trust of my mentor and senior agronomist. Summer is our busy season here in Southeast QLD so we spend most of our time in the paddock checking crops. Currently, we have been checking predominantly cotton and mung beans with some other soybean, sorghum and peanut crops. Ideally, we check cotton once or twice a week and mung beans once a week. This allows us to keep on top of the crop and allow us to make timely decisions if needed.
Checking the crops involves using a tarpaulin sheet, called a beat sheet, and a poll to beat the plant against the sheet to knock any insects out of the plant and onto the sheet. This allows us to identify the insects and count their numbers. I will repeat this multiple times, depending on the paddock size. This allows us to calculate thresholds to determine if it is economically viable to take action.
Around this time, I will usually pull up for lunch. If I have a full day checking crops I will pull up under a tree or near a creek and eat lunch. If it is a quieter day I may come back to the shop to have lunch and send some crop reports or other emails.
Typically, I will head back to the shop so I can write up crop reports/recommendations and send them through to the growers. Most of the time I can write all the reports and get them sent by 5.00 pm before I finish for the day. Sometimes, if I have checked lots of crops during the day and haven’t got enough time to get every report written, I may take some time at home after work to get the reports written. Why would I do that after work hours instead of the next morning? What we do as agronomists directly impacts our clients and if a client needs to spray a paddock I would rather they have the report ready for the next day. I have found it also frees up the next morning and leads to a more productive day. After all, I want to do well and develop in my field, so I am willing to put in some extra effort to make it happen.
I get home from work and will try to do some work around the yard, cook dinner, and unwind from the day by watching some TV or reading a book.
Some other cool things I get to do often as part of my job include travelling to other towns such as Maryborough (30min inland near Fraser Island) and Mundubbera, both 2 hours away from the shop, once a week to check cotton. This is a fantastic opportunity to see how cotton grows in different areas and climatic conditions, such as near the coast. Travelling around also gives me the chance to see other crops grown in these areas such as pineapples and sugar cane.
Thinking of experiencing life as a Nutrien Ag Solutions Graduate? Sign up to GradAustralia to receive job alerts for Nutrien Ag Solutions. | <urn:uuid:72082874-c19e-4ea0-b8c5-7bd7b0b05326> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://explorecareers.com.au/article/2022/06/07/a-day-in-the-life-with-graduate-agronomist-matthew-mccauley/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572408.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816151008-20220816181008-00679.warc.gz | en | 0.959447 | 1,000 | 1.6875 | 2 |
The Mecklenburger is a warmblood horse bred in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern region of north-eastern Germany. The breeding of these horses has been closely linked to the State Stud of Redefin. Historically influenced by Arabian and Thoroughbred blood, today's Mecklenburger is an athletic riding and driving horse similar to the neighboring Hanoverian. They are bred to the same standards as the other German Warmbloods, and are especially suitable for dressage and show jumping, though they are used for combined driving, eventing and show hunter competition as well.
Also known as
This breed is also called Mecklenburg, Mecklenburg Draughthorse, Mecklenburg Warmblood, Mecklenburger as well as Mecklenburger Coldblood.
Is your horse a Mecklenburger?
You can use our Horse Scanner app to find out whether your horse is a Mecklenburger. | <urn:uuid:0d63c31a-b55c-4306-8071-aa74390e2a2c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://siwalusoftware.com/horse-scanner/horse-breeds/mecklenburger/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573163.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818033705-20220818063705-00072.warc.gz | en | 0.941043 | 216 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Background: There is renewed interest in ACL repair following rupture with the development of new repair techniques. The aim of the audit was to assess outcomes and complications of ACL repair with Internal Brace Ligament Augmentation (IBLA) at minimum one year follow-up.
Materials and methods: 68 consecutive patients who underwent Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) repair with IBLA were followed for a minimum of one year following surgery. Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) and Western Ontario and McMaster osteoarthritis index (WOMAC) scores were collected at set time points via an online outcomes system. Improvements in scores from baseline were recorded and effect sizes for the five KOOS and three WOMAC domains were calculated. Patients suffering from re-rupture or undergoing re-interventions were identified and Kaplan-Meier survivorship calculated.
Results: Improvement was seen over the study period in all KOOS and WOMAC domains with the majority of improvement seen in the first three months. The results were comparable to the literature on ACL reconstruction. In the KOOS score, the greatest effect size at one year was seen in the Quality of Life (QoL) (2.82, 95% CI 2.25 to 3.39) and Sport domains (2.60, 95% CI 2.09 to 2.12). The lowest KOOS effect size was seen in the Activities of Daily Living (ADL) domain (1.1, 95% CI 0.68 to 1.51), with similar smaller improvements seen in the WOMAC domains.
There were four re-interventions including one for re-rupture, and one each for surgery for arthrofibrosis, meniscal tear and chondral parthology.
Conclusions: This audit provides early functional outcome and failure data that demonstrates the technique of ACL repair with IBLA is comparable with early results from ACL reconstruction, with the greatest improvements seen in return to sporting activity. Further randomised studies are required to directly compare repair against standard ACL reconstruction techniques.
Keywords: Anterior cruciate ligament; ACL; ACL reconstruction; ACL repair
Injury to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is common, particularly in young active individuals. Current estimates suggest that in the United States alone 400,000 ACL reconstructions are carried out each year . As the majority of ACL injuries occur in patients of working age, the economic burden to both patients and society is considerable.
The current ‘gold standard’ treatment for an ACL tear is ACL reconstruction . The technique either involves removing or bypassing residual ACL tissue, without any attempt to repair the ligament. This is despite the fact that in the majority of cases, sufficient tissue remains for a repair to be considered, particularly if surgery is carried out within six weeks of injury [3,4]. One of the reasons surgeons do not currently attempt ACL repair, is that historically isolated repair of the ACL has met with only moderate success, with revision rates of up to 24% .
A number of problems have been identified with ACL reconstruction however, with autograft harvest associated with a degree of morbidity from tissue loss. Hamstring muscle weakness following harvesting averages 10% in most studies with anterior knee pain common with patellar tendon grafts [5,6].
Although reconstructive surgery with autograft restores knee function, it does not produce a ‘normal’ feeling knee, with loss of proprioception a particular problem [7-9]. Not surprisingly therefore the majority of studies of gait after ACL reconstruction show abnormal gait patterns and altered knee kinematics which may be linked to the higher rate of early Osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee observed in this group [5,6,10-14].
Modern arthroscopic surgical instrumentation and implants might potentially allow more successful attempts to repair the ACL. ACL repair protected by the Internal Brace Ligament Augmentation (IBLA) system may offer an advantage over previous ACL repair techniques. The clinical benefits of a well repaired native ACL which retains host tissue and proprioceptive function are likely to be greater for patients than those offered by traditional ACL reconstruction surgery.
The aim of this audit was to assess the patient reported functional outcome and re-operation rate of a technique of ACL repair that combined repair with a synthetic Internal Brace to protect the healing ligament. The secondary aim of this audit was to provide pilot data to assist in the design of a prospective trial to compare ACL repair with the more commonly provided ACL reconstruction technique.
All patients undergoing ACL repair and Internal Brace Ligament Augmentation (IBLA - Arthrex, Naples, Florida) for isolated acute ACL injury between Sept 2011 and Sept 2014 in the lead author’s (GM) practice were included in this audit. Inclusion criteria were clinical and radiological confirmation of a complete isolated ACL rupture within three months of initial injury. Only patients who had completed one year of follow-up were included. Exclusion criteria were: patients younger than 16 years of age, chronic ACL ruptures, multi-ligament injuries, bilateral injuries and polytrauma patients. Patients were considered eligible for repair and IBLA if they were within six weeks of injury, although during the period of the audit, the maximum time from injury to surgery was increased to three months. Associated tears of either menisci were treated with resection or repair depending on type and location of the tear.
Overall 82 consecutive patients were assessed, deemed suitable and consented for the procedure, with 68 patients actually undergoing repair and IBLA once the ability to repair the torn ACL had been confirmed at the time of surgery. For those patients with mid-substance ruptures in whom ligament repair was not feasible, all 14 underwent ACL reconstruction instead. Twenty-seven patients had a complete dataset of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) suitable for analysis. This group forms the study group for PROMs analysis. The overall group of 68 patients who underwent ACL repair are considered when examining re-rupture and re-intervention during the study period and in the calculation of Kaplan-Meier survivorship.
Patients Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) were routinely recorded prospectively using the Surgical Outcomes System (SOS) (Arthrex, Naples, Florida). This online system collected PROMs data by automatically emailing surveys to patients at predefined time points.
Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome (KOOS) scores and Western Ontario and McMaster osteoarthritis index (WOMAC) scores were collected pre-operatively and at three, six and 12 months postoperatively. Data on complications from repair failure, reoperation and infection were also collected.
The surgery was performed under general anaesthetic and as a day case procedure. Local anaesthetic infiltration was used to assist postoperative pain management and patients were allowed to mobilise fully weight-bearing without bracing. The ACL repair technique involved repair of the ligament where it had avulsed from its femoral attachment on the medial wall of the lateral femoral condyle. The technique was used only for proximal detachment injuries of the ACL where the ligament had avulsed from its femoral attachment. The surgery was carried out within three months of the original injury. Beyond this time the ACL remnant begins to remodel and retract, and the tissue is no longer able to be placed back at its original attachment point.
The ACL remnant was ‘whip stitched’ using an arthroscopic suture passing instrument developed for shoulder surgery (Scorpion FastPass - Arthrex, Naples, Florida). A single ‘whip stitch’ was sufficient in the majority of cases although an additional suture was passed if the remaining host tissue was friable. The proximal end of the ACL was then re-approximated against the medial wall of the lateral femoral condyle, in an anatomical mid-bundle position. The bone on the femoral condyle at the anatomical insertion point was freshened with a microfracture probe.
The repair was then protected using the Internal Brace Ligament Augmentation Repair device, a 2.5 mm polyethylene tape bridging from tibia to femur, with the aim of creating the ideal mechanical environment to allow healing to occur in the ligament at an appropriate length. The Internal Brace bridges the anatomical attachments of the ACL in the mid-bundle position on both femur and tibia, protecting the repair. Tensioning of the Internal Brace was carried out with the knee in extension.
3.5 mm tunnels were drilled in the tibia and femur to facilitate the repair and for the Internal Brace fixation. Fixation of the repair stitch and Internal Brace proximally was carried out with the ACL TightRope (Arthrex, Naples, Florida) whilst distal fixation of the Internal Brace was carried out with the SwiveLock Suture Anchor (Arthrex, Naples, Florida).
Patients underwent a standard ACL rehabilitation programme following ACL repair, avoiding open chain exercises for 6 weeks post-operatively. Limited pain and swelling facilitated early range of movement, muscle control and restoration of function, allowing accelerated early phase rehabilitation.
Statistically analysis was performed with SPSS (Version 19, IBM UK Ltd, Hampsire, UK). Mean ages were compared between men and women using the Student t-test. KOOS and WOMAC domains at each time point are reported as means with Standard Deviations (SD). KOOS and WOMAC scores at each time point were compared with the adjacent time points using the repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) test. This test provides an overall p value for change over the whole times series. Post-hoc paired testing was performed for individual time periods (baseline-3 months, 3 months to 6 months, 6 months to 1 year), and was adjusted for multiple testing with the Bonferonni correction. The overall difference from baseline to one year was also calculated and tested for significance using a paired t-test. The mean difference and 95% confidence intervals for this change are also reported as effect sizes . A small effect size is generally considered to be 0.2 to 0.3, a medium effect to be 0.3 to 0.8 and a large effect to be greater than 0.8 . The effect size is the change divided by the baseline Standard Deviation (SD). The level of statistical significance was set at p<0.05. Two tailed tests were used throughout.
Kaplan-Meier survivorship methodology was used to calculate the cumulative reintervention rate. This allowed for compensation for different periods of follow-up as all patients in the original series were considered for this analysis. All cause reintervention was considered along with specific failure of the ACL repair.
The mean age was 34 years, (standard deviation (SD) 15.5, median 28, range 16 to 60). There were 14 men (51.9%) and 13 women (48.1%). There was no significant difference in mean age between genders (t-test; p=0.146). There was a significant improvement over the study period in all KOOS and WOMAC domains (Table 1, Figure 1). The majority of the improvement was seen in the first three months. In the Sport and Symptoms domains, further improvements were noted between six and twelve months.
|Baseline||3 Months||6 Months||1 Year||P Value|
|ADL||Score (SD)||53.0 (37.7)||74.7 (36.5)||77.9 (37.9)||94.4 (18.8)|
|Change (95% CI)||21.7 (8.2 to 35.2)||3.2 (-12.0 to 18.2)||16.5 (-0.6 to 33.6)||P<0.001|
|Pain||Score (SD)||58.0 (29.1)||85.2 (12.6)||87.0 (12.8)||91.1 (7.4)||P<0.001|
|Change (95% CI)||27.1 (13.7 to 40.7)||1.8 (-3.7 to 7.2)||4.1 (-0.6 to 8.8)|
|QOL||Score (SD)||20.1 (18.3)||48.0 (28.8)||50.5 (29.3)||71.7 (21.1)||P<0.001|
|Change (95% CI)||27.9 (19.6 to 36.2)||2.5 (-10.6 to 15.5)||21.2 (6.7 to 35.7)|
|Sport||Score (SD)||21.3 (22.7)||52.7 (28.8)||59.1 (36.1)||80.4 (21.8)||P<0.001|
|Change (95% CI)||31.4 (20.2 to 42.6)||6.4 (-8.8 to 21.7)||21.3 (5.0 to 37.5)|
|Symptoms||Score (SD)||38.8 (30.0)||63.8 (35.2)||67.5 (35.9)||85.7 (12.8)||P<0.001|
|Change (95% CI)||25 (12.6 to 37.4)||3.7 (-10.9 to 18.3)||18.3 (3.2 to 33.3)|
|Pain||Score (SD)||57.0 (38.9)||75.2 (37.1)||76.6 (37.7)||92.5 (18.8)|
|Change (95% CI)||18.2 (5.4 to 31.0)||1.4 (-13.8 to 16.7)||15.9 (-1.3 to 34.1)||P<0.001|
|Stiffness||Score (SD)||44.6 (35.4)||66.5 (34.9)||71.0 (36.7)||85.7 (21.2)||P=0.001|
|Change (95% CI)||21.9 (8.2 to 35.6)||4.5 (-10.4 to 19.3)||14.7 (-2.8 to 32.3)|
|Function||Score (SD)||53.1 (38.4)||73.9 (36.9)||77.4 (38.5)||94.3 (19.1)||P<0.001|
|Change (95% CI)||20.9 (6.9 to 34.8)||3.5 (-12.2 to 19.1)||16.9 (-0.8 to 34.7)|
Table 1: KOOS and WOMAC domain scores at baseline, 3 months, 6 months and 1 year. P-value represents repeated measures ANOVA test for within subject variation over the time periods. The change represents the mean difference (95% confidence interval) between each time point. Significant differences are highlighted in bold type (p<0.05).
In the KOOS score, the greatest effect size at one year was seen in the Quality of Life (QoL) (2.82, 95% CI 2.25 to 3.39) and Sport domain (2.60, 95% CI 2.09 to 2.12) (Figure 2). The lowest KOOS effect size was seen in the Activities of Daily Living (ADL) domain (1.1, 95% CI 0.68 to 1.51). Similar improvements were seen in the WOMAC domains (Table 2).
|Change: Baseline to 1 Year||Baseline SD||Effect Size||P Value|
|ADL||41.3 (25.7 to 57.0)||37.7||1.1 (0.68 to 1.51)||<0.001|
|Pain||33.0 (19.2 to 46.9)||29.1||1.13 (0.66 to 1.61)||<0.001|
|QOL||51.6 (41.1 to 62.1)||18.3||2.82 (2.25 to 3.39)||<0.001|
|Sport||59.1 (47.4 to 70.8)||22.7||2.60 (2.09 to 3.12)||<0.001|
|Symptoms||47.0 (34.0 to 60.0)||30.0||1.57 (1.13 to 2.00)||<0.001|
|Pain||35.5 (18.3 (52.8)||38.9||0.91 (0.47 to 1.36)||<0.001|
|Stiffness||41.1 (23.0 to 59.2)||35.4||1.16 (0.65 to 1.67)||<0.001|
|Function||41.3 (25.1 to 57.5)||38.4||1.08 (0.65 to 1.50)||<0.001|
Table 2: Overall change from baseline to 1 year. P value represents Paired t-test. The effect size (change divided by standard deviation) is reported for the overall change from baseline to 1 year.
The one year cumulative reintervention rate for any cause was 6.0% (n=4, 95% CI 5.9 to 28.8) (Figure 3). This group comprised four patients: one patient whose repair failed at 18 weeks on return to collision sports, a release and manipulation for stiffness, one for recurrent meniscal pathology and one for a patellofemoral osteochondral lesion. Arthroscopy in these three latter patients demonstrated the ACL repair to be intact (Figure 4). The cumulative reintervention rate for a rerupture was 1.5% (n=1, 95% CI 1.5 to 54.0). There were no further failures beyond one year.
The results of this audit suggest that at short-term follow-up, repair and IBLA appears at least as effective in restoring stability and function to the knee as traditional ACL reconstruction surgery, with similar PROMS to those reported in the literature for traditional ACL reconstruction techniques . In particular the effect size is greatest in the KOOS Sport, Symptoms and QoL which are the most discriminating domains of the score for high activity levels. Additionally a low all cause reintervention and ACL repair failure rate are seen in our patients.
In the late 1970s through to the late 1980s ACL repair was widely used, but with mixed outcomes. Although some reported good outcomes [19-21] other studies suggested high revision rates of up to 24% or poor clinical outcome scores (mean KOOS Score 68.6) . The concept of successful ACL repair however remains attractive, with retention of proprioceptive fibres in the healed native ligament more likely to occur than following reconstruction. Loss of proprioception is important as it may lead to overloading of the ACL graft and the loss of confidence in the knee after ACL reconstruction. It is estimated that less than 50% of patients return to sport after ACL reconstruction, and those that do often find that they cannot perform at the same level as pre-injury/pre-surgery [24,25]. The fear of movement (kinesiophobia) is high after an ACL injury and although this generally improves after ACL reconstruction, many patients still report some degree of kinesiophobia post-surgery .
The majority of studies assessing gait and knee kinematics post- ACL reconstruction show an improvement in gait pattern compared to pre-surgery, but compensatory mechanisms of muscle use persist in the majority of patients indicating sub-optimal performance of the reconstructed graft [5,12,27-31]. Graft donor site morbidity from tissue loss and scarring is well documented with hamstring weakness and anterior knee pain problematic after hamstring and patellar tendon harvesting respectively [5,6].
The current evidence base does not provide clear data on whether the loss of proprioception, donor site morbidity or abnormal gait patterns and altered knee kinematics causes or contributes to the development of early osteoarthritis of the knee observed in these patients, but the failure of ACL reconstruction to prevent the development of osteoarthritis is recognized [6,10].
A number of modifications have been introduced to the ACL reconstruction technique to try to improve outcomes and these include: changes in graft tunnel position, double bundle rather than single bundle grafts, retention of the ACL remnant and variations in graft fixation techniques. However, none of these modifications have been shown to make a significant difference to patient reported outcomes.
A recent systematic review by Crawford et al. of studies with minimum 10 year follow-up data, indicates that the cumulative ACL graft failure rate requiring revision surgery at 10 years is 11.9% . The actual rate of failure of the graft may be higher than this if patients declining further surgical intervention were to be included. Shorter term data from the Danish Ligament Registry (n=12,193) indicates a 4.1% revision rate for ACL reconstruction at five years after surgery, with those under the age of 20 having a higher revision rate of 8.7% .
Proximal detachment of the ACL is the most common scenario following injury and our experience suggests that sufficient ACL tissue can remain for up to 3 months following ACL injury to allow a repair to be carried out. Not all patients in our series were suitable for repair however with 14 out of the original 82 patients (17%) undergoing ACL reconstruction as they had mid-substance ruptures. Importantly both 3.5 mm femoral and tibial tunnels placed for repair were in exactly the same location as the larger tunnels drilled for placement of the hamstring or patellar tendon autografts used for ACL reconstruction, should failure of the ACL repair technique occur. In the single patient requiring revision surgery in this series, a routine patellar tendon reconstruction was carried out as a primary type of procedure.
Earlier return to function could result in less hospitalisation and healthcare usage post-operatively, with an earlier return to work and sport. This could potentially have benefits not only to the patient but to the health service and society as a whole. None of these factors could be specifically assessed in this audit and all require to be prospectively investigated. This audit also has limitations in terms of the sample size, completeness of the dataset and length of follow-up. A power calculation was not relevant as we were primarily performing a clinical audit. A post-hoc power calculation however showed that this study had a 25% power to detect a small effect on the KOOS Sport, a 81.6% power to detect a medium effect and a 98.9% power to detect a large effect. This audit was also at risk of experiencing potential selection bias as patients opting for early repair may have been more likely and motivated to comply with rehabilitation and return to sporting activities. In particular the time to surgery in patients undergoing acute ACL repair with IBLA is likely to be shorter than those undergoing ACL reconstructions, the majority of whom will have failed a period of conservative care. The results of this audit may reflect the results of early intervention, rather than that of the repair itself.
We have no way of assessing whether the ACL had healed or not and it is theoretically possible that stability of the knee at this early stage is being maintained only by the Internal Brace, with limited healing of the repaired tissue. Future studies should include the use of MRI to assess healing of the repair. Longer term follow-up will also determine the risk of secondary meniscal tears and the subsequent development of osteoarthritis.
This audit provides early functional outcome and failure data that demonstrates the technique of ACL repair with IBLA is at least comparable with early results from ACL reconstruction, while avoiding donor site morbidity and speeding return to sporting activity. It provides useful early pilot data that may assist with the development of a protocol for a randomised controlled trial comparing this technique with standard ACL reconstruction.
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
The senior author has received payment for services from a third party (Arthrex, Naples, Florida) whose products were used in the surgery of the submitted work. | <urn:uuid:b86f4563-7c0c-4283-9a05-62674244162c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.longdom.org/open-access/anterior-cruciate-ligament-repair-revisited-preliminary-results-of-primary-repair-with-internal-brace-ligament-augmentat-39889.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571150.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810070501-20220810100501-00677.warc.gz | en | 0.940095 | 5,280 | 1.546875 | 2 |
First the good news – the Irish housing market has finally hit rock bottom in the wake of the economic collapse according to a leading international credit ratings agency.
Now the bad news – it may be some time before the market drags itself off the floor according to the same Standard & Poor’s report.
The S&P report, widely quoted in all the Irish papers on Thursday, says that the market is coming to the end of a ‘correction’ in prices but with interest rates set to rise, prices are unlikely to show much growth.
“Ireland’s prices have corrected but there’s no recovery in sight,” said the American-based agency.
The report states that Irish prices have fallen 33 per cent from their peak in the late 00s but many experts believe the falls have been much steeper according to the Irish Independent.
“Irish house prices have, in our opinion, completed their correction but it will take time - probably another couple of years - before we see tangible signs of market activity resuming,” said the pan European report which confirmed that Irish falls were the biggest on the continent.
Prices, according to Standard & Poors, are now back at 2000 levels and more affordable to ordinary buyers.
“This suggests that, unlike other markets, Ireland has pretty much fully corrected the excess of the previous housing bubble,” said the company.
“Still, this does not mean that the market is about to pick up again soon, in our view. We continue to see uncertainties about the extent of supply overhang that still needs to be absorbed.”
Some experts, S&P noted, believe there are 300,000 excess houses and apartments in the Irish market.
“More recent estimates from the Irish Department of the Environment point to a much lower number of 23,000, but based on a smaller survey of recently completed estates,” the agency claimed.
“Ireland’s overall economic situation, with growth expected to remain very weak this year on the back of a severe fiscal adjustment, combined with the likely gradual rise in Euro-zone interest rates, does not call for much optimism regarding the short-term housing market.” | <urn:uuid:b4a73218-ea2f-4b99-ae15-c8a1f653ae17> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.irishcentral.com/news/irish-house-market-bottoms-out-but-no-growth-in-sight-121379914-237385951 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281574.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00015-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963136 | 460 | 1.539063 | 2 |
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This is the Carcharodontosaurus species, which is often referred to as the African T-Rex. 100 million years ago and was actually larger than the North American T-Rex. Due to their fragile nature and the fact that these teeth are roughly 100 million years old, it is very rare to obtain a specimen that is void of repair or restoration.... Hence any tooth that is 100% Natural is very rare.Yes, this specimen is real and not a fake or replica. Please note that I DO NOT sell ANY fakes, replicas, or plastic molds of any kind. ONLY the real deal here! Now, onto the specimen before you. 100% Natural specimen and EXTRA WIDE. This specimen is about 50% wider or than most specimens of this same size. And as stated, this tooth is 100% Natural which makes it all the more special. Very very difficult to obtain these without any repairs or restoration work. Thank you for your interest in my fossils. We do NOT measure our teeth on a ruler and round up. Why would you should be the question. We do NOT list low quality commercial grade teeth as "Gems" or World Class. We do NOT hide flaws during photographing.
Please read the question and answer section below. I charge what the post office charges. Because if the package weighs 16 ounces or less, and 99% of them do, than the United States Postal Service does not require one. Question #3: Do you have a website? There is never such thing as a stupid question, and I answer all my emails personally._gsrx_vers_855 GS 7.0.19 (855). The item "African T-Rex Carcharodontosaurus Dinosaur Tooth 3 & 5/8 in. 100% NATURAL" is in sale since Saturday, November 30, 2019.
This item is in the category "Collectibles\Rocks, Fossils & Minerals\Fossils\Vertebrates\Amphibian, Reptile & Dinosaur". The seller is "sydni816" and is located in Bradenton, Florida. This item can be shipped worldwide. | <urn:uuid:3931ddc6-f01f-4343-b714-1e2a53f03dce> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://rextrexdinosaur.com/african_t_rex_carcharodontosaurus_dinosaur_tooth_3_5_8_in_100_natural_2.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573667.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819100644-20220819130644-00078.warc.gz | en | 0.936631 | 499 | 1.75 | 2 |
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Widgets are always plugins, but plugins donā??t always have widgets. A widget usually is a pretty and easy way of using a plugin.
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Posted on: April 18, 2011 If you enjoyed this post then why not add us on Google+? Add us to your Circles | <urn:uuid:fbef6f44-4790-49f1-9bf0-eb148cb240a0> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://roseindia.net/ajax/jquery/widgetVSplugin.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280364.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00035-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900355 | 178 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Wellness: Health Care
Risks for dogs include obstruction and alcohol poisoning
My husband has recently taken up the delicious hobby of artisan bread baking. Although this is a pursuit my belly fully supports, it has reminded me of the dangers that raw bread dough poses for our pets. The risks are twofold. The first problem is that dough rapidly rises after ingestion and can cause life-threatening stomach distention and obstruction. The second—and potentially more serious—risk comes from the fermentation of the yeast, which can lead to alcohol poisoning.
Any species can be susceptible, but dogs are most commonly involved due to their often indiscriminate eating habits. Given the opportunity, many dogs will readily ingest bread dough during the process of rising, and because they snarf all that is available, they usually consume 1 to 2 loaves or a pan of rolls. They don’t think, “Hmm, I’ll just save this one loaf for later,” so they generally present with large amounts in their stomachs.
A common scenario is that the soon-to-be bread is placed on a counter to rise overnight, and the next morning the owner wakes to find missing dough and a symptomatic dog. I treated a Labrador for alcohol poisoning just this past weekend after he ate two pizza dough rounds. He stumbled into the hospital with his worried parents but went on to make a full recovery with treatment.
How does it happen?
The warm, moist environment of the stomach serves as an efficient incubator for the replication of yeast within the dough. The expanding dough mass causes distention of the stomach, which compromises blood circulation in the body. The continued distention of the stomach can also make breathing more difficult.
Yeast fermentation also produces ethanol (alcohol) as a byproduct, which is absorbed into the bloodstream, resulting in inebriation and potentially life-threatening disturbances to a pet’s system.
What are the clinical signs?
Early signs can include unproductive attempts at vomiting, visible belly distention and increasing depression. As ethanol intoxication develops, the pet can stagger and become disoriented. Eventually, profound neurological depression, weakness, coma, low body temperature and/or seizures can be seen. Death is usually due to the effects of alcohol rather than from the stomach distention, however, the potential for the dough to trigger life-threatening Gastric Dilatation and Volvulus (GDV or “bloat”) or intestinal obstruction should not be overlooked. [See: Bloat, the Mother of All Emergencies]
How is it diagnosed?
Blood alcohol levels can be obtained through a laboratory, but are generally not used in a veterinary setting; a presumptive diagnosis is usually made based on history of exposure and presenting clinical signs. Other disease processes that can present in a similar way include GDV, other intestinal foreign bodies, ethylene glycol ingestion (antifreeze) and ingestion of antidepressants.
How is it treated?
Vomiting may be induced with recent ingestion in animals not showing clinical signs, although the glutinous nature of bread dough may make removal by this method difficult. In animals where vomiting has been unsuccessful, gastric lavage may be attempted (“flushing” the dog’s stomach with water while he is under anesthesia).
Cold water introduced into the stomach through a stomach tube during lavage may slow the rate of yeast fermentation and aid in removal of the dough. Surgical removal of the dough mass may also be required if a large enough amount has been ingested.
Pets that present with the additional signs of alcohol toxicity first need to be stabilized and have any life-threatening conditions corrected before attempts are made to remove the dough. Alcohol toxicity is managed by correcting metabolic problems, managing heart abnormalities and helping the pet maintain his normal body temperature. Fluid therapy is administered to help enhance elimination of the alcohol from the blood stream.
Luckily, the dog I treated this past weekend did not require surgery. We supported him with IV fluids and took serial X-rays to monitor the passage of the dough, ensuring no complications developed. Aside from a pizza dough hangover, he made a full recovery in 36 hours.
As always, prevention is the best treatment: If you have a fabulous baker boy (or girl) in your home, be extra conscientious during the rise!
Wellness: Health Care
Tips for keeping your pet merry this season
O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree! You are beautiful, but you can hurt me!
As the holiday season gears up, have you noticed that with the increase in fun and festivities comes a simultaneous increase in the level pet mischief? There just seems to be no way for our curious pups to resist the allure of all that holiday paraphernalia.
Below is a list (all naughty, no nice!) of the common problems I treat on an emergency basis:
Decorative lights on the tree can pose a serious electrocution hazard when chewed. Signs of electric shock range from a dazed and confused behavior to difficulty breathing, burn injuries in the mouth, seizures and potentially sudden death. Immediate evaluation by a veterinarian is recommended if you suspect electrocution. Take appropriate precautions to ensure lights are hung out of reach and the cord is adequately protected. Use grounded three-prong extension cords and strictly follow manufacturer's guidelines for light usage.
Tinsel and ribbon can potentially cause an obstruction in the intestines when ingested. In medical terms, we refer to these items as “linear foreign bodies,” and they have significant potential to get bound up within the intestinal tract causing a blockage, and in some cases, cutting through the intestines.
Most often, these linear foreign bodies get “hung up” in the intestines, causing deadly “bunching” and can only be removed by surgical means. If you notice a bit of ribbon, tinsel or string, whether from the mouth or the other end (see photo), it is important to remember never cut the ribbon or attempt to remove it yourself! Seek veterinary care immediately.
Vomiting, diarrhea, loss of appetite and depression will be the most common abnormalities seen when an intestinal obstruction is developing, and early surgical care is essential. Exercise extreme caution and never leave pets unattended around string, tinsel and ribbon.
Ornaments may be ingested and have potential to cause an obstruction leading to the need for surgery. Ornaments made of glass can fall and break, leading to cuts and other injuries. Adequately secure ornaments and place them above the reach of wandering paws and curious noses.
Tree-stand water contains preservatives and sap that may cause vomiting and diarrhea.
Festive plants are often displayed during the holidays and precautions should be taken to avoid ingestion of any plant. Even “nontoxic” plant material, such as pine needles, may cause stomach upset.
Common holiday plants to take particular note of include:
Potpourri is often used around the house to put us in the holiday mood. The plant material and some additives are very irritating to the skin, mouth and intestinal tract. If skin exposure is suspected, then bathing with a mild soap is recommended and medical care may be needed to treat irritation and pain that follow exposure. Ingestion often results in signs that may include drooling, loss of appetite, vomiting, and in some cases, disorientation.
Treats are a common source of holiday emergencies. While it can be hard to resist your pleading pet’s eyes, it is important to recognize the dangers of particular foods and treats:
“People foods” that we take for granted as being safe for us are not always safe for our pets. Raisins and grapes have been implicated in causing kidney failure in dogs. Onion ingestion can cause blood cell damage in both dogs and cats. Chocolate contains caffeine and a caffeine-like substance (theobromine) that dogs and cats are highly sensitive to causing stomach upset, tremors, seizures and irregular heartbeat. Macadamia nuts cause dogs to show a variety of strange neurological signs that can include weakness, apparent pain, disorientation and tremors.
I hope this information helps you and your four-legged family members avoid any “bah-humbugs” this holiday season!
News: Guest Posts
New York Times Bulldog story exposes serious health issues, deep denial
In 2008, the BBC documentary “Pedigree Dogs Exposed”—which revealed high levels of disability, deformity and disease among purebred dogs—dropped like a bomb on the world of dog shows and breeding in the United Kingdom. A year-and-a-half later, the UK’s Kennel Club initiated steps to reform its practices and standards.
Three years later, questions and calls for reform are finally gaining traction here. In April, the Humane Society of the United States convened “The Purebred Paradox” conference to explore issues like those being debated across the pond, and featuring some of those key players. In September, John Woestendiek presented the state of the debate in a feature for Bark (“Breeding Paradox: Can dog-breeding practices be changed?”)
And last Sunday, Benoit Denizet-Lewis added The New York Times’s high profile voice to the conversation with a Magazine cover story on the poor benighted Bulldog (“Can the Bulldog Be Saved?”). The mascot for the Marines and many college sports programs just might become the most enduring example of breeding gone wrong.
Is this a topic near and dear to your heart? Read up on the recent coverage and check back, we’ll be hosting an online conversation with experts soon.
Wellness: Health Care
What you need to know about this life-threatening condition for dogs
There is no quicker way to jump to the front of the ER line than if you walk into the hospital with a distended dog. Bloat is a life-threatening condition that I treat frequently, and a good outcome is time-dependent.
Last week, JoAnna Lou wrote about recognizing the signs of bloat and included an educational video of an Akita experiencing GDV (don’t worry, he survived!). This topic elicited excellent comments and questions, prompting me to want to expand upon it further. I hope to answer some of the questions put forth by readers as well as dispel misconceptions that could potentially harm your pet.
First, some vocabulary: Bloat is a condition when the stomach fills with air and/or fluid (dilatation). This can progress to a twisting of the stomach upon itself, called GDV (gastric dilatation volvulus). Bloat is often used to describe GDV, but there is a vast medical difference. We’ll get to the details of GDV in a moment, but let’s start with the most important take-home message:
If you even remotely suspect bloat or GDV, take your dog to a veterinary hospital IMMEDIATELY!
What NOT to do:
A note about the use of Gas X: This medication may help to reduce the amount of stomach gas in the case of “simple” bloat, but it will do nothing to help your pet in the case of GDV. The problem with GDV is not the gas, but the actual twisting of the stomach (think of a balloon being twisted in half, like when a clown makes an animal figure). It is the twist that kills, and a medication will not undo the deadly rotation of the stomach. Please do not waste valuable life-saving moments waiting to see if the medication helps! Taking an x-ray of your pet’s abdomen is the only way to tell the difference between bloat and GDV, allowing for appropriate intervention.
What is GDV and why is it so serious?
The twisted and bloated stomach presses on the major blood vessels that carry blood back to the heart, stopping normal circulation and sending the dog into shock. Making matters worse, the stomach tissue is literally dying because it is stretched tightly and blood cannot circulate through it. Intense pain is associated with this disease, causing the heart to race at such a high rate that heart failure will result.
There can be no recovery until the stomach is surgically untwisted and the gas is released. A dog with GDV will die in a matter of hours unless surgery is performed. For each hour that goes by, there is a greater risk for complications during surgery as well as during the recovery period.
What are the signs of GDV or bloat?
View some of these bloat symptoms in the video we posted last week.
What dogs are at risk?
Classically, this condition affects deep-chested breeds, and dogs with deep chests that weigh more than 99 pounds have a 20 percent risk of bloat. Although a rare occurrence, I have also treated three small-breed dogs for this condition in my ten-year career.
There are many theories regarding what triggers GDV, but truly, no one really knows—it remains a veterinary medical mystery. Risk factors, lifestyle and personality profiles that may increase a dog’s potential for developing GDV have been identified over the years and include:
On the flip side, the following factors may decrease the risk of GDV:
One day after treating Bauer for bloat, veterinarian Shea Cox scheduled him for surgery to prevent the more serious GDV.
What else can I do?
For breeds with a high risk of bloat, a preventive surgery called prophylactic gastropexy can be performed at the time of spay or neuter. Gastropexy involves surgically “tacking down” the stomach to the inside of the abdomen to prevent rotation. If your dog has already been spayed or neutered, the same procedure can be done laparoscopically, and is minimally invasive. I had this procedure performed on my own Dobie, Bauer. I saw him bloat (and thankfully not twist!) one day at the park, and treated him at work. The next day, I scheduled the laparoscopic procedure.
This is a same-day surgery with a quick and comfortable recovery. In the Bay Area, the cost is generally $1,500–$2,000, which is far cheaper than emergency surgery, and worth its weight in gold for peace of mind. One of my biggest fears was to have Bauer bloat while I was away for the day, only to return home to find I was too late.
It should be noted that gastropexy does not prevent future bloat, but it does prevent future twisting, which is the deadly component of the condition.
What is the prognosis?
Decades ago, a diagnosis of bloat was almost always a death sentence, and only 25 percent of pets with bloat survived. Today, the survival rate is better than 80 percent! Part of the reason for this is increased owner awareness (go, pet parents!) leading to rapid intervention and treatment. The earlier the veterinarian gets started with treatment, the better chance for survival. Extremely aggressive medical and surgical intervention early in the course of the disease has the most dramatic impact on overall success.
This is a condition I see much too frequently, but I have to say from personal experience, nearly all dogs return home (95 percent or greater) with early and appropriate treatment.
Being the doting mom of two Dobies, this is a subject that hits close to home, and one I have experienced personally. Thank you to JoAnna for helping raise awareness of this all-too-common condition in our large-breed babies. Feel free to ask questions; I am happy to further elaborate on any area. For now, I’m off to hug my boy, being especially thankful that he is with me today.
News: Guest Posts
A veterinarian with a potentially sick dog needed to know
Thanks to everyone who replied to my post, A Death in the Pack. Your stories and advice were both comforting and enlightening. Happily, Renzo dodged any long-term ill effects of his raisin binge and was back on stride within a few days.
But there was one aspect of Raisingate that was not satisfactory. When I first brought Renzo in, my veterinarian tried to assess how many raisins he may have ingested by eating approximately a half a box of Kellogg’s Raisin Bran. She called Kellogg’s to ask and was told it was proprietary information the company couldn’t release.
She was trying to figure out if he’d consumed more than three ounces, which would make a big difference in toxicity and treatment strategy—essentially, one day of fluids versus three days.
Thanks to the Internet and a skeptical engineering student, my vet was able to crack this carefully guarded secret with a few strikes of the keyboard! Aspiring Polymath: Adrian Corscadden decided to challenge Kellogg’s two scoops claim and actually separated out the raisins and weighed them. (His judgment: Barely a cup, or 150 grams in the 475 gram box.)
