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Have you ever taken the time to sit back and watch children play? To truly observe them, paying close attention to what they do and how they interact with each other and the world around them?
The truth is children learn through play and their play includes using what they know in combination with what they learn through experimentation, exploration and design to create new understandings. In essence, the act of play is integrated learning.
That said, it is only logical for schools and educators to use that same approach to teaching. As a school that celebrates and preserves childhood, we have been using an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning for the past six plus decades. Through traditions, performances, Chapels, field trips and classroom projects, St. Thomas’s Day School organically creates experiences that help students make connections across the curriculum while developing their attitudes, skills, and knowledge. Our whole class, small group, and cross-grade experiences provide opportunities for critical and creative thinking, and for students to experience learning that is relevant and meaningful.
Students at STTS are involved in a variety of integrated activities throughout each year and in each grade. They participate in a well-developed performing arts program, which allows them to express themselves through drama, singing, dancing, music and art. Plays and other performances reinforce leadership and public speaking skills and provide students with opportunities to explore concepts in new and interesting ways. Field trips and educational excursions support the learning that takes place in the classroom, providing hands-on experiences and exposure to resources that would otherwise not be available.
The Makerspace is the hub of integrated learning at St. Thomas’s Day School. In fact, it represents a place for children to develop a wide range of 21st-century skills, which include the “Four Cs”: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. Students create real-world applications from concepts studied in the classroom. They use the space to collaboratively work on comprehensive projects that demonstrate a deep conceptual understanding of the curriculum. Technology is viewed as a tool for learning that is woven throughout all projects in the Makerspace. The technology curriculum is carefully developed and presented in age-appropriate ways throughout the grades. Students are eager to incorporate their newly learned technology skills into their projects. For example, in Kindergarten our students worked on a life-sized geoboard which was then recreated on the ipad. Our Grade 4 students are in the process of creating stop motion animation videos to demonstrate their knowledge of the Boston Tea Party. They are also currently using their knowledge of circuits to create light-up Valentine’s Day cards. Our Grade 6 students are creating Civil War-themed video games based on the information they learned in class.
I’m sure you’ll agree that our classrooms are filled with purpose and passion. Our goal to provide dynamic, innovative experiences for our students remains at the forefront of everything we do and every decision we make. Students will live in a world where the demands of their personal, public and professional lives will be very different from today, and it is our job to design programs and experiences that equip our 21st Century learners to excel as young leaders in this global society. | https://stthomasday.org/heads-up-learning-comes-alive-through-integration/ |
After teaching in the classroom for the past seven years, I have been fortunate and excited to have moved into the role of Leader of Curriculum & Innovation at my school. This means I no longer have my own class, and allows me the opportunity to work closely with all teachers across our school to unpack the curriculum to design, plan and implement innovative and creative learning opportunities for our students. As teachers, we need to ensure we are designing learning experiences for our students that cover a range of topics and skills to support them for their future. This is what I love.
In recent years, the addition of the Technologies strand to the Australian Curriculum has led to many teachers calling the curriculum ‘overcrowded’ and reporting that there is just ‘not enough time to teach everything’ that it encompasses. I wholeheartedly agree with these sentiments if the curriculum is taught in silos, but by taking an integrated approach across the curriculum, teachers can design learning experiences that cover several learning areas at the same time.
The Australian Curriculum states that the learning area of Technologies aims to develop the knowledge, understanding and skills to ensure that, individually and collaboratively, students:
- investigate, design, plan, manage, create and evaluate solutions;
- are creative, innovative and enterprising when using traditional, contemporary and emerging technologies, and understand how technologies have developed over time;
- make informed and ethical decisions about the role, impact and use of technologies in the economy, environment and society for a sustainable future;
- engage confidently with and responsibly select and manipulate appropriate technologies − materials, data, systems, components, tools and equipment − when designing and creating solutions;
- critique, analyse and evaluate problems, needs or opportunities to identify and create solutions.
The Technologies learning area is then separated into two components; Design and Technologies and Digital Technologies.
Design and Technologies, in which students use design thinking and technologies to generate and produce designed solutions for authentic needs and opportunities.
Digital Technologies, in which students use computational thinking and information systems to define, design and implement digital solutions.
In this post I will share ways to integrate a variety of digital technologies across the curriculum to support you in designing engaging and meaningful learning experiences. A focus of these lesson ideas is to develop students’ communication, critical thinking, creativity and collaborative skills.
Junior Primary Ideas (Foundation – Year 2) :
Some of my favourite digital technologies to integrate in the Junior Primary classroom include, BeeBots, Dot & Dash and Cubetto. Each of these robots is very user-friendly, allowing younger learners the opportunity to be introduced to sequencing code while developing their confidence.
BeeBots are small robots that can move forwards and backwards in 15cm increments and turn 90 degrees left and right. They have the ability to remember up to 40 sequences of code.
Dot and Dash are two individual robots that connect via Bluetooth to mobile devices. With a variety of Apps to control these robots, they have ability to manoeuvre around the floor in all directions, sense objects, flash LED lights and record and play back audio.
Cubetto is a wooden cube robot that moves in 15cm increments. Physical blocks are used to sequence code to manoeuvre Cubetto around a grid.
Literacy – Using story books as provocations, have students demonstrate their comprehension of the text by creating particular scenes of the story by coding any of the above robots to move around that scene.
Mathematics – Using the above technologies students develop their understanding of directional language, location and mapping skills.
I have written numerous MTA blog posts that explain lesson ideas for the Junior Primary classroom in further detail. Click the following links for more details lesson ideas. Many of these ideas can also be used with Cubetto too.
- 5 Literacy Bee-Bot Lessons for the Classroom
- 5 Mathematics Bee-Bot Lessons for the Classroom
- Bee Bots in the Classroom
- Dot and Dash in the Classroom
Australian Curriculum Links
English:
Foundation:
- Identify some features of texts including events and characters and retell events from a text (ACELT1578)
- Retell familiar literary texts through performance, use of illustrations and images (ACELT1580)
- Innovate on familiar texts through play (ACELT1831)
Year 1:
- Recreate texts imaginatively using drawing, writing, performance and digital forms of communication (ACELT1586 )
Year 2:
- Create events and characters using different media that develop key events and characters from literary texts (ACELT1593)
Mathematics:
Foundation:
- Describe position and movement (ACMMG010)
Year 1:
- Give and follow directions to familiar locations (ACMMG023)
Year 2:
- Interpret simple maps of familiar locations and identify the relative positions of key features (ACMMG044)
Digital Technologies F-2
- Follow, describe and represent a sequence of steps and decisions (algorithms) needed to solve simple problems (ACTDIP004)
Middle Primary Ideas (Year 3 & 4):
As students’ understanding of Digital Technologies and computational thinking develops, we need to design their learning experiences accordingly. My favourite resources for these classes are Bloxels Builder and Sphero.
Bloxels Builder is a fantastic platform that allows students to be the creators of their own games. Using the free Bloxels Builder app or the physical gameboard, students use their creativity to design a character and game.
Spheros can roll at a speed of up to 7km/h in any direction, spin, flip and change colour. Using the Sphero EDU App students can accurately direct the movement of the Sphero using block code.
Bloxels
Literacy – Students create a game that represents a virtual story.
Mathematics – Using the 13 x 13 grid, students’ creations will demonstrate their understanding of multiplication, fractions, and area/perimeter.
Sphero
Mathematics – Students can create shapes, navigate mazes and obstacles and play games that require them to demonstrate their understanding of angles, length, time, speed.
Australian Curriculum Links:
English:
Year 3:
- Create imaginative texts based on characters, settings and events from students’ own and other cultures using visual features, for example perspective, distance and angle (ACELT1601)
Year 4:
- Create literary texts that explore students’ own experiences and imagining (ACELT1607)
Mathematics:
Year 3:
- Create and interpret simple grid maps to show position and pathways (ACMMG065)
Year 4:
- Use simple scales, legends and directions to interpret information contained in basic maps (ACMMG090)
- Compare angles and classify them as equal to, greater than, or less than, a right angle (ACMMG089)
- Recall multiplication facts up to 10 × 10 and related division facts (ACMNA075)
- Compare objects using familiar metric units of area and volume (ACMMG290)
Digital Technologies 3-4:
- Define simple problems, and describe and follow a sequence of steps and decisions (algorithms) needed to solve them (ACTDIP010)
- Implement simple digital solutions as visual programs with algorithms involving branching (decisions) and user input (ACTDIP011)
Upper Primary Ideas (Year 5 & 6):
Upper Primary years students have the ability to apply their learnt skills and knowledge of digital technologies to create solutions to problems. My favourite resources for Upper Primary years are the Micro:bit and SamLabs.
The Micro:bit is a small microcontroller with LED lights, sensors, accelerometer and compass.
SamLabs are wireless blocks and accessories that connect together including motors, sliders, buttons, lights and sensors.
Lesson idea – Using the United Nations Sustainable Goals as a guide, I select two or three goals that link to our unit of inquiry. Students are asked to focus on one of these goals and to create a solution to this problem using either the Micro:bit or SamLabs technologies.
I explore this in more detail (with student examples) in my MTA Blog: Integrating Sam Labs in the Classroom
Australian Curriculum Links:
Digital Technologies 5-6:
- Define problems in terms of data and functional requirements drawing on previously solved problems (ACTDIP017)
- Design, modify and follow simple algorithms involving sequences of steps, branching, and iteration (repetition) (ACTDIP019)
- Implement digital solutions as simple visual programs involving branching, iteration (repetition), and user input (ACTDIP020)
- Explain how student solutions and existing information systems are sustainable and meet current and future local community needs (ACTDIP021)
Science:
Year 5:
- Scientific knowledge is used to solve problems and inform personal and community decisions (ACSHE083)
Year 6:
- Electrical energy can be transferred and transformed in electrical circuits and can be generated from a range of sources (ACSSU097)
- Scientific knowledge is used to solve problems and inform personal and community decisions (ACSHE100)
Whether it be the digital technologies I have highlighted, or any other, technology in our classrooms they should not be seen as something separate, but rather something that is integrated purposefully into student learning experiences. These technologies provide hands-on learning opportunities that allow for students to develop critical thinking, creativity and problem solving.
Featured Products:
Dash & Dot Educational Robots Pack
How are you using Digital Technologies across the curriculum? We would love to hear from you! | https://blog.teaching.com.au/changing-role-of-digital-technology-in-the-classroom |
Directions:
Below are questions that will help you to complete your Project ATLAS Digital Portfolios.
Directions: Please answer the questions based on a project completed during the 2016-2017 school year.
For each question, please include your written reflections. You are also encouraged to provide other multimedia to deepen your written reflections and exemplify your analysis. Multimedia can include images, sound files, and video clips.
Please annotate your multimedia, describing why you have chosen these particular artifacts, what you are interested in your audience knowing about them, and why they are important to share.
Section I: Arts Integration – Documentation.
Please upload documentation from your project. Please include a variety of media forms for your documentation.
1. Documentation should not only provide a narrative, or story, of your project, but should also provide evidence of students’ engagement in the unit inquiry.
- The students at Swift spent the winter of 2017 working on “The Identity Project.” Students explored themselves (we are a very diverse school, with an immigrant/refugee population that accounts for 50% of body, resulting in 65 languages spoken by our families) through a variety of activities, as a few are listed below:
- Creating a greeting card about their homes, and installing on a giant world map that expands an entire wall of our school.
- Photographing and writing about their favorite physical feature.
- Creating Haiku about their homes, and accompanying on classroom instruments.
- Creating a “thumbprint” of words and pictures to describe themselves.
- Photographing specific body parts that students strongly identified with.
- Teachers took photographs and video (on phones) and submitted to the editing committee. From there, the committee sifted through the media submitted, and narrowed down to 4 minutes per grade band. We worked with a visiting artist, who specialized in video production, to help us assemble the parts of the video. Our culminating activity resulted in premiering the video at Swift’s Fine and Performing Arts Night.
2. Through your documentation, please provide student artifacts that depict the range of work completed. For example, what were the various ways in which students responded to various aspects of the project?
- Question 1 addressed a few of the activities that students worked on. Students were excited, and proud, to talk and share about themselves, and their families. Some of the older students understood that in the current political environment, their diversity was a negative, were frightful of being “purged,” yet were defiant in their art and words. Overall, it was a very positive experience, not just for the kids, but for their families, as well.
Section I: Arts Integration – Inquiry
3. What is your Inquiry Question for your ATLAS curriculum unit? What big ideas does this inquiry question address, and why do you think the question successfully addresses these?
- How do people contribute to awareness and understanding of their lives and the lives of their communities through artmaking?
4. How did student research help them to engage more deeply with the unit inquiry question? Explain how your students conducted research for their ATLAS project, and how that research opened up avenues for further inquiry.
- Student research came in the form of speaking with/interviewing parents and family members, in order to help form their own identities.
- Students worked in a studio setting to explore various art forms, in which to create their individual projects that reflected their identities.
5. Describe how the unit inquiry opens up avenues for interdisciplinary connections between the arts and academic content. How did arts processes and/or research practices facilitate students’ understanding of the academic topics addressed in the inquiry question?
- Interdisciplinary connections were very evident in student writing and the art works they chose. One way in which students were more engaged and thoughtful was through their exploratory writing. For example, our first grade students took photographs of their favorite body part. Their teachers printed the pictures in black and white. Using those images, students were able to study the image to describe what they saw, allowing them to not only reflect on the physical, but how that physical attribute connected to their personalities, characteristics, their self, etc..
6. How did the curriculum evolve based on the unit inquiry process?
- The concept of identity was expanded.
Section I: Arts Integration – Create Works
7. How did students self-direct while creating their artistic work during the ATLAS project? Please provide any examples for the ways in which students made their own aesthetic choices and direction for creating their artwork. Examples might include but are not limited to: how did students make choices about the use of materials, how did they decide what they wanted to communicate, how did they make decisions about how to present work?
- The visual arts studio, Ms. Hoyun knew she wanted to incorporate a wall-sized world-map mural that is located in the hallway, therefore, making the art work public. With those parameters in mind, students decided to create greeting cards from their family’s place of origin, as well as how it would be curated. They pinned their greeting cards to that place, attached to a string that connected to Chicago. It became a powerful, unifying piece for the entire project! Each class participated in a gallery walk and discussion after the work was completed.
- Fifth grade students were working on a poetry unit in their language arts classes, and spirituals in music class. When questioned with how to reflect our identities, with music as an art form, students decided to create haiku to reflect what ‘home’ meant to them, as this was a prominent piece of their identity. They made a conscience choic to use the accompaniment to “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” as an audio track for their recitation of their haiku. Their reasoning stemmed in the fact that so many spirituals spoke to the idea of ‘home.’ Students watched the original video, and discussed what would make them more interesting/visually aesthetic. They decided to add movement to reflect a home structure.
8. Please explain what opportunities the students had to reflect on their experiences and react to the work of their peers.
- Visual arts classes participated in a gallery walk and discussion after the work was completed.
- Music classes were able to watch the video from the other two fifth grade classrooms, and participate in a discussion about what they saw and heard.
- Each class that participated had their own classroom presentations and discussions around their work.
9. How did the students’ artifacts from various stages of the ATLAS Unit impact your teaching practice? Please provide artifacts that exemplify your points. What did you learn about your teaching practice from looking at these artifacts?
10. Describe how the students’ work was shared in the school or publicly. Why was this an important part of this unit?
Our students’ work was shared in a variety of public ways:
- They shared with their individual classes.
- Student work was displayed throughout the halls of our building.
- Student work was displayed in various businesses throughout the Edgewater community (library, coffee shops, Whole Foods).
- We created the Identity Project Film, and premiered it for our school/parent community.
Section I: Arts Integration – Collaboration
11. How did students collaborate at different stages of the project? Examples might include but are not limited to: did the students research together, did they create together, did they critique together, did they present together?
- research was conducted individually, for the most part, simply because it focused on identity of each student.
- In creating, collaboration was done in a variety of ways. Some were full class works, such as within music, while others were more individual, as with writing. In the visual arts project, students created individually, but the installation was collaborative.
- Presentation was definitely done as a schooled community. We premiered a video that showed the process, through the final projects, during our Fine Arts Night. Student work that had been completed was on display, as well.
12. In what ways did you collaborate with the students for this unit. How did the students impact the way in which the curriculum was implemented? For example, how did students help you plan, develop, and/or implement the curriculum?
TYPE YOUR RESPONSE HERE
13. How did you collaborate with other teachers in your school to plan and/or implement the unit?
- The project began with two teachers. They invited one person each to the first formal meeting, and the group expanded with each meeting, until we had a core group designing and structuring the process. It was then rolled out to the entire staff.
Section II: Technology Integration
14. What was your process for selecting this form of digital media technology? Why did you think this form of digital media technology would be ideal for student learning?
- Almost 50% of our student body are English Language Learners, and we thought a video, that documented the process through product, would be a great way to show students the various stages of learning.
15. How did students use digital media technology to direct their own learning? Provide artifacts to show evidence of how students used the technology to direct their own learning. Examples might include but are not limited to: making choices about technologies to use, using technology to facilitate experimentation, using technology as a research tool, to express themselves artistically, and/or to make meaning of their experiences.
16. How did you use technology to enhance the learning environment for both you as a teacher and for the students?
- So much of my discipline (music) is in the moment. The use of video, pictures, and audio recordings allows me to further reflect on what my students are creating and performing, to take a closer look.
- The use of technology always seems to formalize what the students are doing. I find they think performances are more real, when they are documented. It seems to step up their game.
17. In what ways do your chosen technology resources align with your goals and outcomes for student learning? Looking back at the unit, how did the technology meet, not meet or exceed your expectations for facilitating student outcomes.
- For my particular expectations, I feel the video really helped facilitate student goals, in that it helped enhance their overall product. They watched, analyzed, and made adjustments to what they were trying to convey to their audience.
18. How did the use of technology contribute to students’ application of higher order thinking skills? Examples of student higher order thinking skills include metacognition, self-reflection, analysis, and application of knowledge or skills.
- Again, I think performance is so fleeting, that it’s good to have work documented in order to really analyze what they are doing. They move past just saying a performance is good, or bad. It allows them the time to be more reflective.
19. How did the use of technology drive student creative artistic expression? Please provide student artifacts that exemplify how technology supported their artistic expression.
TYPE YOUR RESPONSE HERE
20. How did the integration of digital media technology impact your teaching practice?
- As I’ve stated before, it allows be the forum to take a closer look at student work, to help guide my instruction in a more thoughtful way. | https://capeprojects.network/bulb-archived-swift-atlas-2015-2018-gamble-year-2-2016-2017/ |
A key base for our IT and Computing curriculum is digital literacy. This is fundamental so that all students have the ability to function and access the world of technology throughout their life. At KS3 we believe that students should be able to access and use a wide variety of software and have as much hands-on experience of using a computer as possible. This builds confidence in our students so they are able to access and feel comfortable in a world of ever increasing technological use.
Throughout KS3 and KS4 there are three core concepts, “Logical Thinking”, “Digital Literacy” and “Creative Media Literacy”. The associated skills are progressively built up from their more implied use in Year 7 in the Scratch games and company logos projects to their explicit use in KS4 where students must create programs to solve real world scenarios or create brand logos that meet a specific brief.
Having a diverse cohort, from a large number of feeder schools means students join us with varying levels of computer literacy. The KS3 curriculum begins with this concept to facilitate a collaborative learning environment where students support one another in sharing their knowledge to solve logical and technical problems. This helps build strong interpersonal skills with the students and tries to remove the stigma of asking for help.
We base our curriculum around access for all with differentiation through the end product. Each unit that we teach in KS3 aims to support students in creating a finished product that demonstrates their ability and understanding of the software. The curriculum products, although differentiated by outcome, are all designed to address the same problem or scenario. Students are able to complete the tasks in a variety of ways; thereby promoting engagement and appropriate challenge. Students are able to push the boundaries of the task to challenge and stretch themselves.
Why this, why now?
In KS3 students are taught with three main pillars of focus. The first is general computer literacy, the second is a focus towards GCSE computer skills such as programming and logical thinking, and the third is creative media literacy which leads onto KS4 Creative Imedia.
In Year 7 we have a range of students coming with different levels of digital literacy. Although the majority of students are technologically literate they are not computer literate. A main focus at the start of the year is introducing and building computer literacy skills, focusing on using spreadsheets, powerpoint and completing typing challenges. Another key feature of the Year 7 programme is organisation and systems within a digital learning environment; students are taught to follow expected norms for naming and folder structures. Students are also introduced to logical thinking through coding in Scratch which builds on from what the majority of students cover in KS2. As well as an introduction to some base computer theory work through creating leaflets on hardware in computers. Finally the creative media literacy is demonstrated through students creating their own company logo using Vector Graphics to solve a specific brief. In Year 8 these concepts continue with a stronger focus on the types of skills students will need for either GCSE computing or Creative i Media.The course is split into three sections the first being Programming in Python which leads on from the previous years coding experience, with further skills introduced such as arithmetic operations, randomness, selection, and iteration. The second unit is in Photoshop which leads on from the Vector graphics unit in Year 7. The introduction of the new software and challenge of a finished product is designed to give the students an idea of working in the real world and what Creative I Media is like as a GCSE. The final unit is on Websites. This brings together a development of the theory students learn in Computer Science and combine this with the digital literacy skill of presentation and visual awareness.