While Adrian was bothered by the vague “2 scoops” claim, I was peeved by Kellogg’s disregard for my dog. My business-savvy friends tell me it’s the way business is done. Sick dog be damned! Companies need to protect their intellectual property. I get that. I understand why they might not want to reveal a secret recipe. But anyone—including Corscadden, spikebythesea and Chow.com—can eventually separate out and weigh the raisins, so it’s hardly top secret.
So thanks to all of you out there who like to count and measure and record your discoveries. I’m not the only dog mom who’s grateful you did (at least one commenter on Adrian’s blog mentioned needing the information for this same reason). As for Kellogg’s, count me unhappy.
Wellness: Health Care
Fatty turkey trimmings can set the stage for pancreatitis
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and for many families this means the tradition of spending the day preparing and enjoying a delicious turkey dinner with all of the trimmings. Us humans are not the only ones who look forward to this meal, and I see many dogs in the ER after they have decided to help themselves to a serving or two. While our pets may find this to be an initially satisfying (albeit naughty) indulgence, it can set them up for the development of pancreatitis, a potentially life-threatening disease.
What is the job of the pancreas?
The pancreas is an organ that sits cozily just under the stomach and along the first part of the small intestine. The pancreas is all about secretion and it has two main jobs. The first is the secretion of digestive enzymes to help break down food, and the second is the secretion of insulin and glucagon (to regulate sugar metabolism). The digestive enzymes are the part of the story that concerns us in pancreatitis.
Just what is pancreatitis?
Put simply, pancreatitis is inflammation of the pancreas that disrupts its normal integrity. Digestive enzymes that are normally safely stored are released prematurely, beginning to digest the body itself, and the result can be a metabolic catastrophe. As the tissue becomes further inflamed, the damage begins to involve its next-door neighbor, the liver. Toxins released from this progressive party of tissue destruction can circulate more broadly, causing a body-wide inflammatory response. If the pancreas is severely affected, its ability to produce insulin can be affected and diabetes can result.
The good news is that most commonly the inflammation is confined to the area of the liver and pancreas, and most pets make a full recovery with support.
What causes pancreatitis?
In most cases, we never find out what causes it but we do know some events that trigger it. These can include:
Miniature Schnauzers are predisposed to pancreatitis as they commonly have altered fat metabolisms.
Signs of Pancreatitis
The classical signs are appetite loss, vomiting, diarrhea, painful belly, depressed attitude and fever.
Making the Diagnosis
Until recently, a reliable blood test has been lacking. A new newer generation option called the SPEC cPL (specific canine pancreatic lipase) test has come to be the lab test of choice. For dogs only, the SPEC cPL can be run overnight by a reference lab and is able to detect 83 percent of pancreatitis cases and exclude other possible diseases in 98 percent of cases.
This test should not be confused with the “in-hospital” pancreatic test, which resembles a “pregnancy test” and gives you an answer of “abnormal” or “normal.” I am personally not a huge fan of this test because other disease processes (such as liver or gastrointestinal disease) can cause an “abnormal” result.
Ultrasound detects 68 percent of cases and provides the opportunity to look at other organs. Since pancreatitis can be accompanied by a tumor near the pancreas, ultrasound is an important tool for catching such complicating factors. I discuss and recommend this diagnostic for all patients I suspect have pancreatitis.
The passage of food through the intestine is a strong stimulus to the pancreas, which is what we want to avoid. Essentially, we want the pancreas to “rest.” This generally means no food or water for 2 to 3 days (in our very ill patients) using IV fluid support to prevent dehydration. Fluid support generally requires electrolyte supplementation and a critical patient will need 24-hour care with blood-test monitoring several times a day. A plasma transfusion represents a specific type of fluid therapy and may be of great help in severe cases.
Pancreatitis can be a very painful condition and pain management is of utmost importance in recovery and is a cornerstone of treatment. Untreated pain affects the immune system and has been shown to increase death rate. Medications to control nausea are also used. Antibiotics are used because even though pancreatitis is not a bacterial disease, bacterial invasion from the diseased intestine is a common occurrence.
Once the patient has started to eat again, a low-fat diet is important to minimize pancreatic stimulation. Since there is potential for the pancreas to always have a smoldering bit of inflammation, long-term use of a low-fat diet is likely to be recommended.
Pancreatitis can be a very severe disease to experience and treat and I hope this helps raise awareness of a potential source of calamity. Please remember to keep your countertops pet-safe: Take all garbage outside promptly and be extra vigilant of the fact that even the most well behaved pets can be tempted with all of the food festivities.
Here’s to a SAFE, happy and wonderful Thanksgiving!
Dog's Life: Lifestyle
See what the symptoms look like in real life
Everyone with a large, deep chested dog is always worried about bloat (any breed can get bloat, but this demographic is disproportionally affected). Bloat is particularly scary because of how fast the condition becomes serious.
When bloat occurs, the dog’s stomach fills with air, fluid and/or food. The enlarged stomach puts pressure on other organs and can cause difficulty breathing and even damage to vital organs.
According to the ASPCA, even with immediate treatment, approximately 25 to 40 percent of dogs die from this condition. But certainly the odds are much better the sooner the dog can get emergency treatment.
I'm familiar with the signs of bloat, but the video below helped me learn what the symptoms look like in real life.
Roscoe, the dog in the clip, was adopted from Akita Rescue Mid-Atlantic Coast. The video was taken when he first got to his new home. No one present had ever seen bloat before. As soon as they realized Roscoe was sick, they rushed him to the emergency vet where he received life-saving treatment.
Thanks to this video, I feel much more confident that I could identify the symptoms of bloat.
Wellness: Health Care
Causes, risks and treatment of cataracts
When you look into your dog’s eyes, what should you see? If your pet is healthy, bright, shiny and clear eyes should be looking back at you. (Well, OK… those three qualities plus a pleading expression, begging for that last bite of whatever it is you are eating.) However, if your dog’s eyes begin to look a little cloudy or bluish-gray, it could indicate that cataracts are forming, which is a sign for you to take him or her to your veterinarian for further evaluation.
So, just what is a cataract?
Cataracts are characterized by the development of opacity in the lens of the eye. The lens is the normally clear structure that sits directly behind the iris (the colored part of the eye), and its job is to focus light as it moves toward the back part of the eye (the retina). Despite its clarity, the lens is in fact made of tissue fibers. As an animal ages, these fibers become more dense and compact, preventing the passage of light to the retina, leading to blindness.
What causes them to develop?
The most common cause of cataract formation is due to hereditary disease. Other causes include congenital (born with it), senile cataracts (age-related), diabetes, trauma, dietary deficiency (milk replacement formulas that are low in arginine or phenylalanine have been implicated as well as puppies fed strictly evaporated milk formulas or goats milk), electric shock or toxins.
Why is it bad to have a cataract?
A cataract by itself does not necessarily require treatment. If the only problem is blindness, and there is no associated inflammation or glaucoma, it is perfectly reasonable to have a blind pet, as dogs do not depend on vision the way humans do. Blind animals can have an excellent life quality and can adjust well to vision loss (though it is important not to move furniture around or leave any hazardous clutter in the home). Some dogs, however, do become anxious—or even aggressive—when they lose their vision.
Of bigger concern is the fact that a cataract can luxate, meaning it can slip from the tissue strands that hold it in place and end up floating around in the eye, causing damage. Furthermore, if a cataract settles in a place blocking the natural fluid drainage of the eye, a buildup in eye pressure (glaucoma) can result, leading to pain and permanent blindness.
Another problem is the fact that cataracts can begin to liquefy and dissolve after a long time. While this sounds like it should be a good thing, it is a highly inflammatory process, and creates a condition called uveitis. This is a very painful eye disease that can also lead to glaucoma.
How are cataracts treated?
Cataract treatment generally involves surgical removal or physical dissolution (“breaking up”) of the cataract under anesthesia. The ideal time for cataract surgery is the immature or early mature cataract stage.
Obviously, the pet must also be in good general health to undergo treatment. For example, a diabetic dog must be well regulated before cataract surgery. Also, in order for a pet to be a good surgical candidate, he or she must also have a temperament conducive to having eye drops administered at home. Lab work is performed prior to anesthesia and some ophthalmologists also request that pets have their teeth cleaned prior to surgery to minimize sources of infection for the eye.
Historically, removing the cataract meant surgically cutting into the eye and physically removing the lens. (This short video shows a cataract removal—not as daunting as one would think!) This is still done for older patients whose lenses are compact, but for younger patients where the lens is still soft, a technique called phacoemulsification is preferred.
This technique has become the most common method of removing cataracts in dogs. Here, the lens is broken apart by sound waves and sucked out with a gadget similar to a tiny—a few millimeters wide—vacuum cleaner. Artificial lenses are implanted at the time of surgery, restoring essentially normal vision. (Without the artificial lens, the dog’s vision will be approximately 20/800, and objects will appear to be reversed, as in a mirror.)
Cataract surgery is performed routinely with an overall 80 to 90 percent success rate. Long term prognosis following cataract surgery is very good to excellent. Overall, a 95 percent vision rate is reported immediately after cataract surgery, and once cataracts are removed, they cannot return!
What else could it be?
During exams, people often raise the concern that a cataract is developing in their pet’s eye. Generally, the vast majority of the time the pet does not have cataracts, but instead has the much more common condition known as nuclear sclerosis.
Nuclear sclerosis is a normal change that occurs in the lenses of older dogs and it appears as a slight graying of the lens. The older, denser lens begins to appear cloudy. It usually occurs in both eyes at the same time and occurs in most dogs over six years of age. The condition does not significantly affect vision and treatment is not needed.
How your veterinarian can tell the difference between a cataract and nuclear sclerosis is by shining a bright light into the eye. With a cataract, you are unable to see to the back of the eye (the retina); with nuclear sclerosis, you can still see the retina. In the pictures below, you can see how easily nuclear sclerosis (left) might be mistaken for a cataract (right).
If you observe cloudiness in one or both of your dog's eyes, you should bring him or her to see your veterinarian for further evaluation. Your veterinarian can perform a complete physical examination, focusing on the eyes, helping to determine the severity of the problem. Restoring vision for your pet can then be weighed against risk and expense, and it is a personal decision for each family to make.
Wellness: Health Care
The 411 on your dog’s anal glands
No butts about it, anal gland issues are not at the top of anyone’s conversation list. However, it is a fairly common problem that occurs in many of our pets.
Anal sac impaction most often results in only minor irritation (or, shall we say, “rear-itation”), but if left unchecked, an anal sac abscess can develop. This is a common complication that I see in the ER. Owners usually present their pet for “bleeding from the rectum,” when in reality, it is a ruptured anal sac that is draining blood-tinged fluid. It’s what I refer to as “anal sacs gone bad.”
What are they?
Anal sacs are two grape-sized glands just inside of your pet’s anus that contain a foul-smelling material. Prior to domestication, these glands served the purpose of marking an animal’s territory, and could be readily emptied voluntarily. Pets nowadays have largely lost their ability to empty their sacs on demand, and the process occurs naturally during normal defecation when firm feces are passed, lubricating the anal opening in the process. Glands can also “spontaneously empty” during times of stress or excitement; you can recognize this has happened if your dog suddenly develops a very unpleasant odor.
What is the anatomy?
The drawing (below, left) shows the location of normal-appearing anal glands in the dog. The glands lie beneath the surface of this skin and are not something that you can visibly see. The second image (below, right) shows both an inflamed anal gland as well as a ruptured anal gland (more on this below).
How does it happen?
Anal sacs become impacted when a blockage develops in the duct that leads from the gland to the anus. Main causes for the development of a blockage in the duct include having a softer stool or diarrhea, allergies that result in inflammation of the sac and duct, or just plain luck of the genetic draw. Surprisingly, worms are NOT a general cause. (It is a common misconception that a “dog scooting” means that your dog has worms.)
At this stage, the gland is generally swollen and not painful. However, if an infection develops the area can then become painful, swollen and sometimes result in the formation of an abscess. Infection develops because blockage of the duct results in inflammation of those local tissues. In general, when any tissue is inflamed it is no longer happy and healthy, making it easy for the bacteria that normally live in the area to get out of check and “take over,” causing an infection.
How can I tell if my pet’s anal sacs are causing a problem?
One of the first things owners often report is a “scooting” behavior; they observe their pets dragging their bottoms along the floor or carpeting in an attempt to empty the glands. Some dogs will also lick the anal area while others will nip and bite at their bottom or chase their tails.
How is it treated?
I bravely tackled the mission of watching a disturbing array of YouTube videos, trying to find one that best demonstrated the task properly. This video provides a good illustration of the task. It may be considered graphic by some, so please don’t click the link if you are easily queasy—some things are best left to professionals.
Can I express my pet’s anal glands at home?
Obviously, this is not for everyone, but if you feel comfortable doing so, this is a procedure that can be done at home. It is strongly recommended that you have your veterinarian or groomer demonstrate how to do this for you, for your first time. A second pair of hands up at the front of your dog or cat is helpful to give distracting rubs on the head and praise. A word of caution: Expressing incorrectly can cause irritation and lead to further problems so make sure you are able to perform the task correctly.
What if the scooting continues?
Your veterinarian should recheck the glands if the scooting behavior continues more than a couple of days following sac emptying. If left unattended, an abscess can develop in the gland and rupture through the skin of the rectal region. A ruptured anal sac abscess is oftentimes mistaken for rectal bleeding. Anal sac abscesses are generally treated with antibiotics, pain medications and warm compressing the area at home.
Another important reason to have your pet examined by your veterinarian if scooting continues is that there could also be other causes of this behavior such as allergies, parasites or even referred back pain.
What if my pet suffers from anal sac impaction on a regular basis?
If your pet’s anal sacs need to be emptied every month or more, you may opt to have the sacs surgically (and therefore permanently) removed. The procedure can be complicated as the sacs are located next to many important nerves—mainly those that control rectal sphincter function—and meaning, if improperly performed, your pet could permanently loose control of its bowel function. Despite how scary this sounds, anal sac removal is considered a relatively “simple” surgery by experienced surgeons.
While not the most pleasant of topics to cover, I hope you have found this information informative and helpful!
Wellness: Health Care
Diagnosis and treatment of marijuana ingestion
Marijuana ingestion is one of the most common toxicities in dogs that I see on an emergency basis, and the post-exam conversation generally starts with the owner asking, "Do you see this often?" I just smile and say, "Well, this is Berkeley..."
Pets are most frequently exposed to marijuana when they ingest “tasty” baked products, eat the remains of marijuana cigarettes, or get into somebody’s “stash.” Dogs can also get into mischief while out on hikes, finding and eating some abandoned drug.
What is marijuana toxicity?
Marijuana is the dried leaves and flowers from the hemp plant (Cannabis sativa) and the active chemical is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). THC is absorbed quickly into the bloodstream and signs of intoxication can be seen from within minutes up to 3 hours after exposure. The drug is eliminated quite quickly from the body and most pets will make a full recovery within 24 hours. However, mild clinical signs can last for up to three to four days because the chemical is absorbed into fat.
How is it diagnosed?
THC can be detected in blood or urine but diagnosis is generally based on unmistakable clinical signs as well as history from the owner. The signs are quite textbook, and this is such a common occurrence that our receptionists have learned to pick them out, bringing these pets to the treatment area saying, "looks like we have another pot dog." I myself treat several of these toxicities a month.
More than 95 percent of the veterinary patients seen for marijuana ingestion are dogs, and almost all exposed animals will exhibit neurological signs. The most common clinical signs we see are incoordination, urine dribbling, drooling, low body temperature and an increased response to stimulation. At higher doses, dogs can suffer from hallucinations with barking or agitation. Seizures, low or high heart rates, respiratory depression and possible progression to a coma can also occur.
How is it treated?
If a pet has recently ingested the marijuana (within 30 minutes) your veterinarian can attempt to induce vomiting to minimize the amount of toxin available to be absorbed. However, if it has been longer than 30 minutes since ingestion, the anti-nausea effects of marijuana usually make it an unsuccessful attempt.
Your veterinarian may also elect to administer activated charcoal, which will help reduce the amount of THC absorbed. Subcutaneous fluids are often given to help prevent dehydration during the recovery period.
If clinical signs are severe, the need for supportive care will be indicated and your pet may need to be hospitalized. Supportive care entails intravenous fluids, repeat administration of activated charcoal, general nursing care, and observation of temperature, heart rate and breathing. If higher doses are ingested, some animals require sedation with valium, and in very rare cases, may require mechanical assistance with breathing if respiration is severely depressed. This is uncommon, but I have personally treated one patient who required ventilator support (he went on to make a full recovery).
Will my pet recover?
Even in extreme cases, the vast majority of animals recover fully and death very rarely occurs.
The main take-away here: Do not withhold information from your veterinarian if you suspect or know that your dog may have ingested marijuana—even if you think that there is no possible way your pet could have gotten into it. Your veterinarian is not under any obligation to report these events, and this information is needed to appropriately treat your pet, as well as avoid unnecessary (and expensive) diagnostic tests.
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In Different College Basketball Bracket, Study Finds Gap in Graduation Rate
Although the Syracuse men’s basketball team received a No. 1 seed in this year’s championship tournament, the program failed to meet NCAA graduation rate standards. Photo by Chris Trotman/Getty Images.
Ahead of Thursday’s tipoff of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, a study has found anew that the gap in the graduation rate between white and black players remains wide.
The annual report, “Keeping Score When It Counts,” by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida found a 28 percent difference between the graduation rates of white players compared to their black counterparts. The report found a four-point improvement from last year, but according to lead author Richard Lapchick the driving force behind the change was a decrease in the percentage of white players graduating.
Overall, the graduation rate for male basketball student-athletes ticked up slightly to 67 percent from 66 percent in 2011. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a former college basketball player, has pushed the NCAA for years to improve the number of graduating athletes and last year called for the NCAA to ban teams with graduation rates below 40 percent from competing in the championship tournament.
In October, the NCAA responded by requiring all teams to meet a 50 percent graduation rate, with failure to do so for three straight years resulting in a ban from postseason play and potential scholarship and practice restrictions as well.
“Clear incentives change behavior in a radical way,” Duncan said on a call to reporters Wednesday. He praised the NCAA for moving “faster and further” on this issue than many expected.
This year, 13 teams in the men’s tournament failed to meet that new standard, including 2011 national champion Connecticut and 2012 tournament No. 1 seed Syracuse.
Once again, women’s college basketball programs beat the men in graduation rates. The report found 92 percent of the women’s teams compared to 39 percent of men’s teams graduate at least 70 percent of their players. Twenty-two women’s teams have a 100 percent graduation rate in this year’s tournament, including the University of Connecticut.
“The women’s teams always give us good news to report each year. It has been clear that student-athletes on women’s basketball teams graduate at a higher rate that student-athletes on men’s basketball teams,” Lapchick said.
“Additionally, the disparity gap between white and African-American student athletes has always been significantly smaller on women’s teams compared to men’s teams. This year’s study reveals that there has been no change in the disparity between graduation rates of white and African-American women student-athletes, which remains 8 percent compared to 28 percent for the men’s teams,” Lapchick said. | <urn:uuid:1ce28fae-ef9d-4206-9187-8f2ce4e2fe52> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/in-different-college-basketball-bracket-study-finds-gap-in-graduation-rate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279933.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00129-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963536 | 614 | 2.109375 | 2 |
They were all in one majestic room: Norway's King and Queen as well as the Crown Prince and Crown Princess; the leaders of 20 European nations including Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Francois Hollande; the European Union's Nobel Laureates and their entourages; plus hundreds of other dignitaries. They filled Oslo's massive and beautifully ornate City Hall. And there, too, among the VIPs sat an 84-year-old Jesuit priest who had traveled half a world away from Tacoma, Washington to be there. He seemed to be as well dressed as the rest of the crowd, though he admitted his black suit jacket and trousers had been purchased at Good Will. But to know Father William Jerome Bichsel is to understand that he does not place much importance on appearances. He's focused laser like on action, and what the next best action needs to be to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
Father Bichsel, whom everyone calls Father Bix or just plain Bix, was invited to the Nobel Peace Ceremony after he was awarded the 2012 Greater Tacoma Peace Prize by the Scandinavian community in Tacoma a few months ago. The award is bestowed annually on an individual whose life exemplifies a dedication to peace. The elderly priest had just been released from federal prison because he and four other activists broke into the U.S. Navy's Trident nuclear submarine base near Seattle, which houses one of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons in the country. Acting as citizen weapons inspectors, the intruders, whom prosecutors called, "The Bangor 5," were intent on exposing America's "weapons of mass destruction." Father Bix has spent a lifetime "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable," says Tom Heavey, a U.S. military veteran who headed up the committee that voted to give the elderly priest its Greater Tacoma Peace Prize. Heavey admits he wrestled with the decision to give the priest the award, because Heavey is "uncomfortable" with some of the priest's protests actions. In the end, however, Heavey decided Father Bix deserved the honor and that it was the right thing to do.
One wonders if there was similarly such soul-searching among the members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee whose choice of the European Union as this year's Laureate has sparked so much controversy. The EU is mired in a three-year-old debt crisis causing rampant unemployment, with some countries in the group teetering on bankruptcy. Several previous Nobel Laureates have sharply criticized the decision including, Desmond Tutu who called the EU an organization based on military force and not deserving of the award. Despite that one cannot overlook the progress in peace the group has fostered over the last 60 years, culminating in a unity among nations who were at one time often at war with each other, such as Germany and France.
At the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony, Father Bix listened intently to the speeches and said he came away feeling an opportunity had been missed. He commended the remarks of European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who described the European Union as supportive of disarmament and against nuclear proliferation. However, Father Bix said he wished that the support had come in the form of some concrete action from the EU instead of just words. | <urn:uuid:61105993-7f7b-4ccf-8a9e-12e35564b952> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.huffpost.com/entry/2012-greater-tacoma-peace-prize_b_2287247 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00073.warc.gz | en | 0.978347 | 670 | 1.765625 | 2 |
A coalition of environmental groups headed by WWF accused Indonesia's biggest paper producer Asia Pulp & Paper Wednesday of clearing forest in a tiger sanctuary set up by the company.
The report, "The truth behind APP's greenwashing" by the coalition Eyes on the Forest, published satellite maps showing cleared land within the Senepis tiger sanctuary that Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) established on Sumatra island.
"APP has repeatedly used this tiger sanctuary as part of their sustainability campaign. They have lied to the public and their buyers by saying the area is being conserved for tigers," WWF-Indonesia spokesman Aditya Bayunanda told AFP.
The report also showed maps that indicated 86 percent of the sanctuary was already classified by the government as partly protected, meaning that sustainable selective logging can be carried out.
"We looked at the satellite images and matched that with what was happening on the ground. We always use satellite imagery because companies can't hide from that," Bayunanda said.
Environmental group Greenpeace has in recent years waged highly successful campaigns against APP, the fourth-largest paper company in the world, saying it has destroyed millions of hectares (acres) of tropical forest.
More than a dozen major international companies, such as Barbie maker Mattel, KFC and Walmart, have dropped paper packaging contracts with APP since Greenpeace exposed what it says is the company's unsustainable practices.
APP said the allegations in the latest report were "totally false" and published online a government map indicating that the area it was carrying out logging was outside the sanctuary.
"We have also published pictures of the real Senepis tiger sanctuary which show that it has been preserved as dense, natural forest," APP managing director Aida Greenbury said in a statement.
The tiger reserve sits in Riau province on carbon-rich and biodiverse peatland and is surrounded by vast tracts of destroyed forest, cleared mostly for paper and palm oil plantations.
The sanctuary is home to some of the world's rarest wildcats, including the critically endangered Sumatran tiger, of which fewer than 400 remain.
WWF said the sanctuary area was not connected by corridors to other forests, so land clearing there put the tigers closer to extinction.
"Riau has lost so much of its lowland forest now that each one left is like a sanctuary for animals," Bayunanda said.
"If this land is cleared, they will have nowhere to go."
Indonesia is home to around 10 percent of the world's tropical forest, and has struggled for decades to control rampant destruction on its lushest islands, Sumatra and Kalimantan, as well as in Papua, the western half of New Guinea island.
The government in May implemented a two-year ban on issuing new permits to clear primary forests and peatland in a carbon-cutting deal backed with $1 billion from Norway.
UN data show that deforestation and forest degradation accounts for 70 percent of carbon emissions in Indonesia, the world's third-largest greenhouse gas emitter.
The country has pledged to cut emissions by 26 percent from 2009 levels -- or 41 percent with international help -- by 2020. | <urn:uuid:0a53a3e0-bea3-45c6-b62c-356f21f5203a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://en.baomoi.com/Info/Indonesian-paper-firm-logging-tiger-sanctuary-NGOs/2/213670.epi | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282140.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00132-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97069 | 650 | 1.914063 | 2 |
“How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:2).
In Christ, believers are dead to sin.
I frequently encounter people who profess to be believers, yet are living in all kinds of vile sins. People claiming to be believers while living in constant, unrepentant sin was not lost on the apostle Paul. In Romans 6:1 he asked the rhetorical question, “Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase?” In verse 2 he answered his own question by exclaiming “May it never be!” It expressed Paul’s horror and outrage at the thought that a true Christian could remain in a constant state of sinfulness. For a person to claim to be a Christian while continuing in habitual sin is absurd and impossible.
Paul goes on in verse 2 to explain why believers cannot continue to live in sin, asking, “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” His point is that believers, at salvation, died to sin. Therefore, they cannot live in a constant state of sinfulness, because it is impossible to be both dead and alive at the same time. Those who continue in unrepentant sin thereby give evidence that they are spiritually dead, no matter what they may claim.
Unbelievers are “dead in [their] trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1), walking “according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience” (v. 2). Believers, on the other hand, have been “delivered . . . from the domain of darkness, and transferred . . . to the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Col. 1:13).
Christians no longer live in the realm of sin, though they still commit sins.
Having a proper understanding of the believer’s relationship to sin is foundational to progressing in holiness. Take comfort today in the reality that sin, though still dangerous, is a defeated foe.
Let us praise God who, because of His mercy and love, made us alive together with Christ (Eph. 2:4-5). Father we ask you to help us walk worthy of that high calling (Eph. 4:1).
00Philip Holderhttp://www.hoperoadnazarene.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/hrn-logo-520x140-1.pngPhilip Holder2015-11-13 06:17:262015-11-13 06:17:26DEAD TO SIN
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Vonnegut in 1972
November 11, 1922|
Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.
|Died||April 11, 2007
Manhattan, New York, U.S.
|Spouse||Jane Marie Cox (1945–1971; divorced)
Jill Krementz (1979–2007; his death)
|Children||3 biological, including Mark and Edith; 4 adopted|
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (//; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American author. In a career spanning over 50 years, Vonnegut published fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction. He is most famous for his darkly satirical, best-selling novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).
Born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, Vonnegut attended Cornell University, but dropped out in January 1943 and enlisted in the United States Army. He was deployed to Europe to fight in World War II, and was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was interned in Dresden and survived the Allied bombing of the city by taking refuge in a meat locker of the slaughterhouse where he was imprisoned. After the war, Vonnegut married Jane Marie Cox, with whom he had three children. He later adopted his sister's three sons, after she died of cancer and her husband died in a train accident.
Vonnegut published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952. The novel was reviewed positively, but was not commercially successful. In the nearly twenty years that followed, Vonnegut published several novels that were only marginally successful, such as Cat's Cradle (1963) and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1964). Vonnegut's magnum opus, however, was his immediately successful sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. The book's antiwar sentiment resonated with its readers amidst the ongoing Vietnam War, and its reviews were generally positive. After its release, Slaughterhouse-Five went to the top of The New York Times Best Seller list, thrusting Vonnegut into fame. He was invited to give speeches, lectures, and commencement addresses around the country and received many awards and honors.
Later in his career, Vonnegut published several autobiographical essays and short-story collections, including Fates Worse Than Death (1991), and A Man Without a Country (2005). After his death, he was hailed as a morbidly comical commentator on the society in which he lived, and as one of the most important contemporary writers. Vonnegut's son Mark published a compilation of his father's unpublished compositions, titled Armageddon in Retrospect. Numerous scholarly works have examined Vonnegut's writing and humor.
- 1 Biography
- 2 Views
- 3 Writing
- 4 Works
- 5 Opera
- 6 See also
- 7 Notes
- 8 References
- 9 External links
Family and early life
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born on November 11, 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was the youngest of three children of Kurt Vonnegut Sr. and his wife Edith (née Lieber). His older siblings were Bernard (born 1914) and Alice (born 1917). Vonnegut was descended from German immigrants who settled in the United States in the mid-19th century; his patrilineal great-grandfather, Clemens Vonnegut of Westphalia, Germany, settled in Indianapolis and founded the Vonnegut Hardware Company. Kurt's father, and his father before him, Bernard, were architects; the architecture firm under Kurt Sr. designed such buildings as Das Deutsche Haus (now called "The Athenæum"), the Indiana headquarters of the Bell Telephone Company, and the Fletcher Trust Building. Vonnegut's mother was born into Indianapolis high society, as her family, the Liebers, were among the wealthiest in the city, their fortune derived from ownership of a successful brewery.
Although both of Vonnegut's parents were fluent German speakers, the ill feeling toward that country during and after World War I caused the Vonneguts to abandon the culture to show their American patriotism. Thus, they never taught their youngest son German or introduced him to German literature and tradition, leaving him feeling "ignorant and rootless". Vonnegut later credited Ida Young, his family's African-American cook and housekeeper for the first ten years of his life, for raising him and giving him values. "[She] gave me decent moral instruction and was exceedingly nice to me. So she was as great an influence on me as anybody." Vonnegut described Young as "humane and wise", adding that "the compassionate, forgiving aspects of [his] beliefs" came from her.
The financial security and social prosperity that the Vonneguts once enjoyed were destroyed in a matter of years. The Liebers's brewery was closed in 1921 after the advent of Prohibition in the United States. When the Great Depression hit, few people could afford to build, causing clients at Kurt Sr.'s architectural firm to become scarce. Vonnegut's brother and sister had finished their primary and secondary educations in private schools, but Vonnegut was placed in a public school, called Public School No. 43, now known as the James Whitcomb Riley School. He was not bothered by this,[a] but both his parents were affected deeply by their economic misfortune. His father withdrew from normal life and became what Vonnegut called a "dreamy artist". His mother became depressed, withdrawn, bitter, and abusive. She labored to regain the family's wealth and status, and Vonnegut said she expressed hatred "as corrosive as hydrochloric acid" for her husband. Edith Vonnegut forayed into writing and tried to sell short stories to magazines like Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post with no success.
High school and Cornell
Vonnegut enrolled at Shortridge High School in Indianapolis in 1936. While there, he played clarinet in the school band and became an editor for the Tuesday edition of the school newspaper, The Shortridge Echo. Vonnegut said his tenure with the Echo allowed him to write for a large audience—his fellow students—rather than for a teacher, an experience he said was "fun and easy". "It just turned out that I could write better than a lot of other people", Vonnegut observed. "Each person has something he can do easily and can't imagine why everybody else has so much trouble doing it." For him, that was writing.
After graduating from Shortridge in 1940, Vonnegut enrolled at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He wanted to study the humanities or become an architect like his father, but his father[b] and brother, a scientist, urged him to study a "useful" discipline. As a result, Vonnegut majored in biochemistry, but he had little proficiency in the area and was indifferent towards his studies. As his father had been a member at MIT, Vonnegut was entitled to join the Delta Upsilon fraternity, and did. He overcame stiff competition for a place at the university's independent newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, first serving as a staff writer, then as an editor. By the end of his freshman year, he was writing a column titled "Innocents Abroad" which reused jokes from other publications. He later penned a piece, "Well All Right", focusing on pacifism, a cause he strongly supported, arguing against U.S. intervention in World War II.
World War II
The attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the war. Vonnegut was a member of Reserve Officers' Training Corps, but poor grades and a satirical article in Cornell's newspaper cost him his place there. He was placed on academic probation in May 1942 and dropped out the following January. No longer eligible for a student deferment, he faced likely conscription into United States Army. Instead of waiting to be drafted, he enlisted in the army and in March 1943 reported to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for basic training. Vonnegut was trained to fire and maintain howitzers, a type of artillery, and later received instruction in mechanical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee as part of the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP). In early 1944, the ASTP was canceled due to the Army's need for soldiers to support the D-Day invasion, and Vonnegut was ordered to an infantry battalion at Camp Atterbury, south of Indianapolis in Edinburgh, Indiana, where he trained as a scout. He lived so close to his home that he was "able to sleep in [his] own bedroom and use the family car on weekends". On May 14, 1944, Vonnegut returned home on leave for Mother's Day weekend to discover that his mother had committed suicide the previous night by overdosing on sleeping pills.[c]
Three months following his mother's suicide, Vonnegut was sent to Europe as an intelligence scout with the ill fated 106th Infantry Division. In December 1944, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge, the final German offensive of the war. During the battle, the 106th Infantry Division, which had only recently reached the front and was assigned to a "quiet" sector due to its inexperience, was overrun by advancing German armored forces. The result was that over 500 members of the division were killed and over 6,000 were captured.
On December 22, Vonnegut was captured with about fifty other American soldiers. Vonnegut was taken by boxcar to a prison camp south of Dresden, in Saxony. During the journey, the Royal Air Force bombed the prisoner trains and killed about 150 men. Vonnegut was sent to Dresden, the "first fancy city [he had] ever seen". He lived in a slaughterhouse when he got to the city, and worked in a factory that made malt syrup for pregnant women. Vonnegut recalled the sirens going off whenever another city was bombed. The Germans did not expect Dresden to get bombed, Vonnegut said. "There were very few air-raid shelters in town and no war industries, just cigarette factories, hospitals, clarinet factories."
On February 13, 1945, Dresden became the target of Allied forces. In the hours and days that followed, the Allies engaged in a fierce firebombing of the city. The offensive subsided on February 15, leaving tens of thousands dead. Vonnegut marveled at the level of both the destruction in Dresden and the secrecy that attended it. He had survived by taking refuge in a meat locker three stories underground. "It was cool there, with cadavers hanging all around", Vonnegut said. "When we came up the city was gone ... They burnt the whole damn town down." Vonnegut and other American prisoners were put to work immediately after the bombing, excavating bodies from the rubble. He described the activity as a "terribly elaborate Easter-egg hunt".
The American prisoners of war were evacuated on foot to the border of Saxony and Czechoslovakia after General George S. Patton captured Leipzig. With the captives abandoned by their guards, Vonnegut reached a prisoner-of-war repatriation camp in Le Havre, France, before the end of May 1945, with the aid of the Soviets. He returned to the United States and continued to serve in the Army, stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, typing discharge papers for other soldiers. Soon after he was awarded a Purple Heart about which he remarked "I myself was awarded my country's second-lowest decoration, a Purple Heart for frost-bite." He was discharged from the U.S. Army and returned to Indianapolis.
Marriage and early employment
After he returned to the United States, 22-year-old Vonnegut married Jane Marie Cox, his high school girlfriend and classmate since kindergarten, on September 1, 1945. The pair relocated to Chicago, where Vonnegut enrolled in the University of Chicago as a graduate anthropology student, courtesy of the G.I. Bill, and worked for the Chicago City News Bureau at night. Jane accepted a scholarship from the university to study Russian at a graduate level. Neither of them finished their degrees. Jane dropped out of the school after becoming pregnant with the couple's first child, Mark (born May 1947), and after Kurt's master's thesis, which analyzed the Ghost Dance religious movement among Native Americans, was unanimously rejected, he left the university without his degree.[d]
General Electric (GE) hired Vonnegut as a publicist for the company's Schenectady, New York research laboratory. The job had required a college education, and, despite dropping out of his program, Vonnegut lied that he had a master's in anthropology from the University of Chicago. Kurt's brother Bernard had worked at GE since 1945, contributing significantly to an iodine-based cloud seeding project. In 1949, Kurt and Jane had a daughter named Edith. Still working for GE, Vonnegut had his first piece, titled "Report on the Barnhouse Effect", published in the February 11, 1950 issue of Collier's, for which he received $750. Vonnegut wrote another story, after being coached by the fiction editor at Collier's, Knox Burger, and again sold it to the magazine, this time for $950. Burger suggested he quit GE, a course he had contemplated before. Vonnegut moved with his family to Cape Cod, Massachusetts to write full-time, and left GE in 1951.
On Cape Cod, Vonnegut made most of his money writing pieces for magazines such as Collier's, The Saturday Evening Post, and Cosmopolitan. He also did a stint as an English teacher, wrote copy for an advertising agency, and opened the first American Saab dealership, which eventually failed. In 1952, Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano, was published by Scribner's. The novel has a post-third world war setting, in which factory workers have been replaced by machines.
Player Piano draws upon Vonnegut's experience as an employee at GE. He satirizes the drive to climb the corporate ladder, one that in Player Piano is rapidly disappearing as automation increases, putting even executives out of work. His central character, Paul Proteus, has an ambitious wife, a backstabbing assistant, and a feeling of sympathy for the poor. Sent by his boss, Kroner, as a double agent among the poor (who have all the material goods they want, but little sense of purpose), he leads them in a machine-smashing, museum-burning revolution. Player Piano expresses Vonnegut's opposition to McCarthyism, something made clear when the Ghost Shirts, the revolutionary organization Paul penetrates and eventually leads, is referred to by one character as "fellow travelers".
In Player Piano, Vonnegut originates many of the techniques he would use in his later works. The comic, heavy-drinking Shah of Bratpuhr, an outsider to this dystopian corporate United States, is able to ask many questions that an insider would not think to ask, or would cause offense by doing so. For example, when taken to see the artificially intelligent supercomputer EPICAC, the Shah asks it "what are people for?" and receives no answer. Speaking for Vonnegut, he dismisses it as a "false god". This type of alien visitor would recur throughout Vonnegut's literature.
The New York Times writer and critic Granville Hicks gave Player Piano a positive review, comparing it to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Hicks called Vonnegut a "sharp-eyed satirist". None of the reviewers considered the novel particularly important. Several editions were printed—one by Bantam with the title Utopia 14, and another by the Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club—whereby Vonnegut gained the repute of a science fiction writer, a genre held in disdain by writers at that time. He defended the genre, and deplored a perceived sentiment that "no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works."
After Player Piano, Vonnegut continued to sell short stories to various magazines. In 1954 the couple had a third child, Nanette. With a growing family and no financially successful novels yet, Vonnegut's short stories sustained the family. In 1958, his sister, Alice, died of cancer two days after her husband, James Carmalt Adams, was killed in a train accident. Vonnegut adopted Alice's three young sons—James, Steven, and Kurt, aged fourteen, eleven, and nine respectively.
Grappling with family challenges, Vonnegut continued to write, publishing novels vastly dissimilar in terms of plot. The Sirens of Titan (1959) features a Martian invasion of Earth, as experienced by a bored billionaire, Malachi Constant. He meets Winston Rumfoord, an aristocratic space traveler, who is virtually omniscient but stuck in a time warp that allows him to appear on Earth every 59 days. The billionaire learns that his actions and the events of all of history are determined by a race of robotic aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, who need a replacement part that can only be produced by an advanced civilization in order to repair their spaceship and return home—human history has been manipulated to produce it. Some human structures, such as the Kremlin, are coded signals from the aliens to their ship as to how long it may expect to wait for the repair to take place. Reviewers were uncertain what to think of the book, with one comparing it to Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann.
Rumfoord, who is based on Franklin D. Roosevelt, also physically resembles the former president. Rumfoord is described, "he put a cigarette in a long, bone cigarette holder, lighted it. He thrust out his jaw. The cigarette holder pointed straight up." William Rodney Allen, in his guide to Vonnegut's works, stated that Rumfoord foreshadowed the fictional political figures who would play major roles in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Jailbird.
Mother Night, published in 1961, received little attention at the time of its publication. Howard W. Campbell Jr., Vonnegut's protagonist, is an American who goes to Nazi Germany during the war as a double agent for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, and rises to the regime's highest ranks as a radio propagandist. After the war, the spy agency refuses to clear his name and he is eventually imprisoned by the Israelis in the same cell block as Adolf Eichmann, and later commits suicide. Vonnegut wrote in a foreword to a later edition, "we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be". Literary critic Lawrence Berkove considered the novel, like Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, to illustrate the tendency for "impersonators to get carried away by their impersonations, to become what they impersonate and therefore to live in a world of illusion".
Also published in 1961 was Vonnegut's short story, "Harrison Bergeron", set in a dystopic future where all are equal, even if that means disfiguring beautiful people and forcing the strong or intelligent to wear devices that negate their advantages. Fourteen-year-old Harrison is a genius and athlete forced to wear record-level "handicaps" and imprisoned for attempting to overthrow the government. He escapes to a television studio, tears away his handicaps, and frees a ballerina from her lead weights. As they dance, they are killed by the Handicapper General, Diana Moon Glampers. Vonnegut, in a later letter, suggested that "Harrison Bergeron" might have sprung from his envy and self-pity as a high school misfit. In his 1976 biography of Vonnegut, Stanley Schatt suggested that the short story shows "in any leveling process, what really is lost, according to Vonnegut, is beauty, grace, and wisdom". Darryl Hattenhauer, in his 1998 journal article on "Harrison Bergeron", theorized that the story was a satire on American Cold War misunderstandings of communism and socialism.
With Cat's Cradle (1963), Allen wrote, "Vonnegut hit full stride for the first time". The narrator, John, intends to write of Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of the fictional fathers of the atomic bomb, seeking to cover the scientist's human side. Hoenikker, in addition to the bomb, has developed another threat to mankind, ice-9, solid water stable at room temperature, and if a particle of it is dropped in water, all of it becomes ice-9. Much of the second half of the book is spent on the fictional Caribbean island of San Lorenzo, where John explores a religion called Bokononism, whose holy books (excerpts from which are quoted), give the novel the moral core science does not supply. After the oceans are converted to ice-9, wiping out most of humankind, John wanders the frozen surface, seeking to have himself and his story survive.
Vonnegut based the title character of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1964), on an accountant he knew on Cape Cod, who specialized in clients in trouble and often had to comfort them. Eliot Rosewater, the wealthy son of a Republican senator, seeks to atone for his wartime shooting of noncombatant firefighters by serving in a volunteer fire department, and by giving away money to those in trouble or need. Stress from a battle for control of his charitable foundation pushes him over the edge, and he is placed in a mental hospital by a dishonest lawyer. He recovers, and ends the financial battle by declaring the children of his county to be his heirs. Allen deemed God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater more "a cry from the heart than a novel under its author's full intellectual control", that reflected family and emotional stresses Vonnegut was going through at the time.
After spending much of two years at the writer's workshop at the University of Iowa, teaching one course each term, Vonnegut was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for research in Germany. By the time he won it, in March 1967, he was becoming a well-known writer. He used the funds to travel in Eastern Europe, including to Dresden, where he found many prominent buildings still in ruins. At the time of the bombing, Vonnegut had not appreciated the sheer scale of destruction in Dresden; his enlightenment came only slowly as information dribbled out, and based on early figures came to believe that 135,000 had died there.[e]
Vonnegut had been writing about his war experiences at Dresden ever since he returned from the war, but had never been able to write anything acceptable to himself or his publishers—Chapter 1 of Slaughterhouse-Five tells of his difficulties. Released in 1969, the novel rocketed Vonnegut to fame. It tells of the life of Billy Pilgrim, who like Vonnegut was born in 1922 and survives the bombing of Dresden. The story is told in a non-linear fashion, with many of the story's climaxes—Billy's death in 1976, his kidnapping by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore nine years earlier, and the execution of Billy's friend Edgar Derby in the ashes of Dresden for stealing a teapot—disclosed in the story's first pages. In 1970, he was also a correspondent in Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War. Slaughterhouse-Five received generally positive reviews, with Michael Crichton writing in The New Republic, "he writes about the most excruciatingly painful things. His novels have attacked our deepest fears of automation and the bomb, our deepest political guilts, our fiercest hatreds and loves. No one else writes books on these subjects; they are inaccessible to normal novelists." The book went immediately to the top of The New York Times Best Seller list. Vonnegut's earlier works had appealed strongly to many college students, and the antiwar message of Slaughterhouse Five resonated with a generation marked by the Vietnam War. He later stated that the loss of confidence in government that Vietnam caused finally allowed for an honest conversation regarding events like Dresden.
Later career and events
After Slaughterhouse-Five was published, Vonnegut embraced the fame and financial security that attended its release. He was hailed as a hero of the burgeoning anti-war movement in the United States, was invited to speak at numerous rallies, and gave college commencement addresses around the country. In addition to lecturing on creative writing at Harvard University, Vonnegut taught at the City University of New York, where he was dubbed a Distinguished Professor of English Prose. He was later elected vice president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and given honorary degrees by, among others, Indiana University and Bennington College. Vonnegut also wrote a play called Happy Birthday, Wanda June, which opened on October 7, 1970 at New York's Theatre de Lys. Receiving mixed reviews, it closed on March 14, 1971. In 1972, Universal Pictures adapted Slaughterhouse-Five into a film which the author said was "flawless".
Meanwhile, Vonnegut's personal life was disintegrating. His wife Jane had embraced Christianity, which was contrary to Vonnegut's atheistic beliefs, and with five of their six children having left home, Vonnegut said the two were forced to find "other sorts of seemingly important work to do." The couple battled over their differing beliefs until Vonnegut moved from their Cape Cod home to New York in 1971. Vonnegut called the disagreements "painful", and said the resulting split was a "terrible, unavoidable accident that we were ill-equipped to understand." The couple divorced and they remained friends until Jane's death in late 1986. Beyond his marriage, he was deeply affected when his son Mark suffered a mental breakdown in 1972, which exacerbated Vonnegut's chronic depression, and led him to take Ritalin. When he stopped taking the drug in the mid-1970s, he began to see a psychologist weekly.
Vonnegut's difficulties materialized in numerous ways; most distinctly though, was the painfully slow progress he was making on his next novel, the darkly comical Breakfast of Champions. In 1971, Vonnegut stopped writing the novel altogether. When it was finally released in 1973, it was panned critically. In Thomas S. Hischak's book American Literature on Stage and Screen, Breakfast of Champions was called "funny and outlandish", but reviewers noted that it "lacks substance and seems to be an exercise in literary playfulness." Vonnegut's 1976 novel Slapstick, which meditates on the relationship between him and his sister (Alice), met a similar fate. In The New York Times's review of Slapstick, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt said Vonnegut "seems to be putting less effort into [storytelling] than ever before", and that "it still seems as if he has given up storytelling after all." At times, Vonnegut was disgruntled by the personal nature of his detractors' complaints.
In 1979, Vonnegut married Jill Krementz, a photographer whom he met while she was working on a series about writers in the early 1970s. With Jill, he adopted a daughter, Lily, when the baby was three days old. In subsequent years, his popularity resurged as he published several satirical books, including Jailbird (1979), Deadeye Dick (1982), Galápagos (1985), Bluebeard (1987), and Hocus Pocus (1990). In 1986, Vonnegut was seen by a younger generation when he played himself in Rodney Dangerfield's film Back to School. The last of Vonnegut's fourteen novels, Timequake (1997), was, as University of Detroit history professor and Vonnegut biographer Gregory Sumner said, "a reflection of an aging man facing mortality and testimony to an embattled faith in the resilience of human awareness and agency." Vonnegut's final book, a collection of essays entitled A Man Without a Country (2005), became a best-seller.
Death and legacy
In a 2006 Rolling Stone interview, Vonnegut sardonically stated that he would sue the Brown & Williamson tobacco company, the maker of the Pall Mall-branded cigarettes he had been smoking since he was twelve or fourteen years old, for false advertising. "And do you know why?" he said. "Because I'm 83 years old. The lying bastards! On the package Brown & Williamson promised to kill me." He died on the night of April 11, 2007 in Manhattan, as a result of brain injuries incurred several weeks prior from a fall at his New York brownstone home. His death was reported by his wife Jill. Vonnegut was 84 years old. At the time of his death, Vonnegut had written fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays and five non-fiction books. A book composed of Vonnegut's unpublished pieces, Armageddon in Retrospect, was compiled and posthumously published by Vonnegut's son Mark in 2008.
When asked about the impact Vonnegut had on his work, author Josip Novakovich stated that he has "much to learn from Vonnegut—how to compress things and yet not compromise them, how to digress into history, quote from various historical accounts, and not stifle the narrative. The ease with which he writes is sheerly masterly, Mozartian." Los Angeles Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez said that the author will "rightly be remembered as a darkly humorous social critic and the premier novelist of the counterculture", and The New York Times's Dinitia Smith dubbed Vonnegut the "counterculture's novelist."
Kurt Vonnegut has inspired numerous posthumous tributes and works. In 2008, the Kurt Vonnegut Society was established, and in November 2010, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library was opened in Vonnegut's hometown of Indianapolis. The Library of America published a compendium of Vonnegut's compositions between 1963 and 1973 the following April, and another compendium of his earlier works in 2012. Late 2011 saw the release of two Vonnegut biographies, Gregory Sumner's Unstuck in Time and Charles J. Shields's And So It Goes. Shields's biography of Vonnegut created some controversy. According to The Guardian, the book portrays Vonnegut as distant, cruel and nasty. "Cruel, nasty and scary are the adjectives commonly used to describe him by the friends, colleagues, and relatives Shields quotes", said The Daily Beast's Wendy Smith. "Towards the end he was very feeble, very depressed and almost morose", said Jerome Klinkowitz of the University of Northern Iowa, who has examined Vonnegut in depth.
Vonnegut's works have evoked ire on several occasions. His most prominent novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, has been objected to or removed at various institutions in at least eighteen instances. In the case of Island Trees School District v. Pico, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a school district's ban on Slaughterhouse-Five—which the board had called "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy"—and eight other novels was unconstitutional. When a school board in Republic, Missouri decided to withdraw Vonnegut's novel from its libraries, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library offered a free copy to all the students of the district.
Tally, writing in 2013, suggests that Vonnegut has only recently become the subject of serious study rather than fan adulation, and much is yet to be written about him. "The time for scholars to say 'Here's why Vonnegut is worth reading' has definitively ended, thank goodness. We know he's worth reading. Now tell us things we don't know." Todd F. Davis notes that Vonnegut's work is kept alive by his loyal readers, who have "significant influence as they continue to purchase Vonnegut's work, passing it on to subsequent generations and keeping his entire canon in print—an impressive list of more than twenty books that [Dell Publishing] has continued to refurbish and hawk with new cover designs." Donald E. Morse notes that Vonnegut, "is now firmly, if somewhat controversially, ensconced in the American and world literary canon as well as in high school, college and graduate curricula". Tally writes of Vonnegut's work:
Vonnegut's 14 novels, while each does its own thing, together are nevertheless experiments in the same overall project. Experimenting with the form of the American novel itself, Vonnegut engages in a broadly modernist attempt to apprehend and depict the fragmented, unstable, and distressing bizarreries of postmodern American experience ... That he does not actually succeed in representing the shifting multiplicities of that social experience is beside the point. What matters is the attempt, and the recognition that ... we must try to map this unstable and perilous terrain, even if we know in advance that our efforts are doomed.
In the introduction to Slaughterhouse 5 Vonnegut recounts meeting filmmaker Harrison Starr at a party who asked him whether his forthcoming book was an anti-war novel - "I guess" replied Vonnegut, Starr responded "Why don't you write an anti-glacier novel?". Underlining Vonneguts belief that wars were, unfortunately, inevitable, but that it was important to ensure the wars one fought were just wars.
In 2011, NPR wrote, "Kurt Vonnegut's blend of anti-war sentiment and satire made him one of the most popular writers of the 1960s." Vonnegut stated in a 1987 interview that, "my own feeling is that civilization ended in World War I, and we're still trying to recover from that", and that he wanted to write war-focused works without glamorizing war itself. Vonnegut had not intended to publish again, but his anger against the George W. Bush administration led him to write A Man Without a Country.
Slaughterhouse-Five is the Vonnegut novel best known for its antiwar themes, but the author expressed his beliefs in ways beyond the depiction of the destruction of Dresden. He has one character, Mary O'Hare, opine that "wars were partly encouraged by books and movies", made by "Frank Sinatra or John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men". Vonnegut made a number of comparisons between Dresden and the bombing of Hiroshima in Slaughterhouse-Five and wrote in Palm Sunday (1991) that "I learned how vile that religion of mine could be when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima".
Nuclear war, or at least deployed nuclear arms, is mentioned in almost all of Vonnegut's novels. In Player Piano, the computer EPICAC is given control of the nuclear arsenal, and is charged with deciding whether to use high-explosive or nuclear arms. In Cat's Cradle, John's original purpose in setting pen to paper is to write an account of what prominent Americans had been doing as Hiroshima was bombed.
Kurt Vonnegut was an atheist and a humanist, serving as the honorary president of the American Humanist Association. In an interview for Playboy, he stated that his forebears who came to the United States did not believe in God, and he learned his atheism from his parents. Like his great-grandfather Clemens, Vonnegut was a freethinker. Vonnegut went to a Unitarian church several times, but with little consistency. In his autobiographical work Palm Sunday, Vonnegut says he is a "Christ-worshiping agnostic." He also talked about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, and the Beatitudes, and made these biblical ideologies part of his own doctrine. Vonnegut laced a number of his speeches with religion-focused rhetoric, and was prone to using such expressions as "God forbid" and "thank God".
Vonnegut would often talk about religion, in his novels and elsewhere. In God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Vonnegut goes to Heaven after he is euthanized by Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Once in Heaven, Vonnegut interviews twenty-one deceased celebrities, including Isaac Asimov, William Shakespeare, and Kilgore Trout—the last a fictional character from several of his novels. Vonnegut's works are filled with characters founding new faiths, and religion often serves as a major plot device, for example in Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle. In The Sirens of Titan, Rumfoord proclaims The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. Slaughterhouse-Five sees Billy Pilgrim, lacking religion himself, nevertheless become a chaplain's assistant in the military and display a large crucifix on his bedroom wall. In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut invented the religion of Bokononism.
Vonnegut had a deep dislike for the Christian religion, often reminding his readers of the bloody history of the Crusades and other religion-inspired violence. He despised the televangelists of the late 20th century, feeling that their thinking was narrow-minded. Realizing that humans need a moral code by which to live, he greatly admired Christ's Sermon on the Mount, and there are a string of references to it across his works. In Palm Sunday, he writes, "The Sermon on the Mount suggests a mercifulness that can never waver or fade." Vonnegut, in his 1991 book Fates Worse than Death, suggests that during the Reagan administration, "anything that sounded like the Sermon on the Mount was socialistic or communistic, and therefore anti-American". Vonnegut did not however disdain those who seek the comfort of religion, hailing church associations as a type of extended family.
Vonnegut did not particularly sympathize with liberalism or conservatism, and mused on the specious simplicity of American politics. "If you want to take my guns away from me, and you're all for murdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other [...] you're a liberal. If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you're a conservative. What could be simpler?" Regarding political parties, Vonnegut said, "The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don’t acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead."
Vonnegut disregarded more mainstream political ideologies in favor of socialism, which he thought could provide a valuable substitute for what he saw as social Darwinism and a spirit of "survival of the fittest" in American society, believing that "socialism would be a good for the common man". Vonnegut would often return to a quote by socialist and five-time presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, who went to prison for his beliefs: "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I'm of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free." Vonnegut expressed disappointment that communism and socialism seemed to be unsavory topics to the average American, and believed that they may offer beneficial substitutes to contemporary social and economic systems.
Vonnegut's writing was inspired by an eclectic mix of sources. When he was younger, Vonnegut stated that he read works of pulp fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and action-adventure. He also read the Classics, like those of Aristophanes. Aristophanes, like Vonnegut, wrote humorous critiques of contemporary society. Vonnegut's life and work also share similarities with that of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn writer Mark Twain. Both shared pessimistic outlooks on humanity, and a skeptical take on religion, and, as Vonnegut put it, were both "associated with the enemy in a major war", as Twain briefly enlisted in the South's cause during the American Civil War, and Vonnegut's German name and ancestry connected him with the United States' enemy in both world wars.
Vonnegut called George Orwell his favorite writer, and admitted that he tried to emulate Orwell. "I like his concern for the poor, I like his socialism, I like his simplicity", Vonnegut said. Vonnegut also said that Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, heavily influenced his debut novel, Player Piano, in 1952. Vonnegut commented that Robert Louis Stevenson's stories were emblems of thoughtfully put together works that he tried to mimic in his own compositions. Vonnegut also hailed playwright and socialist George Bernard Shaw as "a hero of [his]", and an "enormous influence." Within his own family, Vonnegut stated that his mother, Edith, had the greatest influence on him. "[M]y mother thought she might make a new fortune by writing for the slick magazines. She took short-story courses at night. She studied magazines the way gamblers study racing forms."
Early on in his career, Vonnegut decided to model his style after Henry David Thoreau, who wrote as if from the perspective of a child, allowing Thoreau's works to be more widely comprehensible. Using a youthful narrative voice allowed Vonnegut to deliver concepts in a modest and straightforward way. Other influences on Vonnegut include The War of the Worlds author H. G. Wells, and satirist Jonathan Swift. Vonnegut credited newspaper magnate H. L. Mencken for inspiring him to become a journalist.
Style and technique
In his book Popular Contemporary Writers, Michael D. Sharp describes Vonnegut's linguistic style as straightforward; his sentences concise, his language simple, his paragraphs brief, and his ordinary tone conversational. Vonnegut uses this style to convey normally complex subject matter in a way that is intelligible to a large audience. He credited his time as a journalist for his ability, pointing to his work with the Chicago City News Bureau, which required him to convey stories in telephone conversations. Vonnegut's compositions are also laced with distinct references to his own life, notably in Slaughterhouse-Five and Slapstick.
Vonnegut believed that ideas, and the convincing communication of those ideas to the reader, were vital to literary art. He did not always sugarcoat his points: much of Player Piano leads up to the moment when Paul, on trial and hooked up to a lie detector, is asked to tell a falsehood, and states, "every new piece of scientific knowledge is a good thing for humanity". Robert T. Tally Jr., in his volume on Vonnegut's novels, wrote, "rather than tearing down and destroying the icons of twentieth-century, middle-class American life, Vonnegut gently reveals their basic flimsiness." Vonnegut did not simply propose utopian solutions to the ills of American society, but showed how such schemes would not allow ordinary people to live lives free from want and anxiety. The large artificial families that the U.S. population is formed into in Slapstick soon serve as an excuse for tribalism, with people giving no help to those not part of their group, and with the extended family's place in the social hierarchy becoming vital.
In the introduction to their essay "Kurt Vonnegut and Humor", Tally and Peter C. Kunze suggest that Vonnegut was not a "black humorist", but a "frustrated idealist" who used "comic parables" to teach the reader absurd, bitter or hopeless truths, with his grim witticisms serving to make the reader laugh rather than cry. "Vonnegut makes sense through humor, which is, in the author's view, as valid a means of mapping this crazy world as any other strategies." Vonnegut resented being called a black humorist, feeling that, as with many literary labels, it allows readers to disregard aspects of a writer's work that do not fit the label's stereotype.
Vonnegut's works have, at various times, been labeled science fiction, satire and postmodern. He also resisted such labels, but his works do contain common tropes that are often associated with those genres. In several of his books, Vonnegut imagines alien societies and civilizations, as is common in works of science fiction, but unlike conventional science fiction, Vonnegut does this to emphasize or exaggerate absurdities and idiosyncrasies in our own world. Furthermore, Vonnegut often humorizes the problems that plague societies, as is done in satirical works. However, literary theorist Robert Scholes noted in Fabulation and Metafiction that Vonnegut "reject[s] the traditional satirist's faith in the efficacy of satire as a reforming instrument. [He has] a more subtle faith in the humanizing value of laughter."
Examples of postmodernism may also be found in Vonnegut's works. Postmodernism often entails a response to the theory that the truths of the world will be discovered through science. Postmodernists contend that truth is subjective, rather than objective, as it is biased towards each individual's beliefs and outlook on the world. They often use unreliable, first-person narration, and narrative fragmentation. One critic has argued that Vonnegut’s most famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, features a metafictional Janus-headed outlook because the novel seeks to represent actual historical events while, at the same time, problematizes the very notion of doing exactly that at the same time. While Vonnegut does use elements as fragmentation and metafictional elements, in some of his works, he more distinctly focuses on the peril posed by individuals who find subjective truths, mistake them for objective truths, then proceed to impose these truths on others.
Vonnegut was a vocal critic of the society in which he lived, and this was reflected in his writings. Several key social themes recur in Vonnegut's works, such as wealth, the lack of it, and its unequal distribution among a society. In The Sirens of Titan, the novel's protagonist, Malachi Constant, is exiled to one of Saturn's moons, Titan, as a result of his vast wealth, which has made him arrogant and wayward. In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, readers may find it difficult to determine whether the rich or the poor are in worse circumstances as the lives of both groups' members are ruled by their wealth or their poverty. Further, in Hocus Pocus, the protagonist is named Eugene Debs Hartke, a homage to the famed socialist Eugene V. Debs and Vonnegut's socialist views. In Kurt Vonnegut: A Critical Companion, Thomas F. Marvin states: "Vonnegut points out that, left unchecked, capitalism will erode the democratic foundations of the United States." Marvin suggests that Vonnegut's works demonstrate what happens when a "hereditary aristocracy" develops, where wealth is inherited along familial lines: the ability of poor Americans to overcome their situations is greatly or completely diminished. Vonnegut also often laments social Darwinism, and a "survival of the fittest" view of society. He points out that social Darwinism leads to a society that condemns its poor for their own misfortune, and fails to help them out of their poverty because "they deserve their fate". Vonnegut also confronts the idea of free will in a number of his pieces. In Slaughterhouse-Five and Timequake the characters have no choice in what they do; in Breakfast of Champions, a character believes that he has everyone's free will; and in Cat's Cradle, Bokononism views free will as heretical.
The majority of Vonnegut's characters are estranged from their actual families and seek to build replacement or extended families. For example, the engineers in Player Piano called their manager's spouse "Mom". In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut devises two separate methods for loneliness to be combated: A "karass", which is a group of individuals appointed by God to do his will, and a "granfalloon", defined by Marvin as a "meaningless association of people, such as a fraternal group or a nation". Similarly, in Slapstick, the U.S. government codifies that all Americans are a part of large extended families.
Fear of the loss of one's purpose in life is a theme in Vonnegut's works. The Great Depression forced Vonnegut to witness the devastation many people felt when they lost their jobs, and while at General Electric, Vonnegut witnessed machines being built to take the place of human labor. He confronts these things in his works through references to the growing use of automation and its effects on human society. This is most starkly represented in his first novel, Player Piano, where many Americans are left purposeless and unable to find work as machines replace human workers. Loss of purpose is also depicted in Galápagos, where a florist rages at her spouse for creating a robot able to do her job, and in Timequake, where an architect kills himself when replaced by computer software.
Suicide by fire is another common theme in Vonnegut's works; the author often returns to the theory that "many people are not fond of life." He uses this as an explanation for why humans have so severely damaged their environments, and made devices such as nuclear weapons that can make their creators extinct. In Deadeye Dick, Vonnegut features the neutron bomb, designed to kill people, but leave buildings and structures untouched. He also uses this theme to demonstrate the recklessness of those who put powerful, apocalypse-inducing devices at the disposal of politicians.
"What is the point of life?" is a question Vonnegut often pondered in his works. When one of Vonnegut's characters, Kilgore Trout, finds the question "What is the purpose of life?" written in a bathroom, his response is, "To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool." Marvin finds Trout's theory curious, given that Vonnegut was an atheist, and thus for him, there is no Creator to report back to, and comments that, "[a]s Trout chronicles one meaningless life after another, readers are left to wonder how a compassionate creator could stand by and do nothing while such reports come in." In the epigraph to Bluebeard, Vonnegut quotes his son Mark, and gives an answer to what he believes is the meaning of life: "We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."
The following is an account of Vonnegut's major works. Unless otherwise cited, this list is taken from Thomas F. Marvin's 2002 book Kurt Vonnegut: A Critical Companion (date in brackets is the date the work was first published):
- Player Piano (1952)
- The Sirens of Titan (1959)
- Mother Night (1961)
- Cat's Cradle (1963)
- God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)
- Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
- Breakfast of Champions (1973)
- Slapstick (1976)
- Jailbird (1979)
- Deadeye Dick (1982)
- Galápagos (1985)
- Bluebeard (1987)
- Hocus Pocus (1990)
- Timequake (1997)
- Canary in a Cathouse (1961)
- Welcome to the Monkey House (1968)
- Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)
- Between Time and Timbuktu (1972)
- Sun Moon Star (1980)
- Bagombo Snuff Box (1997)
- God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)
- Armageddon in Retrospect (2008) Short stories and essays
- Look at the Birdie (2009)
- While Mortals Sleep (2011)
- We Are What We Pretend to Be (2012)
- Sucker's Portfolio (2013)
- Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons (1974)
- Palm Sunday (1981)
- Nothing Is Lost Save Honor: Two Essays (1984)
- Fates Worse Than Death (1991)
- A Man Without a Country (2005)
- Kurt Vonnegut: The Cornell Sun Years 1941–1943 (2012)
- If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice to the Young (2013)
- Vonnegut by the Dozen (2013)
- Kurt Vonnegut: Letters (2014)
- Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut (1988) with William Rodney Allen
- Like Shaking Hands with God: A Conversation about Writing (2010) with Lee Stringer
- Kurt Vonnegut: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations (2011)
- Kurt Vonnegut Drawings (2014)
Hans-Jürgen von Bose Schlachthof 5 (Slaughterhouse five) – opera, libretto by the composer, 1994/95. Opening of the Munich Opernfestspiele 1996. Bavarian state opera, Munich.
- Harrison Bergeron (1968)
- In fact, Vonnegut often described himself as a "child of the Great Depression". He also stated the Depression and its effects incited pessimism towards the validity of the American Dream.
- Kurt Sr. was embittered by his lack of work as an architect during the Great Depression, and feared a similar fate for his son. He dismissed his son's desired areas of study as "junk jewellery", and persuaded his son against following in his footsteps.
- Possible factors that contributed to Edith Vonnegut's suicide include the family's loss of wealth and status, Vonnegut's forthcoming deployment overseas, and her own lack of success as a writer. She was inebriated at the time and under the influence of prescription drugs.
- Vonnegut received his degree in anthropology 25 years after he left, when the University accepted his novel Cat's Cradle in lieu of his master's thesis.
- A 2010 report commissioned by the German government estimated the toll at up to 25,000.
- Boomhower 1999; Farrell 2009, pp. 4–5
- Marvin 2002, p. 2.
- Sharp 2006, p. 1360
- Marvin 2002, p. 2; Farrell 2009, pp. 3–4
- Marvin 2002, p. 4
- Sharp 2006, p. 1360.
- Boomhower 1999
- Sumner 2014
- Sharp 2006, p. 1360; Marvin 2002, pp. 2–3
- Marvin 2002, pp. 2–3
- Farrell 2009, p. 5; Boomhower 1999
- Sumner 2014; Farrell 2009, p. 5
- Shields 2011, p. 41
- Lowery 2007
- Farrell 2009, p. 5
- Shields 2011, pp. 41–42
- Shields 2011, pp. 44–45
- Shields 2011, pp. 45–49
- Shields 2011, pp. 50–51
- Farrell 2009, p. 6.
- Farrell 2009, p. 6; Marvin 2002, p. 3
- Sharp 2006, p. 1363; Farrell 2009, p. 6
- Vonnegut 2008
- Hayman et al. 1977
- Boomhower 1999; Farrell 2009, pp. 6–7.
- Vonnegut, Kurt (April 6, 2006). "Kurt Vonnegut". Interview with Michael Silverblatt. Bookworm. KCRW. Santa Monica, California. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
- Dalton 2011
- Thomas 2006, p. 7; Shields 2011, pp. 80–82
- Marvin 2002, p. 7.
- Boomhower 1999; Sumner 2014; Farrell 2009, pp. 7–8
- Boomhower 1999; Hayman et al. 1977; Farrell 2009, p. 8
- Boomhower 1999; Farrell 2009, pp. 8–9; Marvin 2002, p. 25
- Allen 1991, pp. 20–30
- Allen 1991, p. 32
- Farrell 2009, p. 9
- Shields 2011, pp. 159–161
- Allen 1991, p. 39
- Allen 1991, p. 40
- Shields 2011, pp. 171–173
- Morse 2003, p. 19
- Leeds 1995, p. 46.
- Hattenhauer 1998, p. 387.
- Allen 1991, p. 53
- Allen 1991, pp. 54–65
- Morse 2003, pp. 62–63
- Shields 2011, pp. 182–183
- Allen 1991, p. 75
- Shields 2011, pp. 219–228.
- BBC 2010.
- Allen, pp. 82–85.
- Shields 2011, pp. 248–249.
- Harold Bloom (2007). Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five. Bloom's guides. Infobase Publishing. p. 12. ISBN 978-1-438-1270-95.
- Jerome Klinkowitz (2009). Kurt Vonnegut's America. University of South Carolina Press. p. 55. ISBN 978-1-570-0382-66.
- Shields 2011, p. 254.
- Marvin 2002, p. 10.
- Marvin 2002, p. 11.
- Wolff 1987.
- Smith 2007.
- Hischak 2012, p. 31.
- Lehmann-Haupt 1976.
- Farrell 2009, p. 451.
- Sumner 2014.
- Marvin 2002, p. 12.
- Grossman 2007.
- Blount 2008.
- Banach 2013.
- Rodriguez 2007.
- Kunze & Tally 2012, p. 7.
- Harris 2011.
- Morais 2011.
- Tally 2013, pp. 14–15.
- Davis 2006, p. 2.
- Morse 2013, p. 56.
- Tally 2011, p. 158.
- "2015 SF&F Hall of Fame Inductees & James Gunn Fundraiser". June 12, 2015. Locus Publications. Retrieved July 17, 2015.
- "Kurt Vonnegut: American author who combined satiric social commentary with surrealist and science fictional elements". Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. EMP Museum (empmuseum.org). Retrieved September 10, 2015.
- NPR 2011.
- Daily Telegraph 2007.
- Freese 2013, p. 101.
- Leeds 1995, p. 2.
- Leeds 1995, p. 68.
- Leeds 1995, pp. 1–2.
- Vonnegut 1999, introduction.
- Vonnegut 2009, pp. 177, 185, 191.
- Niose 2007.
- Leeds 1995, p. 480.
- Vonnegut 2009, p. 177.
- Vonnegut 1982, p. 327.
- Vonnegut 2006b.
- Davis 2006, p. 142.
- Vonnegut 2009, p. 191.
- Kohn 2001.
- Farrell 2009, p. 141.
- Leeds 1995, pp. 477–479.
- Marvin 2002, p. 78.
- Leeds 1995, p. 525.
- Sharp 2006, p. 1366.
- Zinn & Arnove 2009, p. 620.
- Vonnegut 2006a, "In a Manner that Must Shame God Himself".
- Sharp 2006, pp. 1364–1365.
- Gannon & Taylor 2013.
- Sharp 2006, p. 1364.
- Zinn & Arnove 2009, p. 618.
- Sharp 2006, p. 1365.
- Marvin 2002, pp. 17–18.
- Marvin 2002, p. 18.
- Marvin 2002, p. 19.
- Barsamian 2004, p. 15.
- Hayman et al. 1977.
- Marvin 2002, pp. 18–19.
- Extence 2013.
- Sharp 2006, pp. 1363–1364.
- Davis 2006, pp. 45–46.
- Tally 2011, p. 157.
- Tally 2011, pp. 103–105.
- Kunze & Tally 2012, introduction.
- Marvin 2002, p. 16.
- Marvin 2002, p. 13.
- Marvin 2002, pp. 14–15.
- Marvin 2002, p. 15.
- Jensen 2016, pp. 8–11.
- Marvin 2002, pp. 16–17.
- Marvin 2002, pp. 19, 44–45.
- Marvin 2002, p. 20.
- Sharp 2006, pp. 1365–1366.
- Marvin 2002, p. 21.
- Marvin 2002, pp. 157–158.
- Allen, William R. "A Brief Biography of Kurt Vonnegut". Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library. Archived from the original on January 18, 2015. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Allen, William R. (1991). Understanding Kurt Vonnegut. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-87249-722-1.
- Banach, Je (April 11, 2013). "Laughing in the Face of Death: A Vonnegut Roundtable". The Paris Review. Retrieved August 13, 2015.
- Barsamian, David (2004). Louder Than Bombs: Interviews from the Progressive Magazine. South End Press. ISBN 978-0-89608-725-5.
- Blount, Roy (May 4, 2008). "So It Goes". Sunday Book Review. The New York Times. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Boomhower, Ray E. (1999). "Slaughterhouse-Five: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.". Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History. Indiana Historical Society. 11 (2): 42–47. ISSN 1040-788X.
- "Obituary of Kurt Vonnegut: Guru of the counterculture whose science fiction novel Slaughterhouse-Five, inspired by his survival of the Dresden bombings, became an anti-war classic". The Daily Telegraph. May 13, 2007. p. 25.
- Dalton, Corey M. (October 24, 2011). "Treasures of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library". The Saturday Evening Post. Archived from the original on December 9, 2014. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Davis, Todd F. (2006). Kurt Vonnegut's Crusade. State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-6675-9.
- Extence, Gavin (June 25, 2013). "Most of What I Know about Writing, I Learned from Kurt Vonnegut". The Huffington Post. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Farrell, Susan E. (2009). Critical Companion to Kurt Vonnegut: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4381-0023-4.
- Freese, Peter (2013). "'Instructions for use': the opening chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five and the reader of historiographical metafictions". In Tally, Robert T. Jr. Kurt Vonnegut. Critical Insights. Salem Press. pp. 95–117. ISBN 978-1-4298-3848-1.
- Gannon, Matthew; Taylor, Wilson (September 4, 2013). "The working class needs its next Kurt Vonnegut". Jacobin. Salon.com. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Grossman, Lev (April 12, 2007). "Kurt Vonnegut, 1922–2007". Time.
- Harris, Paul (December 3, 2011). "Kurt Vonnegut's dark, sad, cruel side is laid bare". The Guardian.
- Hattenhauer, Darryl (1998). "The Politics of Kurt Vonnegut's 'Harrison Bergeron'". Studies in Short Fiction. 35 (4): 387–392. ISSN 0039-3789. (subscription required (. ))
- Hayman, David; Michaelis, David; et al. (1977). "Kurt Vonnegut, The Art of Fiction No. 64". The Paris Review. 69: 55–103. Archived from the original on February 5, 2015.
- Hischak, Thomas S. (2012). American Literature on Stage and Screen: 525 Works and Their Adaptations. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-9279-4.
- Jensen, Mikkel (2016). "Janus-Headed Postmodernism: The Opening Lines of Slaughterhouse-Five". The Explicator. 74 (1): 8–11. ISSN 1939-926X. (subscription required (. ))
- Kohn, Martin (March 28, 2001). "God Bless You Dr. Kevorkian listing". New York University School of Medicine. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Kunze, Peter C.; Tally, Robert T. Jr. (2012). "Vonnegut's sense of humor". Studies in American Humor. 3 (26): 7–11. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Leeds, Marc (1995). The Vonnegut Encyclopedia. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-29230-9.
- Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (September 24, 1976). "Books of The Times". The New York Times. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Lowery, George (April 12, 2007). "Kurt Vonnegut Jr., novelist, counterculture icon and Cornellian, dies at 84". Cornell Chronicle. Archived from the original on November 8, 2014. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Marvin, Thomas F. (2002). Kurt Vonnegut: A Critical Companion. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-29230-9.
- Morais, Betsy (August 12, 2011). "The Neverending Campaign to Ban 'Slaughterhouse Five'". The Atlantic. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Morse, Donald E. (2013). "The curious reception of Kurt Vonnegut". In Tally, Robert T. Jr. Kurt Vonnegut. Critical Insights. Salem Press. pp. 42–59. ISBN 978-1-4298-3848-1.
- Morse, Donald E. (2003). The Novels of Kurt Vonnegut: Imagining Being an American. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-29230-9.
- Niose, David A. (July 1, 2007). "Kurt Vonnegut saw humanism as a way to build a better world.". The Humanist – via HighBeam Research (subscription required). Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Rodriguez, Gregory (April 16, 2007). "The kindness of Kurt Vonnegut". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Sharp, Michael D. (2006). Popular Contemporary Writers. 10. Marshall Cavendish Reference. ISBN 978-0-7614-7601-6 – via Questia. (subscription required (. ))
- Shields, Charles J. (2011). And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, a Life. Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-0-8050-8693-5.
- Smith, Dinitia (April 13, 2007). "Kurt Vonnegut, Counterculture's Novelist, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Sumner, Gregory (2014). "Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr.". American National Biography Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved August 14, 2015. (subscription required (. ))
- Tally, Robert T. Jr. (2011). Kurt Vonnegut and the American Novel: A Postmodern Iconography. Continuum Books. ISBN 978-1-4411-6445-2.
- Tally, Robert T. Jr. (2013). "On Kurt Vonnegut". In Tally, Robert T. Jr. Kurt Vonnegut. Critical Insights. Salem Press. pp. 3–17. ISBN 978-1-4298-3848-1.
- Thomas, Peter L. (2006). Reading, Learning, Teaching Kurt Vonnegut. Peter Lang. ISBN 978-0-8204-6337-7.
- "Up to 25,000 died in Dresden's WWII bombing – report". BBC. March 18, 2010. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Vitale, Tom (May 31, 2011). "Kurt Vonnegut: Still Speaking To The War Weary". NPR. Retrieved August 13, 2015.
- Vonnegut, Kurt (January 21, 2006). "A Man Without A Country, "Custodians of chaos"". The Guardian. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Vonnegut, Kurt (1999). God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian. Seven Stories Press. ISBN 978-1-58322-020-7.
- Vonnegut, Kurt (June 28, 2008). "Kurt Vonnegut on His Time as a POW". Newsweek. Archived from the original on March 1, 2015. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Vonnegut, Kurt (1982). Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage. Dell Publishing. ISBN 0440571634.
- Vonnegut, Kurt (2009). Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage. Random House Publishing. ISBN 978-0-307-56806-9.
- Vonnegut, Kurt (2006). Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons. Dial Press. ISBN 978-0-385-33381-8.
- Wolff, Gregory (October 25, 1987). "A Wildly Improbable Gang Of Nine". The New York Times. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
- Zinn, Howard; Arnove, Anthony (2009). Voices of A People's History of the United States. Seven Stories Press. ISBN 978-1-58322-916-3.
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- Kurt Vonnegut at DMOZ
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Word to describe the head of a phillips screw where the head has been worn or mangled?
It's called stripped.... Your screw has been stripped....
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They are called Beats (b) and they are by hip hop artist Dr. DR E
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Paul Oakenfold - Ready, Stady, Go | <urn:uuid:9fd8dfdb-6053-4128-9088-257f4fcda5f7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.qacollections.com/Where-is-my-head | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281331.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00223-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914267 | 191 | 1.890625 | 2 |
The great ranches of the Old West are time capsules of the American frontier, where one can hear tales of gunfighters and desperadoes, wranglers and cowpokes, and cattle drives of a thousand miles up the dusty Chisholm and Goodnight-Loving trails to the railheads of Abilene, Dodge City and Denver. These historic ranches are the stuff of legend, and more than one classic John Ford western movie.