At KS4 students have the opportunity to choose either Creative I Media or Computer Science. For Computer Science we start year 10 looking at data types and how computers understand instructions through binary. This knowledge is key to many of the topics which follow, hence early understanding needs to be secure before moving on to look at system architecture, memory and storage, networks and security. The main theory parts of the course are taught in blocks to ensure students are secure in their knowledge of the topic before moving on. Key skills of logic, algorithms and python coding are interleaved between these topics to ensure these skills are continuously revisited and practised. The programming elements of the course begins with consolidation of the key knowledge and skills from Year 8, before embarking on a more indepth look at iteration, selection, variables and outputs. In Year 11 we cover the remaining units, including ethics, protocols, system software and robust programs. We also focus on the more complex programming skills associated with files, string manipulation and list.
For Creative I Media we start the year with the first coursework unit which is the visual identity and digital graphics unit. This unit links well with the KS3 content, promoting confidence and engagement. This unit also brings clarity to the term “media literacy”, where students must be able to understand and utilise techniques and standards that are used in the media industry. At the end of the year students sit the exam unit to ensure they have the best opportunity in the exam without the distraction of other exams that they would have in year 11. In Year 11 students will complete the second piece of coursework of creating a digital game. This is a more intense and larger piece of work with the students having to learn software and skills that they have not previously encountered, so giving the full year to it is appropriate.
Teaching the Computer Science and ICT Curriculum
The main concepts within IT and Computing are: Digital Literacy, Logical Thinking and Creative Media Literacy. These pillars are taught both explicitly and implicitly depending on the unit and topic that is being taught.
Digital Literacy: teachers are confident and capable with the use of computers and they pass this knowledge onto the students through explicit teaching and modelling.
Logical Thinking: GCSE students are explicitly taught this when solving and creating algorithms in Computer Science. KS3 and Creative I Media students are taught to implicitly interpret and decompose a brief to make it manageable and ensure they work through the problem in a logical and achievable way. Across the subject this is often done through a collaborative and challenging environment, with students who are more secure in their knowledge and techniques being encouraged to support others. For those students that are wanting to push themselves they are directed to using more complex techniques or think of ways to make the algorithms they have already written more efficient.
Creative Media Literacy: this features in both the KS3 curriculum and GCSE Creative I Media; students' understanding and completion of the projects set, enables them to demonstrate their understanding of the impact colors, fonts, styles, target audiences, image and formatting can have and how these are used to influence and appeal to the public in the media industry.
Assessing the Computer Science and ICT Curriculum
KS3 students are given regular verbal feedback on their work in class with project tracking to ensure deadlines are met and support independence. At the end of each unit students complete a mini project to demonstrate their understanding and ability in each skill. These projects are graded using a traffic light system as per the school assessment policy to provide data about student progression. This is shared with students and next steps are written which are relevant to the next project.
In Computer Science, all lessons start with recall questions which support retrieval and respond to areas of concern arising from homework quizzes. Through the course after each unit the students have a formal assessment on that topic. These results are tracked, feedback is provided and intervention deployed to support student progress.
Creative I Media students receive verbal feedback on their project progression and work to a specific set of assessment objectives. These are used to assess the final project, in line with exam board guidance.
Progression in the Computer Science and ICT Curriculum
By the end of KS3 students will:
- have a clear grasp on a range of literacy skills, such as how to organise their personal digital storage in a clear manner
- be competent in the use of the main google products, google docs, slides and sheets
- have a good understanding of the process and application of creating a working game in Scratch
- have an introductory understanding of the media industry and be able to create basic vector graphics
- understand and be able to identify programming in Python
- problem solve by interpreting briefs provided
- have an understanding of how to create a digital image that meets a client's brief using photoshop
At the end of KS4 Computer Science students will:
- have a core understanding of the key functions and structures of programming allowing them to confidently code in python
- be confident in their ability to abstract and perform decomposition on any problem to be able to come up with a solution
- have an understanding of how computers work and the systems that work together through networks
At the end of KS4 Creative I Media students will: | https://bccs.bristol.sch.uk/learning/curriculum/subjects/computer-science-and-ict/ |
On May 28th and 29th, Burrell seniors presented their portfolios to family, friends, and the community just as their predecessors have done for the past several years, with one very notable difference – there wasn’t a binder in the bunch.
The Class of 2013 was the first group of Burrell seniors to present a totally digital portfolio as their graduation requirement. All future portfolios in the Burrell School District will be digital as well.
According to program sponsor Linda Wilkins, Burrell’s transition to paperless portfolios began four years when this year’s class constructed a PowerPoint “shell” in their freshmen Emerging Technologies class. Throughout grades 9-11, they worked with mentor teachers to create a series of digital documents including career goal statements, electronic classroom projects , and artifacts and reflections in support of their career goals. During their senior year, students completed their e-portfolios with a career research paper, details of a job shadowing experience or community service initiative, and other complementary elements.
“Students continually build and add to their portfolio to showcase their achievements and work that relates to their goals in respect to careers and postsecondary education,” explains Ms. Wilkins. She says that many colleges today are requiring students to develop digital portfolios, and the e-portfolio program gives Burrell grads a clear advantage. “Some of the content that our students develop for their Burrell portfolios can be modified and included in their college-specific portfolio. Plus, our students will already be familiar with the process.”
Ms. Wilkins adds that the move toward e-portfolios has opened up new avenues for Burrell students to be creative with the content they share in their presentations. She reports that many students are now using video components in their portfolios, and are including more photos and links to relevant web-based resources. “The technologies really allow them to create a more dynamic and personalized portfolio,” says Ms. Wilkins.
The switch to digital portfolios also requires students to adopt a more formal and businesslike presentation strategy. This year’s community presentations were delivered in classrooms using Promethean boards, and presentation periods were extended to a half-hour rather than 15 minutes to accommodate the change.
From the district’s perspective, the e-portfolio process is intended to help students understand the importance of postsecondary planning, become more goal-oriented, and develop and demonstrate advanced organizational and technical skills. “The e-portfolio program challenges our graduates to reflect upon and encapsulate the high school experience in a way that is relevant to the needs and expectations of postsecondary education and the modern workplace,” says Superintendent Shannon Wagner.
The district is in the process of implementing several technology upgrades this summer that will enhance the digital technology process, including enhanced broadband capabilities.
You must be logged in to post a comment. | http://burrellbuzz.com/?p=790 |
School District 21’s Mission is “Ensure engaging, innovative, equitable and safe learning experiences for every student, every day,” and the District’s Vision states that “CCSD21 strives to empower every student, every day, in every school.” To that end, one of the main goals of the Information Services Department is to provide students with devices that serve as tools to better allow students and teachers to accomplish this Mission and Vision.
School District 21 is committed to helping students meet the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards for Students. These standards include:
- Empowered Learner: Students leverage technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving, and demonstrating competency in their learning goals, informed by the learning sciences.
- Digital Citizen: Students recognize the rights, responsibilities and opportunities of living, learning and working in an interconnected digital world, and they act and model in ways that are safe, legal and ethical.
- Knowledge Constructor: Students critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts and make meaningful learning experiences for themselves and others.
- Innovative Designer: Students use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful or imaginative solutions.
- Computational Thinker: Students develop and employ strategies for understanding and solving problems in ways that leverage the power of technological methods to develop and test solutions.
- Creative Communicator: Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to their goals.
- Global Collaborator: Students use digital tools to broaden their perspectives and enrich their learning by collaborating with others and working effectively in teams locally and globally.
Chromebooks help our students develop skills and have experience that will support them as they work to meet these standards.
School District 21 also believes in the importance of the 4Cs for 21st Century Learning. The 4Cs include:
- Collaboration
- Creativity
- Communication
- Critical Thinking
Chromebooks, along with the support of staff and teachers, can help students develop their proficiency with each of the 4Cs. | https://ccsd21.org/information-services/chromebook-information/ |
Define the Problem:
Last year, I found myself in a bind when creating my schedule. Thomson was moving to a 90 minute weekly PLC for all grade levels, and I was tasked with covering students for half of that time. I stared at the daunting content colors in front of me, realizing I had much more scheduled time with students on a weekly basis than I had in the past. At first, I tried to fill the time with a variety of tasks, but they didn’t seem to engage the students. These tasks involved all students working on the same thing, at the same time, with the same technology.
Ideate:
Passion Projects seemed to be the answer, so I decided to try this type of learning out with my 4th-6th graders. As I started to put all the pieces into place, I began to think I was crazy. How was I going to be able to manage a whole grade level that was working on different topics, at different stages in their project, with different technology tools? There was only one way to find out, so I took a risk and went for it.
Successes:
As with anything new there come successes and challenges. I would have to say that my biggest success was the student engagement. At first, when I told them what we were going to do I didn’t get quite the response I wanted. They were moaning and groaning about having to do another research project. As the year went on I saw a huge change in my students. I rarely had to redirect students because they got to choose what tool to use and the topic they were most passionate about. I also found it to be a great way for students to collaborate with each other. I allowed students to use the following tools to show their learning, but didn’t limit them to these:
Challenges:
My biggest challenge was supporting and giving feedback on all the different projects. When I implement passion projects again this year, I will be very intentional about when and how I give feedback. Check out these resources on giving feedback while facilitating Passion Projects or Genius Hour in the classroom:
One thing I would advise is to have a way to track where students are in their projects because once you get this started they work at different speeds and it is hard to keep up with all of them. Some ideas and tools for how to manage many different projects at once include:
Reflections:
My biggest takeaway from this whole process was that our students needed to be risk takers. So many students were afraid to push the button and try something new because they were afraid they were going to break something. It took many conversations with them about being risk takers for them to finally see that they could do it. As a result of this learning, instead of library orientation this year, I tasked the students with creating a book (Book Creator) or a short video (PowToons) that explains different technology and library expectations. Doing this task pushed them to be risk takers from the moment they walked into the library this year. I know that there will be some growing pains when we begin our passion projects again this year, but that is the BEAUTY of education; you never know if you can do it unless you try!!!
Want More Passion Project Info?
Would you like more resources on starting Passion Projects in the classroom? Check out these articles and books!
John Hattie and Robert Marzano together are like peanut butter and jelly! Like oreos and milk! Like bees and honey! John Hattie released his research on educational strategies and their effect sizes in 2009. Since then he has updated and reworked his research to keep up with changing times. Robert Marzano has been writing books on education for about 25 years related to best-practices and research-based strategies. But where do these 2 giants in the education world agree? And how does technology support all of this?
In an article published by Shaun Killian, the author lists 8 strategies that both Hattie and Marzano agree on. So it would seem that this list should be paid extra attention. This list includes things like “clear focus for the lesson”, “give feedback” and “get students working together”. It would also seem that in 2018, we should elevate how technology can support these 8 powerful strategies.
In the table below you can see the 8 strategies, a brief description of that strategy and some ideas on how technology can support those strategies. Technology can be a powerful tool when combined with research-based teaching! What other tech ideas do you have to support these 8 strategies?
"Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results." ~John Dewey.
Digital discussions have become regular practices in our everyday lives. From text messages and social media posts to blog and YouTube comment streams there are continued learning and sharing opportunities with global connections on a regular basis. Many of us are often hyper-active in daily digital discussions as we connect with friends, family, and world-wide audiences.
As we continue to implement the Jeffco Generations skills and Transform Tasks, digital dialogue and discussion opportunities present engaging opportunities to authentically develop skills and concepts beyond the basic acquisition of facts. Through participation in digital discussions with global audiences we are exposed to the challenges of content application, concept justification, and social understandings in our ever changing world.
The New York Times provides a number of incredible resources to educators and students for elevating digital discussion opportunities that engage learners in relevant and meaningful topics. Through The Learning Network, they began in 2014 with 200 Prompts for Argumentative Writing which grew to 650 Prompts for Argumentative Writing in 2016 and is now over 1000 Writing Prompts for Students in 2018. The prompts are broken up by topic areas such as Social Media and Smartphones, Gender Issues, Dating and Sex, Music, Literature and Art, Being a Teenager, School, Health and Nutrition, Science and Animals, Government and Leadership, Personal Character and Morality, and more. Under each topic is a list of questions that are linked to a short articles followed by more specific questions for students to consider and answer. The list of 650 prompts are also available via a handy PDF for easy access and sharing.
So how does this apply to our daily instruction as educators? Francis Bacon said, "Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man". Reading, writing and discussion are a critical components of our everyday learning and growth processes. As educators we know high quality instruction in any content area or discipline contains regular opportunities for learners to engage in reading, writing, and discussion to further develop critical and creative thinking skills.
Using the resources above, learners can be given a prompt and the associated article to read. Following the reading, learners can engage in a short writing activity to gather thoughts and develop ideas. Learners can then share their thoughts with others and ideas to seek feedback for further development and discussion. Some ideas might include:
Reading, writing and dialogue can and should take place in all disciplines, not just literacy. For example, math teachers can leverage prompts like #327 which centers around a distribution graph of how many A's schools hand out or #289 "Are You Afraid of Math?" and #290 "Do We Need A Better Way To Teach Math?". Science teachers can leverage the wide variety of prompts in Science & Health (1,066-1,146) involving Science and The Environment, Animals and Pets, or Exercise and Health. Art teachers have a vast array to choose from in Arts and Entertainment (75-248). Whichever discipline you teach, there can be resources for you to leverage to support students with engaging in reading, writing, and dialogue.
How will you leverage digital discussions as a way to Transform the Task and support learners with developing the Jeffco Generations skills? The Jeffco Ed Tech team is available to support you in thinking through ways you can leverage reading, writing and discussion with students in your instruction. We would also love to hear from you around how you are already leveraging digital discussions or have done so in the past. We learn a great deal from examples and experience so we invite you to share with us as we continue to grow together.
The Jeffco Ed Tech team is excited to announce our Fall 2018 online book studies.
K-2 can, too! Young children are naturally curious about the world around them. They love to explore and play; in fact, that’s how they learn! The Google Apps for Littles book study will provide educators with ideas on how to get students playing and exploring using the G Suite. Empower your littles and shift your thinking to believe that even the youngest kids can do more with technology!
Interested?
Interested in learning more about our Jeffco Ed Tech book studies? Want to register? Looking for more professional learning opportunities from our team? Click on the image below for details.
We hope to learn alongside of you this Fall!
Back to School With Ed Tech
8/20/2018
August 9th Learning Day
Due to the overwhelming success of this event, we want to make sure that all educators have access to the learning. Attached is a document with the course descriptions and linked presentations!
A huge thank you goes out to Golden High School for hosting our event, as well as events for several other departments in the district. We are very thankful to all of the schools who partner with us throughout the year to help us deliver learning to so many educators!
Hello!
This year we are excited to share that we have 2 new members joining our Ed Tech team!
Jamie Kelley
Jamie joins the team as a former Jeffco Instructional Coach with a passion for technology. She’s returning to work after taking a year off to spend time with her family. Jamie will serve as a point-of-contact for most of our middle schools this year.
Nick Steinmetz
Nick joins us from Aurora Public Schools where he worked in a similar role as Ed Tech and Personalized Learning support for a wide range of schools in the district. We are excited to tap into his great wealth of knowledge and expertise. Nick will serve as a point-of-contact for most of our high schools this year.
Goodbye.
A new year also comes with some exciting new transitions for our amazing teammates.
Karrie Zanetti
We wish Karrie continued success as she transitions from an Ed Tech Specialist position to a Digital Teacher Librarian position at Deer Creek Middle School. We will certainly miss her many talents on our team and feel fortunate that she will continue to make a difference for the Deer Creek community.
Amanda Thanos
Amanda has accepted a position as a Digital Literacy and Instructional Coach at Thunder Vista P-8 in Adams 12. She spent countless evenings and her summer break working hard to open this brand new school. We wish her the very best in her exciting new adventure!
Other Changes
Marnie Roush
Rather than support a sub-set of our schools (as she’s done for the past few years), Marnie will be charged with developing a strategic vision for Computer Sciences working in close partnership with schools, central departments, communities, CDE and vendors in shaping this exciting work.
Julie Carlson
We are excited to welcome Julie back from maternity leave. As an Ed Tech Specialist, she will continue as a point-of-contact for a subset of our elementary schools this year.
Amie Adams
Amie will move from a Title I-funded position to one that supports all of Jeffco. She will serve as a point-of-contact for a subset of our elementary schools this year.
Rounding out the Ed Tech team are continuing team members:
Teachers as Innovators-A Golden High school teacher using technology to transform tasks
8/17/2018
"Make something that does a thing." This was the challenge put out to 10th grade students at Golden High School by their teacher, Mr. Gitner. Students were engaged in a very broad PBL. The sky was the limit. Their task was simply to create something that does something.
Gitner said of the task, "If I do not explicitly name a tool for them, at the end they create something that they feel is important. It ended up being a passion project where I just became the coach." The students went out and decided what they wanted to learn and found the right tool for the job. “What you know isn't what is important anymore, it's what you can do," says Gitner. At the very heart of this task was the foundation of student choice.
The results from the students was phenomenal. One student got her artwork on a brochure that fights to end violence against women. Another student created a mockumentary. This student learned a valuable work-life lesson. He says of the leadership within the project,
“What I really learned is how difficult it is get people together without intrinsic motivation. Bringing people together and giving them a task is not enough. It takes true leadership to engage others." This is the essence of The Jeffco Generations skill, Collaboration and Leading by Influence.
Last year, Gitner created a task called "Walk in Someone Else's Shoes". He had students create Trello Boards. A Trello board is a list of lists, filled with cards, used by you and your class. It's a lot more than that, though .Trello has everything you need to organize projects of any size. Open a card and you can add comments, upload file attachments, create checklists, add labels and due dates, and more. Here is a video Andrew made for his students. You can also access his example of a Trello Board here. You can find this lesson on the Bridge to Curriculum in the Teacher Resource Library.
Andrew started his school year by reading Bold School this summer. This book was written by Jeffco parent, Weston Kieschnick .
This book overlays SAMR with Rigor and Relevance. Andrew says he creates experiences for students that span the SAMR model, but spends a fair amount of time creating experiences for students that asks them to Augment. "Students can't always be in Modification. Student experiences should span the range of the SAMR model." The Jeffco Ed Tech Team will be hosting a Bold School Book Study in the Fall. More information coming soon!
So what is next for Gitner's 10th graders? A phone scavenger hunt at the Clyfford Still museum. Students will use their phones to complete tasks around the museum.
No Challenge too Big...
8/13/2018
It's time to engage your Tweeting skills as we kick off the school year with the first Ed Tech Twitter challenge of 2018! So, grab your coworkers and challenge yourself to get connected and grow your Professional Learning Network!
Here's your Challenge... Should You Choose to Accept it.
Beginning August 15th (the first day of school), log into Twitter each day and complete the following activities, using #JeffcoChat in each of your Tweets. You may also choose to include #JeffcoGenerations or mention us (@JeffcoEdTech), as well.
Jeffco educators who complete all 8 challenges can be entered to win a 3 month premium Pear Deck subscription! Visit this Google Form by midnight on August 27th and upload a screenshot of each of your Tweets! We will draw the winner on the 28th.
Need Help getting STarted?
Last year, we hosted 2 different Twitter challenges to teach educators how to start using Twitter to build their professional learning networks. So, if you are new to Twitter, check out the resources below, before you get started.
Clean Slate
5/16/2018
You’ve almost made it. It’s the final stretch. And it’s starting to feel a little bit like survivor out here.
We know your plate is full. You’re teaching, grading, and closing up shop. But just as you clean and close out your physical space, don’t forget to clean up your digital space too. Your Google Drive is like a giant filing cabinet. Use the same habits in your digital space as you would in your physical space.
We’ve curated 5 easy ways to help you jump start your Google Drive as you head out the door for summer.
1. Clean Sweep
Does the thought of opening your Google Drive stress you out? Perhaps you’ve got a long list of files that just need to be organized in a folder, but you have no idea where to start. Silence that visual noise by moving all of those files into a folder!
2. Brush up on your Driving skills
Now that you’ve got that cleaned up, start exercising some healthy digital organizational habits. Need a basic lesson on Google Drive? Check out our Google Drive Multimedia Text Set to jump start your Driving skills.
3. Create visual interest
4. DO not Enter
Never go to the “Shared with Me” folder. This folder will never be neat and organized because it is a continual collection of everything that has been shared with you. Looking for something that was shared with you? Just use the Search bar at the top of your Drive. You can click the drop down arrow on the right to narrow your search by file type, specific person, and even owned by you. You can add it to your Drive when you search.
5. Quantum mechanics
Do you need a Doc to live in 2 places? Perhaps you created a math assessment during the PLC’s. This document lives in a shared folder with your team. However, you would also like the document to live in your math content folder. Great news! This IS possible and it’s pretty easy!
Gear up for next year
Looking for more opportunities to learn more about Google Apps and tools? Whether you're listening to a podcast on a road trip, reading by the pool or ready for face-to-face learning, we've got an opportunity for you!