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The water comes from an artisan springs called Grass Springs. The Stone Cabins date back to the 1880's built by miners who were processing gold ore. They ended their operations here when the Hualapai held their very first Ghost Dance in 1889.
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The main Ranch House was built in 1931 by Tap Duncan who acquired the Ranch from the Starkey's. It became the original headquarters of his 1.4 million acre cattle ranch then known as the Diamond Bar Ranch.
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All of these accommodations and activities can be found and are available to book on this website. | <urn:uuid:2bd1c01f-99d3-4726-966d-dc67a7aee0df> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://grandcanyonwesternranch.com/ourhistory.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570765.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808031623-20220808061623-00266.warc.gz | en | 0.978941 | 618 | 2.140625 | 2 |
HOW TO INSTALL JAVA (JDK AND JRE) ON YOUR SYSTEM
There are two methods by which we can install java on windows,
1. First one is windows online
2. And the other is windows offline
By windows online we mean that, if you have internet connection then you simply need to install windows online file
For windows offline, you need to download the exe file and then install JRE on your system after that it will automatically open the java verify link which informs you whether java is installed on your system or not, sometimes we need to restart the browser for checking whether java is installed on your system or not, if this doesn’t work you can manually check through command prompt
Open the command prompt, You can open it through start menu or by typing win+R and then type cmd and then ok, it will open the command prompt
Then type java<space> -version
If it shows you the version of java, it means you have java installed on your system,
If it says there is no internal or external command found then it means you haven’t installed JRE properly,
reason might be the execution file is corrupt or some error has occurred while installing. You can download the file again and then install it properly.
Also you need to check the compatibility of your system, that whether the system is of 32 bit or 64 bit. If it is 32 bit system and you are installing JRE of 64 bit, then it’s a big problem, so while downloading keep this thing in mind. This was all on how to install JRE on windows, and JRE is enough for those who wants to run java application.
But if you also want to compile your own programs then you need to install JDK on your system too. And likewise JRE we can install JDK and, for checking whether JDK is installed properly or not you can find it by typing in command prompt jdk<space>-version.
Also before checking this, set the path for jdk by creating new environment variable, and define path over there. Let us start with installation
STEPS TO INSTALL JAVA
1. Go to the link java.com
2. Click on Agree and start free download, this will instantly save an installation file on your system and when you install that file you need to have internet connection.
3. If you don’t want to proceed with this, then you can see all java download options available.
4. According to your windows compatibility you can download JRE executable file
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6. Now after installation when you close the installation window it will directly open the java verify link | <urn:uuid:7d485de3-7e0e-4d65-a8a8-2ba91534c43a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://wideskills.com/java-tutorial/how-to-install-java | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281151.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00109-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.886551 | 569 | 2.53125 | 3 |
The Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology (BIMSB)
Systems Biology integrates high-throughput technologies, mathematics, bioinformatics, molecular biology, biochemistry and engineering to derive predictive, quantitative models for biological systems, which may be molecules, cells, organisms or entire species. In combination with biomedical research, Systems Biology has the potential to steer medicine into the next century of personalized medicine.
In combination with the major disease oriented programs of the MDC, Medical Systems Biology is an essential strategic and overarching component of the scientific profile of the MDC: the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology (BIMSB) was launched in 2008. The scientific concept was initiated by Nikolaus Rajewsky, who is now leading the program and its further developments.
Research at the BIMSB is focused on the understanding of gene regulatory networks, in particular transcriptional and post-transcriptional processes and their integration with major cellular regulatory mechanisms, such as protein-protein and protein-DNA/RNA interaction networks, signal transduction pathways, post-translational modifications, metabolic feedback, both, in health and disease states.
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Copyright © 2013 by the author(s). Published here under license by The Resilience Alliance.
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Liu, J., V. Hull, M. Batistella, R. DeFries, T. Dietz, F. Fu, T. W. Hertel, R. C. Izaurralde, E. F. Lambin, S. Li, L. A. Martinelli, W. J. McConnell, E. F. Moran, R. Naylor, Z. Ouyang, K. R. Polenske, A. Reenberg, G. de Miranda Rocha, C. S. Simmons, P. H. Verburg, P. M. Vitousek, F. Zhang, and C. Zhu. 2013. Framing sustainability in a telecoupled world. Ecology and Society 18(2): 26.
Framing Sustainability in a Telecoupled World
1Michigan State University, USA, 2EMBRAPA Satellite Monitoring, Campinas, SP, Brazil, 3Columbia University, USA, 4Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, 5Purdue University, USA, 6University of Maryland, USA, 7Stanford University, USA, 8CENA University of São Paulo (USP), Piracicaba, São Paolo, Brazil, 9Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 10University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, 11Federal University of Pará, Brazil, 12Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands, 13China Agricultural University, Beijing, China, 14International Union for Conservation of Nature, China
Interactions between distant places are increasingly widespread and influential, often leading to unexpected outcomes with profound implications for sustainability. Numerous sustainability studies have been conducted within a particular place with little attention to the impacts of distant interactions on sustainability in multiple places. Although distant forces have been studied, they are usually treated as exogenous variables and feedbacks have rarely been considered. To understand and integrate various distant interactions better, we propose an integrated framework based on telecoupling, an umbrella concept that refers to socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances. The concept of telecoupling is a logical extension of research on coupled human and natural systems, in which interactions occur within particular geographic locations. The telecoupling framework contains five major interrelated components, i.e., coupled human and natural systems, flows, agents, causes, and effects. We illustrate the framework using two examples of distant interactions associated with trade of agricultural commodities and invasive species, highlight the implications of the framework, and discuss research needs and approaches to move research on telecouplings forward. The framework can help to analyze system components and their interrelationships, identify research gaps, detect hidden costs and untapped benefits, provide a useful means to incorporate feedbacks as well as trade-offs and synergies across multiple systems (sending, receiving, and spillover systems), and improve the understanding of distant interactions and the effectiveness of policies for socioeconomic and environmental sustainability from local to global levels.
Key words: agents; causes; coupled human-environment systems; coupled human and natural systems; coupled social-ecological systems; dispersal; distant interactions; effects; feedbacks; flows; globalization; investment; knowledge transfer; migration; socioeconomic and environmental interactions; species invasion; sustainability; technology transfer; teleconnection; telecoupling; trade; transnational land deals; water transfer
The world has undergone dramatic changes and increased interactions over long distances in recent decades, often with profound impacts on socioeconomic and environmental sustainability (Reid et al. 2010). A poignant example involves biofuels. Biofuel mandates, such as in the European Union (EU) and the United States, have significant ramifications for food prices and carbon footprints because producing biofuel domestically may take land away from food production and importing large quantities of biomass over long distances, e.g., imports to EU from Africa, Asia, and the Americas, emits substantial amounts of CO2
and affects land use elsewhere (Banse et al. 2008). The increase in food prices and overall reduction in food production due in part to the growing demand for biofuels (Feng and Babcock 2010, Swinton et al. 2011) contributed to global food shortages in 2008 and civil unrest in many nations. In response to social and environmental externalities, the scientific community and policy makers have begun to put forth policies and mitigation measures. However, major scientific and policy challenges remain with regard to creating timely responses that could prevent negative impacts from occurring at all. To address such challenges, we need improved understanding and the ability to predict distant interactions and their consequences in all places.
Distant environmental interactions have existed since the formation of planet earth, and distant socioeconomic interactions have occurred since the beginning of human history. However, distant interactions such as trade, transnational land deals, spread of invasive species, and technology transfer are now more prevalent, and occur more quickly, than ever before (Liu et al. 2007a
; Appendix 1). For instance, many subsistence needs, e.g., food such as grain and fish and water resources, historically met by local resource uses are now being met by increased global trade (Kastner et al. 2011, Konar et al. 2011). In the past several decades, the world’s total food exports have increased tenfold (United Nations Statistics Division 2012).
Distant interactions also occur in completely new contexts (Appendix 1). For example, the world’s urban population increased from 1.02 billion in 1960 to 3.56 billion in 2010 (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2012), with 2.54 billion more people now depending on food and other resources from places outside urban areas, and often from across the world. Economic activities increased sevenfold from 1950 to 2010 (Nelson 2005). Many large countries such as China, India, and Brazil were poor three decades ago, but have now emerged as global economic powerhouses. The explosive development and use of social media have empowered and connected individuals across the world, with highly unpredictable socioeconomic and environmental consequences.
Distant interactions pose unprecedented challenges and opportunities for sustainability. They increasingly affect issues of global importance, such as climate change, biodiversity, food security, land use, poverty alleviation, public health, social unrest, and water scarcity. For example, international trade accounts for 30% of threats to species globally (Lenzen et al. 2012). Although a number of countries, such as China, have experienced forest transitions, e.g., a shift from net forest loss to net forest recovery, these transitions often occur at the cost of forests in other countries through trade of forest and agricultural products (Zhu and Feng 2003, Zhu et al. 2004, Rudel et al. 2009, DeFries et al. 2010, Lambin and Meyfroidt 2011). Impacts of climate change on agriculture are predicted to be most significant in regions where food demands are growing the fastest, e.g., China, requiring trade to bridge the gap between food production and food consumption (Jones and Thornton 2003). More water transfer projects are being built to address water crises in regions plagued by water scarcity, including the world’s largest and longest one, China’s South-North Water Transfer Scheme, which aims for 45 billion m³ of annual water transfer with a planned investment of US$ 77 billion (Liu and Yang 2012). At the same time, expansion of information technology and networks has promoted democracy (Li and Reuveny 2003), availability of cellular phones that allow for connections with distant partners has improved trade opportunities for local shareholders (Aker 2008), and global health networks have made vaccines increasingly available for remote communities (Milstien et al. 2006). In addition, the rapid growth of eco-certification, sustainability standards, and sustainable sourcing strategies by large agribusiness corporations offer a potentially countervailing trend to the increase of commodity trade, by harnessing the forces of globalization for sustainability (Giovannucci and Ponte 2005, Van Kooten et al. 2005).
Understanding distant interactions is a direct response to international calls for transforming the concept of sustainable development into practice (United Nations Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability 2012). Although there has been separate and fragmented research on some aspects of distant interactions, there are numerous important knowledge gaps, e.g., those identified by the National Academy of Sciences (National Research Council 2012), which called for evaluating impacts of global trade on the environment, e.g., ecosystem services, and human well-being, e.g., health. Distant forces have been sometimes considered, but they were often treated as exogenous variables (United Nations Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability 2012). Expanded distant interactions across the world require a new research framework to fill knowledge gaps and advance sustainability science and applications (Kates et al. 2001, Turner et al. 2003). We propose a new integrated framework for advancing our understanding of various distant interactions and instantiate it with two illustrative examples. We also highlight the implications of this framework for research and policy on sustainability from local to global levels. Finally, we discuss research needs and general approaches to move research forward.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF TELECOUPLINGS AND SUSTAINABILITY
Interactions between distant natural or human systems have been studied in many disciplines. For instance, the concept of teleconnections has been used in atmospheric sciences (Glantz et al. 1991) to refer to environmental interactions among climatic systems across long distances, such that changes in climate at one place influence places hundreds or thousands of kilometers away through atmospheric circulation (Fig. 1A). On the other hand, economic globalization (Levitt 1983; Fig. 1B) or socioeconomic interactions between distant human systems, has long been studied by social scientists. Although such separate studies on distant socioeconomic or environmental interactions have produced useful insights, they also have led to oversights (Adger et al. 2009, Eakin et al. 2009).
Sustainability can be understood better when different types of interactions are integrated across multiple coupled human and natural systems (National Science Foundation Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education 2009). We use an integrated concept, telecoupling (Liu et al. 2011), to encompass both socioeconomic and environmental interactions among coupled human and natural systems over distances (Fig. 1C). The concept of telecoupling is a logical extension of research on coupled human and natural systems (Liu et al. 2007b
, Alberti et al. 2011), coupled social-ecological systems (Walker et al. 2004), or coupled human-environment systems (Turner et al. 2003, Moran 2010). Telecoupling is also a unifying concept that builds upon previous concepts such as teleconnection, globalization, and world systems theory (Hornborg et al. 2007, Dreher et al. 2008), which have largely been limited to single disciplines (but see Adger et al. 2009, Seto et al. 2012).
To understand telecoupling, we propose an integrated framework. Telecoupled systems are hierarchically structured, so the telecoupling framework takes a multilevel analytic approach. At the telecoupled system level, it includes an interrelated set of coupled human and natural systems that are connected through flows among them (Fig. 2). At the coupled system level, each coupled system consists of three interrelated components: agents, causes, and effects (Fig. 2). At the component level, each component includes many elements or dimensions. For example, agents have different types, e.g., individuals, households, organizations, corporations, and there are socioeconomic and environmental effects. Furthermore, there are cross-level interactions, e.g., agents within coupled systems facilitate flows among coupled systems, and flows among coupled systems produce effects within coupled systems.
Causes produce a telecoupling between coupled human and natural systems, which generates socioeconomic and environmental effects that are manifested in coupled human and natural systems. The telecoupling is made possible by agents that facilitate or hinder the flows of material/energy and/or information among systems. Agents and causes can affect each other. As Figure 2 indicates, causes and effects are connected by feedback loops, but separating cause from effect can be a useful analytical simplification. Furthermore, although some components, e.g., agents, causes, and effects, are nested within a coupled system, treating them as separate components from systems can help highlight their roles in telecouplings and their relationships with other components. We illustrate the telecoupling framework using two detailed examples of distant interactions (Table 1): one is dominated and initiated by humans intentionally, and the other is biologically dominated and initiated by humans unintentionally.
The first example, soybean trade, concerns the increasing trade of soybeans from Brazil to China. Chinese soybean imports grew from ~14 million tons in 2000 to ~46 million tons in 2010 (United States Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service 2010). Currently more than 80% of soybeans used by China’s food industry are imported from other countries, mainly from Brazil and the U.S. (Zhang and Liu 2009, Brown-Lima et al. 2010). The soybean trade between Brazil and China plays an important role in global trade markets and prices, carbon emissions, ecosystem services, and livelihoods in many coupled human and natural systems in China, Brazil, and beyond.
The second example is the red imported fire ant (RIFA) invasion. The RIFA (Solenopsis invicta
) is listed as one of the “100 worst invasive species” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; Lowe et al. 2000). It reduces biodiversity and causes over US$ 6 billion in damage in the U.S. alone each year, mainly by damage to agriculture (Ascunce et al. 2011). The fire ant originates from South America and was first accidentally introduced to the U.S. on cargo ships in the early 1900’s (Ascunce et al. 2011). It spread widely throughout the southern part of the country soon after being introduced, and has recently further spread to Australia, New Zealand, China, and elsewhere (Ascunce et al. 2011).
Although we highlight two distinct examples of telecoupling below, we emphasize that different telecouplings may interact with one another. Some of them may enhance each other, while others offset each other. Some may induce further telecouplings, while others may eliminate them. For instance, studies have indicated there are close relationships between trade and species invasions. On one hand, trade is one of the major causes of species invasions (Crosby 1986, Nentwig 2007). On the other hand, species invasions have led to feedbacks including restrictions and inspections of traded goods and products, with calls for stronger measures such as tradable permit programs (Horan and Lupi 2005) and invasive species tariffs (Margolis et al. 2005) in the future.
Systems refer to coupled human and natural systems or integrated systems in which humans and nature interact (Liu et al. 2007b
). Although each system is in a geographic location (place), has specific contexts, and consists of many human and natural elements as well as processes (e.g., climatic and soil conditions, habitats, accessibility, topographic features such as slopes and elevation, economic and political institutions and policies, and local couplings between human and natural elements), we focus on attributes that are directly related to telecouplings between systems. For each telecoupling, systems can act as sending systems, receiving systems, or spillover systems. Sending systems can be thought of as origins, sources, or donors and receiving systems as destinations or recipients (Fig. 2). Sending systems refer to those from which flows of material, energy, or information move outward, e.g., exporting countries, whereas receiving systems are those that obtain flows from the sending systems, e.g., importing countries. Of course, which system is defined as sending and which as receiving depends on the flow being analyzed.
Spillover systems are systems that affect and/or are affected by the interactions between sending and receiving systems. Spillover systems may be connected to sending and receiving systems in at least three main ways: by being an intermediate stopover between the two systems, e.g., migratory bird stopover or port and airport connections; by being in the pathway between the sending and receiving systems, e.g., oil spill by tanker in transit; or by interacting with sending and/or receiving systems in other ways, e.g., third party in trade agreement (Fig. 3). A system can also be a sending system for one telecoupling and a receiving or spillover system for another telecoupling.
In the soybean trade example, Brazil can be considered the sending system for soybean flow because it produces the soybeans and China is the receiving system because it receives the soybeans and soybean products. However, for the flows involving financial transactions for soybean production, China is the sending system and Brazil the receiving. These relationships can be seen in market transactions with products flowing in one direction and money flowing in the other direction. However, little research has been done on spillover systems, which may include every other country around the world that has historically been involved in soybean trade, such as the United States. The U.S. in particular may have been affected as a result of the cheaper costs of producing soybeans as well as technological advances in tropical agriculture in developing countries like Brazil, which competes with soybean production in the U.S. In the RIFA invasion example, South America is the sending system because that is the native habitat of the RIFA. The U.S., the first foreign country that the RIFA invaded, is the main receiving system.
The interrelationships among sending, receiving, and spillover systems are complex. In terms of the numbers of sending, receiving, and spillover systems in a telecoupled system, they may be one-one-zero (one sending, one receiving, and no spillover system), one-one-one (one sending, one receiving, and one spillover system; Fig. 3A), a mix of one and many systems (e.g., one-one-many in the case of market effects because bilateral trade may have widespread effects), or many-many-many (many sending, many receiving, and many spillover systems; Fig. 3B). The latter are the most complex because there are not only interactions among sending, receiving, and spillover systems, but also interactions among sending systems, among receiving systems, and among spillover systems. In addition, for the same telecoupling over time, a receiving system can become a new sending system. In the RIFA invasion example, the U.S. could either be considered a receiving system or a sending system, depending on the time period in question, because it was initially a receiving system but later developed into a sending system that enhanced the spread of the species to other countries. In fact, global populations of the RIFA have been genetically traced back to U.S. populations as opposed to originating directly from South America (Ascunce et al. 2011). For these complex interactions, it is key to characterize not only system composition, but also temporal and spatial configurations of the telecoupled system to better understand flows, agents, causes, and effects.
Flows are movements of material, energy, or information between the systems that are transferred as a result of actions taken by agents. Material and energy include biogeophysical entities, e.g., manufactured goods, food, natural resources, organisms, and biofuels, and information consists of knowledge, trade agreements, financial data, genes, and agricultural techniques. Flows can be unidirectional or bidirectional and can follow pathways that proceed directly between sending and receiving systems, or indirectly between the two by passing through spillover systems (Figs. 2 and 3).
In the soybean trade example, the main material flows include shipping of soybeans and soybean products from Brazil to China, and examples of information flows are financial transactions and trade agreements between Brazil, China, and other countries. In the case of the RIFA invasion, the main material flows involved are movement of goods for trade, ants themselves, and pesticides and other materials used to control the spread of the invaders. Information flows include the dissemination of knowledge about the damages caused by the ants and how to control the spread.
Flows can leapfrog from sending systems to distant receiving systems. This occurred with the soybean trade example involving the distant countries Brazil and China, which are 20,000 km apart by sea. Flows can also begin with receiving systems located closer to the sending systems, and radiate outward over time to more distant receiving systems. This can be illustrated by the case of the RIFA invasion’s initial stages of gradual spread of the invader from the south and southeastern U.S., the initial receiving system, to California, although it leapfrogged later on when spreading from California to other countries.
Networks of infrastructure, institutions, and ecosystems play important roles in dictating the pathways that flows take as they proceed from one system to another. They include transport networks, e.g., roads, boats, vehicles, airplanes; intergovernmental networks, e.g., trade agreements; facilitators of trade, e.g., electronic customs clearances (Hertel and Mirza 2009); social networks, e.g., epistemic scientific communities (Haas 1993); and ecological networks, e.g., animal migration pathways. In the case of soybean trade, the networks allowing the flows of soybeans from Brazil to China include financial, social, transportation and government networks.
Agents, or actors, include autonomous decision-making entities that directly or indirectly facilitate or hinder telecouplings, such as via the emergence or dissolution of flows. The telecoupling framework highlights the variety of agents and the intricate connections between the agents distributed across sending, receiving, and spillover systems. Agents facilitate or prevent flows that produce, maintain, amplify, weaken, or dissolve telecouplings. They can be individuals or groups of humans or animals, e.g., socioeconomic units such as households, or organizations such as government agencies, or flocks or herds of animals.
In the soybean trade example, the main agents include soybean producers, agribusinesses, and public and private investors and their supporters in Brazil, financial investors and consumers of soybean products in China, and the respective government agencies involved in creating and enforcing trade agreements. In the case of the RIFA invasion, the main agents consist of traders who inadvertently helped spread the insect, the farmers and policy makers in the United States and spillover systems who attempt to limit further spread, e.g., by conducting control operations, and the ants that have evolved characteristics that outcompete many other insects and make them highly successful as invaders of the new habitats into which they were inadvertently introduced.
Agents form relationships with one another to produce flows that shape the telecouplings. For human agents, these may operate through social networks such as governments, institutions, private corporations, personal friendships, and kinship (Jackson and Watts 2002). For instance, relationships between governments and corporations are important to drive bilateral trade flows between Brazil and China in the soybean trade example (Niu 2010). For animal agents, there are also forms of communication that facilitate interactions. In the RIFA invasion example, individual ants use sophisticated chemical communication to coordinate activities of the colony that allow for expansion into new systems (Vander Meer et al. 2002).
For establishing new telecouplings, innovative agents that are flexible in their requirements may be most often successful, but different characteristics, such as resilience, may matter more for maintaining and strengthening an existing telecoupling. Alien species like the RIFA take hold and become invasive in receiving systems when they thrive in new biotic conditions and outcompete natives for limited resources (Callaway and Ridenour 2004). The soybean trade between Brazil and China has thrived in part because the flexible trade agreements adopted by Brazil and China allow the systems to adapt to new markets and opportunities, and because there are highly effective commodity value chains linking producing regions with the main markets abroad.
The causes of a telecoupling are factors that influence its emergence and dynamics, e.g., changes in strength. Most telecouplings have more than one cause. A cause may originate in a sending, receiving, or spillover system (Fig. 2). A cause can be classified as proximate or ultimate (Laland et al. 2011). Political, economic, cultural, technological, or ecological change can produce new dynamics in the telecoupled system and all of these changes are intertwined. Shifts in preferences can alter demand, technological innovations and diffusions can alter supply, and the interplay of supply in the sending system and demand in the receiving system can shape the system dynamics. Changes in institutions including policies and rules can induce or retard interaction with a distant system. Ecological factors play important roles in telecouplings. Causes also interact with effects via feedback mechanisms.
There are multiple causes of the soybean trade telecoupling. One of the main economic causes is a demand for soybean products, e.g., vegetable oil and animal feed in China and a supply of land, water, and capital for soybean production in Brazil. A political cause is the Chinese government’s interest in pursuing foreign investments and the Brazilian government’s interests in developing the export market. A cultural cause is preferences for soybean products and animal products, resulting from soybeans as animal feed, by the Chinese people. Technological causes include agronomic advances mostly by Embrapa, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, which invested heavily in developing tropical agriculture technology to cope with acid Cerrado
soils, and the development of soybean varieties adapted to these latitudes that are able to biologically fix nitrogen from the atmosphere (Alves et al. 2003, 2006). In addition, development of supply chains and rapid advancements in the efficient storage and long distance transport of agricultural products like soybeans in recent years have also facilitated this telecoupling. An ecological cause is the good climatic conditions for growing soybeans in Brazil.
For the RIFA invasion telecoupling, one of the main economic causes is an increase in global trade. RIFAs were primarily spread accidentally on transport vessels along with other goods involved in transnational trade (Ascunce et al. 2011). A political cause is improved governmental and interorganization relationships between countries in South America and the United States in the early 1900s that facilitated such trade by allowing for open exchange. A technological cause relates to advances in ship construction and operations around this same time that allowed for long distance transport of goods in unprecedented volumes. A cultural cause is the increasing preferences of consumers in the U.S. for foreign goods. A key ecological cause of the successful spread of the species is the innate superior competitive abilities of the species in the new environments into which it was introduced and their resilience to environmental challenges such as floods and droughts (Vinson 1997).
Effects refer to socioeconomic and environmental consequences or impacts of the telecoupling. They can be manifested in sending, receiving, and/or spillover systems in different ways (Fig. 2). Effects can occur at multiple spatial, temporal, and organizational scales. We divide effects into two main categories, socioeconomic and environmental (Table 1), but emphasize that the two are inherently linked to each other. These effects may promote or hinder environmental and/or socioeconomic sustainability (Liu 2010).
In the soybean example, trade between Brazil and China may cause increased intensity of agricultural land use in Brazil (Macedo et al. 2012), increased use of herbicides in no-tillage production systems, increased use of pesticides and fertilizers, mainly phosphorus, and loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services (Martinelli et al. 2010). Trade of soybeans has also caused displacement of local people and rural violence in Brazil, afforestation and carbon sequestration in China, and carbon emissions in spillover systems, e.g., throughout transport routes (Table 1). In China, many farmers have abandoned soybean production because of lower prices of soybean imported from Brazil and much of the original soybean land has been used for the production of other crops, e.g., maize, or converted into forests (GRAIN 2012). The trade has generated income for some sectors of Brazilian society (Lima et al. 2011). In the case of the RIFA invasion, species invasion has caused reduction of biodiversity in native invertebrate communities, destruction of habitat for wildlife, loss of agricultural crops and ensuing loss of income, damage to furniture and residences, and injury to livestock and humans as a result of painful and potentially dangerous bites from RIFA (Vinson 1997; Table 1).
Types of complex effects observed in individual coupled human and natural systems (Liu et al. 2007b
) may also be evident in telecoupled systems, including indirect effects, sometimes called ‘second-order effects,’ cascading effects, nonlinearities, time lags, legacy effects, induced effects, and feedbacks. Cascading effects refer to phenomena in which the effects of telecoupling on one system or system component radiate outward to affect multiple other systems or components. In the soybean trade case, Embrapa in Brazil has taken its new agricultural technologies for soybean production to spillover countries in Africa where they are engaging in large-scale development in the savannas (Galerani and Bragantini 2007, Batistella and Bolfe 2010). Effects are often nonlinear, and may have time lags, in which they do not appear until years or even decades after the telecoupling is initiated. Legacy effects are those that may last for an extended period of time even after the telecoupling has ceased to operate. An example of an induced effect, i.e., a secondary effect brought on by another effect, in the soybean trade case is its influence on other agricultural sectors and overall consumer spending. Furthermore, changes in the income of laborers harvesting the soybeans cause labor income to vary, and create induced alterations in demand for food and other goods that the laborers consume, which has cascading effects on the broader economy and spillover systems (Altieri and Pengue 2005).
Feedbacks are important features of telecouplings. Feedbacks occur between systems when effects of the first system on a second system feed back to affect the first system. Some feedbacks between systems can be fast, while others may be very slow and take a long time to be realized or detected. In the soybean trade example, the shift in land use in China away from soybean production has led to a positive feedback, whereby China’s demand for soybeans from Brazil has increased and resulted in further development of soybean production in Brazil. Furthermore, the soybean trade may also help promote more Chinese investment in Brazil and the import of products, e.g., machinery, textiles, from China to Brazil (Brainard and Welch 2012). In the RIFA invasion case, RIFA caused substantial environmental and socioeconomic damage to the receiving system, the U.S., prompting the development of techniques to hinder the spread of the invaders in the receiving system. The techniques then fed back to affect the sending system, South America. More specifically, between 1961 and 1975, 250,000 kg of the compound Mirex, a chlorinated hydrocarbon and derivative of cyclopentadiene, was used for ant control in the southeastern U.S. Nearly 150,000 kg was exported to Brazil for ant control during the same period (Eisler 2007). However, the use of Mirex had a double negative effect because (a) it is a bioacumlative pollutant and its use was prohibited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1976, and (b) it helped to spread the fire ant because it also killed native ants that competed with the fire ants (Markin et al. 1974). Another feedback is the importation of natural enemies, e.g., flies and microorganisms, of the fire ant from Brazil to the U.S. as an invasion control method decades after the RIFA was established in the U.S. (Callcott et al. 2011).
Although some studies have been done regarding effects on both sending and receiving systems in each of our examples, little or no research has been published on their effects on spillover systems. Some research has shown transporting food and products can have huge impacts on the environment along and beyond the routes, such as energy consumption and emissions of pollutants, e.g., CO2
.These suggest the potential impacts of transporting soybeans from Brazil to China, but no quantitative research on such impacts has been published.
There may be interactions among different types of telecouplings. For example, studies have found that the spread of many invasive species is made possible by trade (Westphal et al. 2008). Although no literature is available regarding the relationships between the two examples in this paper, applying the telecoupling framework may help researchers to look into possible relationships between soybean trade and species invasion, and their relations with other types of telecouplings.
IMPLICATIONS OF THE TELECOUPLING FRAMEWORK
The framework of telecoupling provides a common language, logical consistency, systematic approach, and holistic guidance for researchers and others who work on different types of distant interactions. It can help transform our understanding of how the world functions over distances and identify solutions to achieve socioeconomic and environmental sustainability across local to global levels, because it is uniquely integrative in several ways.
The framework integrates both socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances, as opposed to just socioeconomic or environmental interactions
This can help expand the scope of previous research on distant interactions, such as trade, animal migration, climate teleconnections, which mainly focus on either socioeconomic interactions, e.g., trade, or environmental interactions, e.g., animal migration. Because it provides information on socioeconomic and environmental interactions simultaneously, it can help assess trade-offs between socioeconomic and environmental consequences, and achieve both socioeconomic and environmental sustainability, e.g., human well-being and biodiversity conservation (Carter et al. 2012, United Nations Environment Programme 2011).
The framework considers sending, receiving, and spillover systems together as a telecoupled and networked system, as opposed to just sending and/or receiving systems
By including spillover systems, the framework opens up a new frontier in research and policies because spillover systems were rarely considered before. For example, the framework suggests that bilateral agreements, which often focus on sending and receiving systems, should be adaptive by accounting for spillover systems as they emerge. In the soybean trade case, besides Brazil and China as soybean sending and receiving countries, spillover systems such as the U.S., a major soybean producer and a traditional exporter of soybean, are affected environmentally and socioeconomically because export of soybeans from Brazil to China affects China’s import from the U.S.
The framework can help evaluate socioeconomic and environmental trade-offs and synergies across multiple systems, as opposed to just one system
For example, there have been calls for consuming local goods and products to support local producers and reduce environmental impacts from long distance transport (Halweil 2002). However, there have been measures that support the sustainability of distant systems, e.g., via purchasing sustainable coffee (Giovannucci and Ponte 2005). Still, others argue that dependence on local produce may compromise food security and forgo opportunities to use production areas with high yields and low environmental impacts (DesRochers and Shimizu 2012, MacMillan 2012). Indeed, the trade-offs between local and global sourcing of food are complex and system-dependent; for instance, recent evidence suggests that converting to local consumption may only reduce global emissions in regions with low intensity of greenhouse gas emissions (M. Avetisyan, T. W. Hertel, and G. Sampson, unpublished manuscript
). Understanding synergies and trade-offs of telecouplings can help minimize the negative externalities outside the system of prime interest.
The framework can help promote policies for sustainability because it explicitly considers distant interactions as feedbacks, as opposed to just unidirectional influence
Feedbacks are an important mechanism to maintain system sustainability. Indeed, policies can be useful feedbacks to guide systems toward sustainability. By considering feedbacks explicitly, the framework can prompt researchers and policy makers to assess the existence and effectiveness of feedbacks among sending, receiving, and spillover systems. One example involves policies implemented to promote transnational land deals in developing countries, which initially bolster local economies, but later may promote social inequities and land degradation when positive feedbacks from foreign investment markets result in excessive use of local resources (Baird 2011). Thus, new policies should be developed to initiate negative feedbacks to reduce land degradation and social inequities.
The framework can facilitate studies on the interrelationships among different types of distant interactions, as opposed to just one type of interaction
Telecoupling is an umbrella concept and includes various distant interactions, e.g., trade, species invasion, migration (Linderman et al. 2005) and tourism (He et al. 2008; Table 2). Similar to the umbrella concept of ecosystem services, which encompasses a variety of nature’s benefits to humans and facilitates studies on relationships among different types of services, e.g., carbon sequestration, food provisioning, pollination, water purification, and recreation (Daily 1997, Liu et al. 2008), the framework of telecoupling can help promote systematic, multidisciplinary studies on different types of distant interactions and their interrelationships. For example, it may promote cooperative research on trade and animal migration. Shade coffee plantations, which produce coffee for trade, have been known to provide key migratory bird habitat (Perfecto et al. 1996). At the same time, the presence of migratory birds on such plantations has promoted trade by creating a new market for trade of biodiversity friendly coffee to eco-conscious buyers (Rice and Ward 1996).
The telecoupling framework as presented here marks a significant conceptual advance by adding substantially to other related theoretical frameworks such as the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework of Elinor Ostrom and colleagues (Anderies et al. 2004, Ostrom 2005, 2011). IAD provides an analytical structure to understand how different institutions, i.e., formal rules and the rules-in-use, influence common and locally used resources. From a telecoupling perspective, some institutions may be understood as socioeconomic feedback mechanisms, using information on outcomes to adjust rules to accomplish societal goals. To this, the telecoupling framework adds a focus on biophysical feedbacks influencing the flows that move beyond the local systems in most IAD work. Furthermore, the telecoupling framework differs from the IAD framework by explicitly accounting for spillover systems and interactions, including feedbacks, among distant coupled systems that are increasingly interconnected (Liu and Diamond 2005, Henry and Dietz 2011).
Viewing distant interactions as telecouplings can help identify knowledge gaps and promote sustainability research and governance. The telecoupling framework expands traditional research on distant interactions to open new lines of inquiry and generate crucial insights on many otherwise hidden impacts. Although previous studies have largely focused on either socioeconomic issues of certain distant interactions, e.g. trade, foreign direct investment, technology transfer, human migration, or on environmental/ecological issues of other distant interactions, e.g., animal migration, they may all have both socioeconomic and environmental implications. There are many different types of telecouplings that can have profound effects on sustainability (Table 2).
MOVING RESEARCH ON TELECOUPLING FORWARD
Telecouplings offer unique challenges and opportunities for sustainability science and applications, e.g., conservation, development, provision of ecosystem services, climate change adaptation and mitigation, invasion control, energy use, land use, and water use. Many important and complex questions remain to be answered about telecouplings (Table 3). For instance, how do telecouplings emerge, how do they change over time, and how are they dissolved? How do they interact with each other? Under what conditions do telecouplings enhance or reduce sustainability? What properties of a given system make it more probable to become a sending, receiving, or spillover system for a given telecoupling? What are similarities and differences among telecouplings?
There are numerous knowledge gaps. For example, even though global trade is widely studied, many of its effects remain unknown. Although accounting for the land area necessary to produce traded agricultural products is useful (Meyfroidt et al. 2010), it does not measure many important environmental and socioeconomic effects because it does not consider the large differences among land-cover types in carbon stocks, biogeochemistry, and human well-being (Meyfroidt et al. 2010). Furthermore, in most studies, spillover systems have not been considered or recognized. However, effects of telecouplings on spillover systems may sometimes be even larger than those in receiving and sending systems. Spillover systems may play key roles in local to global sustainability because they connect and propagate the effects of telecouplings widely across space. In addition, cross-sectoral connections among coupled systems remain a largely uninvestigated area of research. Examples include food-feed-fuel exchanges in the agricultural sector and more broadly agriculture-energy-finance linkages among sending, receiving, and spillover systems, e.g., relationships between biofuels, financial investments, and land commodities.
Compared to local couplings, telecouplings create greater challenges for research (Table 3) and governance (Table 4) because they are more complex, involving multiple flows, multiple agents, multiple causes, and multiple effects across multiple systems at multiple scales and often across administrative and political borders. Governance approaches may need to be quite different between those depending on local couplings versus those in which telecouplings have strong influences. Systems that have only local couplings may lack resilience when disasters occur. Telecoupled systems may serve as reservoirs for replenishing populations of species depleted by disasters, and sources of information, material, and energy flows when local human infrastructure is destroyed. However, those who fully depend on telecouplings may also encounter risks when telecouplings dissolve or are disrupted and no substitutions are available. For example, when other countries’ demands for products decline because of international competition, many manufacturing facilities in the U.S. have closed with devastating effects on local economies and human well-being (Minchin 2009). In systems where both local couplings and telecouplings already exist, it is important to evaluate how well they are balanced.
Integrating both local couplings and telecouplings into decision making can enhance adaptive capacity. Such integration may benefit from creating new institutions and/or reforming existing ones at the local, national, and international levels, e.g., the United Nations, World Bank, and World Trade Organization. There have been some international policies that seek to manage for effects of distant interactions such as The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species Flora and Fauna (CITES) and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), both of which involve cross-country regulation of flows of materials that affect sustainability, i.e., endangered species, carbon, and forest products. However these endeavors often focus on particular socioeconomic or environmental impacts and few attempt to approach policy making from an integrated telecoupling perspective, a perspective that addresses multiple impacts and feedbacks among sending, receiving, and spillover systems.
Priorities for advancing telecoupling research include: (1) development and integration of new theories and methods to better examine telecouplings for sustainability, e.g., how feedbacks influence multisystem dynamics, (2) creation of knowledge on telecouplings and insights useful for assessing changes in telecoupled systems, e.g., how trade in commodities influences people and the environment in sending, receiving, and spillover systems, (3) exploration of complex relationships among various telecouplings, e.g., species invasions, trade, migration, disease spread, flows of ecosystem services, and (4) investigation of strategies for making telecoupled systems more sustainable at multiple scales and across different systems.
Studying and promoting sustainability in the context of telecouplings requires new research directions. These may include (1) adoption of the telecoupling framework, (2) changes in research approaches from locally focused inquiry to network-based inquiry into telecoupled systems, e.g., expansion of research at individual places to connections among multiple places, and from multisite comparisons to cross-system integration, and (3) collaborations among researchers and stakeholders in sending, receiving, and spillover systems. Network science may provide especially useful theoretical and methodological tools for understanding telecoupled systems, which are fundamentally a form of networks (Bodin and Prell 2011). Studying telecouplings can fill many research gaps such as determining ecological consequences of increased social networking for distant resource usage, and predicting future land and water use scenarios to address global land and water shortages for food and biofuel production.
The telecoupling framework can also lead to new analytical approaches and improve existing approaches. For example, agent-based modeling is widely used for research in land change and coupled human and natural systems (Chen et al. 2012; Filatova et al., in press
), but the agents are mainly restricted to those within a coupled human and natural system. The telecoupling framework calls for explicitly incorporating interactions among agents in distant coupled systems, or telecoupled agents, in shaping land change and dynamics of coupled systems. Similarly, scenario analysis and forecasting have mainly considered components and interactions within a coupled system (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005, Moss et al. 2010). A telecoupling perspective can help develop more realistic scenarios and more accurate forecasting to reflect an increasingly telecoupled world.
Systems integration, or bringing together data on different aspects of the telecoupled system from diverse disciplines, can help understand telecouplings. For example, systems models can be employed to explore the long-term consequences of policy scenarios regarding telecouplings to enhance their positive effects and reduce their negative effects across multiple scales, and evaluate sustainability options for adaptation to changes in telecouplings. Studies at the global and national scales can provide a broad context of telecouplings, while studies at regional and local scales can achieve detailed understanding of coupled systems, flows, agents, causes, and effects of telecouplings in particular systems. For example, although there have been studies at the international level on displacement of land use (Meyfroidt et al. 2010, Lambin and Meyfroidt 2011), especially deforestation (DeFries et al. 2010), few studies at the national, regional, and local scales have been simultaneously linked to global-scale analyses (Rudel 2005, Rudel et al. 2005, DeFries et al. 2010). By taking a multiscale systems approach, it is possible to trace telecouplings. Studies on telecouplings can also benefit from a portfolio approach (Young et al. 2006), which involves developing a multidisciplinary toolbox of theories and approaches, because no single method is able to accomplish everything (Verburg et al. 2008). Furthermore, revolutionary communication technologies such as social networking tools could enable the establishment of “crowdsourcing” platforms (van der Velde et al. 2012) and more participatory and transparent approaches to research and governance for positive socioeconomic and environmental outcomes.
The telecoupling framework provides a broader analytical lens to integrate distant socioeconomic and environmental interactions affecting sustainability across local to global levels. It explicitly accounts for environmental and socioeconomic interactions across sending, receiving, and spillover systems simultaneously. As a common and logically consistent language, the framework integrates various human and natural elements, e.g., land, water, climate, energy, air, humans, and organisms, involved in a variety of distant interactions, e.g., trade, species invasion, disease spread, flows of ecosystem services. It provides a useful means to incorporate interconnections and feedbacks as well as socioeconomic and environmental benefits and costs, as called for in the recent reports of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability (2012) and the International Council for Science (2010). It can also help identify new insights that cannot be obtained from considering one type of distant interaction alone, because many telecouplings may have complex interrelationships. Understanding telecoupling has important implications for governing global sustainability in an increasingly telecoupled world.
We thank the National Science Foundation, Michigan State University, U.S. DOE Office of Science, and Michigan AgBioResearch for funding. We are also grateful to Anthony Janetos, Harini Nagendra, Phil Robertson, and Robert Walker for helpful input.
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A bar complaint is a complaint individuals may file against an attorney who they believe has violated state rules of professional conduct governing lawyers. Since each state governs attorneys separately, you must file your complaint with your state bar association. While forms vary from state to state, the process is a straightforward one, requiring you to record the details of your relationship with the attorney, the specifics of the case, and describe in detail the complaint. Complaints and the investigation are confidential, and if the bar association finds clear and convincing evidence of misconduct, the attorney can be sanctioned, suspended or barred from the practice of law in your state.
Obtain a complaint form from the bar association in your state. There are county and state bar associations, so you may be able to file with both organizations. Some states such as Idaho provide forms online. The American Bar Association provides a directory of state bar associations for assistance locating the bar association in your state.
Enter specifics of the attorney-client arrangement, including your full name and contact information, followed by the full name of the attorney and information on when you retained her and the fee arrangement. Enter in a narrative of the legal issue for which the attorney was retained and what occurred to give rise to your complaint. Be as specific as possible in regard to what ethical violation you believe the attorney committed.
File by mail your complaint with the state bar association, and wait to be contacted. The bar association will have its own attorneys who handle such investigations, and the attorney or an investigator will contact you to review your complaint. The investigators may require additional information, and a copy of the complaint typically will be provided to the subject of the complaint. | <urn:uuid:9fb55107-13d8-4659-ac5a-b9a2e914380e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://legalbeagle.com/8419284-draft-bar-complaint.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282926.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00391-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948677 | 334 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Learned a great opening activity in the Labor Education study group I participate in at Meiji University's Labor Media and Education Center. Needs a good title -- "Still Life with Union Movement"?
The activity is similar to Statues (where participants use other participants to create a statue representing an idea or situation).
Facilitator piles up three or four chairs in the middle of the room, some on top of others, in a jumble.
She asks participants to think of this pile of chairs as "The Union Movement."
She then asks participants to place themselves in relation to the pile of chairs, reflecting their sense of how they are related to the Union Movement. For example, someone with little connection might place herself far away from the pile of chairs, maybe even facing away. Someone who is trying to change the Union Movement might take a position close to the pile, trying to lift a fallen chair, or pull two tangled chairs apart...
Once all the participants have placed themselves, the facilitator asks everyone to take their pose and freeze -- creating a kind of snapshot (would be great to video/photo this) of the whole group's relation to the Union Movement.
Participants return to their seats, in a circle with the jumble in the middle and take turns introducing themselves by talking about where they were and how their position reflects their actual relation to the Union Movement. The facilitator can either use a simple go 'round, or help the discussion unfold by asking for people who had similar positions to speak and then go to people with very different positions, etc.
The activity does a great job of introducing people in terms that are relevant and interesting, as well as generating issues and ideas worthy of more discussion/exploration. The challenge is how best to follow up -- it might be interesting to go from here to an "open space" format, having people identify issues they want to discuss and form groups to hold those discussions.
[need to remember the name of the great educator who I learned this from...] | <urn:uuid:e3dd886a-6f49-43e8-ac0c-843b3cd6f57c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://rollingearth.org/content/still-life-union-movement | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571222.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810222056-20220811012056-00671.warc.gz | en | 0.956354 | 410 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Workplace Lead Publications
At NIOSH, we have studied lead exposure in many different industries. Below are links to study publications and NIOSH-numbered publications meant to inform and reduce workplace lead exposure.
NIOSHTIC-2 is a searchable bibliographic database of occupational safety and health publications, documents, grant reports, and journal articles supported in whole or in part by NIOSH. Use this database to search for lead-related journal articles published by NIOSH.
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR): ToxFAQs: Lead (PDF 74 KB, 2 pages)
Worker Health Chartbook 2004 DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 2004-146 (PDF 8.5 MB, 382 pages)
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Lead Hazard Fact Sheet (PDF 21 KB, 2 pages)
Protecting Workers' Families: A Research Agenda DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 2002-113 (2002)
Report to Congress on Workers' Home Contamination Study Conducted Under The Workers' Family Protection Act (29 U.S.C. 671a) DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 95-123 (1995)
Protecting workers exposed to lead-based paint hazards – A report to Congress (NIOSH) Publication No. 98-112 (1998)
NIOSH Alert - Preventing Lead Poisoning in Construction Workers DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 91-116a (1991)
- Page last reviewed: September 30, 2013
- Page last updated: September 30, 2013
- Content source:
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations and Field Studies
- National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health | <urn:uuid:cbce41a9-1fc5-4ac0-8409-a267b1a6160a> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/lead/Publications.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719843.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00291-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.804295 | 367 | 2.515625 | 3 |
While the whole concept of beauty is said to be a matter of perception, but every once in a while it is essential to look at your best. People love men who always manage to look drop-dead handsome every time, which is also why individuals often make all the efforts to look that way. If you are someone who goes through phases of looking good but cannot keep up with looking handsome every time, there are some fundamentals that you may be getting wrong.
Yes, there are basic things that you can do to make you instantly likable and attractive to the people around you. Here are 8 tips to follow for your occasional handsomeness to become a part of your daily lives.
Here are the top 10 Tips to Look Handsome Everyday:
Beard, Hair, and Nails
It is a scientific fact that girls like men who keep themselves properly groomed, be it their beards, hair, or nails. While it is also true that girls like men with beards, but that does not mean that you let them keep growing. Trim your beard to keep it in a shape that suits you, keep your hairstyle maintained, and cut your claws to manageable lengths. Along with this, make sure that you get rid of unsightly body hair to keep you well-groomed. Not keeping these things in proper conditions often shows that you don’t care about the way you look.
Your walking style says a lot about your personality. When you walk with a swagger in your shoulder, your personality automatically becomes attractive. So don’t ever walk like a Quasimodo. However, make sure that you look natural while walking.
Ditch That Slouch
Good posture can boost your attractiveness and can take it a notch ahead. A study conducted in America found that good posture, even if maintained for a short period of time can increase the level of testosterone; a hormone that is associated with confidence. Not only this, but the hunchback can also affect the life of your spine. So start working on your sitting posture to look handsome.
Men, your eyes need all the care you can provide for them because if you don’t, it begins to show really quickly. Not just that, the skin around your eyes is also important, which is why a proper sunblock is good for your skin, and using an under-eye gel for the dark circles is a great idea. To get all this convenience in one item, use bigger sunglasses every time you step out.
Your skin is the largest organ in your body because it covers the entire body. You can choose to look amazing or you can choose to get wrinkly early, but trust us, the former will look better. So invest in proper skincare, not just for your face, but also for your hands and feet as well. Get rid of the blemishes and the dark circles that are giving you a bad look, and start to look fresh every time you step out.
Nobody likes someone who would look great otherwise but has little to no care for their own oral hygiene. Stained teeth, crooked teeth, or bad breath are some of the most significant factors in making a great first impression. Get in touch with a good dentist at the best dental clinic in India and sort these issues out, while also maintaining a proper dental care routine. Brush twice a day, floss once, use mouthwash, stop smoking, and schedule regular dental check-ups.
Your days of wearing baggy oversized clothes and long-waisted jeans are gone with your boyhood. Men wear properly fitted clothes, especially when you want to make a great first impression. Get your shirts, and if you wear them like Barney Stinson, suits tailored to fit your torso. Nothing says Classy like someone who looks great in their clothes. Making sure they fit you like your own skin is the first step you need to take.
No matter where you are going, even if it is a workplace that does not have a strict formal wear policy, make sure that you bring your tie with you every day. It makes you look professional and serious. Plus in a world of casuals, a formal dress code will definitely help you to stand out. So make sure that even when you are not wearing a suit, you always have a tie and belt on you.
Men who smell good more often are the ones that are liked more. It takes out some of the efforts you put into making a great impression. Make sure that you match your fragrance with your personality and don’t overdo it. It is one thing to smell good and totally other to smell like a perfume factory.
Classy and Quality Accessories
Finally, it is very important to choose quality over quantity when it comes to accessories. Whether you are choosing shoes, watch, or even your earphones, make sure that you choose what is classy, not what is flashy. Quality accessories are designed with your comfort in mind, which is why it is better to include more quality. Comfortable is always classy, keep in mind that.
Being handsome is a gift, but putting in efforts to look handsome is way more important because it adds confidence in your stride and a swagger in your step. Remember these steps, include them in your daily life, and look handsome every day effortlessly. | <urn:uuid:047811df-b524-42b9-911c-a7b590cc80cc> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://miska.co.in/10-habits-that-can-make-you-look-handsome/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571150.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810070501-20220810100501-00673.warc.gz | en | 0.96824 | 1,117 | 1.507813 | 2 |
It is strange that these delightful promises affect us coldly, or scarcely at all, so that the generality of men prefer to wander up and down, forsaking the fountain of living waters, and hewing out to themselves broken cisterns, rather than embrace the divine liberality voluntarily offered to them (Jer.2:13). "The name of the Lord," says Solomon, "is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it, and is safe." (Pr.18:10) Joel, after predicting the fearful disaster which was at hand, subjoins the following memorable sentence: " And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered." (Joel 2:32) This we know properly refers to the course of the Gospel. Scarcely one in a hundred is moved to come into the presence of God, though he himself exclaims by Isaiah, "And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear." (Is.65:24) This honour he elsewhere bestows upon the whole Church in general, as belonging to all the members of Christ: "He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him." (Ps.91:15) My intention, however, as I already observed, is not to enumerate all, but only select some admirable passages as a specimen how kindly God allures us to himself, and how extreme our ingratitude must be when with such powerful motives our sluggishness still retards us. Wherefore, let these words always resound in our ears: "The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth" (Ps.145:18). Likewise those passages which we have quoted from Isaiah and Joel, in which God declares that his ear is open to our prayers, and that he is delighted as with a sacrifice of sweet savour when we cast our cares upon him. The special benefit of these promises we receive when we frame our prayer, not timorously or doubtingly, but when trusting to his word whose majesty might otherwise deter us, we are bold to call him Father, he himself deigning to suggest this most delightful name. Fortified by such invitations it remains for us to know that we have therein sufficient materials for prayer, since our prayers depend on no merit of our own, but all their worth and hope of success are founded and depend on the promises of God, so that they need no other support, and require not to look up and down on this hand and on that. It must therefore be fixed in our minds, that though we equal not the lauded sanctity of patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, yet as the command to pray is common to us as well as them, and faith is common, so if we lean on the word of God, we are in respect of this privilege their associates. For God declaring, as has already been seen, that he will listen and be favourable to all, encourages the most wretched to hope that they shall obtain what they ask; and, accordingly, we should attend to the general forms of expression, which, as it is commonly expressed, exclude none from first to last; only let there be sincerity of heart, self-dissatisfaction, humility, and faith, that we may not, by the hypocrisy of a deceitful prayer, profane the name of God. Our most merciful Father will not reject those whom he not only encourages to come, but urges in every possible way. Hence David's method of prayer to which I lately referred: "And now, O Lord God, thou art that God, and thy words be true, and thou hast promised this goodness unto thy servant, that it may continue for ever before thee" (2 Sam.7:28). So also, in another passage, "Let, I pray thee, thy merciful kindness be for my comfort, according to thy word unto thy servant" (Psalm 119:76). And the whole body of the Israelites, whenever they fortify themselves with the remembrance of the covenant, plainly declare, that since God thus prescribes they are not to pray timorously (Gen.32:13). In this they imitated the example of the patriarchs, particularly Jacob, who, after confessing that he was unworthy of the many mercies which he had received of the Lord's hand, says, that he is encouraged to make still larger requests, because God had promised that he would grant them. But whatever be the pretexts which unbelievers employ, when they do not flee to God as often as necessity urges, nor seek after him, nor implore his aid, they defraud him of his due honour just as much as if they were fabricating to themselves new gods and idols, since in this way they deny that God is the author of all their blessings. On the contrary, nothing more effectually frees pious minds from every doubt, than to be armed with the thought that no obstacle should impede them while they are obeying the command of God, who declares that nothing is more grateful to him than obedience. Hence, again, what I have previously said becomes still more clear, namely, that a bold spirit in prayer well accords with fear, reverence, and anxiety, and that there is no inconsistency when God raises up those who had fallen prostrate. In this way forms of expression apparently inconsistent admirably harmonize. Jeremiah and David speak of humbly laying their supplications
before God (Jer.42:9; Dan.9:18). In another passage Jeremiah says "Let, we beseech thee, our supplication be accepted before thee, and pray for us unto the Lord thy God, even for all this remnant" (Jer.42:2). On the other hand, believers are often said to lift up prayer. Thus Hezekiah speaks, when asking the prophet to undertake the office of interceding (2 Kings 19:4). And David says, "Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice" (Ps.141:2). The explanation is, that though believers, persuaded of the paternal love of God, cheerfully rely on his faithfulness, and have no hesitation in imploring the aid which he voluntarily offers, they are not elated with supine or presumptuous security; but climbing up by the ladder of the promises, still remain humble and abased suppliants. | <urn:uuid:8f0accff-8474-451f-846f-3f8d5a345785> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://biblehub.com/library/calvin/of_prayer--a_perpetual_exercise_of_faith/chapter_14_it_is_strange.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573760.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819191655-20220819221655-00669.warc.gz | en | 0.967445 | 1,370 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Gluggafoss - Window Falls
by Evdokia Tapoglou, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece
The upper half of the cliff is palagonite and tuff rock, while the lower ledge is basaltic rock. River Merkja overtime formed tunnels and windows through the soft rock, forming an arch under which the river flows.
Taken on 20
Submitted on 27 February 2015
Credit: Evdokia Tapoglou (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)
Click to appreciate | <urn:uuid:fbe9dcd9-a21b-42e6-a27a-ea3bcc735ee3> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://imaggeo.egu.eu/view/3037/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570879.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808213349-20220809003349-00465.warc.gz | en | 0.820548 | 135 | 3.078125 | 3 |
How To Make Your 2020 Goals a Reality
The New Year and decade are upon us, and this is the time to turn your dreams into a reality. The first step is to create a plan. Now is the time to set your goals in place by following these seven tangible tips for a successful year to move forward with an improved you by cultivating a routine that focuses on just that — YOU.
2020 is your year to accomplish the aspirations that you want for your life. Set yourself up for success by making these small changes to your daily life to move forward with want you want for yourself, family, business, and community.
1. Your SMART Goals
What are your SMART goals for this year? Carve out some time to focus on what you want and envision for yourself over the next 12 months. Then, write them down and put them in a visible place that you will often see as you navigate your day. You may find that your bathroom mirror, by your computer, or inside your car are the best places. By having your goals in a prominent location, you are more likely to take in the visual cue to focus on your future.
When developing your goals, the SMART goal process will ensure that your objectives are doable. Each goal should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. By reshaping your intentions to have a clear focus, you reduce the amount of time you spend drifting from one idea to the next. Instead, you’ll bring clarity to your future and, in the end, achieve your life dreams.
2. Daily Goal Practice
In 2020, start the practice of daily writing down your biggest dreams in detail. Neuroscience explains that if you want to achieve your goals, you need to take the time to put pen to paper. By creating this visual, the chances of you achieving your goal are “1.2 to 1.4 times more likely.”
This step will improve your recall of what matters to you over time and then focus your attention on the life you want to live. Your goals are a promise to yourself and, therefore, should take priority on how you start your day.
3. Enlist a Mentor
Your mentor could be a person in your community that encompasses the qualities that you want to grow within yourself. Connect with this individual once a month in person or via the phone. These meetings are an excellent way to have a cheerleader, as well as an accountability partner. If you cannot find a mentor, then look for someone online that has the career or business you want to emulate. You may never need to meet them in person, but seeing their achievements can help motivate your future success.
4. Have a Support System
Any goal worth pursuing will not be an easy journey, and it’s something that you cannot do alone. Therefore, spend time to find a supportive community and plugin. You are a reflection of the five people you spend the most time with, so select your support team of colleagues, friends, or family members with intention. You need to trust that they can hold you accountable while cheering you on when you falter. If your group of friends reflects a negative or unmotivated attitude, then reach out to other groups via the Internet or within your community.
5. Celebrate Your Wins
When you reach a milestone or a goal, take a moment to celebrate these “wins” as they are the building blocks into developing your better self. By having these small celebrations throughout the year, this will serve as reminders and help grow your self-confidence. That way, when you have a rough day or are faced any unexpected tough situations, you’ll have proof that you can focus on what you want and can comfortably take a day to reset.
6. Schedule a Check-In
Take time on your calendar to schedule a weekly or monthly check-in to gauge how you are progressing on your goals. This step is one that you don’t want to skip because it gives you time to shift the focus from your busy schedule to your future. Are you where you want to be? If not, evaluate why and what are the obstacles that you need to overcome within the next quarter, month or week.
7. Prepare for a Marathon
Reaching your goals is not just accomplishing a single race, but think of this next year as finishing a marathon. There will be days that you will get off track – but know that life will be okay when it happens. Maybe you missed a deadline, a workout, or your project didn’t come out perfect. Take a moment to pause and evaluate the negative outcome. Is the reason why you missed your goal lack of time or resources, or are you being too self-critical? In 2020, give yourself some grace as you navigate this new chapter of your life. Setting goals is not about creating extra pressure but instead, challenging yourself to be a better you.
Your goals are a reflection of the expectations, wants, and dreams that you have for yourself. Find a way to hone in on your persistence as you work daily towards each objective, even if you accomplish something small.
Life will throw you a curveball as it always does in the next year. However, that is not a reason to give up on yourself and the new life that you envision. The key is to find your supportive community that will provide the motivation you need on those off days. This group can offer you the needed words of encouragement to push towards making tangible progress. Use these tips as tools to help you accomplish your goals for the next several months; all you need to do is start. | <urn:uuid:231abb66-cacc-476a-8707-3f1f924d61a0> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://brightworkadvisors.com/how-to-make-your-2020-goals-a-reality/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570868.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808152744-20220808182744-00070.warc.gz | en | 0.958178 | 1,155 | 2.0625 | 2 |
NASA Earth science data/imagery is focused on Earth science discipline work (atmosphere, cryosphere, human dimensions, ocean, etc) and not on "close-in" studies
or work. Keeping in mind that NASA Earth science data resolution ranges from 100m down to 15m per pixel (depending on the product), you can understand that a 15m pixel (in a scene/swath that can be up to 100+ miles) is not very usable for small-area studies or focus.
That being said, you are welcome to explore our imagery and data with the following resources
NASA Earthdata Search - premier search tool for our entire archives -
NASA Worldview - imagery search tool with access to data -
NASA Earthdata - our primary portal for access to Earth science data and information -
Let me know if you need anything else.
- Earthdata Support | <urn:uuid:9d3c2b6a-9253-4520-99ec-a99296a97258> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://support.earthdata.nasa.gov/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/nasa-earth-science-image-resolution/0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571982.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813172349-20220813202349-00077.warc.gz | en | 0.764865 | 219 | 2.234375 | 2 |
By Eduardo Amaral, Quality Management Associate Director at Noesis
When everyone talks about digital acceleration and how the pandemic came to boost digital transformation in organizations, we all realize that part of the “secret” to respond to this context is the speed with which companies are/were able to reinvent themselves and to adapt business models to the digital world.
The pressure on IT departments has increased, application development and the introduction of new solutions and technologies as well. And it is in this scenario that talking about Quality - Quality Assurance and Quality Management - makes even more sense. These are issues that business decision-makers and managers should be aware of. Talking about Quality, Quality Assurance, software testing, it cannot be just an IT theme, it is a theme that impacts the entire organization, different stakeholders, customers, in short, the business.
Some facts that demonstrate it:
- According to Forrester, 25% of users abandon a web or mobile application after a delay of just 3 seconds. 3 seconds is an eternity in customer perspective, who quickly leaves the Site or application ... and looks for alternatives.
- According to the IBM System Science Institute, the correction of a critical incident in Production has a cost 10x higher than it would be in the final testing phase, and 100x higher than the design phase. These costs are only incurred in IT processes, that is, without adding the possible impacts on the business, which often result in tangible and intangible losses on unaffordable scales.
- And the most “impressive” data… 50% of most organizations' IT effort and budget is spent on maintenance tasks, due to problems related to poor performance, errors, or problems with their applications (internal or external), according to us says techrepublic.com.
Have you calculated the direct costs, the intangible impact, and the reputational and commercial damage that this type of incident can cause in your business?
The implementation of an efficient Quality Management strategy is essential to minimize this impact, with proven data that guarantees, from the start, significant increases in customer satisfaction, for example, when they have an excellent online experience with your brand and applications or your company's website; reduction of releases and versions of the developed application; significant reduction in critical incidents, increasing levels of user confidence (internal or external) in the reliability of the systems and even the information they generate or the significant reduction in time-to-market, not to mention the effective cost reduction, related to maintenance, carrying out redundant tests or other types of inefficiencies related to their systems and applications.
Automation is one of the top companies' priorities nowadays and is one of the biggest trends in the technology industry. Some even speak of HyperAutomation to describe the central role that automation will play in the organizations of the future. Also, in Quality, the automation of software tests is already a reality. All, or almost all, the large companies that have applications and systems critical to their business, are looking to automation as a way of reducing effort, reducing the performance of manual tests, optimizing resources, and, above all, reducing application development times and associated costs.
Despite the obvious gains that Test automation represents, it should not, however, be a “miraculous” solution in the context of quality and should be implemented gradually and always considering an important KPI - ROI (Return on investment). Automation costs must be taken into account, and it is very important to estimate the balance between effort-investment-benefits of implementing an automation solution. It is necessary to consider the effort and frequency of development of the application in question, its criticality to the business, the support/maintenance it will require, and the test tasks that are carried out manually.
In short, it is increasingly important for organizations to adopt a Quality Strategy, in order to guarantee a faster arrival to their target audience, with reliable technological solutions - ensuring its functionality and a good customer experience. Failure to achieve this goal is nowadays penalizing for most organizations, and the short/medium term will simply be decisive in their ability to survive in a market increasingly eager for adequate solutions and made available at the right times.
Originally publish (in Portuguese) in Executive Digest | <urn:uuid:79ef3b76-071a-43ca-aa30-9584dfd84b0b> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.noesis.pt/en/News/noesis-in-the-media/2021-03-26-porque-investir-em-qualidade-no-desenvolvimento-de-software | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571246.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811073058-20220811103058-00265.warc.gz | en | 0.944916 | 868 | 1.5 | 2 |
On 14 December 1988, 4ZZZ was taken off air and forcibly evicted from its UQ premises by the then student union executive, headed by one Victoria Brazil. The move prompted many previously apolitical students to take a firm stand against the move and to rally support for the station. While Zed was not to return to the premises its' volunteers had helped hand-build, unprecedented community support saw the station live to fight another day.
Proposed mines threaten endangered finch, and more 10am Zedlines
Accused one-punch killer to stay at Arthur Gorrie
The lawyer of the accused one-punch killer of brisbane teenager Cole Miller says high security jail is preferable to immigration detention for his client.
Daniel Maxwell, a New Zealand National, withdrew a bid for bail after an email from Australian Border Force advised that he would be taken into immigration detention if released from Wacol’s Arthur Gorrie correctional centre.
Mr Maxwell’s lawyer said it would be much more difficult to access his client if he was placed into immigration detention.
Wild weather hits Far North Queensland
Two hundred millimetres of rainfall has been recorded in parts of far north Queensland as ex-Tropical Cyclone Winston nears the coast.
Severe weather warnings have been issued for the Northern Tropical Coast and Tablelands and the Herbert and Lower Burdekin as it is predicted the weather system will continue to move inland today.
Qld coal mines to wipe out endangered finch
New research has shown that proposed coalmines in Queensland, including the Adani Carmichael mine, would wipe out most of the remaining habitat for the endangered black-throated finch.
The research out of James Cook University in Townsville found that biodiversity offsetting, which was part of the approval agreement for the Carmichael mine, was not possible.
A report authors said the finch’s chances of surviving the proposed mines was very low, and that it had already lost 80 percent of its global habitat and was extinct in New South Wales.
PNG calls for Manus closure
Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister Peter O'Neill has called for an eventual close to the Manus Island regional processing centre.
Mr O'Neill clarified statements made at Australia's National Press Club, saying the centre has damaged Papua New Guinea’s reputation and its eventual closure would be necessary.
He says while the PNG Government will contribute, it does not have the necessary resources to resettle the refugees and cannot hold them indefinitely.
Australian Government figures released earlier this year showed the average time spent in detention reached a record high of 446 days.
Smith & Wesson doubles profits
Gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson has announced its latest quarter profits have doubled from the same period last year.
The period covered by the announcement included the San Bernadino massacre in which 14 people were killed and 22 injured by a gunman using a Smith & Wesson assault rifle.
The company’s British chief executive said the company’s performance was driven by what it called healthy consumer demand.
Security Council passes toughest sanctions on N Korea
The United Nations Security Council has unanimously voted on the toughest sanctions on North Korea in decades.
North Korea launched a volley of missiles into the sea following the announcement.
The resolution bans the export of iron, coal and other minerals to North Korea as well as as fuel exports. | <urn:uuid:f9446e7c-6d2a-470d-ada5-9976f02f81a7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.4zzzfm.org.au/news/headlines/2016/03/04/proposed-mines-threaten-endangered-finch-and-more-10am-zedlines | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279933.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00124-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969708 | 700 | 1.507813 | 2 |
I make objects that are very dimensional, not always frontal, and sometimes incorporate very familiar imagery… I don’t think that contemporary objects tend to function through formal philosophies. Maybe, to some degree, line, color and shape act directly on psychology, through what is called “significant form”… Paintings are always objects within a system of objects, and my paintings create a kind of microcosmic system of objects (toys, mazes, symbols and painting materials), which although familiar within their own contexts, might combine into an overarching system of familiarities that create a kind of transparency of their own.
- Mike Cloud
Michael Cloud takes on painting from a systematic approach. In the past using mathematical formulas to transform an old mater still life into a geometric abstraction and arranging brushstrokes according to the logic of the color wheel and the physical qualities of the paint, Cloud employs a methodical structure to his paintings as a means of superseding the virtuosity that is often linked to the medium of paint. Cloud believes that a fundamental part of being a painter is to question the boundaries of painting both formally and conceptually. In keeping with this belief, he uses unconventional materials including gridded surfaces cut from aluminum, children’s toys and board game pieces to build his paintings, often times crossing into a more sculptural realm.
Evident in his edition Large Abstract, the grid is a recurring element through which Cloud implements an orderly abstraction. Connected to his methodology of formulas and systems, the grid has been the basis of two series of paintings. In addition, Cloud regularly uses iconic imagery so as to engage in another sort of system based in symbolism.
Cloud grew up in Chicago where he attended the University of Illinois at Chicago for his BFA. He received his MFA from Yale University and now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, teaching at Brooklyn College.
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
The Bronx Museum
Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum
Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery | <urn:uuid:3d2c0151-189a-4c0a-a446-e2250aee4442> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://vera-list-art-project.myshopify.com/collections/michael-cloud | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571758.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812200804-20220812230804-00676.warc.gz | en | 0.961516 | 440 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Grandpa was born at Long Marton, Westmorland (now Cumbria), England in 1877. By 1881 his parents, Philip and Annie, had moved into the larger market town of Penrith.
In December 1884 Philip, Annie and children (Mary Elizabeth, Arthur, Ruth, and baby John) sailed for America on the British Crown, arriving at Philadelphia in mid-January 1884.
Philip permanently resettled the family in Kansas where besides establishing a successful dairy, he bought large parcels of the land around it. In 1912, he sold some of the land and took Annie back to England for a month. This postcard is one of several they brought back from that trip.
It took quite a bit of sleuthing to determine exactly where the multi-family dwelling with the "X" was located in relation to the village of Long Marton.
The high embankment at first appears to be a road, but is actually one end of the Long Marton Viaduct on the old Settle to Carlisle Railway (begun in 1870 and completed in 1876).
two photos. The building in the top photo with
four chimneys is Grandpa's birthplace.
Below is St. Margaret & St. James, Long Marton's
village church where he was christened.
[See also Simon Ledingham's photos of St. Margaret's]
The small building barely visible above the Sowerbys' home in the original postcard is not Long Marton Station as I originally thought. The station is beyond that building and out of sight.
But thanks to David and Madeleine Adams, the station has escaped the wrecking ball.
Their account of its history and how they came to own it is a fascinating read in itself, and includes another postcard from the same series as mine.
In the extreme lower right-hand corner of the photo at right, the road that led down to Grandpa's birthplace is now grassed over.
The station has been lovingly restored and made available as a self-catering holiday cottage.
I can't think of a more perfect place than Long Marton Station as a base for exploring my Sowerby and Savage roots in Cumbria.
brainchild of the delightful Marie Reed! | <urn:uuid:98f8ddf0-3fd1-4a40-9746-069c866cdf46> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://saturdayschild-jama.blogspot.com/2009/07/postcard-friendship-friday-x-marks-spot.html?showComment=1248550688155 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988717783.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183837-00076-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971009 | 476 | 1.90625 | 2 |
A website is responsive when it adapts to fit a users screen size.
With 70% of local searches now happening on cell phones a mobile-friendly design is a necessity. Your site must be capable of responding to the screen sizes for all devices used to view it.
A responsive site ensures a consistent user experience and allows you to replicate your content seamlessly on smaller screens.
Today, the majority of search queries happen on a mobile device. When we build a site, we incorporate responsive design.
Why Responsive Design?
Adaptability is automatic to make your site work well for all sizes and types of screens - desktops, notebooks, tablets, and smartphones - now and in the future.
Versatile and Practical
Because it is scalable, you only need one site that will consolidate web traffic - that means much better SEO results, especially on Google.
It also means that your FULL content is available to ALL visitors.
Easy-to-Read on ANY device
Considering that over 120 million US consumers owned a tablet by 2016, one-third of the total US adult population, this is CRITICAL. | <urn:uuid:e32f2915-1c7c-4e74-835d-7d0de193aa09> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://choosemysite.com/mobile-friendly-web-design/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573760.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819191655-20220819221655-00671.warc.gz | en | 0.906764 | 249 | 1.820313 | 2 |
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - A Missouri bill removing the names of juvenile sex offenders from public registries could affect hundreds more people than originally estimated.
Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed the bill earlier this summer and has been trying to discourage legislators from overriding that veto when they convene in September.
Nixon said Wednesday the legislation could remove the names of 870 people who had committed sex offenses as juveniles from public notification websites. That figure is more than 50 percent higher than Nixon originally estimated last month.
The Democratic governor says the bill would "help violent sex offenders hide from the public."
Republican legislative leaders have said a veto override is likely. Some supporters say the youths deserve a second chance. | <urn:uuid:e22f4721-dfe5-4dc2-a6f1-c718489f9310> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.newstribune.com/news/news/story/2013/aug/21/vetoed-bill-could-affect-870-mo-sex-offenders/453595/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280872.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00318-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945604 | 145 | 1.625 | 2 |
International Federation of Youth Conquerors, Inc. was incorporated in 2010 for the purpose of assisting underprivileged, low income youth and their families have a better quality of life. Our primary focus is helping individuals build a strong literacy and basic education foundation, become health/ nutrition conscious and exposure to arts, performing arts, culture and diversity. To nourish the seeds of knowledge already planted within the hearts of the youth, which will grow into a beautiful and thriving tree, shading all cultures of our community, and eventually bear the fruits of a unified people.
Watch the Miss IFOYC 2013 Pageant Here!
Witness for yourself the grandiose spectacle of beauty during the IFOYC pageant night. Each contestant showed their youthful and fresh talents and paraded grace and glamour on their gowns to give the night a splendid atmosphere of excitement and entertainment. | <urn:uuid:adc203f9-b5de-465f-b88b-83e0f3adc6a7> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.ifoyc.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720475.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00355-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943964 | 172 | 1.546875 | 2 |
mental interests and abilities
Yves has the ability to concentrate and become completely immersed in his work. Yves Montand seems to know things at an instinctive, nonverbal level and prefers learning through direct experience or apprenticeship rather than through books or lectures. Yves has mechanical ability and works well with his hands. Montand could become adept at sculpture, pottery, carpentry or anything that involves manual creativity.Biology (and related fields such as medicine) interests him as well. Yves Montand also has an instinctive rapport with animals, and may feel that he relates better to them than to people! Yves Montand tends to become narrowly focused on his own specialized interests and may not have much to say or communicate outside of that particular field.
Yves has an introspective turn of mind and may enjoy keeping a journal or a record of his dreams and personal experiences, or learning about psychology, history, and the inner workings and emotional foundations of his own life.Montand is studious and something of a bookworm.
Yves Montand would be an excellent teacher or counselor for he listens sympathetically and encourages others to express their inner thoughts and feelings. People trust and confide in Yves, and he is able to read between the lines and sense what their feelings are as well as what they are saying. Montand works well with and understands women as well as the emotional, feminine side of life. He is articulate on personal (rather than factual or technical) subjects. Keeping a diary or journal would be satisfying for Montand. Yves Montand also has a talent for learning languages.
His desire to make a point sometime overrides his receptivity to others' views. He can be a good listener, but Yves Montand often finds it hard not to speak out.
Yves Montand has a sharp tongue and ready wit, and he enjoys intellectual competition, problem solving, and demanding intellectual work. In a debate, he knows how to drive his point home. Yves Montand also possesses quick reflexes and dexterity and could be an excellent tennis or racquetball player. Any sport which involves a dynamic exchange between the players is a suitable arena for Montand.
Even though Montand can be a decisive and convincing speaker (as indicated earlier), he also has a highly imaginative and intuitive mind. This combination offers a number of possibilities: Yves could accurately articulate the images and fantasies he has, he could forcefully convince others of his own brand of idealism (or illusion!), or Yves Montand may alternate from being very clear and direct to being rather evasive or poetic. The following describes the more fluid, non-rational aspect of Montand's thinking.
His mind is highly imaginative and creative and he possesses dramatic, artistic or musical abilities. As a child, Yves Montand enjoyed daydreaming, fantasizing and pretending, and probably lived in "his own little world" a good deal. He perceives things that are not obvious to other people and Yves Montand has an uncanny ability to "read" people and situations without being told anything about them. However, Yves Montand must learn to discriminate between true psychic perception and his imagination. Learning to discipline and focus his mind is necessary if Montand wishes to use all of his creative potential. Otherwise, Yves Montand could be simply a dreamer.
Communication with others is difficult for Yves Montand because he often finds words frustrating and inadequate to express his experiences and perceptions. Also, Yves may purposefully mystify or deceive others.
His mind is deep and penetrating and he is interested in anything secret, mysterious, or hidden, including the deeper recesses of the human psyche. Yves Montand possesses an aptitude for private investigation, psychology and research work. Yves Montand is also drawn to esoteric or occult studies.
Yves Montand tends to have big plans and pursues his ideas with great zeal. Yves Montand also has the power to influence people and sway them to his point of view. He may accomplish this through public speaking or writing, and could do well in publicity or advertising.
Astrological factors in this Astro Profile section:
Mercury in Scorpio
Mercury in 4th house
Moon Trine Mercury
Mercury aspects Moon and Mars
Mercury Sextile Mars
Mercury aspects Mars and Neptune
Mercury Square Neptune
Mercury Trine Pluto
Mercury Opposition Moon/Pluto | <urn:uuid:32893881-449f-42e2-9034-93c809ef2c32> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://famous-relationships.topsynergy.com/Yves_Montand/Mentality.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00211-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968845 | 912 | 2.4375 | 2 |
Sports and geopolitical tensions nearly collided last month, when the world's attention turned to Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics. But once the games got underway, concerns about their host country — including Russia's frosty relations with the West and its lack of regard for LGBT rights — were largely overshadowed by the Olympics' orgy of pomp, circumstance and athletic accomplishment.
Now there's a very different — and much more delicate — confluence of sports and politics in the very same place. The 2014 Paralympic Games begin this Friday in Sochi, a week after Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine's Crimea region. Many have decried the move as blatantly violating international law.
Unlike the Olympics, the Paralympics typically unfold beneath the mainstream radar. But Russian hostilities in Ukraine have already disrupted the Paralympics, which run through March 16, with major nations declining to send government officials — and some threatening to pull athletes from the games over safety concerns.
Russia's aggression also raises the question of whether Putin would have responded to the Ukrainian uprising against President Viktor Yanukovych in similarly heavy-handed fashion had the conflict in Kiev reached its climax just a couple weeks earlier, during the height of Olympics-mania.
Paralympics already impacted
"We can’t be sure what Putin was thinking," UCLA political science professor and Russia expert Daniel Treisman told Mashable on Monday. "But clearly he did not want to ruin the spectacle of the Sochi Olympics by intervening in Ukraine. It would have been a major embarrassment for those heads of state and other dignitaries who did accept his invitation to attend.
"Clearly he does not think that the Paralympics are on the same level in terms of attracting the press and attention of the world."
The White House on Monday announced that it would no longer send a presidential delegation to Sochi for the Paralympics in response to Russia's intervention in Ukraine. But it's not an all-out boycott. “President Obama continues to strongly support all of the U.S. athletes who will participate in the Paralympics and wishes them great success in the Olympic competition,” White House spokesperson Caitlyn Hayden told Mashable.
British officials announced a similar Paralympics absence on Sunday, with athletes representing Great Britain still scheduled to compete as well. Germany's National Paralympic Committee told The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, meanwhile, that it would cancel the entire team's trip if German officials issued a travel warning for Sochi.
Deepening crisis moves toward Sochi
Particularly ominous for the Paralympics is that the political crisis has shifted from Ukraine's capital of Kiev to Crimea — less than 300 miles across the Black Sea from Sochi.
Ukraine's political turmoil began in late 2013 after Yanukovych unexpectedly backed out of a trade deal that would have established closer economic and cultural ties with the European Union in favor of a cozier relationship with Russia. This enraged many Ukrainians longing for more connection to the West.