LISTEN: Kasey Bell of Shake Up Learning and Matt Miller from Ditch that Textbook join forces to create a weekly 30ish minute podcast. Google Teacher Tribe provides teachers with practical tips and tricks for using the G Suite and other Google tools for instruction.
WATCH: EDU in 90 is a video series by Google for Education. These short videos provide just in time learning regarding updates, programs and resources. Subscribe today!
READ: Prefer to read for your Professional Learning? The Ed Tech Team has a variety of books to help you get where you want to go. Here are some of our favorites:
ATTEND: There are also a number of face-to-face opportunities for Jeffco employees to learn more about Google. We hope to see you there!
Our school makerspace has all sorts of cool things- robots, Little Bits circuits, Makey-Makey kits, cardboard, old math materials, rubber bands, paper clips, art supplies, yarn for days, and the list goes on. You name it, we have it. The problem is that these materials have sat in the library untouched by many, and tinkered by few. The only purpose this makerspace served was that it was an attractive exhibit for parents considering our school.
I came to realize that we didn’t actually have a makerspace, and all these materials were just a waste of space.
An official definition by Wikipedia says, “A Rube Goldberg machine is a deliberately complex contraption in which a series of devices that perform simple tasks are linked together to produce a domino effect in which activating one device triggers the next device in the sequence. “ After watching this music video, my mind began racing and this was my “ah-ha” moment. We needed Rube Goldberg in our makerspace. I asked the art teacher at my school if he would like to co-facilitate a Rube Goldberg after-school club, and he agreed! This club (for kids in grades 3-6) has pivoted my makerspace into what it actually should be, and is changing the culture of how the kids use this space.
The kids plan backwards, one contraption at a time. It has been hard for the adults to refrain from “jumping in” and solving the problems, so we are practicing the “Yes, And” protocol. What’s been so amazing about this protocol is that the kids come up with solutions that the adults didn’t even see. The kids are driving the inquiry. We’ve done a ton of filming in slow motion so that we can see just where the contraption went wrong. This video is a great example of how filming in slow motion can help pinpoint the problem. In the many times in which the kids failed, the whole group stops to willingly participate in collaborative problem solving. This has been the finest example of failing forward I’ve ever seen.
If you are looking for a way to kickstart your makerspace, Rube Goldberg is your “in!” Our makerspace looks chaotic now, and it’s beautiful. There are tons of resources online, but my advice is to watch a few Youtube videos, and let the kids take it from there!
Good ENough.
Back in my high school years, each ELA teacher required that students write a variety of essays. These essays were scored, entered into the grade book, passed back to us for a quick review of our grade, and then saved in our teachers' filing cabinets. At some point, usually in the late spring, the teachers returned all of our essays and asked us to pick the 3 best samples to create a portfolio. I'd make the recommended changes my teacher had listed and hit print -- good enough. Knowing that my teacher was going to be the only one who would be reviewing my work (again) did little to motivate me to think critically and improve my writing. Usually, my score did not change.
"If students are sharing their work with the world, they want it to be good. If they are just sharing it with you, they want it to be good enough." - Rushton Hurley
In my college years, after all my learning had been finished, I was again asked to build a portfolio as the cumulating task. After hours of scrapbooking and collecting artifacts, I had a beautiful 3" binder full of lesson plans, photos, and beautifully designed (and protected) pages only my professor would ever see. My hard work would never be looked at by a future employer or anyone in my industry. Although I was proud of the final product, much of my time felt wasted and little was actually learned by doing this task, with the exception of becoming a better scrapbooker.
If you think back to your educational years, I'd bet you have a similar experience building portfolios to demonstrate learning. Creating a portfolio of student work can be a very beneficial activity for both the student and the intended audience, but how we build them can be better than what I experienced. To do this, we can consider having students create digital portfolios. Essentially, digital portfolios are the same as a traditional portfolio, but what differs is the manner in which the learning is presented. What makes digital portfolios relevant is that they give students the ability to demonstrate growth of learning, skills, and reflection over time to an authentic audience. This authenticity helps build confidence and a sense of achievement for the learner as they share their work with the world. It also encourages them to go beyond "good enough." In secondary years, students can develop a brand or image for who they are as they apply for continuing education and seek employment opportunities.
"Digital portfolios aren’t just a way to archive work—they’re also an excellent vehicle for students to reflect on their growth and learning." - Avra Robinson
3 Types of Digital Portfolios
The Google Infused Classroom, by Holly Clark and Tanya Avrith, outlines 3 different types of digital portfolios that could potentially be created by students in any grade level or subject, as a demonstration of learning. If you haven't read this book, it's a great one to add to your library. Here is a brief synopsis of the different portfolio types:
The Process Portfolio:
The purpose of the process portfolio is to make students' thinking visible by documenting and reflecting on learning. Throughout this process, students create, reflect, receive feedback, and publish. Students' very best work is mixed in with work that shows improvement over time.
The Showcase Portfolio:
The showcase portfolio highlights a student's very best work. This type of a portfolio is an assessment of student learning. The students create and then publish only their final products. The 3" binder portfolio from my college years was an example of a showcase portfolio.
The Hybrid Portfolio:
As you might guess, a hybrid portfolio is a combination of a process and showcase portfolio. In this portfolio, students create, reflect, receive feedback, then select one (or more) of their favorite pieces to share with a global audience. A hybrid portfolio can be a great way to carry learning forward from year to year as a student progresses through grades. My first experience with the high school essays was a hybrid portfolio.
Digital Portfolio Tools
Although there are many options for creating digital portfolios, the new Google Sites and Seesaw are two of our favorite tools for this purpose.
"It sounds a little extreme, but in this day and age, if your work isn't online, it doesn't exist." - Austin Kleon
A few last thoughts...
The purpose of digital portfolios is to create an opportunity to share learning with a larger and more authentic audience. Sometimes this can feel frightening when thinking about student data and privacy. Instead of limiting an audience and locking down a portfolio, consider having students use their first initial and last name, or just a first name, to keep student work global but their identities private. Also, remind students not to share personal information such as their address or phone number on their portfolios.
As you are considering ways to integrate digital portfolios into the student learning experience, it is important to remember that not all artifacts have to be digital. Snapping a photo of a physical piece of evidence, or recording a video of a student speaking, is a great way to allow the physical and digital worlds to collide and create a bigger picture of what a student can do!
Want to Know more?
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Connect: | https://edtechjeffco.weebly.com/jeffco-ed-tech-blog/category/all |
The 3Ps model is a learning framework that:
- gives clarity to students about what their learning involves
- helps staff create engaging and authentic learning experiences
The three Ps are Prepare, Participate and Practise. This article explains the 3Ps and gives suggestions for implementing them at a module level.
Prepare
Students will get the most out of their face-to-face sessions if they prepare for them in advance.
What you can do:
Give students the framework to help them understand how each module fits into their programme. This will help them manage their time, understand what they need to achieve, and know what to do in advance of each session.
How?
Use the FET Blackboard module template. It is easier for students to find the information they need if it is in the same place in each module they are studying.
Under Module Information:
- Include the learning outcomes for the module. How will your students know if they are successful?
- Include a teaching schedule which outlines the different topics. Let students know what their learning activities will consist of, both in class and independently.
- Introduce the technologies and tools that will be used on the module.
Under Learning Materials:
- Include your Session Study Plans. These are key to helping your students prepare for a face-to-face session.
- Organise your files, videos, presentations, links and other learning materials in a coherent way and include a description for each so that students know what it is, when it will be needed and how to use it.
- Set active tasks to help students prepare for topics and upcoming sessions (e.g. ‘watch this and answer these questions’, or ‘read this and draw a diagram to explain it’).
Under Assignments:
- Include all the details of summative assignments. Students should understand how their final mark will be made up, when each component is due and the specific requirements for each assessed piece of work (including how it should be submitted).
Participate
A lot of learning comes from interaction; students get the most from their learning when they interact with others on collaborative tasks (projects, discussions etc.) and when they interact with learning materials.
What you can do:
Make the most of face-to-face time by allowing students to ask questions, work in groups, collaborate, discuss, debate, present and give feedback to each other. Set tasks that require learner to work together and create spaces and opportunities for interaction outside the classroom as well – help learning communities to form where students can support and learn from each other, as well as have an overall sense of the discipline and their place in it.
How?
Make participation safe.
- Create a cohort identity and rapport between students through induction activities and icebreakers.
- Respect everyone’s contribution, and ensure other students do the same – be mindful of issues of inclusivity.
- Encourage an atmosphere of curiosity and experimentation, where mistakes are allowed.
- Consider using anonymous methods of contribution, such as Mentimeter polls.
- Celebrate successes and showcase students’ work.
Make the most of the digital tools available, both in class and outside taught sessions.
- Mentimeter allows students to take polls, ask questions and contribute ideas anonymously, in real time in classes or webinars, or asynchronously.
- Tools such as Padlet and Miro let students share their work and comment on each other’s contributions.
- Microsoft Teams can be used to create a collaborative space where students can use text chat or video calls, share files and co-author documents.
- Blackboard discussion boards can be used in a structured way to elicit student contributions, or more informally for peer support and discussing topics.
Consider new teaching methods and assessments.
- Explore ways of getting students to support each other’s learning, such as peer feedback or the Jigsaw method.
- Consider assessment methods such as presentations, posters or video submissions, where students can witness and learn from each other’s work.
- Look into different group work models, such as Teams-based or Problem-based learning.
Practise
Students will learn better when they have the opportunity to apply their knowledge.
What you can do:
Make sure your module includes opportunities for activities such as problem-solving, practical work, field work, connections with employers and industry, live projects and authentic assessment. Help students take a holistic view of their learning by making connections not only between topics, but to relevant work experience, volunteering, participation in societies and other extra-curricular activities.
How?
Include active learning, so that students are working with the knowledge and information to make it their own rather than passively receiving it.
- Make lectures interactive with questions, polling, think-pair-share activities etc.
- Chunk your material – whether written, video or audio, concentrate on one concept in each segment and follow it with an activity (e.g. MCQs).
- Consider using a flipped approach.
- Provide regular opportunities for students to practice retrieving knowledge from their memory (e.g. quizzes or ‘minute papers’).
Make sure students get regular and timely constructive feedback so that their practice can develop.
- Use well-designed rubrics in formal assessments.
- Consider using online formative tests where students can receive automated feedback.
- Support students to give and receive constructive peer feedback.
- Set practical tasks where feedback is intrinsic.
- Set tasks that require students to reflect on and act on feedback they receive.
Show how the module relates to the real world.
- Use case studies and have students work on authentic problems.
- Invite guest speakers from industry.
- Assess students in ways that are applicable to the workplace, such as presentations, emails, reports or portfolios, rather than controlled-conditions examinations and essays. | https://fetliu.net/blog/introduction-to-the-3ps/ |
After a simplified — but not simplistic — approach to the theoretical aspects of phase in our last article, today we will see in which cases you may find yourself having to deal with phase problems.
Phase problems begin when we want to mix different signals from the same source. A textbook case is recording a bass guitar with a DI box and a mic placed in front of the amp. Considering that the speed of sound traveling in air is slower than that of the electric signal passing through the DI, you will immediately end up with comb filtering. The same applies when you record a guitar amp with several mics. The distance to the source can't be exactly the same for all of them, so you will inevitably have trouble. But these situations aren't the worst, because the sources are "fixed," which means that the phase problems will be constant and, thus, can be easily corrected, as we will see later.
The real problems start when you record an acoustic instrument with multiple microphones. The musician will inevitably move, making the distance between the mics and the source totally random and unpredictable. The resulting comb filtering will be more complicated to deal with.
The same problem arises with stereo recordings, and it's even worse with 5.1 systems. You should never forget that your productions are still likely to be listened to in mono. (When stereo or surround mixes are combined into a mono signal, comb filtering resulting from phase differences can degrade the sound quality.) And, anyway, more often than not, whenever recording an instrument in stereo you will also record it using (mono) close-up mics. Take drums, for instance, where you have a pair of overheads and individual mics for each drum. And don't forget that mic bleed will also factor in.
You might think problems stop there. And, yet, even when you record with one single microphone you can have phase problems. This time around, it's the reflections created by sound reflecting on the surroundings that mess up the signal.
As you can see, phase problems are everywhere when you record. You can go mad from comb filtering — and this is only the beginning!
When you're mixing, giving the final touches to your songs, it's not unusual for you to use spatialization effects (delay, reverb, etc.) to gain some width, depth or both. These effects are often at the source of many phase problems when mixing the "dry" (original) and "wet" (processed) signals. Parallel processing of a track, with the NY compression technique, for instance, can also lead to phase problems for the same reason.
On the other hand, if you succeeded in controlling phase problems when recording a source with several mics, you can have problems during mixdown by simply using an EQ on one of the tracks of that instrument, but not on the others. Likewise, the technique of fattening a sound by doubling a track, applying to it a different EQ and panning it to the other side of the stereo field, will inevitably result in an offset for certain frequencies, leading to a mess when listening to it in mono.
As you have seen, there are lots of potentially problematic situations. But don't panic, there are solutions, too. We will show you how to deal with these problems in the next article. However, if you are really eager and can't wait for that moment to come, don't hesitate to post your questions in the forum where the active community will be glad to help you out!! | https://en.audiofanzine.com/recording-mixing/editorial/articles/phase-practical-cases.html |
Hi,
Can anyone direct me to some online resources on mixing solo acoustic guitar fingerstyle tracks a la Andy McKee and Antoine Dufour? Most of the mixing resources on acoustic guitar online tend to focus on sitting an acoustic guitar in a band mix, which i more or less already grasp.
I am looking for ideas on EQ-ing, stereo placement, and reverb treatment and the like, for solo acoustic guitar pieces. Many thanks.
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I keep meaning to work my way through this recent thread, but I have not had a chance to dedicate the time to it yet. But it seems like it might address your questions well:
http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/f...d.php?t=237148
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When it comes purely to mixing, there's not much to it since a solo guitar doesn't have anything to compete with in a mix.
The thread posted above is great for sure, Doug has helped me quite a lot since I joined this site as well.
I tend to use a spaced pair of SD condensers, panned hard left and right with a limiter and some light, room esque reverb. The only EQing I do it a high pass set to cut anything below about 100Hz out.
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You want the McKee sound compared to the original CD or something off the internet?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddn4MGaS3N4
http://www.filestube.com/ateqgvOnGaj...-Drifting.html
For the the second fuller sound first install a guitar pickup.
Try emailing the specific guys you like the sound of and see if they will email back some advice.
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Hi All, thanks for the replies!
Hello wcap,
I already read through the article that you linked. It was really helpful for me in terms of recording the guitar itself and what effects were added. I really wished to learn more though, like how Doug tweaked the two reverbs that he added to the tracks, the compression settings and how it was panned, hence this post
Fichtezc,
you're right! There's hardly any mixing per se since we are only dealing with 1-3 tracks. For lack of a better word, I used mixing. I guess what i meant was post-production after the recording stage.
For instance, with the tips you mentioned.. i would also like to know that if you pan it hard L and R would it sound like a 'big mono' or would you lose center imaging and sound more distant etc. And also is the high-pass at 100Hz really necessary since we are dealing only with a solo instrument
Rick,
I am interested in going for both sounds! I understand that most of the youtube vids would tend to factor in their K&K settings into the mix, while the album versions tend to be more mic. I just dropped a message to Antoine Dufour on fb on this as well.
Thanks a lot guys. Keep it coming!
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hi Fich,
by big mono i mean it sounds like the guitar is 10 foot wide as opposed to a stereo field separation. Also when you pan your stereo mics hard L and R, is there anything at the center? Like i said, i'm fairly new to solo acoustic mixing and normally in a band mix the feature instrument or part tends to be center in the stereo field
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When i'm just using mics there isn't anything in the "middle" but it still sounds like the guitar is dead infront of you. If i'm using my anthem however that's panned to the center and relatively low in the mix. Just to add some clear bass and a different color to fill out the recording.
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http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/f...d.php?t=237148
Generally, for solo guitar, it's pretty easy. Get your mics set right, and get a the sound you want, add a little reverb, and you're done. With Andy (and perhaps Antoine, I forget), they blend in a pickup. Andy recorded his last CD at home with 1 mic and 1 pickup, but he didn't mix the result, just handed it off to an engineer. But again, it's pretty straightforward, blend in the pickup to taste, and play around with EQ, reverb, etc, until you hear something you like.
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Hi Doug,
very informative post. I'd like to ask a few questions:
1. You recorded with two pairs of mics. How are you panning them in relation to each other?
2. Also you have two reverbs sent to your tracks. Did you send the shorter reverb into the longer one as well? Also, how else did you vary the parameters of both besides the density of the reverbs?
3. Your video mentioned that you set the compression for both pair of mics to have to noticeable compression. Do you mean that the threshold is high and you kept the compression ratio low?
Thanks :)
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yeah Doug i meant to type NO noticeable compression as well..
So you are panned hard left and right with nothing dead center as well? Is center imaging compensated with stereo reverb?
Also, is the LA2 a tube compression emulator that mildly processes the sound despite having no gain reduction on the meter?
And thanks, Doug that was helpful.
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Just re-reading your initial post, and things might be a little clearer if you read up on stereo micing techniques. This is a different approach, recording in stereo, where you're trying to capture the space of a natural sound to some extent, compared to what you seem to be used to - multi-tracking where every sound is mono and you create an artificial sound stage. For solo fingerstyle guitar, the approach is usually more like traditional stereo micing than multi-track techniques, tho it depends on the performer and what kind of sounds they want.
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If I recorded to two mono tracks, I'd have the left one panned hard left and the right track hard right. With most modern DAWs, you can record on a single stereo track and have the equivalent of that on a single track.
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You could reach out to Rob Poland at Candyrat.
He is the "man behind the scenes" for many of the Candyrat artist videos.
Mike
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http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/f...d.php?t=238876
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I've talked to Andy about what he did on his last CD - he recorded with a single mic and a K&K, 2 separate tracks. He sent that to a studio to be mixed, and he doesn't know (or didn't know at the time I last talked to him) what the engineer did as far as the mix. But it's not magic, there are only a few options.
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Hi Doug,
when you record with a stereo setup and you pan extreme L and R you have no signal from your left mic to your right speaker and vice versa. Am i right?
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But when recording in stereo, really, I all but ignore the pan control. That's not really something that gets involved in a proper stereo recording. You create the image with the mic placement. if you have to adjust the pan control, you set up the mics wrong or set your preamp levels wrong.
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Technically speaking, "panning" has to do with where you place a mono signal within a stereo or multi-channel soundfield.
It's my usual practice to send each mic of a stereo pair to it's own mono channel so that I can have total control of the final stereo width of what was recorded.
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I was always trained to record stereo as two mono tracks so all this is new to me.
If you record it as a single stereo track, and 'pan' that track, you are essentially making L louder than R and vice versa, yes? As opposed to sending a bit of left's signal to the right?
And one of the reasons you do this is to avoid phase issues.
Does this sound about right?
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Of course, that's ok, too. The bottom line is what sounds good. If you get the best sound by putting up two mics, recording them to separate mono tracks and panning them however you want, the results speak for themselves! Do what sounds best. What sounds best to me, so far, is recording a stereo track and getting the sound I want by mic placement. Therefore the need to "pan" simply never comes up. But there's a reason they call recording an "art". You can do anything you like, if you like the results, it's great.
You asked about mixing solo guitar, and the examples I posted show how I did it in a couple of cases. It's not the "right" way, it's just what I do, so if you like the results, you might experiment with the same approach. If you don't think it sounds good, avoid my techniques. I do think that the basic approach I use is pretty common among solo fingerstyle guitar recordings, which is why I brought it up. I didn't invent any of this :-) I came up with what I do by studying lots of fingerstyle recordings, talking to lots of recording engineers and other guitarists, and so on. I hope it's helpful, but if it doesn't make sense to you, that's ok, too. There are tons of ways to do things, if it sounds good, thats what counts.
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Just to follow up on the stereo mic placement, here's a few places that might be worth a quick read:
general stuff:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997...reomiking.html
http://www.deltamedia.com/resource/s...echniques.html
http://www.xowave.com/doc/recording/mic-pair.shtml
more guitar-oriented:
http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/...can-use-today/
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug0...cacgtr0801.asp
http://www.homestudiocorner.com/stereo-mic-techniques/
http://www.uaudio.com/blog/stereo-mi...oustic-guitar/
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Awesome links! Thanks for sharing.
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but i've slept, reread and rewatched, and i now understand that both mics are in stereo and are blended, and one side of each mic can be heard on the left and right channels, and there is no way to hear each mic separately.
i hope i explained this well enough to not cause further confusion. thanks for the information and sorry for panning the thread hard left. :)
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You can take the same approach with a pickup - going back the original "how do I sound like Andy McKee" question, record with mics, and also record a pickup. You can record the pickup on a mono track, so you can actually make good use of that pan control :-) Blend with the mics to taste.
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b) Two separate mono tracks, panned hard left and hard right.
You can see the difference between a stereo file containing a mono signal, and a recorded true stereo file, by noticing that the left and right sides of a true stereo file look different. The left and right side of true stereo files look different because the left and right channels within the stereo file have different information on them. When there is different information on the left and right channel of a stereo file, the result is a perception of space, width and depth.