On Dec. 1 an estimated 1 million protesters, including boxing champ Vitali Klitschko, flooded the streets of Kiev, leading to minor clashes with police.
Then hellish violence engulfed Kiev the week of Feb. 17, leaving more than 70 protesters and police reported dead. Yanukovych fled the capital, and the opposition took over central government buildings. A victory of sorts was declared.
Yet things were not nearly so simple. Some Ukrainians, primarily located in the Eastern half of the country, favor a tight relationship with Russia, which has long seen Ukraine as a sphere of influence since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
That's why the conflict's epicenter has moved southeast, to Crimea: Putin used the notion of protecting Russian interests and people there as a pretext for what some are calling an "invasion" of the area since Yanukovych's overthrow.
Putin remained mum on the Ukraine situation during the Olympics, as violence engulfed Kiev.
Crimea has so far experienced no outbreak of violence, but the situation there is fragile.
Ukranian officials claim 16,000 Russian troops are in the area, and on Monday the Associated Press said Russia had assumed "complete control" of the region.
Ukraine's new leadership calls the move a "declaration of war." China has thrown its support behind Russia amidst condemnation from much of the rest of the world.
“We are monitoring the situation in the Crimea closely as the safety and well-being of our athletes is our top priority," International Paralympic Committee (IPC) spokesperson Craig Spence told Mashable on Monday. Spence added that that 39 of the 45 nations scheduled to participate had already arrived in Sochi, with the remaining six confirmed in transit.
Breaking the Olympic Truce
In the Olympics' earliest days, the ancient Greeks established an Olympic truce to safeguard athletes and fans traveling to the games from their respective countries. In 1998, a United Nations resolution officially reinstated the truce — and Spence says it was expanded to formally cover the Paralympics in 2006.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for all participating nations to observe the truce through the conclusion of the Olympics and Paralympics this year.
The Olympic Truce is largely a symbolic concept, but the irony of the games' host taking over part of a neighboring country during it has not been lost by many in the run-up to the Paralympics' start on March 7.
Edward Walker, a UC Berkeley academic and author of the book Dissolution: Sovereignty and the Breakup of the Soviet Union, told Mashable "Putin had much more at stake politically with the Olympics than with the Paralympics," but "just how Moscow would have reacted had the crisis in Ukrainian developed more rapidly is anyone's guess. Obviously how things shake out in Ukraine is ultimately much more important to Russia, and the rest of the world, than the Olympics."
The Kremlin has yet to respond to Mashable's request for comment. | <urn:uuid:2291965e-62f5-4bbf-883c-b6bb577a9645> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://mashable.com/2014/03/03/paralympics-russia-ukraine/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283008.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00082-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967787 | 1,204 | 2.125 | 2 |
On the far reaches of Brooklyn’s Atlantic coastline is a forgotten piece of aviation history.
Long before JFK and LaGuardia, there was Floyd Bennett Field, New York City’s first municipal airport. Designed in stunning Art Deco style, it was once the most modern airport in the world, a glittering gateway into America’s principal metropolis. Many of the leading aviators of their day started daring adventures here during the golden age of aviation—pilots like Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh and Roscoe Turner, the latter of whom flew with a lion cub as his co-pilot. Wiley Post, the man who was the first to fly solo around the world, took off and landed here in front of crowds of 50,000 fans. When Howard Hughes set the world record for flying fastest around the world, it was from Floyd Bennett that he piloted his gleaming Lockheed Super Electra.
But today many of the old hangars lie empty and abandoned. The deserted control tower looks over runways covered in weeds. I went to explore the airfield to discover its incredible history, uncovering a remarkable hidden treasure along the way—a graveyard of vintage planes being tended to by a dedicated group of volunteers.
When it opened in 1931, Floyd Bennett Field was the most advanced and sophisticated airport in the United States. Named for pioneering aviator and Brooklyn resident Floyd Bennett, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1926 for flying to the North Pole, the modern airfield was at the forefront of the fledging air travel industry.
Floyd Bennett was built on what was then the marshlands around Jamaica Bay in an area called Barren Island. Located roughly a dozen miles from Manhattan, Barren Island was once home to a small community of fish processing factories. It had a main street, a church and even a hotel. Roughly six million tons of landfill created the foundations for the new airport.
The focal point of the roughly 1,400-acre airport was a beautiful terminal, which is still there today. Designed in the Art Deco style with classical Doric columns, it was a suitably grand airport for New York City. In the 1930s air travel was still largely enjoyed only by the wealthy, and well-dressed passengers would arrive at the sweeping drive way in front of the terminal where their luggage was collected by porters and taken underground by twin ramped tunnels which emerged out on the runway. The inside of the terminal was decorated with vast, elaborate murals from the WPA program.
The Art Deco interior housed a ticketing office, a restaurant (the Aviator Bar & Grill), a newsstand, barbershop, photo studio and even a radio studio to broadcast commentaries of the world record attempts that took place here. After checking in, passengers could retire to a cocktail bar that led onto balconies overlooking the airfield, and runways that were amongst the first to be concreted and lit electrically.
Today, thanks to the National Park Service who took control of the airfield in the 1970s, the ground floor of the terminal has been recently restored to much of its original elegance. A small museum tells the story of the airfield and the famous aviators who once flew from here.
But upstairs much of the terminal is sadly falling apart. These were once the pilots quarters, where aircrew could rest and office. Peeling paint, empty bedrooms and cracked bathroom tiles are all that remain. Up a narrow ladder is the control tower. All the instruments are long gone, but the views over the mostly abandoned airfield and Marine Park are captivating. “We’re about as far out in Brooklyn as you can get,” says a ranger from the National Park Service. “It is remote enough today, let alone in the 1930s and 40s for a viable passenger terminus.”
That remoteness was its downfall. A new tunnel built in 1940 connecting Queens to midtown Manhattan led the way for a much more convenient airport to be built on the site of the old Gala Amusement Park in northern Queens. Named for the city mayor who championed its development, LaGuardia airport effectively marked the end of Floyd Bennett as New York’s principal airport.
During World War II, much of Floyd Bennett Field become a Naval Air Station. The runways and roads inside the base were extended and new buildings were constructed for sleeping quarters, munitions, gymnasiums, and even ballfields. Most of the infrastructure from that period today is still used by the Coast Guard and the NYPD, but many of the buildings today lie empty. Mechanics facilities, dormitories and offices are covered in ivy, full of rusted equipment and left for nature to reclaim.
When the National Park Service acquired Floyd Bennett in 1971, it became part of their Gateway National Recreation Area. A vast program encompassing Sandy Hook in New Jersey, Fort Tilden and Riis Park in Queens and much of Jamaica Bay amongst others, Floyd Bennett became protected wildlife preserve. Nature was allowed to reclaim parts of the runway, and community gardens were recreated. There is even a campsite, one of New York’s largest, named after Amelia Earhart, allowing campers the unusual experience of spending the night on an old deserted airfield, by the water where once seaplanes took off and landed.
At the far end of the airfield, some ten minutes walk across the abandoned runways lies one of Brooklyn’s best kept secrets. A hangar swiftly built in the Second War, inside is a remarkable plane graveyard, known as Hangar B. Home to a dozen rescued vintage planes, the drafty cavernous hangar is filled with seaplanes, biplanes, fighters and cargo freighters. Some are in better shape than others, who await restoration.
Hangar B is headquarters for several groups of dedicated volunteers. Often retired, ex-Air Force mechanics, or simply history buffs, these veteran plane enthusiasts are steadily keeping the true spirit of Floyd Bennett Field alive. The principal group is known as the Historic Aircraft Restoration Project (HARP), which meets here three times a week. One long-serving volunteer named Artie Kuhnert shows me a hulking old flying boat known as a PBY Catalina. “It was found at the end of a runway in Brazil about thirty five years ago, right in the middle of the rainforest,” he says. According to Kuhnert, it had been leased to the Brazilian government during World War II for just $1—its mission, to patrol the waters of the Brazilian coastline for German U-boats. As we climbed into the seaplane, rescued from the rainforest, walking down the bare steel skeleton of the fuselage and into the old cockpit, Kuhnert told me how is still belongs to the Navy, but the Parks department arranged to bring it in pieces to Floyd Bennett to be restored.
We walk past an old AT6 trainer plane, painted black with a snarling red mouth and bared teeth, whose wings are unattached and leaning against the fuselage, to a striking yellow biplane, restored to its 1940s polish—a project that took three years to complete. Kuhnert leads the way into a C47, the legendary transport aircraft that was developed from the Douglas DC3. These were the planes that fought at Guadalcanal, dropped supplies to the soldiers trapped at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge and dropped paratroopers behind the Normandy beaches. As we climb into the plane you can still see the cable running along the ceiling that when ordered by the jump sergeant, paratroopers would hook onto. Like a lot of the aircraft in Hangar B, the C47 needs further restoration.
Another volunteer, Dante DiMille, flew reconnaissance missions for the air force in the Korean War. “I was shot at but never fired back,” he tells me. In the Hangar B mess hall he shows me a photograph of himself as a young man and then points out one of the planes the HARP volunteers are most proud of—an exact replica of Wiley Post’s Lockheed Vega, the Winnie Mae.
In 1933, the one-eyed aviator set the world record for flying around the world solo, going round trip through Floyd Bennett Field. The original Winnie Mae can be found at the Smithsonian in Washington DC, but according to DiMille, “it belongs here because it made the flight from here.” So the HARP veterans decided to make their own. No thanks to the museum (“The Smithsonian wouldn’t give us anything”) they took a toy model airplane kit of the Winnie Mae and enlarged the instruction plans to build an exact scale replica, a labor of love that spanned six years.
But despite the rich aviation history of Floyd Bennett Field, it remains largely unknown and ignored not only by the Smithsonian but also by the City of New York. “No one really knows what to do with it,” DiMille explains, noting that some of the hangars were converted to a sports center, but not much else. “One of our biggest problems is we’re old people. The skills it takes to restore old aircraft, they don’t exist anymore.”
Hangar B itself was in a fair state of disrepair when I first visited in the winter of 2013, with broken windows and holes in the roof. In the intervening time, Hurricane Sandy had wreaked terrible damage to the 70-year-old hangar, and it eventually had to close its doors temporarily for desperately needed repairs.
Returning to Floyd Bennett Field recently, I saw fences encircling Hangar B, where the plane graveyard still rests inside, and which is due to hopefully reopen in the summer of 2016. But behind the hangar, one plane is still being worked on. It sits out on the forecourt runway, an awe-inspiring piece of machinery from the end of the early days of the Cold War. Around 110 feet long, with a wing span of over 140 feet of gleaming silver steel and chrome, it’s a Boeing C-97, with the suitably magnificent name the “Stratofreighter”. These giant propeller planes were used during the Berlin airlift and the wars in Korea and Vietnam and could transport an astonishing 35,000 pounds of cargo. The one being worked on at Floyd Bennett Field is one of only two still airworthy today.
Nicknamed the “Angel of Deliverance,” it has led a storied life after the war, flying relief missionary work in South America and hauling salmon in Alaska. Tim Chopp, an ex-air force mechanic who served in Vietnam leads the group of dedicated volunteers. “Our aim is to preserve the memory and legacy of one of the greatest aviation and humanitarian efforts in history,” he says. Between June 1948 and September 1949, the U.S. and Great Britain airlifted desperately needed supplies to the half of Berlin entirely surrounded by the Iron Curtain. The Berlin airlift was the deadly focal point of the Cold War conflict.
With Floyd Bennett’s future uncertain, the plan is to fly the Angel of Deliverance to New Jersey. Like the HARP group, the dozen or so Deliverance volunteers receive no funding from official museum sources; some of the team has been working on the plane for over 12 years. When I visited, they were testing the hydraulics on the landing wheels. Gently raising the 82,500 pound plane on oversized jacks, the small group worked on retracting the huge wheels over and over.
One of the volunteers monitoring the precarious operation knows this plane better than anyone. Master mechanic Berge Jermakian made these planes fly in the Korean War and commercially for Northwestern Airlines. The biggest challenge is paying for fuel, he explained. “We need about 15,000 gallons, and no one really knows we’re here.” | <urn:uuid:921afc64-a54e-4221-8051-e04f89c070df> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/theres-an-art-deco-airport-lying-ruined-in-brooklyn | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280718.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00400-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964611 | 2,482 | 3.046875 | 3 |
THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE DAYS CONFERENCE is an annual two-day, nation-wide conference held at the University of Calgary. The next conference is being held on Friday, March 17th and Saturday, March 18th, 2017.
Undergraduate students from across Canada, the United States, and Overseas are invited to submit an abstract for an oral or poster presentation on the history of medicine and health care. The presentations will be 10 to 12 minutes for oral or 2 to 3 minutes for a poster (with additional discussion time afterwards). The poster display will be up for the entire conference.
The topics for presentation will cover a wide range and include areas such as the Classics, the History of Public Health, Nursing, Veterinary Medicine, Human Biology and Neuroscience, etc. Prizes will be awarded in different categories and all active participants are invited to join us at the Awards Banquet on the last evening of the conference.
Each student must present an original historical research attempt with new methodological perspectives on the topic and/or have a critical discussion following the presentation.
If three to four students would like to present together on a related topic, this could be done in a panel form. A suitable discussant will then be identified by the conference organizers to comment upon these particular presentations. We ask, however, that presentations and poster abstracts be sent in by one author only, not multiple authors.
The Keynote Speaker will be Professor Paul Weindling from Oxford Brookes University in Oxford, United Kingdom. The title for his presentation will be publicly shared when the preliminary program is established.
For further information on available stipends and to see the call for presentations and other application related materials please go to the website of the Calgary History of Medicine and Health Care Program (https://hom.ucalgary.ca/hmd). The deadline for this CfP is January 16th, 2017.
Please send your abstracts and application materials directly to: [email protected]
Donna Weich, Conference Coordinator | <urn:uuid:1196b068-64e9-4eb5-94f5-ac67f265f842> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://cshm-schm.ca/fr/call-presentations-26th-annual-history-medicine-days-conference/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572063.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814173832-20220814203832-00670.warc.gz | en | 0.930082 | 410 | 1.578125 | 2 |
UTF-8 is a variable-width Unicode character encoding scheme. UTF-8 stands for Unicode Transformation Format 8-bit. It is the most popular character encoding on the World Wide Web.Continue Reading
Each character in the Unicode character set is assigned a unique value called a code point. UTF-8 represents these code points as a single byte or sequence of bytes, allowing a computer to understand and use them.
Since Unicode contains the characters for most of the world's written languages, UTF-8 allows computers to display text from multiple languages with a single encoding. This makes the localization of software and Web pages much easier.Learn more about Computer Programming | <urn:uuid:5f39dc80-3e95-4ca8-bffa-97a0817c2659> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.reference.com/technology/utf-8-fac81cf8ac170dc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280718.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00407-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.865141 | 131 | 3.96875 | 4 |
Immunize to avoid the flu
As flu season begins to get underway, the public is encouraged to be immunized.
“We’re just starting to see it,” Auglaize County Health Department Nursing Supervisor Cindy Jones said this week of influenza cases locally. “Our concern is once people do their Thanksgiving sharing they will be passing more than the turkey.”
With the flu vaccine taking approximately two weeks to become effective, Jones said they are encouraging the public to come in as soon as possible to get one.
While the county’s flu season typically peaks in February or March, a couple of years ago it did spike in November, so Jones said it’s best to get the protection early. They still will be encouraging those who haven’t gotten it yet into the new year, to do so.
The length the vaccine lasts varies from person to person, said Jones who said it can be impacted by a person’s overall health as well as annual changes to the formulation of the vaccine.
This year’s vaccine is the same formulation as last years, which Jones said is unusual but a change in the illness from one year to the next must not have been expected.
“Some people feel they are healthy or won’t get that sick if they do get the flu, so they don’t get the vaccine,” Jones said. “But even if it won’t impact them greatly, they may still pass it on to someone who may not do as well with it.”
Jones said during influenza season people are talking about protecting oneself but it’s important to protect others, too, some of whom for a variety of reasons cannot be vaccinated.
Flu shot clinics held early in the season in October were poorly attended, Jones said, but they are getting several calls a day now about when and where people can get immunized.
To date, influenza type B has been seen in local urgent care centers and emergency rooms, Jones said.
Coughing is the most recognizable flu symptom, with other symptoms being fever, aches and fatigue.
Despite popular misconceptions, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea are not seasonal flu related.
Jones said if a person who thinks he has the flu is relatively healthy and doesn’t have a high fever and can continue to eat and drink, they may be fine without seeing a physician and the treatment of antiviral medications, however those with respiratory problems or diabetes need to seek help immediately as they won’t fare as well.
She said the antivirals can cut down the length of the illness as well as lessen serious side effects and help avoid hospitalization. | <urn:uuid:88b23577-4a8b-4565-8db4-e8725713d60b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.wapakdailynews.com/content/immunize-avoid-flu?quicktabs_2=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280310.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00184-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975579 | 557 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Dry Ice Blasting
Dry ice pellets, when applied under high pressure to a soiled or painted substrate,
cause the surface finish to flash freeze and crack. The pellets then move into the cracks and sublimate creating thousands of small explosions that lift the finish off the substrate.
Dry ice is minimally abrasive with with a Mohs scale hardness of about 2 so it can be
used in delicate situations as well as those that require more aggression.
Once sublimated, the dry ice reverts to its natural state of gaseous carbon dioxide.
Because there is no secondary waste the process is ideal for cleaning machinery that
cannot tolerate grit or areas where the presence of water or other solvents is
unacceptable. Dry ice application is scalable in terms of pressure, rate of ice flow and particle size allowing its effective use over a wide range of situations.
Vapor blasting employs water vapor mixed with a small amount of media under high
pressure. This process is appropriate for applications requiring more aggression than
dry ice but far less than traditional sand blasting. In addition to using a relatively small
amount of media, a major advantage is the reduction of dust from blasting by more than 90%.
As with dry ice, vapor blasting is scalable. This allows us to clean everything from soft
plastic to marble statuary to steel beams. The pressure, grit size and ratio of water to
media can be adjusted to suit specific requirements. An example of this is the ability to
remove soil or paint from brick and block surfaces with little to no degradation of
masonry joints. There are several media options depending on the project. We find
garnet, crushed glass and microcrystalline silica to provide a complete range of abrasion
to work effectively with any job. It is an ideal solution for complete graffiti removal and
other exterior cleaning that creates very little secondary waste with low environmental impact. | <urn:uuid:75b248c2-b175-4bd4-b6ba-32d5bab43e72> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.lakeeffectdryice.com/our-services | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570977.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809124724-20220809154724-00468.warc.gz | en | 0.916131 | 406 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Your Smoke Alarm May Not Wake Your Child
A new study, completed by researchers at Victoria University in Melbourne shows that most of the time, kids will sleep...
A new study, completed by researchers at Victoria University in Melbourne shows that most of the time, kids will sleep soundly, right through the blaring beeping of a home smoke alarm. It seems nuts right? When my smoke alarm goes off by accident it's hyper annoying. Still, the research shows that a full 78% of school-aged children slept through 30 seconds worth of smoke alarm noise. The study, published this month in the journal Fire and Materials, is not actually the first of its kind. Back in 2008 I posted a video about this very issue, that shows young kids sound asleep as a smoke alarm goes off nearby. I believe it. Kids will sleep through everything. TRUE STORY - When my son was three or four years old, we lived in a two story apartment complex in New Mexico. We had the upstairs apartment. Anyhow, one night a drunk driver plowed through the gates of our complex, drove through the complex, then smashed into the apartment directly below us, taking out the wall. It made the loudest sound you ever heard, not to mention all the shaking. Then of course, the cops and their blaring sirens came, along with every neighbor we had. I'm pretty sure everyone in our entire complex was wide awake. Except my son. He slept through all the noise and shenanigans. My son also slept through two earthquakes when we lived in California. Kids can sleep! It gets worse... Be aware that not hearing the alarm wasn't the only problem. According to the parents who participated in this study, of the kids who did wake up when an alarm when off (22%), only half were able to identify the sound as a smoke alarm, and only half of those kids knew that the alarm meant get out of the house now. Wow. What can you do to keep your kids safe?
First discuss fire safety with your kids from a young age. Of course babies rely on parents, but young toddlers need to start learning about fire safety and smoke alarms. Make sure that kids know what the smoke alarm sounds like and understand what it means (in case they do hear it). Your family needs to practice fire safety. Secondly, although you should always have working smoke alarms installed, your family shouldn't count on smoke alarms to wake kids up. Yes, this puts pressure on you, the parent, but you don't have a big choice in the matter. Part of your evacuation plan, in case of a fire, should include checking on kids and helping them out if possible. Another idea is to install a home sprinkler system. Studies by the U.S. Fire Administration note that, "The installation of residential fire sprinkler systems could have saved thousands of lives; prevented a large portion of those injuries; and eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars in property losses."
- Fire safety for young children.
- Electrical safety at home
- Ten ways to burn proof your baby and kitchen | <urn:uuid:ffb8f53f-f761-4f7b-be36-8dbcaae5e7e6> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.pregnancyandbaby.com/baby/articles/935031/your-smoke-alarm-may-not-wake-your-child | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279224.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00478-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964823 | 627 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Essential VCE Business Management Units 3 and 4 with CD-ROM: Units 3 and 4
Cambridge University Press
Publication Date :
1 Jan 2009
2 Rev ed
Essential VCE Business Management Units 3 and 4 2nd edition provides complete coverage of the new VCE study design implemented in 2010. With activities that support different learning styles, this full-colour text will develop the knowledge, skills and confidence needed for success at VCE level. This text includes: * Student friendly language * Theory made simple through visual representation * Key knowledge table that maps out what students need to know * Up-to-date statistics and case studies demonstrate how theory works in current business practices * Relevant ICT activities * Comprehensive end of chapter materials including chapter summaries that aid in the regular revision of material * Exam preparation questions in every chapter to improve student readiness for the final exam * Extensive range of teacher support materials A Student CD-ROM is included with this textbook. It offers an electronic version of the book plus crosswords to enhance student learning. | <urn:uuid:a4a6717a-9a5d-4748-9db2-c13c0a6421dd> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | https://www.zookal.com/essential-vce-business-management-units-3-and-4-with-cd-rom-units-3-and-4-9780521759434/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721595.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00479-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.87209 | 213 | 2.1875 | 2 |
| Folgore Parachute Brigade|
Brigata Paracadutisti "Folgore"
Folgore colpisce le Tommies
The Folgore (Italian for "Lightning") is Italy's airborne infantry, dropped out of the CA 314 transport plane. They carry elite infantry weapons, making them deadly to all but the toughest infantry, but must get close to tanks to plant satchel charges.
In 1941, the division was created as the 185. Divisione Paracadutisti Folgore (185. Parachute Division Folgore). The division trained alongside its German counterparts in preperation for the airborne assualt on Malta, which was to be never carried out.
It was during the Second Battle of El-Alamein that the Folgore would earn their fame. While on the defensive, it was assaulted by the British 131. Queen's Infantry Brigade, 44. Infantry Division, 7. Armored Division "Desert Rats", and the French Free Brigade. The division fought with what little equipment they had left (as the North African Campaign was coming to a close). They engaged British tanks with hand grenades, petrol bombs, and outdated anti-tank rifles, all while not showing any signs of surrender. The division's few survivors were withdrawn from El-Alamein on 3 November 1942, without water and on foot. The survivors were reorganized into the 185. Folgore Parachute Battalion. On 6 November at 2:35 pm, after running completely out of ammunition, the remnants of the once-great Folgore Parachute Division surrendered to the British. In honor of their skill and bravery, the British commander allowed them to surrender without waving the white flag or raising their arms up.
Tactics and TipsEdit
- Although they have not AT weapons other than hand thrown explosives, they are exellent Anti-infantry units that can be used to support other infantry such as the Bersaglieri or Granatieri, or AT gun's such as the AT 47mm. | <urn:uuid:2f9206ab-1817-4f22-85c4-3139fd2e5b62> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://ruse.wikia.com/wiki/Folgore | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280730.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00244-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918954 | 428 | 2.46875 | 2 |
As it happens every time I travel to the southeast corner of Turkey, this time too I had the feeling that I wasn’t only in another land but in another planet. The heaviest snowfall of last 20 years had covered the entire region with purest white, filling one with incredibly enchanting and mystical sensations.
This is what happens every time I travel to Hakkari. Hakkari is the only Turkish province that has common borders both with Iran and Iraq. It wouldn’t be out of place to call this province, “the hotbed of Kurdish insurgency.” The first bullet of the PKK’s armed struggle that began in 1984 was fired in this province’s town of Semdinli that abuts both Iran and Iraq. Even today, the province the most troubled corner of Turkey.
What makes Hakkari so special, more than its geopolitics and historical background, is its topography. Some 88% of its area comprises mountains. Flat plains are but 2%. The remaining 10% consists of high plateaus. When you say mountains, we are speaking of those above 3,000 meters, some even 4,000 meters.
The nearest airport to Hakkari is 200 km away at Van. It takes about four hours of driving to get to Hakkari. The topography of Van and its environs are similar to that of Hakkari. Your first sensation that you are in the different land and even in a different planet overcomes you after about an hour and a half of driving from Van, once you drive through the Guzeldere Pass at 2,740-meter altitude.
The other day when passing through Guzeldere [which means Beautiful Creek] I realized that there was no creek to see and that the name was affixed to as a matter of routine without any creativity whatever it as it was done with many Kurdish location names. I said to my Kurdish friends from Hakkari who were with me that Guzeldere Pass must have had a Kurdish name. It did. It was called Gedika Chux. Chux was the name of a village a bit below the pass. Nobody in the region ever calls it the Guzeldere Pass.
Anyone who lives in Hakkari city calls it Colemerg. The most populated town of the province and perhaps the zenith of Kurdish militancy in Turkey we call Yuksekova, but the Kurds call it Gever. For them Cukurca and Semdinli, the two towns known for frequent attacks on border outposts, are known as Cele and Semdinan, respectively.
After you drive through the pass, the horizon is a series of mountains lined up like a wall. Beyond them is Iran. Once you take the Iran border to your left and drive toward Hakkari city, you are engulfed by one of the most spectacular sceneries of the world. The Zap River that enters Iraq at Cukurca and links up with River Tigris near Mosul meanders through wadis and canyons overlooked by majestic mountains.
The region’s distinctive ethnic and geographical identity that sets it apart from other regions of Turkey continues unchanged in Iran in the East and Iraq in the South. That is the heartland of the region called Kurdistan. Hakkari’s topography is similar to Iran and Iraq. Their common feature is being the land of Kurdistan. On these lands live the Kurds with their tribal ties and kinships.
The people of the region have never acknowledged the borders imposed on them. You can’t have natural borders on such high mountains. There are also no ethnic boundaries. Borders are easily traversed by the Kurds who don’t use passports. Kurdish armed movements in all three countries have routinely used the land of each other as hinterland of their area of operations.
Those who live inside the borders of Turkey refer to neighboring countries without using their official designations. For them Iran is Rojhilat and Iraq is Bashur, that is East and South respectively in Kurdish language, just as they are now referring to Kurdish areas adjacent to Turkish border in Syria as Rojava, that is, the West.
These identifications are based on their perception of Kurdistan. With feel they live in Kurdistan. For them the part of their geographical and ethnic entity that on paper remains in Iran is the East, those parts in Iraq is the South and the parts in Syria is the West, hence the labels East Kurdistan, South Kurdistan et al. Bakur, that is North, is where they live, hence North Kurdistan.
We reached he city of Hakkari, that is Colemerg, talking about all these with Kurdish academics of the Hakkari University.
The introductory paragraph of the article was especially stunning: “If you follow the Turkish media, and especially focus on news related to Turkey’s southeastern neighbors, you will notice an interesting nuance: The autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of is almost never referred to with its official name. Most Turks rather simply call it ‘Northern Iraq’ with clear intention to avoid the K word. Others who try to be more realistic speak of ‘the Kurdish Regional Government.’ They, in other words, prefer the word ‘Kurdish’ to ‘Kurdistan,’ because the latter is quite toxic for most Turkish ears.”
Allergy of Turks to the word “Kurdistan” is at times unnerving and at times amusing. While I was reading these lines I remembered an incident with an Iraqi young girl who entered Turkey from the border of Kurdistan in Iraq. In 1991 after Saddam Hussein lost his sovereignty beyond the 36th parallel, marking the actual emergence of a Kurdistan region, many babies were named Kurdistan and that was how they were recorded in population registers. This young girl, almost a teenager when the Americans invaded in 2003, entered Turkey through the Habur border crossing in the southeast. The official studying her passport gave her a long look and asked: “What is your name?” After hesitating a bit, she answered: “Northern Iraq.”
Akyol’s points were on the mark, provided if you read this part of it from the end: “The reason for this widespread Turkish sensitivity is not hard to see: The geographic area that historically has been called ‘Kurdistan’ is divided since World War I between four countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, the last of them having the largest share. Moreover, groups among Turkey’s Kurds have launched almost two dozen rebellions against Ankara in the past 90 years. This had led successive Turkish governments –and especially the bureaucratic establishment, which was politely called ‘the regime’ – to try to ‘Turkify’ the region.”
What I mean by reading from the end is this: “Because successive Turkish governments — and especially the bureaucratic establishment, which was politely called ‘the regime,’ tried to ‘Turkify’ the region, that led groups among Turkey’s Kurds to launch almost two dozen rebellions against Ankara in the past 90 years.”
And I can add the following “As long as the identity of Turkey’s Kurds are denied including the avoidance of the K word, Kurds will never feel reconciled.” Because the Turkish allergy to the word Kurdistan brings with it the fear of division of Turkey. For Kurds, this means rejections of their quest and demands for equality.
The problem with the word ‘’Kurdistan’’ is not solvable by citing claims that the borders are not precisely defined, therefore it has the potential of causing problems in the Turkish administrative structure. While there is Kurdistan in Iraq, a province with that name in Iran was allowed to keep it both under monarchy and then the Islamic Republic, there is now the possibility of another one emerging in Syria, to think that there has never been an area called Kurdistan in Turkey only attributes sacrosanctity to the superficial, illogical and abnormal borders drawn after World War I to define Turkey’s southern frontier.
This can no more be possible in the second decade of the 21st century.
Akyol’s remark that “if there is a Kurdistan in Turkey, it is the whole country and its capital is Istanbul” sounds pleasing to the ears. His intention with that description is subtly pleasant but not in full harmony with historical and physical facts and the direction developments are heading toward nowadays. Akyol’s words, “Kurds should be made more at home in every inch of Turkey,” are entirely justified.
But this will be impossible, if the name of their homeland is denied or considered as dangerous for the unity of the people and country or as ‘sinful’.
The proper response to the question “Is there a Turkish Kurdistan?” that will also satisfy the concerned parties could well be: ”Part of Turkish territory is Kurdistan.”
Cengiz Çandar is a contributing writer for Al-Monitor's Turkey Pulse. A journalist since 1976, he is the author of seven books in the Turkish language, mainly on Middle East issues, including the best-seller Mesopotamia Express: A Journey in History. He contributed to two Century Foundation publications: Turkey's Transformation and American Policy and Allies in Need: Turkey and the U.S. He is currently senior columnist of Radikal in Istanbul. Çandar was a special foreign policy advisor to Turkish President Turgut Özal from 1991 to 1993. | <urn:uuid:d82667c0-de9f-4f84-9e82-aeaf3a69bbf0> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2013/02/turkey-kurdistan-pkk-hakkari.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572221.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816060335-20220816090335-00064.warc.gz | en | 0.967424 | 1,995 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Workers at Cerro Verde copper mine in Peru plan strike next month
LIMA, March 31 (Reuters) - Workers at Freeport McMoRan Inc's Cerro Verde mine in Peru, one of the country's biggest copper deposits, plan to go on a 48-hour strike starting April 8 for unspecified reasons, the union said in a statement on Thursday.
Freeport has a 53.56 percent stake in the mine, which produced about 32,000 tonnes of copper in January. Sumitomo Metal Mining Company Ltd controls 21 percent and Peruvian miner Buenaventura owns 19.58 percent. (Reporting by Teresa Cespedes; Editing by Sandra Maler)
© Thomson Reuters 2017 All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:c425fbec-b730-425c-8b18-1d7c0c0015a1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://lta.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idLTAL2N17400Y | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280483.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00301-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927907 | 152 | 1.507813 | 2 |
NEW HAVEN – In September 1998, during the depths of the Asian financial crisis, Alan Greenspan, the United States Federal Reserve’s chairman at the time, had a simple message: the US is not an oasis of prosperity in an otherwise struggling world. Greenspan’s point is even closer to the mark today than it was back then.
Yes, the US economy has been on a weak recovery trajectory over the past three years. But at least it’s a recovery, claim many – and therefore a source of ongoing resilience in an otherwise struggling developed world. Unlike the Great Recession of 2008-2009, today there is widespread hope that America has the capacity to stay the course and provide a backstop for the rest of the world in the midst of the euro crisis.
Think again. Since the first quarter of 2009, when the US economy was bottoming out after its worst postwar recession, exports have accounted for fully 41% of the subsequent rebound. That’s right: with the American consumer on ice in the aftermath of the biggest consumption binge in history, the US economy has drawn its sustenance disproportionately from foreign markets. With those markets now in trouble, the US could be quick to follow.
Three regions have collectively accounted for 83% of America’s export-led growth impetus over the past three years – Asia, Latin America, and Europe. (Since regional and country trade statistics assembled by the US Department of Commerce are not seasonally adjusted, all subsequent comparisons are presented on the basis of a comparable seasonal comparison from the first quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2012.) | <urn:uuid:7a81f270-ee0e-4eb2-b23c-86d64bde2ee6> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-great-american-mirage?barrier=accessreg | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279489.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00009-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948966 | 329 | 2.25 | 2 |
Saturday January 25, 2020 at the Auditorium of the Campus St-Jean of the University of Alberta
INTERCULTURAL CARREFOUR organized by the Francophonie Albertaine Plurielle – FRAP, to whom we say thank you for having associated AJFAS to this important meeting.
Theme: Values of Newcomers facing Canadian Values
With as panelists:
– Oury Barry (President of the Guinean Community of Edmonton)
– Kazir Coulibaly (President of the Ivorian-Canadian Community of Edmonton)
– Ridha ATIOUI (from Job Access)
– Luketa M’PINDOU (Director General of AJFAS)
– Mrs. Marie-Josée VERRET (from CSCN)
Luketa M’Pindou: “We live here in a country of law and its values. Not everything is allowed. In Africa for example, you can afford to correct your child. This is called discipline. By cons here, this is considered corporal punishment; therefore abuse of a minor (Art. 43 of the Criminal Code of Canada which prohibits the use of force).
Such situations can lead to prison or outright withdrawal of the child and placement in a foster family.
This causes a real culture shock for many immigrants who come to settle here in Canada, especially those from Africa. “ | <urn:uuid:24df733b-7b56-444d-96d0-6ca1a601c2c3> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://ajfas.ca/en/2020/01/30/intercultural-carrefour/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572870.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817062258-20220817092258-00676.warc.gz | en | 0.908918 | 289 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Last revised: April 30, 2019
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Nonviolence and the Book of Revelation
with an Annotated Bibliography
There are sixty-six books in the Christian Bible, none of which has provoked more controversy, esoteric speculation, or misunderstanding than the very last one — Revelation. In the fourth century notable scholars like Chrysostom and Eusebius hesitated to include Revelation in the canon. The Protestant reformer Martin Luther described it as “neither apostolic nor prophetic. My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book. I stick to the books which present Christ to me clearly and purely.” John Calvin wrote commentaries on every book in the New Testament except Revelation. Today, among Eastern Orthodox believers Revelation is the only book that they don’t read in their public liturgy.
Not in the mainstream of the Christian faith, Revelation has, however, been the favorite book of the Bible of many marginal Christian groups. Sects like David Koresh’s Branch Dividians have used its violent imagery to support its own violent actions. The two churches most common for sending its members knocking on doors to ‘evangelize,’ Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses, nearly always begin their proselytization with Revelation (at least in my experience of conversations on porches).
More troubling is the extent to which Revelation is fascinating larger numbers of contemporary “evangelical” Christians, especially in the United States, who have made the “Premillennial Dispensationalism” of John Nelson Darby (1800-1882; British preacher) a central part of their faith — as manifested, for example, in the popularity (over 50 million books sold) of a fictionalized version of dispensationalism, the Left Behind series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. (For more on the Left Behind series from the perspective of mimetic theory, see the webpage “Re-Sacralizing Violence in the Left Behind Books.”) With much of mainline Christianity seemingly doing its best to ignore the Book of Revelation, there has not been a strong enough voice to challenge the increasing acceptance of the dispensationalist way of reading it.
Is it time for other Christians to wake up and add their voices to the mix? If that would happen, they would find that there is a more recent trend in the interpretation of this mystifying book that may be even the most surprising yet: seeing Revelation as a call to nonviolence — a 180 degree turn from the Left Behind version. The Book of Revelation, I believe, shows us a picture of the beastly powers of violence finally collapsing into their own hell-hole of violence, together with a plea to the faithful to maintain their faith. In the midst of relating his vision, John the Seer pauses to speak directly to those faithful:
Let anyone who has an ear listen: If you are to be taken captive, into captivity you go; if you kill with the sword, with the sword you must be killed. Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints. (Rev. 13:9-10)
Could the call to nonviolence be any more clear? Yet the images of violence, including the possibility of divine vengeance, seem to overpower such a call to nonviolence. How does one sort through this barrage of images that are rather foreign to our modern worldview? For those who see the New Testament as a call to nonviolence, being able to interpret the Book of Revelation as part of that overall message depends primarily on a strategy of seeing how Revelation takes violent apocalyptic imagery from the Hebrew tradition and means to subvert it from within, primarily through the dominant actor in Revelation, the Lamb slain. Laboring to offer a thorough-going interpretation from the perspective of nonviolence is admittedly not an easy chore, but it is one that has been taken up in recent years. What I aim to do here is to give a brief introduction to such a reading and then follow it with an annotated bibliography.
Again, the point of Revelation that I think it is conveying to us is that the terrifying violence that we so often face in this world is decidedly not God’s violence but the violence of empires under the deception of Satan, the dragon. And God’s defeat of that violence is not one of superior firepower, of simply having more of the same kind of violence to subdue that of the empires. No, God’s defeat of violence is to expose it through the love of the Lamb slain whose self-giving love lets itself be slaughtered by the violence, and the Lamb’s resurrection shows its power of life to be victorious. Disciples of the Lamb follow not in a hope that there would be a different kind of victory someday, a victory in which the Lamb became a Lion and devoured all its enemies. But followers of the Lamb believe that his slaughter and resurrection have already won the victory, such that we wait with endurance and hope, following in the Lamb’s loving nonviolence if we must, until the day when Satan’s violence finally becomes its own defeat, collapsing in on itself.
Let’s take a quick look at the most relevant passages. The first pivotal point in the drama comes with John the Seer’s despairing over no one being worthy to open a sacred scoll with seven seals. We pick up the drama at 5:4:
And I began to weep bitterly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.” Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He went and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who was seated on the throne. (Rev. 5:4-7)
John looks to see the Lion of Judah, that hoped for warrior who devours God’s enemies, and instead he sees the Lamb slain. This is the beginning of a subversion from within of the dominant human hopes for a divine violence and vengeance that will someday put all evil-doers in their appropriate place, a hellish place of God’s condemnation. But Revelation begins to subvert this hope right from the very beginning with the one who has truly won God’s victory on the cross, the Lamb slain. And the Lamb is never portrayed as someday coming back like a lion. No, the emphasis is not on the future but on the continuing present. The Greek for “a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered” uses participles in the perfect tense: arnion hestekos hos esphagmenon. It is something that has already happened and is continuing on into the future.
The other crucial passage comes in chapter 12 describing the war in heaven:
And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, 8 but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world– he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, proclaiming, “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah, for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death. Rejoice then, you heavens and those who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to you with great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!” (Rev. 12:7-12)
I believe this passage elaborates the idea behind Jesus’ words (used by René Girard in giving title to one of his books, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning) in Luke 10:18: “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.” In the nonviolent ministry of Jesus and his disciples, culminating and coming to power through his death as the Lamb slaughtered and his resurrection, the Satanic powers of violence are thrown out of heaven. In short, they lose their transcendence. Exposed by the greater power of loving self-giving, human beings need no longer look to the Satanic powers of violence as heavenly powers. Duped by the beastly deception, we will continue to be led astray for a time. But the battle has already been fought and won, signified by Michael and the angels throwing Satan out of heaven. And was this victory won by superior divine firepower? No, the nature of the victory is made crystal clear: “they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death.” It is a continuation of the ministry begun on this earth by Jesus Christ and furthered through his disciples — his witnesses (martyrs in the Greek) — who continue in his way of loving self-giving instead of hate-filled vengeance.
Is this way of discipleship an easy choice? Obviously not! It requires great faith, the kind of faith that says to the sacrificial system — represented by Mt. Zion (“this mountain” made obvious by the context) in Jesus’ synoptic version of the saying — “Be taken up and thrown into the sea” (Mark 11:23). The hope for sacred, divine violence to vanquish evil-doers, represented by symbols such as the Lion of Judah, is a hope deeply engrained in our anthropology of creating gods to justify our own violent actions against enemies. The Satanic powers of violence have been our heavenly powers since the foundations of our human worlds. But the revelation from the heavenly Father of Jesus Christ — in giving over his Son into the human hands of sacrificial, sacred violence and then raising him up to new Life on Easter — has begun to unveil that violence as less than the heavenly power of unconditional love and forgiveness, a revelation that continues to take place through the work of the Holy Spirit of Truth (the Paraclete) as partly manifested in the witnesses who do not “cling to life even in the face of death.”
At the beginning of the 21st Century, I believe the principle witness to this way of nonviolence has been a Hindu follower of Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi, who has inspired a revival of Jesus’ way of nonviolence. Gandhi is named as a model for many, many subsequent movements, perhaps the most significant of which has been the Civil Rights movement in the United States led by Martin Luther King, Jr. In fact, Gandhi has become a new symbol who for many who need to distance themselves from the many so-called followers of Christ, “Christians,” who have fallen back into the Satanic ways of violence and remain duped along with the “kings and nations” by the deceptions of the dragon — making it all that much more important for a Christian voice to strongly put forward a more faithful reading of the Book of Revelation. Gandhi’s way of nonviolence follows in the way of the Lamb slaughtered.
When I wrote the first draft of this page (May 2007), I was wondering if one of the most popular phenomenons of our time would be on the side of this way of nonviolent love. I believed J. K. Rowling to be presenting us with the choice between Lord Voldemort’s Satanic ways of death and Dumbledore’s way of self-giving love. Dumbledore never shrinks from the fact that one must stand against such evil ways as Voldemort’s. But he also persists in teaching Harry that the most powerful force in the world is that of love, the kind of self-giving love which his mother showed in dying for him. And the end of Book 6, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, leaves readers with the question: Is Snape’s murder of Dumbledore just a senseless murder that needs to be made meaningful by an age-old act of vengeance? Or is it a staged murder that is, in reality, an act of self-giving love? I argued for the latter in a paper entitled “Harry Potter and the Power of Love” (which was written between Book 6 and 7, with some rather accurate anticipations of what happens in Book 7).
Book 7 (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) has arrived and we now know that Rowling stayed true to the end with a Christian theme of nonviolent love. Even in the showdown with Voldemort, Harry offers him a last chance to repent and then attempts to disarm him rather than kill him. It is Voldemort’s own killing curse which rebounds on himself and leads to his finish — which is what I think the book of Revelation offers us, namely, violence bringing about its own end. C. S. Lewis, by contrast in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, gives us a Christ figure Aslan who sacrifices himself on the witch’s altar, but then the risen Aslan leads a violent assault to final defeat of the enemy. I believe that Christians have, in the wildly popular Harry Potter series, a Revelation-like tale of fantastic creatures and events that champions the true power of life in this world that can stand “even in the face of death.” (For a full bibliography see my webpage “Harry Potter and the Christian Faith.”)
1. For other writings on the Book of Revelation at this website, see:
- the conclusion to Part III of “My Core Convictions“
- a sermon from St. Michael and All Angels Day, “Faith Is Trusting that the Satanic Violence Is Self-Defeating“
- an Easter 4C sermon, “Who Do We Follow, a Lion or a Lamb?“
- an Easter 6C sermon, “Just How Much Does Jesus Heal Us?“
2. Austin Farrer, A Rebirth of Images: The Making of St. John’s Apocalypse, 1949. This is a groundbreaking work in detailing all the Hebrew and Aramaic texts that the Book of Revelation draws upon and in beginning the process of showing the subversion from within of the violent imagery to serve the message of nonviolence in the face of such violence. Farrer followed it with a standard commentary 15 years later: The Revelation of St. John Divine: Commentary on the English Text, 1964.
3. G. B. Caird, The Revelation of St. John the Divine (Harper’s New Testament Commentaries), 1966 (original; reprinted by Hendrickson, 1993). This is one of those commentaries which has an importance that goes beyond the ordinary commentary — a must for the pastor’s library. (Caird, for example, was a teacher of, and influence on, such N.T. scholars as N. T. Wright.) Building on and extending the work of Farrer, Caird sets the benchmark for a nonviolent reading of Revelation.
4. Wilfrid J. Harrington, Revelation (Sacra Pagina Series), Liturgical Press, 1993. A more recent, solid addition to the tradition of interpretation begun by Farrer and Caird.
5. Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation, Cambridge UP, 1993; and The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation, T&T Clark, 1993. Important work by a major contemporary N.T. scholar.
6. Brian Zahnd, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News, Waterbrook, 2017. Chapters 7-9 provide a wonderful and accessible nonviolent reading of Revelation, as a climax to reading the Gospel itself from a thoroughly nonviolent perspective. (The title of the book alludes to the primary illustration of Zahnd’s personal conversion from Jonathan Edwards‘ iconic sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a conversion to the nonviolent God of Jesus.)
7. Mark Bredin, Jesus, Revolutionary of Peace: A Nonviolent Christology in the Book of Revelation, Bletchley, England: Paternoster, 2003. This bibliography is primarily based on one that Bredin gives in chapter 4, pages 28-35. Bredin gives an up-to-date synthesis of the above commentaries while mixing in ideas from Gandhi and René Girard. A very capable guide to the enterprise I am encouraging here, namely, a nonviolent reading of Revelation.
8. Stephen Finamore, God, Order, and Chaos: René Girard and the Apocalypse. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009. “If the Apocalypse was a book for its times to enable what the Spirit was saying to late first century people, Finamore’s reading of the Apocalypse, through the lens of Girard’s theory, is an equivalent wake up call for a world addicted to violence and coercion in the pursuit of human flourishing and a plea to consider the ‘better way’ of the victim, the story of whose death, supposedly expedient for the wellbeing of the people, is recorded in the New Testament Gospels.” — Christopher Rowland, Oxford
9. Michael Hardin, and Ted Grimsrud, editors, Compassionate Eschatology: The Future as a Friend, Cascade Books, 2011. Wes Howard-Brook writes, “Compassionate Eschatology interweaves close readings of the Bible — with Revelation as its central text — theology and current events to shed light on the ‘times of the end.’ The authors reveal, each from their own angle of vision, how God’s ultimate purpose is not destructive vengeance, but the healing into harmony of all creation.” Contributors include: the editors, Richard Bauckham, Barbara Rossing, Walter Wink, Anthony Bartlett, Stephen Finamore, and Jürgen Moltmann.
10. J. A Jackson and Allen H. Redmon, “‘And They Sang a New Song’: Reading John’s Revelation From the Position of the Lamb” (online version; login required), Contagion (Vol. 12-13, 2006). A paper presented at a COV&R conference and then published in the Girardian journal.
11. Michael Battle, Heaven on Earth: God’s Call to Community in the Book of Revelation, WJK Press, 2017.
12. Gregory Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross, Fortress Press, 2017. The focus is primarily on rereading the violence of God in the Old Testament, but there are passages in the New Testament that also need addressing. Appendix IV makes ample use of Bauckham’s books (above) in giving a concise and readable assessment of “Violence in the Book of Revelation.”
13. Margaret Barker, The Revelation of Jesus Christ: Which God Gave to Him to Show to His Servants What Must Soon Take Place (Revelation 1.1), T&T Clark, 2000. Here is a commentary from an O.T. professor whose work on the Temple for Christian theology is groundbreaking. (Her work is a favorite of Girardian James Alison.)
14. Barbara Rossing, The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation, Westview Press, 2004 (paperback, 2005). Not a standard commentary it has a more practical application of both criticizing popular readings of Revelation and putting forward a reading strategy focused on the Lamb. It exposes the Rapture theology behind the Left Behind series which have been wildly popular in America. She lays out the Rapture theology as based on the “dispensationalism” of John Nelson Darby, a nineteenth century preacher, whose interpretation of Scripture has become foundational among many “evangelical” Christians in America — made even more popular by the Left Behind series (which has sold around 50 million copies).
15. Craig R. Koester is a leading, recent interpreter of Revelation from a perspective of nonviolence, with two prominent books: Revelation and the End of All Things, Eerdmans, 2001; and Revelation (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries), Yale, 2015.
16. N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, John Knox/Westminster, 2011. An accessible commentary by one of today’s leading scholars, and a student of a trendsetter on Revelation, C. B. Caird (see above). | <urn:uuid:88a4db5a-89ca-405e-a4a2-dafcf4bbf779> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://girardianlectionary.net/learn/nonviolence-book-revelation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00068.warc.gz | en | 0.945377 | 4,411 | 1.84375 | 2 |
High-mobility group A (HMGA) proteins are non-histone nuclear proteins that bind DNA and several transcription factors. They are involved in the regulation of chromatin structure and function. HMGA protein expression is low in normal adult tissues, but abundant during embryonic development and in several human tumours. Rearrangements of the HMGA genes have been frequently detected in human benign tumours of mesenchymal origin, e.g. lipomas, lung hamartomas and uterine leiomiomas. HMGA proteins have been implicated in the control of cell growth and differentiation of the pre-adipocytic cell line 3T3-L1. In an attempt to better understand the role of HMGA1 proteins in haematological neoplasias and in the differentiation of haematopietic cells, we have investigated their expression in human leukaemias and in leukaemic cell lines induced to terminal differentiation. Here we report HMGA1 overexpression in most fresh human leukaemias of different origin and in several leukaemic cell lines. Moreover, differentiation of three cell lines towards the megakaryocytic phenotype was associated with HMGA1 protein induction, whereas induction of erythroid and monocytic differentiation generally resulted in reduced HMGA1 expression.
High-mobility group A1 proteins are overexpressed in human leukaemias
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Giovanna Maria PIERANTONI, Valter AGOSTI, Monica FEDELE, Heather BOND, Irene CALIENDO, Gennaro CHIAPPETTA, Francesco LO COCO, Fabrizio PANE, Maria Caterina TURCO, Giovanni MORRONE, Salvatore VENUTA, Alfredo FUSCO; High-mobility group A1 proteins are overexpressed in human leukaemias. Biochem J 15 May 2003; 372 (1): 145–150. doi: https://doi.org/10.1042/bj20021493
Download citation file: | <urn:uuid:1dcdab4a-4ec7-42ce-a05c-561ba7139d21> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://portlandpress.com/biochemj/article-abstract/372/1/145/43651/High-mobility-group-A1-proteins-are-overexpressed?redirectedFrom=fulltext | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571987.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813202507-20220813232507-00265.warc.gz | en | 0.885847 | 439 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Active ingredients: Clotrimazole
ATC Code: G01AF02
Clotrimazole is an imidazole derivative with a broad spectrum of antimycotic activity.
Clotrimazole acts against fungi by inhibiting ergosterol synthesis. Inhibition of ergosterol synthesis leads to structural and functional impairment of the cytoplasmic membrane.
Clotrimazole has a broad antimycotic spectrum of action in vitro and in vivo, which includes dermatophytes, yeasts, moulds, etc.
The mode of action of clotrimazole is fungistatic or fungicidal depending on the concentration of clotrimazole at the site of infection. In-vitro activity is limited to proliferating fungal elements; fungal spores are only slightly sensitive.
Primarily resistant variants of sensitive fungal species are very rare; the development of secondary resistance by sensitive fungi has so far only been observed in very isolated cases under therapeutic conditions.
Pharmacokinetic investigations after vaginal application have shown that only a small amount of clotrimazole (3 – 10% of the dose) is absorbed. Due to the rapid hepatic metabolism of absorbed clotrimazole into pharmacologically inactive metabolites the resulting peak plasma concentrations of clotrimazole after vaginal application of a 500mg dose were less than 10 ng/ml, reflecting that clotrimazole applied intravaginally does not lead to measurable systemic effects or side effects.
There are no pre-clinical data of relevance to the prescriber which are additional to the information included in other sections of the SPC. | <urn:uuid:8459eede-d5e8-4136-be8f-10a9802ddb32> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.rxreasoner.com/monographs/2676/pharmacology | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573760.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819191655-20220819221655-00673.warc.gz | en | 0.917867 | 335 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The push is on in deploying large solar arrays
Solar-electric propulsion (SEP) is high on 's list of things to do in its growing effort to develop technologies that will support long-term human space exploration. And within that arena, figuring out how to deploy large, lightweight solar arrays in space is a key enabler. Even after building the International Space Station with its 115-ft.-long array wings, the agency sees the technology readiness level (TRL) of deploying big arrays for exploration beyond low Earth orbit at 3 or 4—a long way from the demonstrated operational capability represented by TRL 9.
Results are starting to come in under the relatively open-ended technology development effort launched at the beginning of the Obama administration. While Congress has not approved the billion-dollar funding levels for the work the White House wanted, it has sprung enough money to make a start. Now five companies have come back with concept reports on what it would take to build and fly a solar-powered space tug testbed by the end of the decade, at a cost of $200 million. It remains to be seen if a testbed actually will be built, given the ongoing funding uncertainty in these parlous fiscal times. But the concept studies should help's Office of the Chief Technologist (OCT) better understand what needs to be done, and just how much it will cost.
“We need that data to help make sure that we're doing the technology development in the right areas and that we're reducing the right risks,” says Mike Gazarik, the OCT space technology program director. “Those studies are going to help us make sure that in our investments in the near future, we're investing in the right areas.”
The basic SEP concept is nothing new, and is already at work in space. Solar arrays turn sunlight into electricity, which powers a low-thrust, high specific-impulse ion engine or Hall thruster to propel a spacecraft. Many communications satellites use it for north-south stationkeeping in geostationary orbit, and NASA's Dawn probe is set to move out Aug. 26 under SEP from orbit around the Main Belt asteroid Vesta toward an encounter with the dwarf planet Ceres (AW&ST May 21, p. 16).
NASA is spending about $3 million on the initial SEP studies, which were originally set up by the technology element in the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. The five companies selected to prepare concepts—Analytical Mechanics Associates Inc., of Hampton, Va.;& Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.; , Huntington Beach, Calif.; Space Systems Co., Littleton, Colo., and Aerospace Systems Corp., Redondo Beach, Calif., each received as much as $600,000 for the work, which could lead to a role in the flying testbed work by the end of the decade.
Near-term, NASA probably will spend its money on ground demonstrations of the deployment mechanisms for large solar arrays like those shown in this testbed concept that Ball Aerospace submitted with its proposal. In the image, a Ball space tug uses circular MegaFlex arrays from ATK. The company also had good luck with Deployable Space Systems' MegaROSA circular arrays, according to Bill Deininger, a staff consultant at Ball.
“Basically what NASA has told us is the technology readiness of the solar array is down around 3 or something like that,” he says. There needs to be some ground-demonstration [engineering demonstration units] built to verify that the deployment mechanisms are as robust as we think they are.”
Gazarik says one data point likely to emerge from the concept studies is a tradeoff between circular and linear arrays. To save weight, both types probably will use folding solar array blankets, but with much lighter support and deployment structures than the linear arrays on the ISS. Other areas to be tackled are the efficiency of the solar cells in the blankets—how much sunlight they can convert to power—and the power electronics needed to switch solar power on and off and to condition it for the electric propulsion systems. “That turns out to be pretty challenging,” Gazarik says.
After the array-deployment tests on the ground, budget permitting, there could be a deployment test “near or around” the space station, possibly making use of the vehicles that deliver supplies and/or crew to it, says Gazarik. The final phase would be the $200 million free-flying space tug test-bed, notionally set for launch in 2018 but highly dependent on funding.
Ultimately NASA foresees using SEP to preposition cargo for human crews arriving later at asteroids and Mars. While the instruments and other systems on the Juno probe now en route to Jupiter are powered with three large linear arrays (AW&ST March 21, 2011, p. 50), Gazarik says studies have showed SEP will be particularly useful at those nearer targets. | <urn:uuid:135a6456-9b57-4668-900f-4ceaba509597> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://aviationweek.com/awin/nasa-advancing-solar-electric-propulsion-0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988718285.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183838-00106-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945052 | 1,016 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Overzealous use of automated dialing for message delivery (“robocalling”) systems threatens to diminish the valuable gains made since the creation of the do not call list and legislation enacted to protect consumers from unwanted phone calls.
When used for the delivery of important municipal and customer service information, these offerings are seen as effective. But when used improperly by debt collectors or overused in political campaigning, they do more than annoy consumers as is evidenced by the situations financial giant Bank of America (BoA) has found itself in.
Further, inventors and others have developed and are pushing solutions that block robocalls. Robocalling clearly needs an image makeover ASAP. Before the baby is thrown out with the bath water, consider this:
Used for the delivery of important information such as road closings and safety issues by the appropriate departments, the systems provide an effective means to get the word out to masses that may not use or check email or stay tuned to local TV news.
I’ve received robocalls with information on road closings, interruption of municipal services (water, etc.) and missing persons, which I found informative and useful. Other uses cover amber alerts, lockdowns, reported scams, time changes for town events, and school cancellations due to inclement weather.
I’ve also received countless robocalls that I didn’t ask for nor found any value in. Some seemed vague and suspicious, and likely illegal.
Nonetheless, I’d be the first to recommend that municipalities that don’t have these systems invest in them. I see them as a tool for potential good by businesses I patronize. I like what I’ve heard. That’s the good.
The bad, for the most part, is the over aggressive use of these systems by political parties, candidates for elected office, pollsters and miscellaneous related research firms. With some political contest seemingly monthly, the above-mentioned groups begin their bombardments early and are relentless in their use of the systems. Sadly, this gives the technology products a bad name, not always those who misuse it.
It seems only the dog officer and tree warden run unopposed in election so that leaves all other candidates, others from their party and their party from robocalling you with messages. These systems are better used by municipalities and responsible merchants with whom you do business. The latter group is more likely to leave informative messages – such as when your car is ready to be picked up or confirming an appointment made long ago – than to deliver a sales pitch.
Though the pollsters and “researchers” want to speak with you and don’t deliver a pre-recorded message or just disconnect in the absence of a live recipient, they are in my “bad” group or “the rest group” as they give technology products a bad rep.
Polls and municipalities aren’t the only ones drawn by the allure of robocall products. Merchants in several vertical industries – retail, healthcare, automotive, etc. – have embraced the offerings, but focusing first on improving customer service through timely information delivery rather than sales pitches. Perhaps large lessons have been learned from the long reign of telemarketers.
Another powerful reason is the reality that many merchants – especially retailers, restaurants, contractors, auto garages etc. etc. already reach consumers via staple direct mail, TV and radio ads, newspaper spots, email and coupon mailers and have little need to revive telemarketing.
But a reminder of an upcoming doctor’s appointment, a notification that a prescription is ready for pickup or a ping that your car has been repaired and is waiting don’t cross the line from useful into annoying. It’s just the opposite as these types of information enhance customer service, which is a pain point for many merchants and patrons.
Best Practices: Townie Tales
These systems (and/or services where available) can represent a valuable tool with which to build a technology-savvy and effective “smart town.” That presupposes the existence of a chief town technology officer (CTTO) or an equally savvy and empowered architect.
While my town is not yet technology-rich, I give those that use the automated systems high marks as much for what they don’t use them for as for how and when they do out them to use.
First and foremost, they don’t overuse the systems. For example, they don’t enhance certain top priority information delivery vehicles such as notifications of school closings. And there are no marketing or sales pitches. No calls alerting you to very low-priority developments such as a change to the school lunch menu. Only important and relevant info is delivered. By using the systems in this way, the robocalls made are likely given a high priority. They are especially time-sensitive and issued accordingly.
When use of a product or service has by another group is overzealous, annoying or crosses legal boundaries, it’s best for other groups to take the baby-steps approach and expand over time than to implement a full-court press and risk joining the “worst-practices” crew.
The Bottom Line
Unwise and/or unappealing use of any product or service will rub consumers the wrong way and cast a pall over beneficial and productive implementations that advance the greater good. While this may seem like a “captain obvious” statement, the current status of robocalling epitomizes the real world issues faced.
Responsible use of technology offerings such as robocalling may not result in big profits or easy ROIs. But then it’s always tough to put a price tag on well-informed consumers, public safety and customer service. | <urn:uuid:dca8bf7a-62b3-4e97-b356-76dc76373c27> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://callcenterinfo.tmcnet.com/Analysis/articles/356268-robocalling-good-bad-the-beyond.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560285315.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095125-00576-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950598 | 1,200 | 2.125 | 2 |
Q. Jeff played a stroke from off the putting green. The ball came to rest in the hole, leaning against the flagstick, and all of the ball was below the lip of the hole. What should Jeff do?
A. Jeff`s ball is holed. The provisions of Rule 17-4 do not apply once the ball is holed. (Definition of "Holed" and Rule 17-4)
Below you can view videos related to this Rule.
Learn what you can do with the flagstickView Video | <urn:uuid:22417872-e9bc-42e9-8536-40b9213eef8c> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.usga.org/RulesFAQ/rules_answer.asp?FAQidx=67&Rule=17 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719453.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00231-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926659 | 109 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Embossed symbols and markings on a glass jar help determine the jar's origin, its manufacturer and even when it was made. While some markings such as city names make it easy to determine at least some aspects of the jar's history, others, such as a simple letter "A," may offer little information about the jar itself, other than the mold model used to create it.
Reading the Symbols
A diamond shape with an O in it, sometimes referred to as a Saturn marking, is a common symbol on the bottom of many glass bottles and jars made between the 1930s and 1950s. This symbol belongs to glassmaking firm Owens-Illinois Glass Company. This same company later changed its mark to a letter O with an I inside it, using the new marking through the mid-1960s. In many cases, a glassmaker's symbol or company initials, such as these, appear within an embossed shape on the bottom of the jar, typically in the center of the bottom, but sometimes along the perimeter. Deciphering the symbol is often a matter of comparing it to known examples on collector websites or in glass-collecting publications. Initials or letters help narrow down the options.
Extra Markings Near the Symbol
Manufactured glass jars that feature an embossed maker's symbol often also have a date and location code stamped nearby. As with the Owens-Illinois Glass Company symbols, a numeral to the right of the diamond symbol indicates a year of manufacture; for instance, a 1 indicates 1941, while the joined O and I symbol, which is newer, uses two numerals as a date code: 60 for 1960, for instance. Numbers to the left of the company symbol, in the case of this and some other manufacturers, indicate a plant number.
Some glassmaker markings are symbols with no lettering or initials included. As with the symbol-and-letter combinations, determining the maker is often a matter of comparing the shapes to known examples, such as the archives on collector websites. Common markings include several variations of an anchor design, indicating the Anchor-Hocking Glass Company, or a diamond shape with no markings inside, which indicates the Diamond Glass Company.
Not Always as They Seem
In some cases, the same embossed information appeared on jars made by many manufacturers over a period of decades, such as the capitalized phrase "MASON’S PATENT NOV 30TH 1858" found on canning-style jars. This patent, displayed boldly on the sides of the glass, pertains to the style of screw-top lid used on these jars. This patent phrase appears on jars dating from 1858 through the 1920s, as well as on some reproductions still being made. While it is not possible to determine the makers on many of these jars, some feature embossed initials on the bottom, such as "W.C.D.," made by the W.C. Depauw Glass Company. If the jars are in bold colors such as bright red or cobalt blue and look fairly new, they probably are -- some reproductions feature glass colors not originally used for this type of jar.
- Society for Historical Archaeology: Bottle and Glass Makers' Markings
- Glass Bottle Marks: Mason's Patent Nov 30th 1858 Antique Fruit Jars – Summary and Overview
- Society for Historical Archaeology: Machine-Made Bottles
- Society for Historical Archaeology: Manufacturer’s Marks and Other Logos on Glass Containers
- Jupiterimages/Photodisc/Getty Images | <urn:uuid:bebeded6-f998-4b74-a18f-b047bceb61b1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://homeguides.sfgate.com/identify-embossed-symbols-glass-jar-101911.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279933.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00122-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939859 | 731 | 3 | 3 |
Auto company Nissan is offering home owners a reliable source of renewable energy collected through rechargeable home batteries in a system called xStorage. The unit attaches onto the wall of the home and provides dwellers with 12 Nissan Leaf batteries that can be recharged using solar energy.
The xStorage turns solar energy into a much more accessible commodity that can be stored up and easily accessed for a variety of technological and electric uses. The system can access both conventional energy sources as well as solar, allowing consumers with the option of switching between the two depending on time of day, accessibility and cost.
The xStorage unit can also be controlled via an accompanying smartphone app, and is designed for longterm. The integration of the xStorage unit directly into the home's control system ensures that environmentally friendly energy is a top priority.
Self-Charging Home Batteries
More Stats +/-
Gold-Plated Dream Cars
Flagship Luxury Cars
Futuristic Gas Station Concepts | <urn:uuid:67a2b3a7-7d79-485e-b243-8dc9b6b609b5> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/home-batteries | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279650.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00433-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904952 | 195 | 1.78125 | 2 |
The proposed changes in the Juvenile Justice Act snatch from vulnerable people below 18 a chance to reform themselves
This article was first published by The Hindustan Times on 08th June, 2015
Adult India is suddenly afraid of its children. This fear has resulted in wide support within the Parliament and outside for amendments to the law to treat children between 16 and 18 years like adult criminals when charged with grave crimes. Under these amendments, if a juvenile board concludes that a child is able to understand the consequences of his crime, it will transfer the case to a children’s court, which in turn could sentence the child from seven to 20 years in custody. Till he turns 21, he will be kept in a ‘place of safety’, after which the court will again evaluate if he has reformed. If not, he will be dispatched to an adult prison for the rest of his sentence.
It has been a long civilisational journey through which we as a people moved gradually from condemning teenage crime to a humane approach of offering the child the opportunity to reform, in the way we would to our own children who lose their way. I have seen many children and teenagers who were inducted into serious crime respond remarkably to love, protection, education, and faith that they matter, that they can indeed rebuild their lives. It is this chance to reform which these new amendments snatch from vulnerable children, condemning them instead to adult criminal standards of evaluation and consequences for childhood offences, stigmatising them for life.
Before these amendments have come into force, large numbers of under-age boys are detained in jails by the police, who have falsely recorded their age as above 18 years. Minna Kabir reports that in Delhi, the high court direction authorised lawyers and social workers to prepare applications for inmates who claimed to be under 18; in Tihar alone out of 330 young applicants, 180 were found to be children. Juvenile homes are themselves typically brutal and loveless, but adult prisons are far more so.
The law evolved over 150 years to make housing young offenders with adult criminals unlawful, recognising that adult prisons are sites in which a teenager is far more likely to be both brutalised and initiated into a life of adult crime, rather than deterred from further crime and receiving steady compassionate guidance to reform. America went down the path proposed by India’s new amendments, of transferring child offenders to adult courts, 25 years ago. But as Ved Kumari points out, most current research in the US confirms that children sent to adult criminal courts commit more violent offences in their life later compared to the children who were dealt with under the juvenile justice system.
These amendments arise from the popular belief that India has seen a spurt in juvenile rape and murder, and that because these teenagers are protected from adult punishment, nothing deters their vicious transgressions. These widely held perceptions were fuelled by public anger after one of the accused in the December 16 rape case escaped adult punishment.
Children comprise 42% of India’s population but 1.2% of the crimes recorded in India are committed by them. Child-rights lawyer Maharukh Adenwalla calculates that only 7% of these crimes are murder and rape. The law separately raised the legal age of sexual consent from 16 to 18 years, which criminalises consensual sex between children. The Hindu reported that of all rape cases against under-age boys in Delhi, 40% were of consensual ‘love affairs’ between boys and girls.
In 2013, crime data showed that among children charged with offences, 78% came from families with an annual income of less than Rs 50,000; 87% had not completed high school. There is a clear profiling of impoverished, street and slum-living teenagers in the working of the juvenile system. It is they who these amendments will now criminalise for life. The amended law overturns the earlier protection that every child’s criminal record would be destroyed to enable the child to start life afresh. Now these records would be retained, entailing all disqualifications and stigma.
Teenage is a life-phase of surging hormones, evolving brain changes and immature emotional control, of risk-taking, impetuousness, sensation-seeking and peer pressure. Teenagers are less able to control both anger and sexual longing because their frontal cortex — which allows adults to control their impulses — is not fully developed. If teenagers come from damaged families, or have none, and have no reliable adults to guide or steady them in these tumultuous bewildering years, they may act unwisely and destructive of themselves and others. The question is whether for such acts they should be condemned, or helped.
The decision we take about how we treat our children and young people when we believe they cause us grave harm defines the quality of our public compassion. Will we condemn them to adult punishment and stigma, and a probable life of adult crime? Or will we recognise that these children are often damaged and unsupported, unable to control their emotions? Will we believe it is possible for them to grow into caring and responsible young adults? Will we allow them a chance? | <urn:uuid:226674c6-2105-4924-8256-fbefb843fea7> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://harshmander.in/?p=183 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571536.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811224716-20220812014716-00273.warc.gz | en | 0.966448 | 1,151 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Yesterday afternoon I announced (in the presence of my daughters) that at 2:30, I would be closing my computer for the rest of the day.
One daughter asked “Why are you telling us this?” The other daughter said “She’s creating accountability. That way we know if she doesn’t get off the computer!”
I was super tickled at her response. You probably suspect she had read (and understood) the computer article I posted yesterday. I actually gave it to both my girls last week and asked for their feedback. I was happy that they understand accountability and wise computer practices aren’t just something adults impose on children; we ourselves are working to act wisely! Here are some of their comments I jotted down last week.
I asked them if they had any other comments. They started sharing some of their goals or actions to be wise users of technology.
- I use timers or music to help me be aware of time: “When I’m done with this album or song, then I need to get off the computer.”
- After 10, I stay off my phone. [We shut down all internet connectivity after bedtime, but they said that’s a rule they are glad we have.]
- I don’t want lots of apps or a web browser on my phone– I want it more as utility.
- I need to have a endpoint.
- No earbuds/ headphones— because it shuts you out from the world. sometimes I do use headphones though, so I’m not distracted.
- I have tried scheduling my day, and it works sometimes but not others. I might be on a roll in my writing and I haven’t yet figured out how to accommodate when I’m productive and my block of time is over.
- Telling you what I’m doing is helpful.
- Making it so you can see me helps me— especially when I’m doing school.
Any other comments about how you know if you’re on the computer too long?
- I get headaches if I’m on the computer too long
- I lose a sense of time– I like the circle limits, because it’s a reminder of how much time has passed. [We use the Circle device to manage our devices. We have limits for various programs the children use. We are generous by adding more time when they ask, but we have explained that one utility of a limit is simply for time awareness.]
- A lot of times you have good intentions, but it’s easy to get distracted.
When I told them I started this article over a year ago, Bethel told me she knew that. When I asked her how she knew, she told me that a lot of the things in the article are things we’ve talked about. She’s right. I love to talk about the whys of our decisions, because I want them to agree with me! If they think my actions are without reasons, they may comply with our rules at home, but they will likely leave them at our home when they become adults. Nearly every bullet point in the computer article is a statement we’ve made across many, many conversations together. I’m hoping for many more as we learn together! | <urn:uuid:ee6d79d3-3ecb-4d3d-ae24-2cc36c218bd7> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.as4me.net/discussions-with-teens-about-computer-usage/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573193.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818094131-20220818124131-00468.warc.gz | en | 0.970192 | 699 | 2.171875 | 2 |
National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program
More Information about Aquatic Ecology
Aquatic Ecology | Effects of Urbanization on Stream Ecosystems | Effects of Nutrient Enrichment on Stream Ecosystems
Sorted by: | Publication Date (newest first) | Publication Date (oldest first) | Author (A-Z) | Author (Z-A) | Title (A-Z) | Title (Z-A) |
Showing results 451 to 476 of 510.
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Brown, L.R., Cuffney, T.F., Coles, J.F., Fitzpatrick, F., McMahon, G., Steuer, J., Bell A.H., and May, J.T., 2009, Urban streams across the USA: lessons learned from studies in 9 metropolitan areas: Journal of the North American Benthological Society, vol. 28, no. 4, p. 1051-1069. doi: 10.1899/08-153.1 Available Online
Brown, L.R., 1997, Concentrations of chlorinated organic compounds in biota and bed sediment in streams of the San Joaquin Valley, California: Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, vol. 33, p. 357-368. Available Online
Brightbill, Robin A., and Bilger, Michael D., 1998, Relation of algal biomass to characteristics of selected streams in the Lower Susquehanna River Basin: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 98-4144, 18 p. Available Online
Brightbill, R.A., and Munn, M.D., 2008, Environmental and biological data of the nutrient enrichment effects on stream ecosystems project of the National Water Quality Assessment Program, 2003-04: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 345, 12 p. Available Online
Brightbill, R.A., and Frankforter, J.D., 2010, Environmental and biological data for assessment of the nutrient enrichment effects on agricultural stream ecosystems, 2006-08: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 517, 12 p. Available Online
Brigham, Mark E., Goldstein, Robert M., and Tornes, Lan H., 1998, Trace elements and organic chemicals in stream-bottom sediments and fish tissues, Red River of the North Basin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota, 1992-95: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 97-4043, 32 p. Available Online
Brigham, M.E., 1994, Pesticides detected in surface waters and fish of the Red River of the North Drainage Basin: North Dakota Water Quality Symposium Proceedings, March 30-31,1994, Fargo, North Dakota, p. 256-269.
Brigham, Allison R., and Sadorf, Eric M., 2001, Benthic invertebrate assemblages and their relation to physical and chemical characteristics of streams in Eastern Iowa streams, 1996-98: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 00-4256, 44 p. Available Online
Breault, Robert, F., and Harris, Sandra L., 1997, Geographical distribution and potential for adverse biological effects of selected trace elements and organic compounds in streambed sediment in the Connecticut, Housatonic, and Thames River Basins, 1992-94: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 97-4169, 24 p. Available Online
Brasher, Anne M.D., 2003, Impacts of human disturbances on biotic communities in Hawaiian streams: BioScience, vol. 53, no. 11, p. 1052-1060. doi: 10.1641/0006-3568(2003)053[1052:IOHDOB]2.0.CO;2 Available Online
Brasher, Anne M., and Anthony, Stephen S., 2000, Occurrence of organochlorine pesticides in bed sediment and fish tissue from selected streams on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, 1998: U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet FS 140-00, 6 p. Available Online
Brasher, A.M.D., Wolff, R.H., and Luton, C.D., 2004, Associations among land use, habitat characteristics, and invertebrate community structure in nine streams on the Island of Oahu, Hawaii, 1999-2001: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 03-4256, 47 p. Available Online
Brasher, A.M.D., Konrad, C.P., May, J.T., Edmiston, C.S. and Close, R.N., 2010, Streamflow characteristics and benthic invertebrate assemblages in streams across the western United States: U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2010-3110, 4 p. Available Online
Brasher, A.M.D., and Wolff, R.H., 2004, Relations between land use and organochlorine pesticides, PCBs, and semi-volatile organic compounds in streambed sediment and fish on the island of Oahu, Hawaii: Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, vol. 46, p. 385-398. doi: 10.1007/s00244-003-3019-4 Available Online
Bradley, P.M., Lowery, M.A., Brigham, M.E., Burns, D.A., Button, D., Chapelle, F.H., Lutz, M.A., DiPasquale, M.C., Riva-Murray, K., Journey, C.A. , 2012, Shallow groundwater methylmercury transport in a Coastal Plain Stream: Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 46, no. 14, p. 7503-7511. doi: 10.1021/es301540g Available Online
Bradley, P.M., Journey, C.A., Button, D.T., Carlisle, D.M., Clark, J.M., Mahler, B.J., Nakagaki, N., Qi, S.L., Waite, I.R., and Van Metre, P.C., 2016, Metformin and other pharmaceuticals widespread in wadeable streams of the southeastern United States: Environ. Sci. and Technol. Letters, v. 3, p. 243-249. Available Online
Bradfield, A.D., and Porter, S.D., 1988, Summary of biological investigations relating to surface-water-quality in the Kentucky River Basin, Kentucky through 1987: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 90-4051, 63 p. Available Online
Bonn, Bernadine A., 1998, Dioxins and furans in bed sediment and fish tissue of the Willamette Basin, Oregon, 1992-95: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 97-4082-D, 12 p. Available Online
Bonn, Bernadine A., 1998, Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxin and dibenzofuran concentration profiles in sediment and fish tissue of the Willamette Basin, Oregon: Environmental Science & Technology, vol. 32, no. 6, p. 729-735. doi: 10.1021/es9706099 Available Online
Block, Elizabeth, 1993, Aquatic biota within the Central Columbia Plateau NAWQA Study Unit: A review of existing information: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Moses Lake, WA, 92 p.
Black, Robert W., Munn, Mark D., and Plotnikoff, Robert W., 2004, Using macroinvertebrates to identify biota--land cover optima at multiple scales in the Pacific Northwest, USA: Journal of the North American Benthological Society, vol. 23, no. 2, p. 340-362. doi: 10.1899/0887-3593(2004)023<0340:UMTIBC>2.0.CO;2 Available Online
Black, Robert W., and Silkey, Mariabeth, 1998, Water-quality assessment of the Puget Sound Basin, Washington, summary of stream biological data through 1995: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 97-4164, 78 p. Available Online
Black, R.W., Moran, P.W., and Frankforter, J.D., 2010, Response of algal metrics to nutrients and physical factors and identification of nutrient thresholds in agricultural streams: Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, vol. 175, p. 397-417. doi: 10.1007/s10661-010-1539-8
Black, D.D., Hughes, W.B., and Gregory, M.B., 2003, Water quality and ecological assessment of Rottenwoord and Sope Creeks, Marietta, Georgia, 2002: in Hatcher, K.J., ed., Proceedings of the 2003 Georgia Water Resources Conference, April 23-24, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, 4 p.