For instance, if you record a grand piano with two microphones spaced far enough apart to pick up different parts of the piano (such as one mic on the lower strings and one mic on the higher strings), and if you route the cables of those microphones to two separate inputs on your interface, you will end up with a true stereo recording. If you decided to record those two microphones onto one stereo track in your DAW, it would look like this:
The file above SOUNDS LIKE STEREO. It sounds wider and more spacious than a mono recording (one mic) because of the fact that two different microphones were used to pick up two different aspects of a single source of sound (one mic is picking up mostly the high strings while the other mic is picking up mostly the low strings of the piano).
Each mic is focused on one area of the piano, but is also picking up a bit of the sound that the other mic is focused on. In other words, the low piano string mic picks up a bit of the high piano strings, and vice versa. Because of the mic positions, the low piano string sound from the mic near the low piano strings (left speaker) will arrive at our ear before the low piano string sound from the mic near the high piano strings (right speaker).
The opposite is also true: the high piano string sound from the mic near the high piano strings (right speaker) will arrive at our ear before the high piano string sound from the mic near the low piano strings (left speaker).
While positioned between two speakers, this difference in arrival time to the left and right ear creates the perception of width, depth and space that we perceive. It’s these very slight delays (some less than a millisecond) that the brain decodes as width, depth and space. This comes from a survival trait we possess, allowing us to pinpoint the location of almost any sound in any space in order to avoid tigers, bears, snakes — and more modernly cars, trains and skateboarders.
Note that in nature, the most dangerous elements man faces emit high frequency sounds. Our ability to pinpoint the location of a low frequency sound is not so sharp. This relates back to why mixing the low end in mono tends to keep a mix more focused and less muddy, and why it’s not so vital where you place a subwoofer in a studio – whereas the placement of a pair of studio monitors is much more important.
Getting back to recording in true stereo; if you decide to record each microphone onto a separate mono track, rather than onto one stereo track as above, no problem. During the mixing stage, you simply need to pan one track hard left and the other track hard right — and the result will sound exactly like the true stereo file above. Here is what routing each mic to a mono track in a true stereo configuration looks like:
Notice something interesting here. We are using two MONO tracks to re-create a single stereo track by doing the following:
- Recording mic 1 to one mono track.
- Recording mic 2 to another mono track.
- Hard Panning each track left and right.
Another Myth
“All mono tracks in a mix are to be left in the center of the mix with no panning and do not contribute to the width, space, or depth of the song. Mono tracks are only for kicks, bass, vocals and stuff like that.”
Truth:
Any mono track can be used for a variety of purposes in a mix. It can, like the example above, be paired up with another mono track to create a virtual stereo track! A mono track can be panned anywhere in the mix – hard left, hard right, and anywhere in between. In fact, panning a mono track, can sometimes create a much more defined and focused picture of the sound you are panning – rather than trying to pan a stereo file (more on that below).
If you recorded the piano with one microphone, you would be creating a mono recording of that piano. It would be centered and focused, but lacking in width, depth and space:
Even if you later bounce that single mono piano track to a stereo file, as explained above, the piano would sound exactly the same with no change. It would have a mono sound (centered, more narrow) rather than a wide stereo sound, which you can get if you recorded the piano with two microphones, or if you used effects plug-ins and applied what is called pseudo-stereo.
Pseudo Stereo
Pseudo Stereo is what most of us commonly create in the box in our home studios. The word Pseudo comes from the Greek word pseudes, meaning “false or lying.” Pseudo Stereo isn’t really false stereo or stereo that is lying, it simply means that it “Sounds like true stereo but isn’t really true stereo.” It hasn’t been created with two input sources, such as two microphones, or two ¼ inch cables coming from a stereo keyboard. In actual practice, Pseudo Stereo can sometimes sound wider, deeper and more spacious than “True Stereo.”
Pseudo Stereo Mixing
Let’s take the mono lead vocal track we spoke about earlier.
How can we take this sound which is definitely mono, and give it stereo characteristics such as space, depth and width? There are many things we can do to manipulate that mono lead vocal recording and make it sound like “True Stereo.”
We can duplicate the lead vocal, pan the original hard left, pan the duplicated track hard right, add several milliseconds of delay to one of the tracks and voila! You will hear stereo characteristics with that lead vocal. Add or subtract milliseconds of delay and the depth, width, color, tone and space will change right before your ears.
Here we see the basic fundamental of stereo sound at play: two sound sources that are different from one another in some way, routed to separate speakers.
We could also use send-return routing with a mono track to create pseudo stereo effects. This is like putting a Y fitting on the vocal track, with the mono output going, as normal to the speakers, and another going to a STEREO Aux or Effects track, on which we can place stereo plug-ins, such as reverb and delay, and create STEREO EFFECTS from a MONO sound source – giving that mono sound source space, width and depth.
Binaural Recording
With Binaural Recording, sometimes referred to as 3D Binaural Recording, you are basically capturing sound very much like a human would hear it – through two ears – in this case, two microphones acting as ears, affixed to someone’s head or to a mannequin head, or an object resembling a human head.
This technique is not used very often when mixing music, though I am currently researching this technique for various applications, such as acoustic guitars, choirs, drums, etc.
If you are interested in sound design and/or foley work (sound effects) for film soundtracks, Binaural Recording is an important tool to know and use.
One recent innovator in bringing Binaural Recording technology to the masses is a company called Hooke Audio, which has released a set of headphones called the Hooke Verse 3D Binaural Headphones. There are two microphones on the outside of the headphone speakers facing outwards. The result of recording with this set-up is beyond True Stereo, it really sounds like 3D True Stereo; and listening to the playback can be quite astonishing. For instance, during playback, you can hear the scissors of a hairstylist move around your head and almost feel the scissors and comb touching your scalp!
Now that we know the basics of what mono and stereo files are and how they can be utilized in a mix, there is a need to discuss customized DAW parameters and features.
Customized DAW Parameters and Features
Mixing mono and stereo files requires a thorough knowledge of your particular DAW. For instance, Ableton Live uses ONLY stereo files. When panning with Ableton Live (up to Ableton Live 9), panning something to the left or right does not create the same result as panning something to the left or right in other DAWS. Panning effectively in Ableton Live 10 requires a thorough knowledge of your manual. Similarly, panning in Logic Pro does not create the exact same result as panning in Pro Tools or Cubase or Studio One. Each has specific specifications and options when it comes to panning.
To say that the music industry and the music production software industry lack standards is an understatement. However, all of these challenges are easily overcome by those who actually study their DAW manual and who practice and experiment and research.
You CAN set up each DAW so that they all pan the same way, but again, it requires the discipline of studying, practice, experimentation and research.
Here’s one specific example so you can see what I’m talking about here:
If you take a stereo track with a high frequency synth lead sound on the left side and a lower frequency synth lead sound on the right side and pan it to the left, you would expect to hear both the high and the low synth lead sounds panned to the left, correct? Well, guess what? Some DAWs are configured in such a way where panning a stereo track to the left does the following:
- It turns the left side up in volume.
- It turns the right side down in volume.
The result? With our example above, if you panned the synth lead stereo track to the left, you would hear the left side high frequency synth getting louder and moving towards the left — but the right side low frequency synth on the right side would go down in volume. If you panned that stereo track all the way HARD LEFT – the high frequency synth would be heard in your left speaker but the low frequency synth would DISAPPEAR!
Believe it or not, until this knowledge is understood, many mixers who don’t fully know their DAWs don’t even realize this is happening with their stereo files, and their mixes are suffering as a result.
There are simple ways to create actual true panning with stereo files in every DAW. Some DAWs are already set up that way. The bottom line? STUDY THE MANUAL!
A Word About Stereo and Mono Plug-Ins
Very similar to panning, different DAWs treat Stereo and Mono Plug-Ins differently. Again, STUDY THE MANUAL! I can’t say that enough. Every one of my students who actually studies the manual carefully – making sure that they clear up the meanings of words they don’t understand, and then making sure they practice, practice, practice with their DAW – succeeds with flying colors! I want you to be successful, so I strongly encourage you to study your manual thoroughly and carefully, and practice what you learn.
Examples of Stereo and Mono Plug-Ins and Your DAW
Some DAWs do not convert a mono track to stereo when you insert a stereo plug-in. Look at this example below. Notice the orange arrow is pointing to the output meter of a stereo reverb plug-in inserted into a mono lead vocal track. The plug-in meter clearly shows a different level on the left as compared to the right – a sure-fire sign that you are dealing with a stereo signal. However, the master output, when this track is solo’d (the blue arrow) shows very clearly that the output of this track is still mono (when the left and right sides of a stereo meter are moving exactly the same – this shows that the output signal is mono). Some artists, producers and engineers don’t know their DAWs well enough to understand that they may be robbing themselves of incredible width, depth, space and emotion from their mixes.
What Happens If You Place A Mono Plug-In on a Stereo Track
Mono Plug-Ins accept information from one channel and output a signal only to one channel. It happens to be the left channel, because the standard for all DAW software programs is to designate the left channel as mono. This has been true for generations, going back to stereo hardware back in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s.
Therefore, if you place a mono plug-in on a stereo track, don’t be surprised if your mix all of a sudden goes a bit whacko. The plug-in effect will only show up in the left channel. If you look at the orange arrow in the illustration below, this shows that the plug-in is outputting a mono signal (both left and right levels in the plug-in are identical), however, if you look at the stereo buss out meter with the vocal track solo’d, (blue arrow) you will see that the signal is very lopsided over to the left. In this case, the reverb is heard only on the left side of the vocal, and the right side is dry:
A Special Note About Drum Mixes
If you record a full drum set, or if you are given files from a drum session, and even if you are mixing EDM or Dance mixes with separate drum sample files (kick, snare, claps, hi-hat, etc.), know that each of those files may be mono or phantom mono stereo files when they are dry (free of any effects). If the recording or sample has effects on it already, it will probably be a stereo file.
I prefer to work with dry recorded tracks and dry samples whenever possible. This allows me to have full control over my drum mixes. It’s very hard, if not impossible, to take reverb out of a track, or to un-compress a track. It’s very easy to add some reverb to taste, or to find your sweet-spot compression setting – as long as you start with dry files.
A Word About Phasing
When dealing with any mix, there is a chance that phasing problems will show up as you combine various sounds and effects. You can train your ear to listen to phasing problems. I often say, “Use your ear, not your gear as a priority when mixing.” I back that up with revolutionary music production ear-training exercises on The Lucrative Home Studio Masterclass. But you can start training your ear to hear phasing problems right now by doing this simple procedure:
- Take any snare track from any recording you have made in the past.
- Import it into a new empty session.
- Duplicate it.
- Turn Snap-To-Grid off on your DAW
- While listening to a loop of the snare only, start to slide the duplicated snare track to the right little by little. I’m talking just a hair at a time. After moving it slightly, leave it alone for 30 seconds or so, and listen very closely to the sound of the snare. Then move it again and listen for 30 seconds. Keep doing this. You will notice that the snare will lose its punch, its crack and its depth, its richness and its low end. It will start to sound weak and thin and wimpy. This is a phasing problem.
- When you slide the track more than 30 milliseconds to the right, you will soon start to hear a distinct delay. However, prior to hearing the delay, you will experience the snare going “out of phase.” The tone will change, the space will change.
NOTE: Not all “out of phase” sounds are unpleasant. Some sound awesome and are the basis of how certain effects are created – such as a Wha-Wha Pedal, or Chorusing, or Flanging.
Do this same experiment with other instruments and tracks. You will see that some instruments and certain ranges (high, mid and low frequencies) are affected more than others.
Often times when I’m mixing drums, I will get rid of room mic tracks, overhead tracks, and “bottom snare” tracks. The more microphones used in a recording, the more chances for out-of-phase problems exist. In fact, there are times when I am fighting a drum mix to sound great, when all of a sudden, by muting room tracks, overheads and “bottom snare” tracks, the drum mix sounds awesome. This is not a rule or a law, but it’s happened enough times for me to pass on this morsel of wisdom.
When dealing with mono and stereo tracks, mono and stereo plug-ins, and panning – you may encounter phasing problems. Learn to identify them and correct them. It’s not hard to do. Checking your mixes in mono is one great way to accomplish it. Like anything else it takes practice. But you can do it!
Mid-Side Technology
Mid-Side recording, mixing and mastering is a separate animal all unto itself. It is neither stereo, nor is it mono. It’s a sort of hybrid of both, but not exactly. It’s a fascinating subject. I’ll be covering this subject in an upcoming TuneCore article, so stay tuned!
And finally, let’s not lose sight of the music itself! As I remind myself, so I will remind you — it’s not so much how we mix and master as it is WHAT we mix and master. Strive for creating emotionally moving music with impact and soul!
We are all striving to complete our mixes and have them hold up to industry standards at the very least.
I’ve come up with a definition for a completed mix, and as you will see, it’s certainly not a technical definition:
The Definition of a Completed Mix: “No emotional weak links for the listener, from the very first note to the last moment of silence.”
Good luck creating great compositions and songs and completing great mixes!
Gary Gray is the teacher behind the Lucrative Home Studio online course. He’s an award winning composer, producer, and engineer, and has produced multiple projects for 20th Century Fox, Disney, Hollywood Records, A&E, EMI, CBS and many others in his home studio.Tags: | https://www.tunecore.com/blog/2020/02/the-difference-between-mixing-in-mono-vs-stereo-part-2.html |
CCOG for MUC 271 Winter 2022
- Course Number:
- MUC 271
- Course Title:
- Audio Programming II: Intermediate Max/MSP
- Credit Hours:
- 4
- Lecture Hours:
- 40
- Lecture/Lab Hours:
- 0
- Lab Hours:
- 0
Course Description
Addendum to Course Description
As of Fall 2015, the Professional Music Department endorses Electronic Music and Sound Design: Theory and Practice with Max and MSP, vol. II as a textbook.
Ultimately, the instructor of record is entrusted with textbook selection, but is expected to consult with the Department Chair to ensure curricular alignment and program coherence.The approved text is difficult, and it is essential the instructor cover the information in an accessible manner.
This course introduces students to sophisticated and abstract content. The course is intended for students who have successfully completed Audio Programming I. Students are, therefore, expected to gain an intermediate facility with the language. Nonetheless, this course is designed for creatives--students realizing creative visions with coding as one of their materials--and not a computer science course. Assignments and standards should be established accordingly.
Intended Outcomes for the course
Upon completion of the course students will be able to:
- Define and use basic and intermediate functions of Max/MSP to generate and create and sculpt new sounds and to design custom audio tools.
- Design flexible, powerful, and navigable user interfaces (UIs) for custom tools, including custom hardware interfaces.
- Articulate and employ principles of sound spatialization - multichannel panning, ambisonics and binaural techniques.
- Employ programmatic/procedural non-linear sound design for immersive world design.
- Demonstrate advanced theoretical knowledge of sound, acoustics, psychoacoustics, analysis, and a wide variety synthesis techniques (including physical modeling, additive, granular, wavetable, FFT based resynthesis and spectral processing).
- Implement data sonification, utilizing rich data-sources to control sound and light experiences.
- Demonstrate working knowledge of OSC, MIDI, Serial, HTTP protocols.
Aspirational Goals
- Students gain levels of comfort that allow them to play freely with confidence with Max/MSP. The language of visual programming begins to feel more native.
- Students begin to imagine more sophisticated sounds and tools and to realize their visions with Max/MSP
- Students have a deep understanding of advanced sound design concepts and creative tools. | https://www.pcc.edu/ccog/muc/271/ |
In this episode, we take a look at vocal recording and mixing, plus some other fun topics. Enjoy!
If you’ve got a question, ask away here:
Podcast (hsc-podcast): Play in new window | Download (64.9MB)
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In this episode, we take a look at vocal recording and mixing, plus some other fun topics. Enjoy!
If you’ve got a question, ask away here:
Once upon a time, Joe made a stupid mistake.
I was recording a bunch of acoustic guitar tracks for an album project.
I was super-excited. I had set aside an entire afternoon to knock out all the songs.
Also, I had just gotten a brand new microphone, and was going to use it along with another mic to record the guitar in stereo.
All was right with the world. I set levels, listened through my headphones, and the sound was HUGE.
Jackpot. Let’s start recording. (more…)
A reader is puzzled by stereo (2-mic) acoustic guitar recording:
I recently got into mixing acoustic guitar with 2 mics. The problem is that I do not know how to create as much ‘space’ as some tracks I know of. I’ve tried XY, ORTF, and spaced pair.
XY and ORTF are too narrow. Spaced pair seems reasonable (following the 3:1 Rule), but the mic pointed closest to the body becomes overly ‘bassy.’
How can I balance the stereo image? EQ can control the problem but not by much. How would you go about on fixing this problem?
I know mic position has to do with it but I don’t know where to start. Just wondering if you had to overcome this type of problem before.
As much acoustic guitar recording and mixing as I do, I’ve dealt with problems like this a LOT.
(And this applies to ANY instrument, not just acoustic guitar.) (more…)
If you record acoustic guitar, then chances are you’ve either played around with stereo recording or at least thought about it. But maybe you’re not sure which techniques to use and the pros and cons of each.
I think I can help.
I’ve recorded acoustic guitar more than any other instrument, so I’ve spent countless hours of quality time with my guitar and a pair of microphones. And I’ve gotten pretty good at getting great acoustic guitar tone.
Stereo recording is simply using two microphones to capture a two-channel “stereo” image of the source. By panning the signals left and right, you can create a sense of space and width and depth, simply by using two microphones instead of one. (more…)
Everybody asks about what microphones and mic placements they should use on acoustic guitar, but rarely do they ask about the preamp. It’s a shame, because the preamp plays a huge roll in the sound of ANY recording.
As I told you in the Intro to Preamps video, there are lots of different types of preamps. If you’re starting out, you’ll just use the built-in preamps on your audio interface. That’s fine, but just know that a really nice microphone into a cheap preamp may not sound as amazing as you expected. (more…)
If using one microphone is great, two must be twice as good, right? Sometimes. 🙂
Some of the best acoustic guitar tones I’ve ever gotten have been with two microphones, this is sometimes referred to as stereo mic placement (although two microphones doesn’t always mean it’s technically “stereo,” but that’s for another day).
As with most things, if there stands to be a bigger benefit (better guitar tone), there are also greater risks (phase issues). (more…)
If you’ve been following the blog this week, you’ve noticed a bunch of acoustic guitar talk.
That’s because next week I’m launching a brand new class: Recording Acoustic Guitar. Nothing super fancy, just 4 weeks of straight talk on getting great acoustic guitar tone.
It’ll be a combination of live webinars (weeks 1 and 3) and HD video downloads (weeks 2 and 4). If you can’t make the live events, no problem. It’ll all be recorded and available for download whenever you want.
This is for you if:
You can join today, only 100 spots are available. I’ll put the videos up for sale later, but they’ll be at a higher price.
3 Reasons to Join Today:
Make it a goal to start getting better acoustic guitar recordings. Go here now to join us!
Once you’ve got a great-sounding guitar in a great-sounding spot in the room (and don’t underestimate how important those two steps are), you’re ready to pick your mic.
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hey, susanna. thanks for the link, whereever it is… nice site!
Posted by: dd at September 12, 2006 03:17 AM
Melbourne’sPhilip Samartzis is one of the leading lights of Australian experimental music. A talented composer and supremely gifted field recordist, he works with a rich array of electronic sounds and environmental recordings to create his delicately structured sound pieces. While he now has an academic pedigree, with a doctorate in sound art and post as a lecturer at the RMIT University in Melbourne, Samartzis began his sonic adventures in the 1980s in true DIY-style as one half of the avant-turntablist duo GUM. Fueled by a love of post-punk and aural abrasion, he and partner Andrew Curtis abused both record and player with an engineer’s precision to form densely textured, noise collages akin to the experiments of Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshihide, and Martin Tetreault. Their recordings have recently been reissued on a definitive, double-cd set titled Vinyl Anthology on the U.S. label 23Five.
After Gum parted ways in 1990, Samartzis stopped working with vinyl altogether and began to focus on recording techniques, digital signal processing, and sound spacialization, eventually studying at IRCAM in France and visiting and working with some of the bigwigs of musique concrete, such as Pierre Henry, Michel Chion, and Bernard Parmegiani. Though he’s been active as a performer, composer and curator for quite some time now, his level of activity has increased exponentially in the last year or so, as a number of long-term projects are now coming to fruition. This summer and fall alone he has four cds coming out, including the stunning Unheard Spaces (Microphonics), which is based an field recordings that he made while in Venice, and a phenomenal split release with Bernard Parmegiani (Plates of Sound), featuring stereo mixes of a pair of surround-sound pieces created for Samartzis’ Immersion festival.
Last year, I interviewed Philip for an article that appeared in the Spring issue of Grooves magazine. Given the large number of Samartzis records now on the docket, I thought it was a good time to print the interview in its entirety and Philip was gracious enough to answer a few additional questions about his recent work and upcoming plans.
When and how did you first begin making music/working with sound?
I only became interested in working with sound once recording technology became affordable, which occurred in the early 80s with the introduction of cheaper synthesizers such on the Pro-One by Sequential Circuits and the Moog Prodigy, as well as the Tascam Porta-Studio, an early cassette based multi channel recording system. Before then I was a keen listener of experimental and electronic music as well as punk and new/no wave but had no aspirations of actually being a musician or composer. However once the tools of production became affordable I found I was attracted to the possibilities they afforded me and began a series of experiments in order to develop a skill set that could convey my conceptual interests.
Could you describe these early experiments? What kinds of instruments/equipment did you use? Were you working alone or in collaboration with other musicians?
The experiments were more or less focused on the way technology operates, the residue they impart and the kinds of results achieved when altered from tools of reproduction as in the case of records, turntables, tape and amplification to ones of production. Gum eventually embodied most of these experiments in a series of works that began with prepared records and extended turntable techniques to tape editing, looping and layering. During that time we also moved from basic four-channel to sixteen-channel recording that afforded more complex mixing and effects delegation.
I understand you were active in Australia’s art punk scene — how did that develop into an interest in more abstract sound work?
Melbourne is a city informed and shaped by a confluence of musical movements and styles since the 60s that coalesced to forge a robust yet eclectic live music scene. When I tapped into it in the mid to late 70s there were a host of seminal electronic and experimental groups such as Essendon Airport, Laughing Hands, Primitive Calculators and Tsk Tsk Tsk that were referencing aspects of minimalism, electronic, punk and ambient music. The mixture of references as well as the irony, satire, cynicism and sarcasm underscoring them allowed me to appreciate the expansive range of attitudes, concepts and practices that informed each musical project. Add other influences such as the Birthday Party, SPK, Severed Heads and Hugo Klang and I was left with an enormous range of possibilities in how sound could be shaped to render profound musical experiences.
Could you tell me a little bit about origins and history of Gum?
Gum was founded at a time when I was looking to meet and work with people with similar interests. I happened to see an advertisement in a record store by Andrew Curtis who wanted to form a band, citing a long list of Industrial influences such as Test Department, Einsturzende Neubaten and Zoviet France. Having no real musical skills other than a fundamental knowledge of recording technology and synthesis, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to be in a band, but I was attracted to Andrew’s enthusiasm and knowledge of experimental and industrial music. Several other people answered the ad that had similar aspirations but after a couple of jam sessions Andrew and I were left as the only survivors. We spent a lot of time listening to and discussing the nature of experimental music in order to determine the type of contribution that we were prepared to make. With the guitar and synthesizer dominating the musical landscape we decided to pursue other forms of sound generation and decided upon the record player and prepared record as the best means of articulation. After a year of experimentation in which we discovered various ways of manipulating vinyl through marking, baking, melting and smashing an assortment of records, we embarked on our first studio recordings during the middle of 1987 that were eventually published by ourselves in true DIY style under the title Vinyl. Our second album, 20 years in blue movies and yet to fake an orgasm, was produced a year later and was far more expansive in the range of production and performance techniques that were incorporated into the recording. Although conceptually both Andrew and I don’t think it was as successful as Vinyl, it was an important project in allowing us to develop our engineering and production skills that were pretty limited up to then. Our final works as Gum were released as singles for Korm Plastics and RRR Records and were perhaps our most satisfying explorations of vinyl as they incorporate our most sophisticated approach to composition and production.
What influence do you see your work with Andrew Curtis having on your current musical activities?
Although Gum ceased to function during 1990 after one too many letters from fascists declaring their admiration for the band, the spirit of research and discovery continues to inform my current work. I must admit that since we ceased working together as Gum it has been interesting to monitor the rise of turntablism as a genre and the various approaches that have been forged with the record player and record. I admire the perseverance of people like Christian Marclay and Philip Jeck and the body of work they have produced but in our case we felt that we had done all we were prepared to do with the medium and that it was time to move onto other ideas.
How did your working methods develop post-Gum? I’m also very curious about the period between Gum and your work at IRCAM [i.e. how you got from point A to point B (or point G to point I)?]
I spent the first five years exploring the potential of digital signal processing, hard disk recording and midi construction to forge new methods of production that were distinct from the analogue processes that I had honed in the 80s. I wasn’t so much interested in publishing works but rather interrogating the technology to discover new modes of articulation and aesthetic appreciation. I eventually published these experiments as Residue in 1998 on Dorobo. At this time I became quite interested in surround sound and began to focus on the history of film sound technology to learn more about mixing and spatialisation techniques. I also began a series of investigations into the history of the loudspeaker orchestra and visited the GRM in Paris to learn more about it and while there visited composers such as Pierre Henry, Michel Chion and Bernard Parmegiani to gain first hand knowledge of their concepts and methodologies. I was eventually invited to IRCAM to work with the Room Acoustics team to compose a new piece based on field recordings of Venice using a variety of microphones including ambisonic, binaural and hydrophonic systems. An excerpt was included in the Liquid Architecture sampler that was available with The Wire a few months ago. I plan to publish the work, which is called Unheard Spaces early next year on my own imprint Microphonics.
There have been a number of different iterations of Soft and Loud — what is the history of the project and what has led to you to revisit the sound sources on multiple occasions?
In 1996 I embarked upon a series of projects in which I traveled to countries where English was not the dominant language in order to enjoy a purely abstract sonic experience devoid of any verbal meaning. After spending a specific amount of time purely listening to the environment in which I found myself, I would begin a series of field recordings to capture acoustic events that held some form of personal meaning in the way I interpreted or experienced a specific place or event. I wasn’t so much interested in presenting a soundscape of a place but rather a composition underscoring my personal impressions of places in which I did not belong.
Soft and Loud is the latest and most ambitious iteration of the concept and commenced with a three-month field trip to Japan in 1999 documenting various sites such as temples, forests, subways and suburbs, each extraordinary for the set of signifiers that determine the acoustic dimension and characteristic of each site. Once I had completed gathering field recordings I began to compose using multi-layering and juxtaposition to construct various movements to highlight the discrete sounds that permeate throughout the Japanese soundscape and how they combine to mark a place with its own personality. This approach is inspired by film sound design where the score is painstakingly constructed from multiple events to forge a sophisticated audio-visual discourse.
At the end of the field trip I had arrived at a rough composition, however I was unsatisfied with what I achieved as it felt unnatural and turgid and failed to reflect the atmosphere and tension I felt while living in Japan. After spending more time refining the composition I decided to perform live to test aspects of Soft and Loud directly upon audiences to ascertain the projects successes and failures. An early version of the composition was published by Staalplaat in the Mort aux Vaches series recorded in Amsterdam in September 2000. After sporadically working on Soft and Loud for four years, publishing extracts on Grain (2002) and Variable Resistance: Ten Hours of Sound from Australia (2002), I eventually arrived at a version that I was happy with.
Is the Soft and Loud on Microphonics and that of the upcoming vinyl release the final [version of ] Soft and Loud, or is it still a work in progress?
The upcoming vinyl release of Soft and Loud on Plates of Sound is the same version as the compact disc. Although I never intended it to be released as a record I am very excited that Joey Rhyu is using it to launch his label. The dance floor will never be quite the same again.
You mention that the field trip to Japan that eventually yielded Soft and Loud was one of a series of such excursions. What other trips did you make and did you use the sounds from those trips in any single recording?
I started a series of works in 1996 based on traveling to non-English speaking countries with no preconceived ideas or prepared material. The idea was to limit myself to the technology I found on location and complete the composition as much as possible while there. The concept took me to France several times as well as Denmark, The Netherlands and Japan publishing the results as Residue (1998), Windmills Bordered by Nothingness (1999) and Soft and Loud (2004). I plan to continue the series over the next several years with an eye on Siberia, Argentina and South Africa.
How did the project Unheard Spaces originate and what was the compositional process behind the piece itself? In your liner notes for the CD, you mention the influence of film on the work and I was particularly interested in how that influenced its composition.
Unheard Spaces is the latest in the series of works focusing on the dynamics of site. It is a significant departure from works such as Soft and Loud or Windmills Bordered By Nothingness as it does not contain any abstraction or electronic sound. Instead I wanted to do a piece that solely used microphone selection and placement to render unusual perspectives of a familiar place. I was attracted to Venice as it is one of the most recognizable cities in the world, and comprises a broad range of acoustics that shape sound events in intriguing ways. It is also a city absent of the intrusive sound of motor traffic, which is such a strong sonic signifier in nearly all built environments. Instead Venice is a city in which pedestrian and maritime traffic mingles in a complex acoustic environment to afford a unique aural experience.
Film scores and sound design have been a major influence on my compositional practice. It is through films such as Death in Venice and Don’t Look Now that I first became interested in Venice. Generally it is the narrative function of film music that I find intriguing which is quite different to the structures informing popular or classical music built on statement, repetition and resolution. Instead film music is often modular, concise and unresolved, reduced to its essential elements to enable all elements of the soundtrack to successfully coalesce. I originally became interested in film scores through the dissonant soundtracks of horror films such as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Bird With the Crystal Plumage and Psycho. Needless to say composers like Bernard Herrmann and Ennio Morricone are household names these days but back in the 70s their work was relatively new to me. What attracted me to their scores were the extended techniques that they borrowed from Western Art music, which drew my attention to the power of texture as a means of generating and sustaining atmosphere. It is from their work that I became interested in 20th century avant-garde music.
As I was looking through some reviews and descriptions of your recordings, I was surprised to see your work likened (in this case the Mort au Vaches recordings) to some of the ultra-minimal techno published on Raster Noton and 12k. Do such comparisons ring true for you? What artists/musicians/others would you cite as especially influential on what you do today?
I am always surprised by the comparisons that are made about my work. The great thing about living in Melbourne is that I can choose to disconnect myself from the discourse that informs sound culture in the northern hemisphere. This is a strategy I often employ so that I can focus on areas of production and composition that don’t necessarily belong to any dominant theory or practice. There is so much that we don’t know about sound and my whole practice is devoted to discovering new modes of articulation by working on projects that continually raise questions about the nature of production and presentation as well as listening. To achieve this I tend to be strategic in what I am prepared to do to ensure that the outcome justifies the time and effort or else I risk becoming a performing monkey on the festival circuit. I think there are enough people already doing this without me joining them.
The artists that I have the strongest rapport with are the ones who are asking the difficult questions about the nature of music and how it can be advanced beyond a sequence of self reflexive movements recycling post WW2 concepts and practices. Especially influential on my own composing are Bernard Parmegiani, Luc Ferrari, Ilhan Mimaroglu and Pierre Henry, for the way they are able to adapt technology to service a sophisticated set of concepts incorporating poetics, culture, politics and science. I am also inspired by improvisers such as David Brown, Seiichi Yamamoto, Michael Vorfeld, Reinhold Friedl and Jean-Luc Guionnet for their inventive approach to live performance. Of course there are many others working in various genres but I guess you get the idea.
What kinds of strategies do you employ? Is your live presentation fairly stable in terms of your general set-up?
It always begins with a series of questions. What is surround sound and how can it be used to render sophisticated experiences beyond the cinematic domain? What happens when you flatten the hierarchy that determines audio-visual discourse to privilege atmosphere and sound effects over voice and music? Why do certain conventions exist that determine the temporal-spatial trajectory of most live performances? I am good at asking questions but the task is finding answers!
One of the topics that’s touched upon in the recent profile of you in The Wire is your use of sound spatialization as compositional technique. After reading that, I was very curious to know more about how you use sound spatialization in works like Immersion and Unheard Spaces. What was the origin of your interest in working with such a specialized compositional technique? Also, how is spatialization linked to the narrative structure that often informs your work, such as Unheard Spaces?
My interest in sound spatialization stems from an interest in film sound technology and the manner in which it has evolved since the 1920s to afford increasingly sophisticated cinematic experiences. Parallel to this is an interest in the history of electronic music and how various institutions such as the GRM and WDR, as well as composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis used multi-channel sound systems to forge immersive environments in a range of performance and exhibition settings. Through this interest I began a series of formal investigations to better understand the concepts, practices and technologies required to work spatially that included visiting composers such as Pierre Henry and Bernard Parmegiani to discuss their ideas first hand. To generate more knowledge about the field I began curating Immersion which is a festival devoted to issues and practices around surround sound spatialization. Each Immersion has had a different focus including explorations into the cinematic space, the loudspeaker orchestra, and the art gallery. The next presentation of Immersion will be presented in Berlin and is based on live audio-vision in which musicians and video artists will engage in a series of improvised exchanges using a multi-screen and multi-channel sound system. The point of all this activity is to discover new and innovative ways in which to present sound beyond the stereo sound field, which has been the dominate mode of auditory experience since the early 60s.
I have no fixed ideas around spatialisation and tend to vary my methods based on the circumstances of the presentation. For installation works I like to use an eight channel sound system to choreograph space with sound in order to formulate densities of space and zones of aural activity. As outlined in the liner notes to Soft and Loud, spatialisation enables me to modulate the listener’s perspective to draw their attention to specific details comprising the mix. It also allows me to play with notions of natural and artificial space as well as elements such as width, depth, absorption and envelopment to arrive at a variety of creative outcomes. The intention is to immerse an audience in sound so that they are hearing it from within the sound field and not outside of it, which is generally the case with stereo presentations.
In performance I tend to be more spontaneous, working with multiple loud speakers and/or musicians located throughout the site of performance to respond to the specific acoustics informing the site. For instance Absence and Presence was initially presented as a piece for five musicians and four loudspeakers spread throughout the auditorium in order to explore relationships between amplified and acoustic sound sources displaced from one another to highlight the way in which architecture colors the final outcome. Therefore there is a large research component that is attached to these types of presentations as they operate outside the normal parameters of performance. Spatialisation is a burgeoning field and I am hopeful that it is one that will draw the interest of musicians from all styles of music.
An aspect of your work that I imagine a lot of listeners/readers are less familiar with is your work with improvisers and other musicians, as on Western Grey or Absence and Presence. What is the appeal of working with improvisers and what kind of challenges does it present?
Like most artists you tend to have different phases in your development. I began my musical career with Gum, which was a collaborative venture. I then spent a number of years working as a sound designer and discovered that I missed the social interaction of working within a group context. In 1998 I was encouraged by David Brown who is the Australian equivalent to Derek Bailey/Keith Rowe/Fred Frith to try my hand at live performance again. It took me a while to figure out how to exactly play live considering I don’t play an instrument, but after much trial and error I developed a system around CD players and electronics that enabled me to translate my studio concepts into the live domain. Once I had established my system I was keen to perform with other musicians and it seemed natural that I work with David, as he has been a long time contributor to my solo CDs. After a while I thought it would be fun to formalize our collaboration by forming a trio with Sean Baxter, which we titled Western Grey after the kangaroo. Sean is also a longtime contributor to my solo CDs providing much of the raw material that I use for abstraction. As a trio we tend to do two or three concerts per year, which is just about right, as we like to treat them as special occasions. We published our debut CD Glacial Erratic in 2002 and I am in the process of completing our second CD that should be available in 2007.
The thing I like about working in improvised music settings is that you can work spontaneously in contrast to studio projects that tend to require a lot of time and consideration. It also allows you to test ideas on a live audience in order to gauge the success or failure of a concept or process. Working with other improvisers also enables you to hear your ideas interpreted in a new context that can be incredibly useful in reaching a resolution. Ultimately though it is about balance and I try to spend equal amounts of time between composition, performance, curation, exhibition and publication so I try and ensure that one doesn’t dominate too much of my time.
What is your job like at the RMIT University? How did you come to be employed within the academy and in what ways has it had an impact on your overall work?
Many people are curious about my position as a lecturer in sound. They often refer to their own experiences of university in judging what my job would be like which may or may not be accurate depending on where you studied. I am senior lecturer and coordinator of sound within the school of art at RMIT University where I present three classes including sound art, immersive environments and studio recording. The focus of the course is to introduce students to fundamental technological processes contextualized within a broad theoretical, conceptual and historical framework so when they learn about a piece of technology such as a sampler they not only learn how to play it but the history that goes along with it including listening to a host of artists working with sampling.
I developed a strong relationship with the Media Arts course area as a student and technician and over time was offered casual lecturing positions before obtaining a full time position in 1997. Although I never really had aspirations to become a lecturer circumstances seemed to intervene to a point where the job chose me and not the other way around. At first I found it quite difficult as I felt I lacked the objectivity and expertise to meet the demands of all students but as I settled into the role it became much less daunting. The important thing to note about where I work is that all staff are artists first and academics second so it is about leading by example and treating students as peers. Therefore the impact of lecturing has been quite positive as you are teaching from experience and conversing with people who are genuinely interested in getting the best out of themselves. I also end up testing my ideas out on students who are pretty good sounding boards and aren’t afraid to let you know when they think something sucks.
Are there any current/upcoming projects that you could tell me a bit about?
There are a couple of releases that are just out or will soon be available.
Wireless_Within is a collaborative project with Gunter Müller and Voice Crack based around several studio improvisations that I edited and rearranged. It features one of the last recordings made by the extraordinary Voice Crack so I was conscious that the project should in part pay homage to the legacy of Andy Guhl and Norbert Möslang.
Immersion is a split record with Bernard Parmegiani that has been a long time coming but I have been promised that it will be out by the end of the year. Over the last several years I have curated a series of events called Immersion focused on the theory and practice of surround sound spatialisation. For the inaugural Immersion I commissioned Bernard to compose a piece for Dolby surround sound playback. The piece is called Immer/sound and will accompany a track that I produced for the second Immersion called Transparency based on field recordings I made of the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris in 2001.
It’s now almost one year on. What other projects and/or releases are currently on your plate? I know you’ve got the festival in Berlin coming up fast….
The next twelve months is quite a busy time. I am presenting Immersion 4 in Berlin as part of the Interface Festival for Music and Related Arts. I have spent three years working on it with Elke Moltrecht so it will be a relief to finally see it come to fruition. In November I commence an Asialink Arts Management Scholarship to research Japanese sound culture in order to develop cross-cultural curatorial projects involving Japanese and Australian sound artists and composers. I will be based in Tokyo for four months working with Christophe Charles at Musashino Art University and am looking forward to learning more about Japanese art and culture, in particular artists who have yet to receive international attention. At the end of the Scholarship I will be based in France for a further four months performing with Eric La Casa and Jean-Luc Guionnet who share my interest in spatialisation. I will be back in Australia in July in time for the next Liquid Architecture festival. We are currently working on a compendium on sound culture with contributions from numerous Australian musicians, and hope to launch it at the next festival so the pressure is on.
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hey, susanna. thanks for the link, whereever it is… nice site!
Posted by: dd at September 12, 2006 03:17 AM
Thanks, David. I believe the link was in an old news item, but your comment is a fine reminder that I should update the links section! Some pretty big changes are imminent with the site (fingers crossed), so I need to get all my ducks in a row…. | https://www.rarefrequency.com/2006/08/sound_narrative_1.html |
I had two gigs in October, and then two medical procedures – including long-planned hand surgery – in early November. Combined with the upcoming holidays, this all means I’ve decided to roll the November and December newsletters into one, and will then resume my normal schedule with the January 2023 edition.
Of the nine live concerts (plus one streamed) I’ve played this year, three of them have been in quad. I’ve also been hearing more talk about releasing music in the Dolby Atmos surround format. By contrast, I saw a module manufacturer and active performer recently ask why we even need stereo, let alone quad or surround. So, I’m going to share some of my own thoughts and experiences on the “how many channels?” issue, particularly as it relates to modular musicians.
- featured article: Mono, stereo, quad, or beyond? How many channels of sound should we be thinking about when it comes to creating our modular synth compositions and performances?
- Alias Zone updates: The new album is almost ready! Should I have CDs made as well?.
- Learning Modular updates: Using a utility mixer to decode and encode mid-side stereo audio.
- Patreon updates: Posts on electronic music genres, putting together a DAW-less percussion case for the Synthplex gig, and on the modulation plus effects sections of my live performance system.
- upcoming events: I’m putting together a mini-tour for April 2023. I’m also curious to hear your suggestions on where else I should play.
- one more thing: Recent hand surgery means I’ll be taking a break from the road – but not the studio!
Mono, Stereo, Quad, or Surround?
Jan Willem of Ginkosynthese recently started an interesting thread on Facebook: Why are people asking for stereo modules? He noted that he had been “us(ing) Eurorack for 18 years now and building modules as Ginkosynthese for 10 years, and in all that time I have never patched one single stereo patch! In my eyes asking for stereo in Eurorack is the same question as asking for polyphony” – in other words, you need a lot of duplicate (or specialized) modules for perhaps unnecessary gains. Aside from module count, he noted that stereo is a lot of extra work to patch live during a performance, and that most club sound systems are not set up to take advantage of or present a good stereo field (let alone quad or surround).
Those are all excellent, valid points – especially when it comes to playing (and patching) live in a club. If you’re new to playing electronic music – especially with modulars – by all means, start out mono until you have a better handle on the music-making part of the equation, and before you start thinking about dealing with multiple channels.
However, a large amount of music is now consumed while wearing headphones or ear buds. Plus, in addition to the club environment, a lot of electronic music concerts are experienced while seated and with the listeners paying closer attention compared to dancing. Given that, the question I constantly ask myself is: If I expect the listener to give me part of their time to listen to my music, how can I give them the best possible experience in exchange?
Going Stereo
I personally find the stereo experience to be much more compelling to listen to than mono, and many of my module purchase decisions these days include whether or not they will help me create more stereo elements.