Bilger, Michael D., Brightbill, Robin A., and Campbell, Harry L., 1999, Occurrence of organochlorine compounds in whole fish tissue from streams of the Lower Susquehanna River Basin, Pennsylvania and Maryland, 1992: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 99-4065, 17 p. Available Online
Go to page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 | <urn:uuid:ba8ec475-1c26-4c9f-8e1d-a383a44878c9> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/bib/pubs.php?start=451&sort=author&updn=DESC&cat=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280718.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00405-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.674455 | 2,024 | 2.78125 | 3 |
At last, it seems like the value of social networking is being recognized by "the establishment." Quoting the article:
Have you ever minimized your Facebook browser window when your supervisor walked past your desk, afraid you might appear unprofessional? Social-networking guilt may soon be a thing of the past as a new breed of social networking sites for scientists clamor to be the next great timesaver in the lab--for you and your supervisor. These science-specific, Web-based networks combine handy library and document-sharing tools with a social twist. Such sites permit scientists to "help out each other with protocols, discuss topics, prepare for scientific meetings, maybe even show off your research a little bit," says social network user Erika Gyengesi, a neuroscience postdoc at Yale University.
Sites mentioned include:
The article notes that no site is dominating the scene thus far, so a scientist may need to try several sites and then decide which one fits her. | <urn:uuid:295b16f6-5481-4f8f-9021-8c661d6dd1af> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://sla-divisions.typepad.com/itbloggingsection/2008/10/article-social.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279650.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00433-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932546 | 198 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Cost of living comparison between Muzaffarpur, India and Aleppo, Syria
WARNING! Aleppo has artificial and unrealistic official exchange rates. You can also get this comparison using the parallel street rate in Aleppo.
WARNING! This comparison is based on only a few data points. At this point it is only a guess. It is based on less than 10 prices entered by less than 5 different people.
These prices were last updated on October 26, 2016. Exchange rate: 7.740 SYP / INR *
Do you live in Aleppo? We need your help!
What do you think about this comparison?
Cost of living in Muzaffarpur (India) is about the same as in Aleppo (Syria)
For example, to keep the same standard of living that would require 375,000 £ in Aleppo you would need to make just about 375,000 £ (₨48,449) in Muzaffarpur.
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- Public transport in Fort Worth, Texas costs $80 (25 minutes ago)
- Monthly rate for domestic cleaning help in Dhaka costs Taka 9 (about 1 hour ago)
- Public transport in Milan costs €22 (about 1 hour ago)
- Monthly rent - 85 m2 furnished accommodation in expensive area in Sofia costs 700 лв (about 2 hours ago) | <urn:uuid:19c68817-5eca-4589-b1d9-a73a5cd474c5> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/aleppo/muzaffarpur | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721174.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00283-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915033 | 342 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Based on 78 income tax records
How much do Behavior Analysts make?
The average total salary for a Behavior Analyst is $63,000 per year. This is based on data from 78 TurboTax users who reported their occupation as Behavior Analyst and includes taxable wages, tips, bonuses, and more. Behavior Analyst salary can vary between $27,500 to $96,500 depending on factors including education, skills, experience, employer & location. | <urn:uuid:7216054d-6d93-46a5-a4c5-b5dc1fd90da6> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://mint.intuit.com/salary/behavior-analyst/co | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572043.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814143522-20220814173522-00478.warc.gz | en | 0.965211 | 100 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Birds Screensaver 2.1 Beautiful images of birds: in flight, on rest. Also, look a Collection of exotic birds. Learn a life of birds!
In full version it's available 40 pictures. All images in resolution 800*600 pix and High Color (24-bit).
Big Birds Screensaver 1.0 This screensaver shows beautiful images of big and beautiful birds. See: Eagle, Golden eagle, Albatross, Ostrich, Pelican, Swan, Bald eagle, Craine, Flamingo, Snowy egret, Egrets, Vulture.
ThumbBrowser 1.0, Birds Eye View On The Site There are many cases, when youd like to see some site as a «general plan» of the page: For example, when you edit a sites design or content, youd rather have a small always-on-screen picture of the entire site instead of «switch to editor switch to browser» development cycle. And ThumbBrowser is the first software ever providing you with Birds Eye view on any
Chess-7 - the most popular board game in history in an attractive modern package The game of chess dates back thousands of years. It has millions (if not billions) of fans and is available in various forms and shapes. Fortunately, with the advent of the computer era, playing chess became even more exciting and challenging. Now you don’t have to look for a decent partner to play — your computer is always ready to test your skills. Which is more, you can easily connect to the Internet | <urn:uuid:cd29d21e-bb97-420c-b76e-d241f950d107> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://3d2f.com/download/21-360-butterfly-screensaver-free-download.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279933.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00128-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904597 | 321 | 1.539063 | 2 |
When people make music together their brain activity synchronizes – even when they aren’t playing the same notes.
Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin used electrodes to trace the brain waves of guitarists playing in duets. And, they found, similarities in brain activity couldn’t be put down to perceiving the same stimuli or performing the same movements.
Instead, the two brains appeared to be synchronizing to support the coordination of their actions.
The psychologists placed 32 experienced guitarists in pairs and attached 64 electrodes to each of their heads. The musicians were then asked to play a rondo sequence from the Sonata in G major by Christian Gottlieb Scheidler a total of 60 times.
Importantly, the two partners were given slightly different tasks. They had to play in two voices, and one of the two was assigned a leading role, making sure that they both started at the same time and kept the same tempo.
And they found that the difference between leader and follower was reflected in the electrical activity captured by the electrodes.
“In the player taking the lead, synchronization of brain waves measured at a single electrode was stronger, and already present before to the duet started to play,” says Johanna Sänger.
This was particularly true for delta waves, which are located in the frequency range below four Hertz.
“This could be a reflection of the leading player’s decision to begin playing,” Sänger suggests.
The scientists also analysed the correlation between the signals from the different electrodes – and found what they decribe as ‘remarkable’ results. When the musicians had to actively coordinate their playing, especially at the beginning of a sequence, the signals from the frontal and central electrodes were clearly associated between the two heads.
“When people coordinate actions with one another, small networks within the brain and, remarkably, between the brains are formed, especially when the activities need to be precisely aligned in time, for example at the joint play onset of a piece,” says Sänger.
“We assume that different people’s brain waves also synchronise when people mutually coordinate their actions in other ways, such as during sport, or when they communicate with one another.” | <urn:uuid:331ef133-c836-4f82-9e60-fda34d031833> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://tgdaily.com/science/67782-musicians-brainwaves-synchronize-during-playing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571950.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813111851-20220813141851-00672.warc.gz | en | 0.972607 | 475 | 3.71875 | 4 |
Ingredients of Shimbhala Heart Caps – clinical studies/Trials
Pharmacology and Phytochemistry of Oleo-Gum Resin of Commiphora wightii (Guggulu)
blasmodendron mukul : http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/138039 Review Article
MM College of Pharmacy, Maharishi Markandeshwar University, Mullana, Ambala, Haryana 132 037, India
Received 18 June 2015; Revised 28 August 2015; Accepted 7 September 2015
Academic Editor: Marie-Aleth Lacaille-Dubois
Guggulu is an oleo-gum resin which exudes out as a result of injury from the bark of Commiphora wightii(Arnott) Bhandari [syn. Commiphora mukul (Hook. Ex Stocks) Engl; Balsamodendron mukul (Hook. Ex Stocks); Family, Burseraceae].
Hypolipidemic Activity – The lipid lowering effect of guggulu with special reference to atherosclerosis and obesity (medoraga) was first reported in a doctorate thesis submitted to the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in January 1966.
In numerous clinical studies carried out (over a period of two years) on rabbits, in which hyperlipidemia was induced, it was demonstrated that crude guggulu lowered the serum cholesterol in hypercholesterolemic rabbits significantly and also protected these animals against cholesterol-induced atherosclerosis at the fatty streak stage. It also reduced the body weight of the animals. A similar trending in patients was recorded of reduction in serum cholesterol levels in patients with obesity and hypercholesterolemia in clinical studies with crude guggulu.
Clinical studies on C. mukul showed its hypolipidemic effect and the outcome of change in lipid profile upon its administration. This study showed significant decrease in total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol after treatment with guggulu. The antioxidant property of guggulu helped stop the oxidation of cholesterol and subsequent hardening of the arteries, reduced the stickiness of platelet, and also lowered the risk of coronary artery disease.
It also enhanced the production of thyroxin and triiodothyronine; these hormones increase the metabolism of carbohydrates and protein synthesis and help in lowering the lipid activity.
Thus, the protective action of guggulsterone might also be due to free radical scavenging property. The metal chelating capacity of guggulsterone might be contributing to its antioxidant activity. Also, the alcoholic extract of C. mukul exhibited antioxidant property.
Anti-atherosclerotic Activity – LDL accumulates in atherosclerotic lesions and is the major source of the cholesterol accumulation in human foam cells. There is evidence that LDL oxidation is essential for atherogenesis and the antioxidants that prevent this oxidation may either slow down or prevent atherogenesis. Guggulsterones, the lipid-lowering components of guggulu, effectively inhibited in vitro LDL oxidation (as discussed under antioxidant action). Thus the combination of antioxidant and lipid-lowering properties of guggulu makes it especially beneficial against atherogenesis.
From this review article it is concluded that the resin of Commiphora wightii, guggulu, has emerged as a good source of the traditional medicines for the treatment of inflammation, arthritis, obesity, microbial infection, wound, pain, fractures, tumor, and gastrointestinal diseases | <urn:uuid:35b6c75e-b36f-4660-b392-4423a1721af6> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://anushveda.com/shimbhala-heart-caps-clinical-study-4/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572908.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817122626-20220817152626-00077.warc.gz | en | 0.873336 | 742 | 1.882813 | 2 |
New Delhi, March 21: The commerce ministry has asked the finance ministry to review gold import duty norms as the curbs have increased smuggling of the yellow metal.
“We have written to the finance ministry to lower the duty and have been working with them towards the possibility of a relaxation,” a senior official said.
With the Reserve Bank of India allowing more banks to import gold, hopes are pinned on the government to revisit the import duty on the yellow metal, which was hiked to 10 per cent from 4 per cent to contain the ballooning current account deficit (CAD).
Sources said the government was working on a gradual easing of the duty to prevent a sudden surge in imports.
Earlier this month, finance minister P. Chidambaram had said the gold import duty could be revisited only after the final CAD numbers were out.
The government had imposed restrictions on the import of the yellow metal to contain CAD, which touched a record high of $88.2 billion in 2012-13.
The current account deficit, the final figures of which are expected in the first week of June, for the current financial year is expected to narrow to $45 billion.
Gold imports, which peaked at 162 tonnes in May 2013, came down to 19.3 tonnes in November after the government hiked the import duty thrice last year.
The CAD, which is the difference between the inflow and outflow of foreign currency, narrowed to $31.1 billion (2.3 per cent of GDP) in April-December of 2013 from $69.8 billion (5.2 per cent of GDP) in the corresponding period of 2012, according to the latest RBI data.
Although the model code of conduct is in force, officials said the poll panel would have to be informed about the changes in the duty structure before a notification was issued as it was an administrative step and not a policy decision.
The Opposition, Bharatiya Janata Party, has opposed the import restrictions, while its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has said any action on gold should take into consideration the interests of the public and traders and not just economics and policy.
UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi had also asked the commerce ministry “to look into the matter” following a request from gems and jewellery exporters to ease the restrictions.
Gems and jewellery exports had dipped 4.18 per cent to $3.59 billion in February. | <urn:uuid:bc8bf98a-f700-4deb-815e-28a9af6c5a30> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.telegraphindia.com/1140322/jsp/business/story_18105697.jsp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280825.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00201-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967575 | 499 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Desk Report: For the first time in Bangladesh, the Sustainable Design & Innovation Award has been launched to promote sustainable design and innovation in the country’s RMG industry.
The Award is an exclusive event under the umbrella of “Made in Bangladesh Week”, which will be organized by Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), in partnership with Bangladesh Apparel Exchange (BAE) from November 12th to November 18th, 2022.
The Award is a unique platform where local talents, spectacular designers will be selected to represent
their best product and process innovations in a series of presentations and participation. The Award aims to find creative and innovative minds in the country through a rigorous selection process.
Fresh graduates and senior students from fashion design institutes of major public and private universities and industry professionals are invited to participate in the open competition. Participants can register themselves online (www.madeinbangladeshweek.com/sdia-submission) and learn more about the application process on the Made in Bangladesh Week website (www.madeinbangladeshweek.com).
Registration begins on 1 August, 2022 and ends on 9 September, 2022.
By participating in the competition, young professionals and graduates from Bangladesh will get the
opportunity to showcase their talent to multinational brands, retailers, and Bangladeshi manufacturers.
Besides, the awardees will receive award certificates, trophies, and networking opportunities with the
BGMEA President Faruque Hassan said, “Sustainability is a key strategic priority for the readymade garment industry of Bangladesh, hence our endeavors are constant to pursue excellence in the area as we believe growing in a sustainable manner is a must to save the planet and people. The Sustainable Design & Innovation Award is such an effort to empower and reward young and talented people who will play an active role in building a more sustainable future.”
Selected submissions from the competition will be displayed to the audience during the Sustainable Design and Innovation Award.
A jury board comprising national and international experts will find the best sustainable and innovative submissions by evaluating the submissions based on innovative aspects of the design, functionality, aesthetics, consideration of environmental standards and social footprint of the product, and process innovation.
This competition aims to help to establish new relationships within the design profession, encourage multi-disciplinary approaches to design, advance diversity, or encourage more environmentally and socially sustainable solutions. | <urn:uuid:f6abf353-2744-41b0-97a4-dffcc5b11cf0> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://textilefocus.com/sustainable-design-innovation-award-launched-to-promote-sustainability-in-bangladeshs-rmg-industry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573667.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819100644-20220819130644-00075.warc.gz | en | 0.922995 | 497 | 1.5 | 2 |
It is okay for diabetics to eat sweets such as ice cream, but with caution, as these foods are usually very high in calories and can wreak havoc on your blood glucose control. They add empty calories to your diet and provide very little nutritional benefit. There are NO foods which must be completely excluded from diabetic diet. It is also NOT necessary to avoid sugar competely. It IS necessary to follow the advice of your medical team and follow a diet that achieves a healthy weight. | <urn:uuid:bd190bae-efed-4fad-9863-8a57fac88eac> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.healthcaremagic.com/questions/Can-you-eat-ice-cream-if-you-have-diabetes/23121 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281424.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00329-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977978 | 98 | 1.96875 | 2 |
5 November 1837–4 April 1913 (Age 75)
When Soren Christian Nelson was born on 5 November 1837, in Hjørring, Denmark, his father, Søren Nielson, was 34 and his mother, Christiana Larsdatter, was 33. He married Ann Josephine Evans on 11 April 1862, in Goshen, Utah, Utah, United States. They were the parents of at least 5 sons and 5 daughters. He lived in Cache, Utah, United States in 1860 and Utah, United States in 1870. He died on 4 April 1913, in Chapin, Fremont, Idaho, United States, at the age of 75, and was buried in Bloomington, Bear Lake, Idaho, United States.
Immigration of Soren Nielsen (1803-1896) family from Denmark, including Soren Christian Nelson 1837-1913 and Ann Josephine Evans 1844-1930. The Nelson family is listed in the 1 Oct 1855 Vendsyssel D …
As a nonprofit, we offer free help to those looking to learn the details of their family story. | <urn:uuid:4c25a499-9fc7-4247-9811-8f8b43147480> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/KWNX-WW2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570921.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809094531-20220809124531-00274.warc.gz | en | 0.975234 | 238 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Someone was looking for an iPod Nano for Christmas is not going to mention how much they really like CDs. Likewise if you hear your little brother talking about how much he really likes that comic book collection he has been showing you, ComportComputers you might want to take notes.
You can repeat this operation as often as you find it necessary. Doing this action is pretty irritating unless have installed the updating software to put an end to your misery. The most frustrating thing to happen is losing unsaved data since you have no choice but to make the system quit! What is worst is when the Task Manager has turned unresponsive. What to do? Whether you like it or not, you must manually turn the computer power off.
When it comes in learning by socializing, the best way is to experience how to socialize with others. This means that giving the child the opportunity to interact far more than the internet has to offer. A way to achieve this is encouraging the child to join local social clubs in the community.
learning computers The word malware is the quick substitute word for the term “malicious software.” It refers to any type of virus or spyware that can get into your computer. Some years ago, the only kind of malware we had to deal with were computer viruses. The job of a computer virus was always to annoy computer operators to one extent or another.
This provides the opportunity for the child to develop his social being as a person. This will train your child to become a better person with competence in helping your community when he grew up as a man.
I started learning about computers late. My little cousins knew more about them than I did. What a shame. If I knew that computers would be that important as I grew older in life, I would of taken the time to learn more about them.
You’ll also need to get training on how to take the best photos. Sign up for a training program that will help you understand how to get the best performance from your equipment. You’ll need to know how to use different camera angles and lights in order to create the best pictures. You should also read lots of photography magazines in order to learn lots of tips and tricks of the business. You’ll be able to make the best of your skills if you know how to use computers. This will enable you to use imaging software to make changes and improvements to the photos as required. The right technical skills will help bring out your creativity.
how to use computers The best answer is to find an antivirus system that can cure the infection and prevent it from happening again. Clearly, it is not the software that you’ve been using!
So once you start to learn how to use this marvel that can make things simpler the next step is find a real computer technician. Just as in the past you had a TV repair guy now you need a PC repair guy. Many advertised companies are very expensive to pay to maintain your computer so look for an independent company or person. One who is local can come to your home and charges a modest flat fee or a reasonable hourly rate. One important tip to remember is while they are there servicing, upgrading, or working on your computer pay attention and ask questions. Learning is a life process in everything we do. Either you stay stagnant or keeping learning. Learning something new everyday doesn’t just mean hearing something new it means learning how to do something new. | <urn:uuid:f13adc78-b8e3-4bda-8072-4a621ce860a9> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.thdstudio.net/reference-and-education/purchasing-a-new-computer-for-trading-futures/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572043.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814143522-20220814173522-00473.warc.gz | en | 0.970757 | 702 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Cultural landscape has become the object of extensive consideration and discussion within diverse academic disciplines and areas of research: human geography, history, biology and ecology. This title includes essays that are predicated on the view that considerations regarding the cultural landscape have underlying philosophical presuppositions.
- Limba : Engleza
- Data Publicarii : 01 Jun 2008
- Format : Paperback
- Numar pagini : 282
- ISBN : 9788274773431 | <urn:uuid:b1d24324-6263-4884-86c8-2957b58aec17> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.okian.ro/humans-in-the-land-9788274773431.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281069.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00268-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.81845 | 96 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Nordita, Stockholm, Sweden
Water is ubiquitous and a prerequisite to life as we know it, yet the fundamental origin in terms of structure and dynamics of its many anomalous properties is still under debate. No simulation model is currently able to reproduce these properties throughout the phase diagram. Experimental techniques, such as x-ray spectroscopies and x-ray and neutron scattering, femtosecond pump-probe and free-electron laser experiments in “no man’s land”, provide data that stimulate new theory developments. This program brings together experimentalists and theoreticians in strong synergy to explore interpretations and to provide a strong basis for further experimental and theoretical advances towards a unified picture of water.
The first goal of the program is to identify critical aspects of water’s anomalous behavior that need to be included in new water models in order to give an overall encompassing agreement with experiments. The second goal is to stimulate further developments of models that can also include perturbations due to ion solvation, hydrophobic interactions as well as describe water at interfaces. There currently exist many water models that can describe some properties well, whereas others are poorly represented. In order to have a fundamental understanding of the relationship between thermodynamic, kinetic and chemical properties with the structure and dynamics of water at various state points and in aqueous solutions it is essential to develop a unified description. The program is intended to stimulate a systematic and synergistic approach towards this goal.
The program will be built around working groups (WG) during weeks 1, 3 and 4 together with an international conference during week 2. There will be four WGs running each week covering different themes. The 1st week will focus on the anomalous properties of water with an emphasis on simulations, the 2nd week will be an international conference, the 3rd week will focus on theoretical description and our fundamental understanding of various experimental techniques to probe the structure, dynamics and thermodynamics of water. The 4th week will extend water models into ion solvation, hydrophobic interactions and interfaces. The format of the working weeks 1,2 and 4 will be a flexible division into working groups where each group has the task to contribute to, and coauthor, a major review summarizing the current state of the art. Each working group will identify areas where agreement has been reached, areas that are contentious and also provide suggestions for new experiments or theoretical developments to resolve the outstanding issues.
Weeks 1, 3 and 4 will have the following general structure:
Monday: WG chairs present their thoughts on topics to discuss and work on during the week. General discussion and first meeting of working groups.
Tuesday-Friday:Each invited speaker will give a half hour presentation followed by discussion. In addition there will be WG sessions to discuss specific topics and work on writing for the review paper. 16:30- General assembly with reports from each WG and general discussion.
|Week 1: Thermodynamics and Simulations of Water
||Thermodynamics of Water
| WG 2
||Force Field Simulations
| WG 3
||Ab Initio Simulations
| WG 4
|Week 2: International Conference - See Below
|Week 3: Theoretical Interpretations of Experimental Data
| WG 6
||X-ray and Neutron Scattering
| WG 7
||Vibrational Spectroscopy and Dynamics
||Fivos Perakis/Yuki Nagata
| WG 8
||Confined Water as Model of Supercooled Water
|Week 4: Aqueous Solutions and Interfaces
||Cations and Anions in Solution
||Huib Bakker/Nico van der Vegt
| WG 10
||Protons and Hydroxide Ions
| WG 11
| WG 12
||Water at Interfaces
Week 2: Confirmed Invited Conference Speakers
Heather Allen, Ohio State University, USA
Austen Angell, Arizona State University, USA
Mikhail Anisimov, University of Maryland, USA
Chris Benmore, Argonne National Laboratory, USA
Mischa Bonn, MPI Mainz, Germany
Fabio Bruni, Roma 3, Italy
Roberto Car, Princeton University, USA
Frédéric Caupin, Université de Lyon, France
Thomas Elsaesser, Max-Born-Institut Berlin, Germany
Giulia Galli, University of Chicago, USA
Paola Gallo, Roma 3, Italy
Peter Hamm, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Yoshihisa Harada, University of Tokyo, Japan
Thomas Kühne, Universität Paderborn, Germany
David Limmer, Princeton University, USA
Thomas Loerting, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Francesco Mallamace, Universitá di Messina, Italy
Angelos Michaelides, UC London, UK
Iwao Ohmine, Institute for Molecular Science, Japan
Francesco Paesani, UC San Diego, USA
Athanassios Panagiotopoulos, Princeton University, USA
John Rehr, University of Washington, USA
Jonas Sellberg, Stockholm University, Sweden
James Skinner, UW Madison, USA
Gene Stanley, University of Boston, USA
Jan Swenson, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
Hajime Tanaka, Tokyo University, Japan
Renato Torre, University of Firenze, Italy
Carlos Vega, Universidad Complutense Madrid, Spain
Limei Xu, Peking University, China
If you want to apply for participation in the program, please fill in the application form. You will be informed by the organizers shortly after the application deadline whether your application has been approved. Due to space restrictions, the total number of participants is strictly limited. (Invited speakers and WG chairs are of course automatically approved, but need to register anyway.)
Application deadline: 31 August 2014
A minimum stay of one working week is required and we encourage participants to stay for a period of at least two weeks.
There is no registration fee.
Invited speakers and WG chairs will have their travel expenses reimbursed by the program. Limited travel grants are available to participants in the program. If you are interested in such a grant, please mark the corresponding field in the application form, briefly summarize your interest in the program in the comments field, and indicate an estimation of your expected travel expenses. Since only a limited number of grants is available, decision concerning the grants will be made on a case-by-case basis and you will be notified shortly after the application deadline.
Nordita provides a limited number of rooms in the Stockholm apartment hotel BizApartments free of charge for accepted program participants.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences through its Nobel Institutes for Physics and Chemistry | <urn:uuid:ee62e97b-07ec-4892-98e2-2d7902558e52> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=3989 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280364.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00027-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.871255 | 1,414 | 2 | 2 |
Tel"e*gram (?), n. [Gr. far + -gram.]
A message sent by telegraph; a telegraphic dispatch.
⇒ "A friend desires us to give notice that he will ask leave, at some convenient time, to introduce a new word into the vocabulary. It is telegram, instead of telegraphic dispatch, or telegraphic communication."
Albany [N. Y.] Evening Journal (April 6, 1852).
© Webster 1913. | <urn:uuid:b0a8ab54-1d27-4423-ba9b-47cefee06bce> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://everything2.com/title/Telegram | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280825.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00206-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.753213 | 104 | 2.03125 | 2 |
100% renewable plastics
To sustain the planet for future generations, humankind needs to transition from a fossil-based economy to a bio-based economy. In layman’s terms this means that instead of crude oil, we use renewable resources such as wood, sugars, and fats to produce plastics. However, this alone is not enough since in 2019 we already used 50% more of the renewable resources than the planet was able to provide for us during that year. It is not enough to simply replace fossil-based plastics with plastics made from renewable sources – we must also find ways to keep the raw materials in circulation for longer.
Our vision of 100% renewable plastics will be achieved through material innovation and extensive recycling. Our mission is to accelerate the shift of plastics economy to a sustainable future by bringing wood based and recyclable Woodly® to the market.
Read more about Woodly as a material and about Woodly’s environmental impact. | <urn:uuid:eb4f062c-101a-40da-a93f-952c4ab2ac0c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://woodly.com/our-vision-renewable-plastic/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571472.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811133823-20220811163823-00679.warc.gz | en | 0.959741 | 193 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Fairfax, Virginia — The American South (Mid-Atlantic)
Dairy Barn Complex
Why was Davis so pessimistic? As he wrote, Blenheim owner Marguerite “Daisy” Duras’s diary cows were setting production records. Just seven years earlier in 1939, her Uncle Harry P. Willcoxon’s dairies were lauded for bringing “Fairfax milk into favorable notice in city markets.” Grandfather Alfred Willcoxon helped found the Central [Fairfax] Farmers Club; he grew corn, hay, wheat, and oats as one of Fairfax’s principal farmers.
But suburbia came swiftly to Fairfax. World War II’s population boom doomed Fairfax’s agricultural economy. “Having decided to discontinue the dairy business,” Duras and her daughter Barbara advertised an auction of “Dairy Cows, Dairy Equipment and Machinery” in September 1948. Three months later, The Fairfax Herald advertised corn for sale at the “former Willcoxon Farm.”
Rezoning Blenheim to suburban residential use began by 1953. By the end of the decade, the process transformed the Willcoxon Farm into today’s neighboring suburbs.
Location. 38° 51.322′ N, 77° 17.58′ W. Marker is in Fairfax, Virginia. Marker can be reached Click for map. The marker is located at the Civil War Interpretive Center at Historic Blenheim. Marker is at or near this postal address: 3610 Old Lee Highway, Fairfax VA 22030, United States of America.
Other nearby markers. At least 8 other markers are within walking distance of this marker. Historic Blenheim (within shouting distance of this marker); Blenheim House (within shouting distance of this marker); Blenheim (Willcoxon Farm) (within shouting distance of this marker); Fairfax (approx. 0.8 miles away); Historic Fairfax Elementary School (approx. 0.8 miles away); Old Baptismal Area (approx. 0.9 miles away); Pozer Garden (approx. 0.9 miles away); Draper House (approx. 0.9 miles away). Click for a list of all markers in Fairfax.
More about this marker. On the right side of the marker is a photograph captioned:
Mural: A large crowd gathered for the Farm Sale on September 25, 1948 at the dairy barn complex, which also included a calf house and granary. The large frame barn built in the 1920s featured two cupolas and a glazed tile silo. The Civil War Interpretive Center now stands behind the former dairy barn complex. The farmyard area once included a machinery and hay shed, horse barn, and cow shed.
City of Fairfax Historic Collections.
Left:The Blenheim dairy barn had 50 stanchions for milking the Willcoxon’s Holstein and Guernsey diary cows.
City of Fairfax Historic Collections
In the center of the marker is a copy of a public sale notice captioned:
Inset: Similar advertisements to the Willcoxon Farm Sale filled pages of the The Fairfax Herald during the late 1940s.
Fairfax County Public Library Historical Newspaper Archives.
Also see . . .
1. Civil War Interpretive Center at Historic Blenheim. (Submitted on December 25, 2009.)
2. Historic Blenheim & Civil War Interpretive Center. (Submitted on December 25, 2009.)
Categories. • Agriculture •
Credits. This page originally submitted on . This page has been viewed 1,208 times since then and 9 times this year. Photos: 1, 2, 3. submitted on . • Kevin W. was the editor who published this page. This page was last revised on June 16, 2016. | <urn:uuid:95d8c10f-eb2c-46e4-a22b-f1251ed69c77> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=25842 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280242.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00077-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935296 | 797 | 3.15625 | 3 |
For Overseas Buyers
Sri Lanka has a rich legacy dating back many centuries, when traders from both East and West were drawn here for its many valued gems, precious stones, spices and exotic fauna. These links were enabled by the island’s strategic location on the ancient Silk Route, and social patterns that encouraged such trade and contacts with the wider world. Sri Lanka has been one of the pioneering countries in Asia that introduced liberal and market oriented Economic policies far back in 1977.
Sri Lanka seeks to add to its past fame and be part of the modern world with an important position in global trade and commerce. Sri Lanka is fast progressing towards becoming Asia’s business hub for naval operations, production and commercial activities, knowledge based industries, aviation activities and tourism and energy developments.
Sri Lanka is now a middle income emerging market, with one of the fastest growing economies in the Asia-Pacific Region, and its new economic strategies hold much promise of bringing out the true potential of the country as a source for exports of diverse commercial and industrial interest, and making it a new focus for international trade.
Sri Lanka’s strategic location as a connecting point of sea and air transport between east and west has been complementary to the expansion in the trade with the world. The Free Trade Agreements that Sari Lanka entered into with India (year 2000) and with Pakistan (year 2005) have already become the key gateway platform for manufacturers and investors based in Sri Lanka to access sub-regional market with over 1.6 billion people.
The Government of Sri Lanka has placed export growth high in its development agenda and has taken many initiatives to innovate, develop and promote products and services with export potential in the global market.
In addition to the traditional gems and spices, which are also enhanced in appeal, the country now has much of interest in agriculture and agro-industry, new high-tech based industries and services, and many human skills much needed in world commerce and trade.
Sri Lanka Export Development Board (EDB) is the country’s apex state organization mandated to develop and promote exports from Sri Lanka. Thereby playing a key role in achieving the national development objectives of the country.
As exports contribute nearly 17% to the GDP, the policy framework of the country accords high priority for the development of the export sector. In line with the government’s development agenda, the EDB is geared towards promoting identified products and services to international buyers and markets in order to make Sri Lanka the most sought after destination for global sourcing.
Dedicated to the task of promoting exports for the benefit of exporters and buyers, EDB performs its key functions in five identified roles as a policy advisor, monitor, promoter, facilitator and knowledge provider.
The EDB formulates and implements the National Export Development Plan in collaboration with all relevant public and private stakeholders in order to achieve the development objectives of the export sector in Sri Lanka.
The approach of the EDB is based on the principle that the public sector facilitates the strategic process but exporters own and drive the strategy. | <urn:uuid:05bd0345-5c14-4a84-a222-c09650040b9f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.srilankabusiness.com/buyers/overview.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280504.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00138-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950606 | 633 | 2.328125 | 2 |
I recently attended the 18th Annual Meeting of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution in Lyons, France, where I met Michael Lynch for the first time. He gave a talk on Evolution of Mutation Rates, a topic many of us treat with a large degree of skepticism—until we're confronted by Michael Lynch. He makes a convincing case for variable rates of mutation in different species and he challenged us (me) to defend the idea that there was a linkage between DNA replication rates and mutation rates. That's a linkage I've always assumed would constrain mutation rates to a narrow range. Now I'm not so sure.
I've been putting off posts about the many exciting things I heard in Lyon because I'm busy with the 5th edition of my textbook but SteveF provoked me into saying something about Michael Lynch by posting a comment on my blog [Larry, you might find this shiny new paper by Michael Lynch in PNAS interesting]. Damn you, SteveF, and thanks.
We had been discussing how the IDiots view mutation and I mentioned that Michael Behe was mostly, but not entirely, correct when he said that if two mutations are required for a complex adaptation then it is very unlikely to happen [Bated Breath].
In a paper just published in PNAS, Michael Lynch explains why it's "not entirely correct" (Lynch, 2010).
The development of theory in this area is rendered difficult by the multidimensional nature of the problem. One strategy has been to ignore all deleterious mutations and to assume that selection is strong enough and mutation weak enough relative to the power of random genetic drift and recombination that evolution always proceeds by the sequential fixation of single mutations (e.g., refs. 6–11). Such an approach provides a useful entree into the evolutionary dynamics of rare adaptive mutations with large effects. Under these conditions, the expectations are clear—with larger numbers of mutational targets and a reduced power of random genetic drift, the rate of adaptation will increase with population size, although more slowly than expected under the assumption of sequential fixation (12, 13). The motivation for these models, which are specifically focused on total organismal fitness, derives from case studies of adaptations with apparently simple genetic bases, e.g., some aspects of insecticide resistance (14), skin pigmentation (15), and skeletal morphology in vertebrates (16).Read the paper. You'll find an interesting discussion of recombination—a discussion that does not assume most of the standard myths about recombination. Lynch points out that when it comes to fixing two independent mutation the effect of recombination is just as likely to break up linkage as enhance it. Recombination cannot make much of a contribution to the fixation of two mutations that are required for a complex adaptation unless the mutations are closely linked (e.g. same gene).
Nevertheless, a broad subset of adaptations cannot be accommodated by the sequential model, most notably those in which multiple mutations must be acquired to confer a benefit. Such traits, here referred to as complex adaptations, include the origin of new protein functions involving multiresidue interactions, the emergence of multimeric enzymes, the assembly of molecular machines, the colonization and refinement of introns, and the establishment of interactions between transcription factors and their binding sites, etc. The routes by which such evolutionary novelties can be procured include sojourns through one or more deleterious intermediate states. Because such intermediate haplotypes are expected to be kept at low frequencies by selection, evolutionary progress would be impeded in large populations were sequential fixation the only path to adaptation. However, in all but very small populations, complex adaptations appear to be achieved by the fortuitous appearance of combinations of mutations within single individuals before fixation of any intermediate steps at the population level (e.g., refs. 17–26).
However, there are some circumstances where large population sizes can overcome the problem of fixing multiple mutations even if there's a negative correlation between mutation rate and population size. This is the "scaling" parameter mentioned in the title of Lynch's paper.
This is not unlike what Behe's says in The Edge of Evolution where he points out that in malaria parasites (e.g. Plasmodium falciparum) the probability of a double mutation is significant because there are trillions of organisms. In large mammals, however, the probability is much lower because the population size in much smaller.
Changing multiple amino acids of a protein at the same time requires a population size of an enormous number of organisms. In the case of the malaria parasite, these numbers are available. In the case of larger creatures, they aren't.Behe concludes that this is the "edge" of evolution. Since these kinds of mutations are required for complex adaptations, it follows that evolution can't account for complex adaptations. You'll have to read Behe's book to find out who can design such complex adaptations.
So far, this is pretty much standard orthodoxy. Given that multiple, independent, mutations might be required simultaneously it's very unlikely that evolution will ever see them in some species. It's one of the reasons why Behe's book is so unexciting. There are other ways to account for the adaptive value of multiple mutations, including the fact that many of the individual mutations may be slightly deletersious but, nevertheless, fixed by random genetic drift.
What Lynch's paper shows is that the standard orthodoxy might be wrong! His models suggest that fixation of multiple mutations in small population may be well within the range of probability required for evolution of complex adaptations.
In summary, the preceding results suggest that some general scaling properties may exist for the rapidity with which various types of adaptations can be assimilated in different populationgenetic contexts. In particular, prokaryotes appear to be much more efficient than eukaryotes at promoting simple to moderately complex molecular adaptations, and substantially so for those involving joint changes at different genetic loci. In contrast, adaptations requiring three or more novel mutations may arise more frequently in small populations, regardless of the level of recombination between selected sites. In the absence of comprehensive information on the molecular basis of adaptation in multiple lineages (i.e., the typical number of sites involved and their degree of epistatic interactions), these general predictions are currently difficult to test. Nevertheless, the ideas presented herein are likely to bear significantly on a number of ongoing controversies regarding the nature of adaptation, including the barriers imposed by adaptive valleys in a fitness landscape (22, 40), the role of compensatory mutation in evolution (41), and the relative rates of incorporation of adaptive and nonadaptive mutations in various lineages (42–44).(my emphasis-LAM)
Lynch, M. (2010) Scaling expectations for the time to establishment of complex adaptations. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) publishe online, Sept. 7, 2010 [doi: 10.1073/pnas.1010836107] | <urn:uuid:9f4f4a31-56a1-4fc8-88da-efc9aa281c62> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2010/09/mutations-and-complex-adaptations.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280730.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00247-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940546 | 1,422 | 1.882813 | 2 |
In the time of globalization, every business activity becomes more competitive. In this paper, I will analyze the different strategies that a multinational company such as Honda Motors undertakes to survive in the business environment of today. Honda Motor Co. Ltd is a car manufacturer which is based in Japan. The company follows some principles on the basis of which it operates. These principles are; respect the individual and the three joys which are the joy of buying, the joy of selling and the joy of creating. Honda is one of the largest motorcycle producers in the world. It manufactures cars which meet the criteria of all types of people who belong to different social classes.
The vehicles that Honda manufactures fit all sorts of purpose. It manufactures, scooters, motor cycles, cars, sports cars, jeeps and other kinds of vehicles. Its products are available throughout the world and at reasonable prices.
The company now has 501 subsidiaries which operate under it and are affiliated with the company in some way or the other, using the equity method. The company was established in 1948 and has been providing us with vehicles for 51 years now. Honda also produces power products.
CULTURAL DIMENSIONS OF GLOBALIZATIONAs mentioned earlier, as the world globalizes the level of competition increases because companies all over the world are competing. In this way there will always be bigger and better companies who will be able to takeover the smaller companies which can not survive on their own.
According to Michael Porter there are some factors which when developed correctly can help companies gain a competitive advantage which can not be easily broken by other companies. There are five forces which help develop this competitive advantage, these are: threat of new entrants, rivalry among existing competitors, bargaining power of... | <urn:uuid:372c576e-ed67-4431-9ef7-bb6e20a5e424> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.writework.com/essay/global-corporate-strategy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281226.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00379-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965047 | 353 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Whoever thought phone-boxes were a thing of the past needs to think again, as they’re all set to get a major technological update in the city of London.
Those loveable phone-boxes of a time long ago are being kicked up the arse and driven into a world of technological heights – as BT have pledged to replace them with ultra-fast free Wi-Fi zones, reports the Mirror.
The aim is to bring digital innovation onto the streets of London by changing all BT phone boxes and transforming them into zones for Wi-Fi and free calls in what BT calls ‘the next evolution’.
At least 750 of the uber-modern ‘Links’, which is what they are going to be known as, are set to hit London over the next few years – complete with phone charging points as well as maps and access to tourist information.
If you’re within range of a Link then you’ll be able to access free ultra-fast Wi-Fi with speeds of up to 1Gbps, and the kiosks will offer free UK landline and mobile phone calls and mobile device charging via two USB charging ports.
Rajesh Agrawal, London’s deputy mayor for business, said:
I welcome this exciting new addition to London’s streets.
Expanding London’s digital infrastructure is a priority for the Mayor, and LinkUK can play a big part in improving connectivity for Londoners and visitors to our city, while reducing street clutter by upgrading and reducing the number of phone boxes.
London is already widely regarded as one of the technological capitals of the world but the Mayor is determined to improve connectivity across the city to ensure we maintain that position.Advertisement
What a day for humanity… | <urn:uuid:21823c55-c768-4345-8a19-c7dff722d9b4> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.unilad.co.uk/technology/phone-boxes-to-be-replaced-with-ultra-fast-wi-fi-hubs-next-year/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280891.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00152-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931371 | 363 | 1.640625 | 2 |
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