“Stereo” can mean a lot of different things, and can be created at different points in a patch. The simplest and most common version is panning each mono signal to a specific point in a left/right stereo field, often to mimic (or play games with) the idea of a band or orchestra spread out on stage in front of you. For added interest, you can animate the pan position of some the sources using voltage control, which will keep the listener further engaged as they follow the movement. Another trick I like to use is to patch two similar sounds – such as dueling kick drums or bass lines – and pan them slightly apart from each other, so you can hear the musical line ping-pong between them when they play at separate times, and unite in the middle when they play together.
Another approach is to “stereo-ize” a mono signal by adding processing near the end of the patch. This can be done with stereo reverb, chorus, and delay effects (among others). I particularly like using multi-tap echoes where each “tap” (repeat) comes from a different location: now your single source has expanded into several, doing a “call and response” between themselves. Chorus and reverb can create a more immersive experience where the sound is now coming from a “space” rather than just a single location (or set of locations). Although the music is still synthetic, the experience is more realistic, as that is how we would normally experience a group of musicians in a reverberant room.
There are also modules and patching techniques beyond effects that allow you to “stereo-ize” a mono source, such as the Xaoc Devices Mińsk I recently added to my studio modular. Splitting a signal into its “mid” and “side” components for separate processing is another popular approach. Ben “DivKid” Wilson has a Patreon channel I would recommend under any condition, but in particular he recently created a PDF for subscribers with stereo patching ideas – here is the link if you already subscribe (or what to join just for a month to get this document).
More sound source modules at the beginning of the patch chain are appearing with stereo outputs. These seem to fall into roughly three camps:
- polyphonic modules (Mutable Instruments Rings and Qu-Bit Surface are two I use) where each individual mono voice appears from a different location in the stereo field
- monophonic modules with multiple outputs, such as oscillators with different waveforms outputs (Mutable Instruments Plaits and the Make Noise XPO come to mind) – some refer to these as “binaural” sources as the left and right channels are different signals (that happen to be in tune), rather than two different perspectives of the same signal, which can sound pretty wild and unnatural over headphones in particular (that’s not a negative judgement – after, most of us are into synthesis to create unnatural sounds!)
- true stereo modules where the left and right channels are different perspectives on the same sound, such as stereo sample playback – indeed, I’ve been recording more of my own samples and loops in stereo to take advantage of this experience
Of course, this category is the one that starts to require more specialized modules. Some can be patched directly to a stereo input on your output mixer, but it’s more fun to also patch these through stereo or dual filters and VCAs – that’s part of the reason why I have so many VCAs, plus have been accumulating more stereo filters. (I wonder if we as an industry can figure out a way to use TRS jacks and patch cables to carry stereo over one cable, and also have a module auto-sense that the “ring” is actually connected to the “sleeve” which is ground, and therefore sum stereo to mono on the tip…)
I personally lean away from extreme stereo effects. For example, I will take a module like Rings – which ping-pongs its voices between left and right outputs – and send it through a stereo processor module or plugin to narrow down the space between those signals so it’s less distracting. It is also possible to spread out a sound so much in stereo that you loose its center, making it seem more like two separate sound sources rather than one wide source.
That said, one of the biggest benefits I have found from going stereo is in separating instruments in a mix. When everything is panned to the center, musical lines can start to step on each other, and it can be hard to tell them apart. By giving them different pan positions in the stereo field, the listener can now better hear and follow each of the individual musical lines you programmed or played, rather than have that extra effort be lost in the mix.
Going Quad
A year ago when I first started exploring how to compose for quad live performance, I spoke with Michael Stearns, who has done a lot of work in surround. His overall comment that stuck with me was: “Surround to stereo becomes like stereo to mono. When you hear the difference, your nervous system says, ‘OK, now we’re on the right track.’”
Indeed, there is an unexpectedly large difference in listening to a concert in quad versus stereo: instead of the performance happening on a stage in front of you, now it is happening all around you, as if you were up on stage yourself in the middle of the synthetic band or orchestra. “Immersive” is a word that gets tossed around so much that it loses its significance, but it is true that being immersed in the sound rather than observing it coming at you sounds more like a “real” experience – such as being out in nature yourself, rather than just watching a nature program on TV.
In very general terms, there are two main approaches to quad:
- The “cinematic” or “theatrical” approach where the main sounds are in front of you, and additional special effects or atmospherics are spread out around and behind you. This works particularly well when the performer is front of the audience in the normal layout, as their attention is already facing forward.
- The “all equal” approach where there is no strict “front” or “behind’: instead, sounds are placed and panned around all four speakers equally. This can work in a typical performer-in-front live performance layout, but can be even better when presented “in the round” with the performer in the middle of the audience.
Mixing in quad is both exhilarating and tricky. It gives you even more space to spread out your instruments so listeners can follow each musical line, and allows for fun effects such as a sound originating in one location and the re-appearing through echo or reverb in another. However, it also takes a bit of work to create a good balance, especially considering only a small portion of your audience is going to be in the “sweet spot” roughly the same distance from all four speakers.
When I know I will be presenting a set in quad, I set up a quad environment with four small powered speakers at home, and spend a lot of time moving around the room to see how the mix works at different locations. I’ve written about my quad mixing experiences in a couple of newsletters already this year, including my initial experiments and what I (as well as Sine Mountain and Jill Fraser) learned after actually playing in quad.
(And to those setting up quad speakers in a venue: Keep that listener experience in mind. I recently played an event with two quad stages, and in both cases it was physically impossible for the audience to be in the middle of the sound field: for one stage, the center was the front edge of the stage; for another, the mixing station was on a large riser in the middle of the room, which also blocked your ability to hear one or two of the speakers depending where you stood.)
When it comes to quad and your modular, there are very few quadraphonic modules; in most cases you will be taking your individual mono and stereo voices and positioning them across the four speakers.
Buchla has long been at the forefront of quad performance, arguably starting with their Model 204 Quad Spatial Director; other now-defunct modular companies such as Wavemakers also created quad panning equipment (photo above from John Loffink’s collection).
In the Eurorack world, Koma was ahead of the curve with their Poltergeist Quadraphonic Mixer; unfortunately it was discontinued before the recent quad resurgence. However, there are a few modules to look at, such as the Intellijel Planar for joystick-controlled quad panning with CV recorder, the u-he CVilization which allows automated or CV-able panning of up to four sources, ADDAC 803 Quadraphonic Spatializer, and Shakmat Modular’s Aeolus Seeds quadraphonic processor and Aeolus Mixer quad summing mixer.
Franck Martin of Peachy Mango – one of the leading proponents of quad sound in the modular world – has an article and video on his website about quad in the Eurorack world.
Releasing Music in Surround
This is the subject I know the least about, and plan to study this winter. There are two different approaches which have caught my personal attention:
- QUARK (the Quadraphonic Universally Accessible Resource Kit): This plugin will take your four discrete quadraphonic channels and encode it into a stereo mix that can decoded back into quad for those who have a four-speaker listening environment. This means it can work with any stereo release format, with the added bonus that a sound geek with the correct tools and enough speakers can convert it back into its original quad.
- Dolby Atmos: This is a more advanced technology that can take multiple channels and encode it into two-channel delivery, which can then be decoded on a variety of different surround sound systems (quad, 5.1, etc.). Apple in particular is pushing its adoption, building it most famously into their AirPod Pro, and highlighting songs delivered in this format (which they call Apple Spatial Audio) on their Apple Music service. They have built Atmos support into their Logic DAW software (with more following) to help musicians create the special multichannel stream.
A third alternative I tried and didn’t like was converting my quad masters into a binaural encoded stereo stream for headphone playback. I thought this would provide the widest compatibility – no special decoder required – but I was disappointed with how much the binaural process changed the sound of my music.
Again, Franck Martin has come to the rescue of his fellow musicians by creating a playlist of videos of his own experiences in surround sound, and in particular releasing music in the Dolby Atmos / Apple Spatial Audio format – this will be my homework as I try to learn more about it myself. He also talks about ambisonic, binaural, streaming quad sound, and more.
This entire subject is definitely one that is still evolving. But with more music festivals offering quad stages, and more ways for a listener to experience surround sound, it’s a way to make your music stand out – plus is very creative and fun to work in.
Alias Zone Updates
After a delay, my new album – Water Stories – should be out by December on the Alias Zone Bandcamp page, and soon thereafter on streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music. I am aiming to have it ready for Bandcamp Friday on December 2 at “name your own price” (as I don’t want money to get in the way of sharing it with you). The image above is a teaser of what the cover will look like; that is a piece of physical mixed media I art I created called “Once, There Was Water.”
In addition to streaming, I am considering making a limited number of physical CDs for each release. I have a survey currently going on with a public Patreon post about what you would prefer for a physical release (if anything at all) – I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.
Learning Modular Updates
Since I was talking about mid/side (MS) encoding in the main article above, I’ve decided to share a video and post I had previously created for my Patreon subscribers about why I like to capture all of my field recordings in MS when possible, and how this allows me to play with their stereo width using utility mixers in my modular. The video from that post is above; click here for the full post.
Patreon Updates
As I mentioned before, the Learning Modular Patreon Channel is the “access all areas” pass to what I’m currently working on and learning about. Posts I’ve written since the previous newsletter include:
- Electronic Music Genres: There are dozens to hundreds of sub-genres listed for electronic dance music (EDM)…but less than a handful for all other styles. Both seem off the mark. (Free to everyone.)
- Going Hybrid Live, Part 8: Modulation: Reviewing the envelope generators and continuously-varying control voltage generators in my performance system, why I chose them, and how I use them – in short, it’s to pretend I have more hands while playing! (For +5v and above subscribers.)
- Going Hybrid Live, Part 9: Effects & External Sources: I finished the survey of the modules and plugins I’ve been performing with this year, with a focus on effects. (For +5v and above subscribers.)
- A DAW-less, four-channel percussion + effects case: When I was preparing to perform as a duo with Jim Coker in his ensemble MeridianAlpha, I decided it would be easier to create a separate satellite case to play along with his composition, than to re-patch on the fly. Here is what went into it. (For +5v and above subscribers.)
Click here to check out the index of all past articles I’ve written for Patreon. I give two months free for an annual subscription, so for $50/year at the +5v level (a lot cheaper than most modules) you can get access to all of those, as well as all the new articles I write over the next year.
Upcoming Events
This year, I performed live nine times (plus once on video, for Synthfest France). For those, I composed four different 20-30 minute sets, plus a human-driven generative performance that lasted three hours(!). Three of those performances were in quad. It’s been a very creative time.
This winter, I’m going to take advantage of a forced break from the road (more on that below) and spend more time in the studio, editing those performance into album tracks while also working on new material.
Then starting next spring, I hope to start working in some more live performances into the schedule. Where do you think I should play? I open to gigs from festivals to living room concerts – including bundling those together on the same trip. Let me know your thoughts; introductions to potential venues are also always welcome.
Meanwhile, I’m in the early stages of booking a mini-tour of southern Arizona & California in early April, leading up to the NAMM show. Already confirmed is Saturday April 8, when Jill Fraser and I will be playing at FurstWurld in Joshua Tree, California. Make a weekend of it, shopping for vintage funk in nearby Yucca Valley, and enjoying one of the more unusual of our national parks in Joshua Tree. Dates before and after that are also tentatively booked; more later.
One More Thing…
I’ve had osteoarthritis in both thumbs for some time now. This past year it got so bad in my left hand that I had to modify how I played – for example, engaging aftertouch on a normal electronic keyboard caused pain; I’ve moved to pad-based controllers as a result.
As a result, I had the left hand operated on, just a few days after my last gig of the year at Synthplex. I’m in the early stages of a recovery that will supposedly take three months to get full function back (and longer for the pain to recede), but so far I’m very encouraged. (For those interested in the details, I posted about it on Facebook.)
That means for the next three months I am barred from lifting heavy objects, which would include the cases for my live performance system. However, I can still use a computer, and should be well enough to patch my studio modular soon – so I’m looking forward to using this winter to rest up, release some new albums, and learn some new things. Which, of course, I will share here, as well as on my Patreon channel.
Thank you again for your support throughout the year – I really appreciate it. I hope to reward it with more musical adventures next year. | https://learningmodular.com/2022-11-newsletter/ |
Before August 14th we’ll be updating the CS:GO Beta, and along with a ton of tweaks and fixes the update will include a massive change to sound spatialization. In order to understand how this system changed, it helps to take a quick look at how sound is handled in earlier versions of Counter-Strike. Counter-Strike 1.6 produces stereo sound using a particular cross-fading algorithm for both headphones and speakers. In Counter-Strike: Source (and until recently in CS:GO), spatialization is optimized for 5.1 surround speakers, and that signal is down-mixed when players use headphones or stereo speakers. Each game uses different algorithms for cross-fading, and there are advantages and disadvantages in each case.
In the upcoming CS:GO update, we’re unlocking options for players to configure their own preferred speaker placement and cross-fading algorithms. We’re also providing presets optimized for headphones, speakers, and surround-sound setups. This should provide a better default experience for new players, while allowing advanced players to customize the system to match their own playing style. | http://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2012/08/3805/ |
Welcome to the fifth entry in our SITREP developer diary series! Up until this point, we have tackled community questions regarding visuals—environments, lighting, equipment, and gear. There’s still more work that we’re doing in these areas that we’d like to discuss in the future, but there is another fundamental puzzle piece of Six Days we haven’t addressed. We’ve briefly touched on audio in previous diaries, but now’s the time for a deep dive. Today, we want to answer the questions, “How does Six Days sound,” and “Why?”Sgt Adam Banotai wrote:The first time rounds come back at you and you realize you're in a firefight, it's sensory overload. It's an overwhelming and almost indescribable feeling. You are terrified. You feel like you're about to die at any moment.
Please remember that all assets shown are currently a work-in-progress.
Audio authenticity is paramount to the tactical shooter experience we’re building. The Second Battle of Fallujah was a three-dimensional, 360-degree battlefield - and hearing is the only three-dimensional, 360-degree sense we have. Audio that differs based on type, distance, and environment gives players the feedback needed to make sound tactical decisions and complete the mission. In Six Days, you can hear when a PKM is bunkered down in a house across the street, when an enemy reloads his AK-47 in the room next door, and when someone knocks over a chair deep into the house you’re clearing. However, authenticity doesn’t come without its own unique set of challenges—especially when tackling audio in a video game.
The first, and arguably biggest, question we have as a team is where to draw the line. As we set out to create an authentic retelling of the hundreds of stories we’ve been told, our initial instinct was to design with a 1:1 correlation in mind. This approach makes perfect sense on paper, but it’s just not feasible in practice (at least, as far as audio is concerned). For example, mirroring gunshots and explosions entirely to their real-world counterparts would cause permanent hearing damage to our players. It’s important to remember that we’re not creating a physical carbon copy of what happened in Fallujah. Our goal is to tell the true stories of those who experienced the battle. Here, the key word is experience.
Secondly, you can’t always predict the future in game audio. Sounds are more dynamic when players are involved, with a number of outcomes that don’t have to be accounted for in television and movies. In a movie, a character can walk onscreen and shoot his gun. The team records the footsteps and gunshots to match the actions onscreen. In games, footsteps and gunshots happen in real-time, at will. Here, the possibilities are multiplicative—actions can happen at any time, on any surface, at any distance, at any speed, etc. And, they can even be repeated. If you have 3 movement speeds, 20 surfaces, and 10 variations each, that’s 600 footstep sounds (and that’s just an example for one character). It takes tens of thousands of sounds to make a game the size of Six Days in Fallujah.
Finally, let’s talk about the challenges associated with producing a final game mix. Unlike movies, we can’t plan for specific scenes. Instead, we plan for scenarios. We do this in two steps: first, we track a variety of gameplay parameters that are constantly changing (eg, player location and movement, player heath state and damage, sound sources, etc). Next, we set the audio engine to update the mix in response to these parameters. Our solution boils down to programming the game to mix itself intelligently as it is being played.
Our reference materials for audio are sourced from two places: documentary footage and high-fidelity recordings. Our research team provides footage of every sound in the game, usually from the battle itself. These include voices, footsteps, weapons, equipment, vehicles, and even animals. These references help us understand how often the sounds occurred, how they sounded at the typical distances and perspectives, how they interacted with the environments in Fallujah, and how they mixed with the soundscape of the battle.Developer Comment wrote:We created a unique parameter called “Enclosedness” in response to the stochasticity of our Procedural Architecture. In most games, player locations can be tracked because these are static on the map. Since we don’t have that luxury in Six Days, we constantly track the closest surfaces around the player in every direction and combine the results into a single value. With the Enclosedness parameter, we can reduce the sounds of distant combat as you creep through a tight alley, calm the wind as you duck into a corner, or make cramped rooms sound more claustrophobic than spacious ones.
The biggest flaw with this historical footage is the sound quality. These were mostly captured by the handheld digital camcorders of the early 2000s, which had microphones that were not designed to capture the sounds of battle. The recordings imparted a unique coloration and distortion to the sounds. Luckily, the coloration is consistent. Like learning to read a person’s cursive, we’ve learned to listen past the unique qualities of the camcorder mics and decipher what it really would have sounded like.
That’s where the second type of audio reference comes in. For nearly all the weapons, equipment, and vehicles in Six Days, the audio team has been able to source authentic, high-quality recordings. If camcorder footage is a letter written in cursive, then these recordings are an email typed in Times New Roman. They are recorded with equipment that captures the full range of frequencies without any perceptible distortion, from multiple angles, distances, and perspectives. We compare the recordings with the documentary footage and manipulate them to play in game.
Our community might be surprised to learn that in-house recording at the studio is used as a last resort. Sound libraries are vast and accessible, but there have been cases in which we needed something very specific to our project. Sometimes it’s something boring like a piece of metal debris falling on a sand dune. Other times it’s more exciting and unique, like authentic Iraqi-Arabic voice acting. While many of our recordings are just for reference, some have more specific applications.
When covering reverb in games, there is an apparent cinematic quality. The reverbs give a sense of how large spaces are and what materials they are made of. Their sounds have a certain subtlety and beauty, and the reverbs in Six Days initially followed this common practice. However, we found this wasn’t meeting our authenticity standards.
The environments in Fallujah are boxy and full of hard, reflective surfaces, and we made the weapon fire excite the environment reflections much more than typical shooters. It makes the sound of gunfire in our environments overwhelming and oppressive. It’s the opposite of subtle and beautiful, and it sounds different than any other game.Developer Comment wrote:A member of the team who frequents indoor shooting ranges kept telling us, 'You know, that isn’t actually how guns sound indoors. They are way more bassy and overpowering.' He took us to an indoor shooting range and we took our recording equipment, and our recordings from that day fundamentally changed how we handle interior reverbs.
The spatial environment also provides important clues for localizing the sound source, especially when you’re under fire. If you listen closely, reverb can help pinpoint sounds—tight reflections tell us it’s a small room, loose reflections tell us it’s outside, and long reverberant tails tell us it’s a large interior like a large hall. Each space in Six Days has realistic acoustic characteristics that help inform the location of sound sources.Cpl Dane Thompson wrote:And he was like ‘I don’t know, I think we're in a bad spot, they’re shooting at me, and I don’t know where they’re at.’ And I turn around and look, and there's literally like ‘pow! pow!’ like all around him. Bullets snapping. Like ‘pop pop pop!’ I see it in the dirt. And I was like ‘damn we are in a bad spot, I think they see us or something.’ But he never moved. He stayed right there the entire time, kneeling over me, until I said, ‘all right, it's time to go.
With Procedural Architecture, no individual sound space exists in a vacuum. They are created and recreated in new ways relative to each other as the environment changes. With our audio engine, the reverbs of each space feed into each other, creating a unique acoustic signature for each building that Procedural Architecture creates. When a reverberant space has an opening—like when a door or window is open, or a wall has a hole blasted through it—we call that an “acoustic portal.” Sounds and their reverberations diffract through acoustic portals in realistic ways. This means you can track down an Insurgent’s footsteps deep into a building or follow the sound of your friend’s voice through doorways.
A common community question related to audio is how VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) communication works in Six Days in Fallujah, and we’re finally tackling this today. Success in our game depends on coordinating with your team, and in-game squad communication becomes essential in cooperative modes.
Our voice communication works just like any other sound in the game—it’s positioned in 3D space, gets quieter as you walk away, uses environmental reverb, and diffracts through doors and windows and around corners. When you talk to your teammates in-game, you have instant feedback about where they are around you. When your team gets separated, you can use the radio. Holding the radio button sends your voice over the team radio channel. Your fireteam will hear your voice in their radios, and anyone in close-proximity will still hear you speaking with your natural voice. But be warned, your character only has two hands. You cannot talk on the radio and perform other actions—like firing your weapon—at the same time.
Filtering of the sound source makes a difference here, too. When your buddy yells from across the street, he’s not only quieter but also slightly muffled. It gets even more muffled if he turns away from you or if objects come between his mouth and your ears.
The chaos of battle also impacts your ability to communicate. Most games duck loud sounds so you can always hear voice comms, but Six Days isn’t like most games. If you’re near loud sounds like gunshots or explosions, you’re not going to be able to hear your teammates.
Let’s move to audio configurations and hardware. One of the upsides of real time mixing systems is that the mix is agnostic of speaker configuration up until the last step of the process. Each sound in the game is positioned in space, not panned to a specific speaker. When the game runs, it determines what kind of speaker setup you have and performs appropriate panning for stereo, 5.1, 7.1, 7.1.2, and all the other industry standard configurations. You’ll always get the correct panning for your speaker setup no matter if you’re playing on headphones, on your TV, or on a surround sound system. We also have a mono output mode, so players with hearing loss in one ear aren't at a disadvantage.
While the best way to experience Six Days audio is on a great pair of stereo headphones or a high-end surround sound system, you’ll always get the highest fidelity of 360-degree surround sound that your system can play back, no matter what you use.Developer Comment wrote:When you choose the headphone mix in the audio options, the game detects whether you are using stereo headphones or virtual surround headphones. If you have stereo headphones, we enable our built-in 3D audio tech. If you want to use your favorite pair of surround sound gaming headphones or a surround sound speaker system, the game lets your system handle the spatialization instead.
Traditionally, audio is infamous for being one of the last components to be completed on a project. This is because audio can be found in almost every step in the long chain of game development. And, it relies heavily on the completion of the feature it’s designed to support. While we can’t change dependencies on audio, we can take a proactive approach to audio design in the development process. And, that’s exactly what we have done.
In the early days of the project, our audio team compiled lists of every potential sound that might be featured in the game. Sounds were specifically made malleable, modular, and data-driven to compliment any changes that would be made as features were implemented. For example, every gun could be heard from any distance and perspective, every part of each piece of equipment could make a sound, every surface could interact with every other surface in several ways, etc. Instead of reacting to new features, our audio team was ready and waiting for them. Now, the team is tying up loose ends and refining the work that’s been done over the years. Testing, tuning, bug fixes, audits, and mixing are the names of the game.
As we look forward to the road to release, we want to remind our community of a few things when it comes to audio: firstly, audio can only be experienced in time. You have to take the time to experience it, or you won’t experience it at all. Secondly, our brains interpret audio based on context. You can’t listen to an isolated sound because the rest of the game audio changes how you hear it. You can’t listen to an audio recording of the game because what we see influences what we hear. You can’t even watch a video recording because you interpret the audio differently when you experience the stress of playing the game. Audio is one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal, and we’re excited for our community to experience the entire soundscape for themselves. | https://forums.sixdays.com/main/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=462&sid=0457b2d4aabdcc4aab2624cd4eea38cc |
Yahoo previous Year Placement paper, Yahoo latest Written test Pattern, Yahoo Selection pattern, Yahoo Latest Company Profile, Yahoo previous year question paper with solution, Yahoo Aptitude Questions with Answer, Yahoo Technical Questions, Yahoo Job interview Tips,
YAHOO PAPER ON 17th AUGUST,2011
quantitative
1.If g (0)=g (1)=1 And g (n)= g (n-1) + g (n -2)
find g (6);
Q like this one. just know the method
Sol:
G(0) = 1
G(1) = 1
G(2) = G(1) + g(0) = 2
G(3) = g(2) + g(1) = 3
G(4) = g(3) + g(2) = 5
G(5) = g(4) + g(3) = 8
G(6) = g(5) +g (4) = 13
2.A plane moves from 9?N40?E to 9?N40?W. If the plane starts at 10 am and takes 8 hours to reach the destination, find the local arrival time?
Q like this one. just know the method
Ans: The time is calculated on the basis of longitude.
(Based on sunrise)
Sun rises earlier in calcutta than in Mumbai. The 40 degrees east and 40 degress west are calculated form 0 degrees.
The plane has travelled westwards by 40+ 40 = 80 Degrees. (WEST) For each degree there is a difference of 4 Minutes. The difference in timings is 320 Minutes behind. As per the starting point time 10.00 AM the flight should have reached at 6.00 PM.
Reducing 320 Minutes from it we get 12.40 PM local time at the destination
3.Given $ means Tripling and % means change of sign then,find the value of $%$6-%$%6
Q like this one. just know the method
ans. ((3)*(-1)*(3)*6 ) - ((-1)*(3)*(-1)*6)
4.The size of a program is N. And the memory occupied by the program is given by M = 4000 sqr_root(N). If the size of the program is increased by 1% then how much % inc in memory?
ans. (4000(sqr_root(1.01N)-sqr_root(N)))/(4000sqr_root(N))
5.what is the largest prime number in 8 digit number?
ans . 251
6.the word ****12******** was given.they asked us to do change 1st 2nd,3rd 4th,so on.then they asked what will be 10th letter from right? Q like this one. just know the method
ans. 2
7.they asked the temperature problem.it was same as previous papers.the ratio was -t*t/6+4t+12. it is like if t is the diff in temp. then find % change in temp from 5 to 9 pm.
Q like this one. just know the method
8.the ques on a man,a woman and a boy finish work together in 6 days.man takes 10 days, woman takes 24 days then how much boy will take? ans. 40 days
9.the matrix of a(7,9) was given.the address of the first byte of a(1,1)=3000.it takes 4 bytes to store the number.then calculate the address of the last byte of a(5,8).
ans .3000+(4*4*9)+(4*8) row major form
10.modulo(373,7)+round(5.8)+truncat(7.2)-round(3.4) = ?
ans . 12 = 2+6+7-3
11.the bucket size is 10KB.it takes 0.0001 KB/milisec to fill bucket.the bucket takes 100 or 1000 milisec to reach to destination.it takes 100 milisec to pass acknowledgement from dest to source.so calculate how much time will it take to pass N KB ,write formula. Q like this one. just know the method
12.1234 in wich system for number xxx number?
Q like this one. just know the method
13.they asked us to match the pairs.they were like
basmati-wheat not type of
scooter-vehicle type of
etc
4 choices
14. Complete the series 3,5,9,__,35,65
ANS. 17
15.If CYRNFR is coded as PLEASE then TNVA can be
coded as ---------
ANS. GAIN
16. A power unit is there by the bank of the river of 900 meters width. A cable is made from power unit to power a plant opposite to that of the river and 3000mts away from the power unit. The cost of the cable below water is Rs. 5/- per meter and cost of cable on the bank is Rs.9/- per meter. Find the total of laying the cable. Q like this one. just know the method
ans . =(900*5)+((3000-900)*9)
17.Select the odd one out.
a. Java b. Lisp c.Smalltalk d.Eiffel.
ANS . LISP
18.Select the odd one out
a. Oracle b. Linux c. Ingress d. DB2
ANS . LINUX
19.Find the physical quantity represented by (FORCE * LENGTH)/(VELOCITY*VELOCITY)?
ANS . d sqr/ t
20.Given the length of the 3 sides of a triangle. Find the one that is impossible?
(HINT : sum of smaller 2 sides is greater than the other one which is larger)
21.Find the singularity matrix from a given set of matrices?
(Hint det(A)==0)
22.Which of the following set of numbers has the highest Standard deviation?
7,0,7,0,7,0
-7,-7,-7,-7,-7,-7.
7,-7,7,-7,7,-7
-7,-7,-7,-7,-7,-7
ans. 3rd
23. A 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
B 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0
C 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0
(AuB)nC = ?
ans. u is OR, n in AND
24. Some Venn diagram was given about english, hindi and bengali speeking opeple. 3 sums were asked easy manageable. about % of bengali speeking people not speaking hindi but speaking english. etc
25.what shape will be obtained using these values
X Y
0 0.001
10 1.02
100 1.72
1000 3.00
9999 4.72
ans . log x
26.some BAR CHART and pie chart given & 2 or 3 question were asked fairly easy. bar was about poeple joining each yr and pie chart about % of poeple. about which yr had max growth %, like that.
27.based on deg, minutes and radians Q. just remember 1 deg = 60 min and 1 min = 60 sec. Q such that u have 2 carry over.
28.graph given and asked 2 write equation. it was some x cube graph.
29.which of the following is power of 3
ans. add the digits. 2 will divide. divide the numbers thrice with 3 time, 1 will not.
30.which fo the following are orthogonal pairs a)
3i+2j b) i+j c)2i-3j d) 7i+j
a and c
31.if A,B,C are the the mechanisms used separately to reduce the wastage of fule by 30%,20%,10% . what will be the fule economy if they were used combine.
ans. =70/100 * 80/100 * 90/100 * 100
32. faces, sides, edges of a cude asked. | http://placementadda.com/placement-papers/all-papers/?p=1057 |
In the previous post we had introduced the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) as a method to perform the spectral analysis of a time domain signal. We now discuss an important property of the DFT, its spectral resolution i.e. its ability to resolve two signals with similar spectral content.
Initially one might think that increasing the sampling frequency would increase the spectral resolution but this totally incorrect. In fact if the sampling frequency is increased, keeping the number of time domain samples to be the same, the resolution actually decreases. So how do we calculate the spectral resolution. One simple way is to calculate the difference between two frequency bins as fs/(N-1) or 1/(N-1)Ts. Simply put the resolution in the frequency domain is the inverse of the sample length in the time domain.
So let us now calculate the DFT of two closely spaced sine waves keeping the sampling frequency to be the same and changing the number of time domain samples (only the result for N=64 shown here). We again list down the code used to calculate the DFT.
clear all close all fm1=100; fm2=120; fs=1000; Ts=1/fs; N=64; t=0:Ts:(N-1)*Ts; x1=cos(2*pi*fm1*t); x2=cos(2*pi*fm2*t); x=x1+x2; W=exp(-j*2*pi/N); n=0:N-1; k=0:N-1; X=x*(W.^(n'*k)); plot(k/N,abs(X)) xlabel ('Normalized Frequency') ylabel ('X')
We first do some quick math to find the spectral resolution.
fs/(N-1)=1000/(64-1)=15.87 Hz
Now the two tones are space 20 Hz apart (100 Hz and 120 Hz), so we can predict that the two tones would be detected successfully. The result of the DFT operation on the composite signal is shown below.
It is observed that although the two tones are detected, they are not exactly at the desired frequencies (0.10 and 0.12). Secondly the amplitude of the two tones is different although the time domain signals had equal amplitude. Both these phenomenon are due to the fact that we only have a limited number of frequency bins (N=64) due to which the resulting spectrum is only an estimate of the true spectrum.
There are better techniques than DFT to separate two closely spaced sinusoids and these are known as super resolution spectral techniques and would be discussed some other time. | http://www.raymaps.com/index.php/tag/spectrum/ |
Businesses typically experience both voluntary and involuntary turnover. Voluntary turnover occurs when an employee chooses to leave a company. Involuntary turnover, on the other hand, results from an employee leaving the business for a reason other than a personal decision. Tracking the difference between voluntary and involuntary turnover is an effective human resources tool used by businesses to determine why employees leave the business.
Determine the number of employees who left the business voluntarily during the past year. For example, assume 25 employees left the country for voluntary reasons.
Determine the average number of employees the business employed during the previous 12 months. For example, assume the business employed an average of 1,000 employees.
Divide the number of employees that voluntarily left the business by the average number of employees. Continuing the same example, 25 /1000 = 2.5 percent. This figure represents the voluntary turnover rate for the business.
Determine the number of employees that left the business for involuntary reasons during the past year. For example, assume 100 employees left the country for involuntary reasons.
Determine the average number of employees the business employed during the same period of time. Continuing the same example, the business employed an average of 1,000 employees.
Divide the number of employees that involuntarily left the business by the average number of employees. Continuing the same example, 100 /1000 = 10 percent. This figure represents the involuntary turnover rate for the business.
McGew, Matt. "How to Calculate Voluntary vs. Involuntary Turnover Rate." Small Business - Chron.com, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/calculate-voluntary-vs-involuntary-turnover-rate-18955.html. Accessed 17 April 2019. | https://smallbusiness.chron.com/calculate-voluntary-vs-involuntary-turnover-rate-18955.html |
How long can it take?
Microbiology Serial Dilution Calculations archive
- WORKING DILUTION PROBLEMS
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How To Make Serial Dilution Calculations
To make 1dm 3 (1000 cm 3) of the diluted solution you would take 100 cm 3 of the original solution and mix with 900 cm 3 of water. The total volume is 1dm 3 but only 1/10th as much sodium hydroxide in this diluted solution, so the concentration is 1/10th, 0.1 mol/dm 3. To make only 100 cm 3 of the diluted solution you would dilute 10cm 3 by mixing it with 90 cm 3 of water. How to do this in
- A dilution series is a succession of step dilutions, each with the same dilution factor, where the diluted material of the previous step is used to make the subsequent dilution. This is how standard curves for ELISA can be made. To make a dilution series, use the following formulas:
- The process of bringing about step-by-step dilution of a solution is called serial dilution. In this process, the dilution factor remains constant throughout. Serial dilution finds its applications in physics, pharmacology, biochemistry, etc.
- Serial dilutions are used to calculate the concentration of microorganisms. As it would usually be impossible to actually count the number of microorganisms in a sample, the sample is diluted and plated to get a reasonable number of colonies to count.
- Although not a serial dilution, the below is an example of a two-fold dilution. Problem #4: To make a two-fold dilution of 10 mL of solution, what amount of solvent would you use and how would you do this? | http://kelownaautosport.com/victoria/how-to-make-serial-dilution-calculations.php |
Gravestone decay and atmospheric concentrations of SO2 are used to determine deposition velocities in two adjacent cemeteries in the Birmingham, UK, Jewellery Quarter. Warstone Lane cemetery is essentially open to the environment with only a limited number of trees. Key Hill Cemetery, located within 100 m, has a continuous canopy of 100 + year-old London plane; gravestone decay at Key Hill is 50% less than at Lane for the period after 1960. This difference is used to calculate canopy resistance as a residual term assuming that aerodynamic and quasilaminar resistances are generally similar at both sites. Calculated resistances range from approximately 300 to 900 sm− 1 and are consistent with estimated and calculated values from a wide variety of studies.
|Original language||English (US)|
|Pages (from-to)||551-556|
|Number of pages||6|
|Journal||Science of the Total Environment|
|Volume||578|
|DOIs|
|State||Published - Feb 1 2017|
Bibliographical noteFunding Information:
Partial funding for this study was provided by the University of Minnesota Duluth through discretionary funds provided by University Honors, the Swenson College of Science and Engineering, and the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. Special thanks to Tony Sames, Liz Ross, and Diane and Chris Rance, for their logistical support, help, and friendship. John Pastor and anonymous reviewers provided valuable comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier B.V. | https://experts.umn.edu/en/publications/gravestone-decay-and-the-determination-of-deciduous-bulk-canopy-r |
All content is at your fingertips...
You can easily calculate the calorie and nutritional values of Fat, goose for different amounts (tbsp, cup) by clicking on the CALCULATE button. You can analyze your nutrition history by adding food into your nutrition diary.
Fat, goose contains 900 calories per 100 grams. This value corresponds to about 45% of the daily energy expenditure of an adult burning about 2000 calories a day.
100 grams of Fat, goose contains 0 grams of carbohydrate, 0 grams of protein and 99.8 grams of fat. It consist of 0% carbohydrate, 0% protein and 100% fat. 0% of total calories of the food are from carbohydrate, 0% are from protein, 100% are from fat.
100 grams of Fat, goose is approximately 0% of daily carbohydrate needs, 0% of protein needs and 154% of fat needs of an adult consuming about 2000 calories of energy a day.
Recommended percentages are 50-55% carbohydrate, 15-20% protein and 20-30% fat. Total nutrition content should be close to these percentages for healthy eating.
100 gram(s)
|Amount||100 g|
|Calorie||900 kcal|
|Carbohydrate, by difference||0 g|
|Protein||0 g|
|Total lipid (fat)||99.8 g|
|Water||0.2 g|
|Fiber, total dietary||0 g|
|Calcium, Ca||0 mg|
|Iron, Fe||0 mg|
|Magnesium, Mg||0 mg|
|Phosphorus, P||0 mg|
|Potassium, K||0 mg|
|Sodium, Na||0 mg|
|Zinc, Zn||0 mg|
|Selenium, Se||0.2 µg|
|Vitamin C, total ascorbic acid||0 mg|
|Thiamin||0 mg|
|Riboflavin||0 mg|
|Niacin||0 mg|
|Pantothenic acid||0 mg|
|Vitamin B-6||0 mg|
|Folate, total||0 µg|
|Folic acid||0 µg|
|Folate, food||0 µg|
|Folate, DFE||0 µg|
|Vitamin B-12||0 µg|
|Vitamin A, IU||0 IU|
|Vitamini A, RAE||0 µg|
|Retinol||0 µg|
|Vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol)||2.7 mg|
|Fatty acids, total saturated||27.7 g|
|Fatty acids, total monounsaturated||56.7 g|
|Fatty acids, total polyunsaturated||11 g|
|Cholesterol||100 mg|
|Ash||0 g|
|Source||USDA|
Some of other foods in the food group Fats and Oils are listed below. You can learn how many calories are contained in food by clicking on the relevant food and reach other nutritional values, especially carbohydrate, protein and fat. | https://www.caloriesta.com/en/calories-in-food/fat-goose?i=4576 |
Last week, a resolution on big data was adopted under the auspices of the 36th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners (hereafter: “ICDPPC”). After earlier guiding documents released this year by, among others, the Executive Office of the President of the United States, the Information Commissioner’s Office (UK), the Working Party 29 and the European Data Protection Supervisor, this resolution is yet another confirmation of the attention big data gets from regulators worldwide.
During the yearly conference national, regional and local data protection authorities gather to discuss privacy-related concerns and challenges with legal experts but also with actors from the economy, the industry or civil society. Some sessions are accessible for everybody, others are reserved to data protection authorities only. These closed sessions result in the adoption of resolutions on topical issues which reflect the point of view of the “community of data protection authorities”.
This year one of these topical subjects was big data, i.e. the ability to store and analyse massive amounts of data. The notion is often described by referring to the 3 V’s:
- Volume (very large datasets are used);
- Variety (data from different sources are often combined); and
- Velocity (both in terms of collection and processing of the data).
According to the ICDPPC, big data entails a new way of looking at data, to a large extent involves the reuse of data and its value may lie in its ability to make predictions. The ICDPPC also notes that use of big data is expected to bring substantial benefits for society.
However, the ICDPPC points out that when personal information is implicated, big data raises some important issues with regard to privacy, protection against discriminatory outcomes and the right to equal treatment. Notably, big data seems to challenge some key privacy protection principles such as the principle of purpose limitation according to which personal data must be collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not be further processed in a way incompatible with those purposes or data minimisation, i.e. the data collected should not be excessive in relation to the purpose and not be retained longer than necessary.
In its September 2014 Statement on big data the Working Party 29, a European advisory body on data protection legislation and composed of members of the EU national data protection authorities, confirmed that the EU legal framework for data protection is applicable to the processing of personal data in big data operations. Whilst acknowledging that the application in practice of key data protection principles such as data minimisation and purpose limitation might require some innovative thinking, the Working Party 29 stated not to believe that a substantial review of these principles, as asserted by some stakeholders, is necessary to enable big data operations to take place.
The resolution of the ICDPPC holds a comparable view stating that “the protection provided by these privacy principles is more important than ever at a time when an increasing amount of information is collected about us. The principles provide the foundation for safeguards against extensive profiling in an ever increasing array of new contexts. A watering down of key privacy principles, in combination with more extensive use of Big Data, is likely to have adverse consequences for the protection of privacy and other fundamental rights.”
The legal concerns relating to profiling seem to be a recurring theme for the ICDPPC taking into account its Uruguay Declaration on Profiling (2012) and its Warsaw Resolution on Profiling (2013).
In concrete terms, the Mauritius resolution on big data from last week calls upon all parties making use of big data:
- To respect the principle of purpose specification.
- To limit the amount of data collected and stored to the level that is necessary for the intended lawful purposes.
- To obtain, where appropriate, a valid consent from the data subjects in connection with use of personal data for analysis and profiling purposes.
- To be transparent about which data is collected, how the data is processed, for which purposes it will be used and whether or not the data will be distributed to third parties.
- To give individuals appropriate access to the data collected about them and also access to information and decisions made about them. Individuals should also be informed of the sourcesof the various personal data and, where appropriate, be entitled to correct their information, and to be given effective tools to control their information.
- To give individuals access, where appropriate, to information about the key inputs and thedecision-making criteria (algorithms) that have been used as a basis for development of the profile. Such information should be presented in a clear and understandable format.
- To carry out a privacy impact assessment, especially where the big data analytics involves novel or unexpected uses of personal data.
- To develop and use Big Data technologies according to the principles of Privacy by Design
- To consider where anonymous data will improve privacy protection.
- To exercise great care, and act in compliance with applicable data protection legislation, when sharing or publishing pseudonymised, or otherwise indirectly identifiable, data sets. If the data contains sufficient detail that is, may be linked to other data sets or, contains personal data, access should be limited and carefully controlled.
- To demonstrate that decisions around the use of Big Data are fair, transparent and accountable. In connection with the use of data for profiling purposes, both profiles and theunderlying algorithms require continuous assessment. Injustice for individuals due to fully automated false positive or false negative results should be avoided and a manual assessment of outcomes with significant effects to individuals should always be available. | https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=cac0494d-4ad0-4292-89d4-b3e6ffd10a9b |
Purpose:
This policy is to safeguard personal information entrusted to Wentworth Baptist Church and to comply with the requirements of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and any other applicable legislation.
Privacy Principles:
Wentworth Baptist Church is committed to protecting your privacy. This Statement of Privacy applies to the Wentworth Baptist Church Web site and governs data collection and usage at all Wentworth Baptist Church sites and services; it does not apply to other online or offline sites, products or services. The website of Wentworth Baptist Church is a general audience website, intended for users of all ages. Personal information of all users is collected, used and disclosed as described in this Statement of Privacy.
1. Accountability
Each church Board, Committee, employee, and volunteer is responsible for maintaining and protecting the personal information under its control and is accountable, for such information, to the Board of Directors.
2. Identifying purposes
Wentworth Baptist Church collects and uses personal information about individuals solely for the following purposes:
- To enable communication;
- For the purposes of event registrations;
- To provide income tax receipts; and,
- To meet statutory and regulatory requirements.
Business contact information and certain publicly available information, such as names, addresses and telephone numbers as published in telephone directories, are not considered personal information.
The only circumstance under which personal information may be disclosed to third parties is for the fulfillment of any purposes identified above, or as required by law. Where personal information is disclosed to third parties for the fulfillment of any purposes identified above, the church will make all reasonable efforts to ensure that the third party has appropriate security procedures in place for the protection of the personal information being transferred.
3. Consent
Unless we hear otherwise, the provision of personal information on official church forms constitutes consent for the Church to collect, use and disclose personal information for the purposes stated in this policy. An individual may refuse or withdraw consent at any time, subject to legal and contractual restrictions and reasonable notice. The choice to provide us with personal information is always the individual. Decisions to withhold particular information may impact one’s ability to meet specific requirements for the provision of certain services.
An individual may refuse or withdraw consent by contacting the Church Clerk at [email protected].
4. Limiting collection
The personal information the Church collects shall be limited only to that which is necessary for the purposes identified.
5. Limiting use, disclosure and retention
The personal information the Church collects will only be used or disclosed for the purposes for which it was collected, unless an individual has consented or when it is required or permitted by law. Personal information will be retained only as long as is necessary for the fulfillment of the purposes for which it was collected, or as required by law.
6. Accuracy
Wentworth Baptist Church will make all reasonable efforts to ensure that personal information is as accurate, complete, and current as required for the purposes for which it was collected. If an individual finds any inaccuracies in our information, they should inform us and we will make the appropriate corrections promptly. In some cases, the Church relies on the individual to ensure that certain information, such as mailing address, email address and telephone number, is current, complete and accurate.
7. Safeguards
Wentworth Baptist Church uses appropriate security safeguards to protect personal information from risks such as loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, or alteration. Safeguards include physical, administrative, and electronic security measures.
All employees and volunteers of the Church are required to abide by the privacy standards established herein. They are also required to work within the principles of ethical behaviour, and must follow applicable laws and regulations. In the course of daily operations, access to personal information is restricted to those employees and volunteers whose job responsibilities require them to access it.
8. Openness
Wentworth Baptist Church will provide information to individuals about our policies and procedures relating to the overall management of personal information that is under our control or with regard to specific personal information about which an individual may have a concern.
9. Control Your Personal Information
Wentworth Baptist Church offers its members choices for the collection, use and sharing of personal information. You may notify us of your preferences by emailing us at [email protected]. Please be sure to provide complete account information so we can identify you in our records.
10. Revisions to this policy
Wentworth Baptist Church may occasionally update this Statement of Privacy as necessary. If there are material changes to this Statement or in how Wentworth Baptist Church will use your personal information, Wentworth Baptist Church will prominently post such changes prior to implementing the change. Wentworth Baptist Church encourages you to periodically review this Statement to be informed of how your information is protected. | https://wentworthbaptist.ca/privacy-policy/ |
The Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) has issued guidance on compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which will come into force on May 25, 2018 and replace the existing European data protection framework under the EU Data Protection Directive. The new data privacy regime is expected to result in enhanced transparency, accountability, and individuals’ rights, while optimizing organizational approach to governance and management of data protection as a corporate issue.
The guidance, titled “The GDPR and You, General Data Protection Regulation, Preparing for 2018,” urges all organizations to not delay the preparation for the GDPR and to “immediately start preparing for the implementation of GDPR by carrying out a ‘review and enhance’ analysis of all current or envisaged processing in line with GDPR.” Proper preparation for the GDPR may help avoid regulatory fines, which can range up to €20,000,000 or 4% of total annual global turnover, whichever is greater.
The guidance consists of a checklist that aims to provide clear direction on how organizations can prepare for compliance with the GDPR in Ireland. However, organizations will find it useful when preparing for the GDPR anywhere in Europe. The checklist is organized around the following twelve points.
Becoming Aware
The DPC suggests that data controllers begin identifying areas that could cause compliance issues under the GDPR and review and enhance their risk-management processes.
Becoming Accountable
The GDPR includes an accountability principle that requires organizations to document and be able to demonstrate the ways in which they comply with the GDPR. The DPC suggests that organizations inventory all personal data they hold and examine it by asking themselves the following questions:
- Why are you holding it?
- How did you obtain it?
- Why was it originally gathered?
- How long will you retain it?
- How secure is it, both in terms of encryption and accessibility?
- Do you ever share it with third parties and, if so, on what basis?
This inventory can also be used to identify incorrect data that needs to be amended or track third-party disclosures.
Communicating with Staff and Service Users
The DPS advises organizations to review all of their current data privacy notices (internal and external) and identify and correct any gaps between statements in the notices and the actual data collection and processing practices. Current legislation requires that data collectors notify data subjects of the following, prior to collecting their personal information:
- Identity of the entity collecting personal data.
- Reasons for collecting the data.
- The use(s) the data will be put to.
- To whom the data will be disclosed.
- Whether the data is going to be transferred outside the EU.
The GDPR will require that the following additional information be communicated to individuals in advance of processing:
- The legal basis for processing the data.
- Retention periods.
- Data subjects’ right to complain about any perceived deficiencies in the implementation of the GDPR.
- Whether personal data will be subject to automated decision making.
- Data subjects’ individual rights under the GDPR.
The GDPR requires that this information be provided in concise, easy to understand and clear language.
Personal Privacy Rights
Organizations should ensure that their procedures cover all the rights granted to individuals under the GDPR, which include:
- The right of access to personal data held about the individual.
- The right to have inaccuracies corrected.
- The right to have information erased.
- The right to object to direct marketing.
- The right to restrict the processing of their information, including automated decision-making.
- The right to data portability.
Organizations should be prepared to timely and effectively respond to a request from a data subject wishing to exercise her rights under the GDPR.
How will Access Requests change?
Organizations should update their procedures to ensure that requests are handled under the GDPR timetable. Under the GDPR, an access request will need to be processed without undue delay and, at the latest, must be concluded within one month (compared to the current 40-day period).
Organizations will no longer be able to charge for processing an access request, unless they can show that the cost will be excessive.
Organizations will be able to refuse a request deemed manifestly unfounded or excessive, if they can support their decision with clear refusal policies and procedures demonstrating why the request meets these criteria.
The DPC recommends that organizations who deal with a large number of access requests save on administrative costs by developing systems that allow individuals to easily access their information online.
What we mean when we talk about a “Legal Basis”?
Organizations should identify and document their “legal basis” for the various types of data processing they carry out, particularly those where they rely upon consent as the sole legal basis for processing data. Under the GDPR, individuals will have a stronger right of erasure where their consent is the only justification for processing.
The DPC recommends minimizing data kept on hand, as well as shortening periods of time when personal data is kept in raw format before being anonymized or pseudonymized.
Using Customer Consent as grounds to process data
Organizations who use individual consent when collecting data should review their procedures for seeking, obtaining, and recording that consent, and determine whether they need to make any changes to comply with the GDPR. Under the GDPR, consent must be “freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous.” Consent requires some action, it cannot be inferred from silence or failure to opt out (pre-ticked boxes).
Consent must be verifiable and individuals must be informed in advance of their right to withdraw consent. Because the GDPR requires controllers to be able to demonstrate that consent was given, organizations should review their systems for recording consent to ensure they have an effective audit trail.
Processing Children’s Data
The GDPR introduces special protections for children’s data, particularly in the context of social media and commercial Internet services. Organizations collecting data from underage individuals (as defined by the individual’s state) must ensure that they have adequate systems in place to verify children’s ages and gather consent from parents or guardians. Once again, consent must be verifiable.
Reporting Data Breaches
The GDPR introduces a mandatory 72-hour breach-notification requirement. All breaches must be reported to the appropriate Data Protection Authority (i.e., the DPC in Ireland), unless the data was anonymized or encrypted. Furthermore, breaches that are likely to bring harm to an individual, such as identify theft or breach of confidentiality, must also be reported to the affected individuals. Failure to report a breach when required to do so could result in a fine, in addition to a fine for the breach itself.
The DPC suggests that organizations do not delay assessing the types of data they hold and documenting those that fall within the notification requirement in the event of a breach. Big companies dealing with large volumes of data will need to develop and implement formal policies and procedures for managing data breaches at all levels.
Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) and Data Protection by Design and Default
A DPIA is “the process of systematically considering the potential impact that a project or initiative might have on the privacy of individuals.” The goal of a DPIA is to identify potential privacy issues before they arise and identify ways to mitigate them.
The GDPR introduces mandatory DPIAs for those organizations that are involved in high-risk processing (e.g., those utilizing a new technology, those using a profiling operation that is likely to significantly affect individuals, those undertaking large-scale monitoring of a publicly accessible area).
Where the DPIA indicates that the risks identified in relation to the processing of personal data cannot be fully mitigated, data controllers in Ireland will be required to consult the DPC before engaging in such processing.
The DPC points out that while privacy by design and the minimization of data have always been implicit requirements of the data protection principles, the GDPR enshrines both the principle of “privacy by design” and the principle of “privacy by default” in law. “This means that service settings must be automatically privacy friendly, and requires that the development of services and products takes account of privacy considerations from the outset.”
Data Protection Officers
The GDPR requires some organizations to designate a Data Protection Officer (DPO). Organizations requiring DPOs include those whose activities involve the regular and systematic monitoring of data subjects on a large scale and those who process sensitive personal data on a large scale.
The DPC cautions that it is important that someone at the organization (or an external data protection advisor) take responsibility for data protection compliance and that the chosen DPO has the knowledge, support, and authority to do so effectively.
International Organizations and the GDPR
Multinationals are expected to benefit from the GDPR’s “one-stop shop provision” that will entitle them to deal with one Data Protection Authority, referred to as a Lead Supervisory Authority (LSA), as their single regulating body in the country where they are mainly established.
To determine the location of their “main establishment,” the DPC suggests that international organizations map out where they make their most significant decisions about data processing. The designated LSA will regulate all data protection matters involving that organization. However, the LSA will be required to consult with other concerned Data Protection Authorities on certain matters.
Over the next few months the DPC plans to produce additional guidance and other tools to assist organizations in their preparation for compliance with the GDPR in Ireland. Additional guidance, at European level, is expected to be introduced by the Article 29 Working Party. | https://www.carpedatumlaw.com/2016/12/irish-data-protection-commissioner-issues-gdpr-preparation-checklist/ |
Data Privacy Day (European Data Protection Day) is held every 28 January. It is an international effort to empower individuals and encourage businesses to respect privacy, safeguard data and set up a climate of trustworthiness. On this day we try to raise awareness about the right to personal-data protection and privacy. Most awareness-raising actions speak about the necessary steps to protect personal data in the main social networks, browsers and operating systems.
But this depends on the assumption that individuals want to protect their privacy. This is not necessarily so across the board; teenagers, for example, according to a Pew Research Center Study, are sharing more personal information on social media sites than they did in the past. According to European Barometer 431, a large majority of people (71%) say that providing personal information is an increasing part of modern life and accept that there is no other alternative than to provide it if they want to obtain products of services.
According to Pew’s study “how Americans think about privacy”, control over personal data matters. This was the answer given by 74% of the respondents. But users struggle to understand the nature and scope of data collected about them. This understanding is certainly not helped by the fact that a person would need more than a month each year to read all privacy policies, as Aleecia M. McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor stated in their paper “The Cost of Reading Privacy Policies”. GDPR should help here. Under this new regime consent will have to be given by a clear affirmative act confirming the data subjects’ freely-given, informed and unmistakable readiness for their data to be processed. Organizations will therefore have to smarten up their arrangements for presenting these terms and conditions.
Right now, for the vast majority, the opportunity cost is too high. Individuals do not have the necessary wherewithal to protect their privacy. Even SMEs do not have the proper data-protection resources. Privacy should be just another commodity or service feature, to guarantee data security throughout the whole supply chain. GDPR will change not only the way organizations handle personal data and approach their customers about it, but also how they do business with other organizations.
For that reason, organizations are now bearing higher costs to phase privacy by default into their whole processes from the design onwards. To start with, a data protection officer (DPO) must be designated by controllers and processors of personal information according to GDPR Article 37 when the processing is carried out by a public authority or when “core activities” require “regular and systematic monitoring of data subjects on a large scale” or consist of “processing on a large scale of special categories of data”. Working on the assumption that any company with at least 5,000 employees would need a DPO for such processing, the IAPP estimated that at least 28000 DPOs will be needed to meet GDPR requirements. | https://www.gmv.com/blog_gmv/language/en/data-privacy-day/ |
Privacy Notice for Research Participants
On 25 May 2018 the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) replaced the Data Protection Act. GDPR governs the way that organisations use personal data. Personal data is information relating to an identifiable living individual.
Transparency is a key element of the GDPR and this Privacy Notice is designed to inform you:
- what your rights are under GDPR
- how and why Lagom Strategy uses your personal data for research
- how to contact us if you have questions or concerns about the use of your personal data.
Your rights
One of the aims of the GDPR is to empower individuals and give them control over their personal data.
The GDPR gives you the following rights:
- the right to be informed
- the right of access
- the right to rectification
- the right to erase
- the right to restrict processing
- the right to data portability
- the right to object
- rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling
Please note that many of these rights do not apply when the data is being used for research purposes. We always try to make it clear in project specific participant information sheets and consent forms which of these rights apply and for how long. We will also try to respond to concerns or queries that you may have during the consent process.
If you would like to exercise any of these rights in relation to the Lagom Strategy use of your data, please contact the Lagom Strategy Data Protection Officer (DPO).
How we use your personal data
Lagom Strategy is a digital agency whose focus is on user research for UK public sector services. Data Protection laws allow us to use personal data for research with appropriate safeguards.
We will always tell you about the information we wish to collect from you and how we will use it. We will seek your consent for the collection and use of your data for a specific research project.
For children, young people and other vulnerable groups we will seek consent from a parent, guardian or appropriate adult (e.g. teacher). Full details will be given to you in a Participant Information Sheet.
Collecting and using personal data
All of the research projects run by Lagom Strategy are different and the information we collect will vary. However, our user researchers will only collect information that is essential for the purpose of the research.
Research data is anonymised as quickly as possible after data collection so that individuals cannot be recognised and your privacy is protected.
You will be informed of the date of which withdrawal is no longer possible when you sign up to participate in the research. You will not be able to withdraw your data after this point.
Some data e.g. survey data is frequently collected anonymously so cannot be withdrawn once you have given permission for it to be used.
Where you may be identifiable in a research publication (e.g. an attributable quote or a photograph), we will seek your explicit consent.
Sharing your data
Often our research projects are sponsored by a Government Department, Arm’s Length Body, Charity or other Public Sector Organisation. In order to communicate our research to the sponsor your anonymised data is likely to form part of a research report. Some reports are published on national platforms e.g. gov.uk.
The privacy of your personal data is paramount and will not be disclosed unless there is a justified purpose for doing so. Lagom Strategy never sells personal data to third parties.
Your data may be shared with the project team who are authorised to work on the project and access the information. This may include staff at Lagom Strategy or collaborators at the sponsor and other organisations authorised to work on the project. This will be clearly identified in your Participant Information Sheet.
Storing and security
Lagom takes a robust approach to protecting the information it holds with dedicated storage areas for research data with controlled access.
There are comprehensive policies and processes in place to ensure that Lagom Strategy staff are aware of their obligations and responsibilities for the data they have access to. By default, people are only granted access to the information they require to perform their duties.
Retention
Your information will not be kept for longer than is necessary and is usually kept in an anonymised format.
After anonymisation, your data may be stored in the Lagom Strategy research data archive where it may be accessed by other members of Lagom Strategy. It will also be stored in the sponsor’s archive where it may be accessed by members of the sponsoring department.
Contact us
You should contact the Lagom Strategy Data Protection Officer [email protected] or 01509 351040 if:
- you have a query about how your data is used by Lagom Strategy
- you would like to report a data security breach (e.g. if you think your personal data has been lost or disclosed inappropriately)
- you would like to complain about how Lagom Strategy has used your personal data
You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner who is the regulator for data protection in the UK: | https://www.lagomstrategy.net/privacy-notice-for-research-participants |
The State of South Carolina government has the ongoing responsibility to balance citizens’ privacy rights with the provision of State services. The following privacy principles1, which may not be applicable in every situation, guide the manner in which we collect, use, disclose and retain our citizens’ personal information.
Notice and Transparency
- Inform the individual about what personal information is being collected and how it will be used and shared. This is sometimes referred to as ‘providing notice’.
Use and Disclosure Limitation
- Use and disclose an individual’s information only in the manner described in the notice. Uses and disclosures outside of the notice require explicit consent from the individual, except for certain instances such as law enforcement requests.
Individual Participation, Access, and Redress
- Provide individuals with a reasonable opportunity to consent to the collection, use or disclosure of personal information. Provide individuals with procedures on how to access information being held about them, how to correct or update that information, and whom to contact with further questions.
Data Minimization and Retention
- Collect only the information needed to perform the official business of the State of South Carolina. Retain information collected for a specific business purpose only as long as necessary to fulfill the purpose, or as required by a records retention policy or other agency policy, law, or regulation.
Data Quality and Integrity
- Establish policies and procedures to ensure to the greatest extent practicable that data is accurate, complete and up to date.
Security
- Establish the appropriate management and operational administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to preserve the privacy, confidentiality, integrity, and accessibility of personal information. These safeguards should align with the level of protection afforded to data categories assigned using the State of South Carolina Data Classification Schema.
Accountability and Auditing
- Establish policies and procedures that assign information protection roles and responsibilities, both internally and with organizations outside your agency. Develop systems for evaluating compliance, identifying areas for improvement, and measuring effectiveness.
Footnote:
1The privacy principles are drawn from several widely accepted frameworks of defining principles used in the evaluation and consideration of systems, processes or programs affecting individual privacy, including: | https://www.admin.sc.gov/technology/enterprise-privacy/privacy-principles |
Explaining Privacy Notices
The GDPR in common with the DPA requires data controllers to provide data subjects with accessible information, which is usually contained within a privacy notice, about how their personal data will be processed. As in many other areas, the principles remain the same or similar to those in the DPA but the level of detail required is much greater under the GDPR meaning that compliance may be more difficult and at a minimum current privacy notices should be reviewed.
Definition under the DPA
The DPA does not define what a privacy notice is however it does set out the minimum information which must be provided to data subjects.
Under the DPA the data controller must make a minimum amount of information available to the data subjects, this information includes:
- The identity of the data controller (or their representative);
- The purpose of processing the data; and
- Any further information necessary in the circumstances to enable the processing to be fair.
What does the DPA definition really mean?
Providing a privacy notice is one way of demonstrating you are being transparent and fair in the way you are processing data.
Subject to relevant exemptions, personal data will only be processed fairly if this information is given to individuals however the use of a privacy notice doesn’t necessarily guarantee fairness.
Definition under the GDPR
The GDPR does not define what a privacy notice is however it does set out the minimum information which must be provided to data subjects.
The GDPR goes further and specifies that, in addition to the above, the following information should also be set out in the privacy notice:
- The contact details of the controller and the data protection officer;
- The legitimate interests of the controller;
- Categories of the personal data;
- Recipients of the personal data;
- Details of transfers to third parties along with safeguards;
- Retention period or criteria used;
- Existence of each of the data subject’s rights;
- The right to withdraw consent at any time;
- The right to lodge a complaint;
- The origin of the personal data and whether it was from a publically available source;
- Whether the provision of personal data is part of a statutory or contractual requirement or obligation and possible consequences of failing to provide the personal data; and
- The existence of automated decision making, information about how decisions are made, the significance of those decisions and the consequences.
What does the GDPR definition really mean?
The GDPR requires a high standard and level of detail in relation to privacy notices. Not only must certain information be provided, the information must be:
- Concise, transparent, intelligible and easily accessible;
- Written in clear and plain language; and
- Free of charge
What are the significant differences between the DPA and the GDPR?
The rules set out in the GDPR surrounding privacy information are more detailed and specific than the DPA however a key similarity in both is to ensure that the information provided is understandable and accessible.
The significant difference in practice is the amount of information that will be required in a privacy notice under the GDPR. This will require longer and more detailed privacy notices that have to, at the same time, be concise and easily accessible. This presents a clear challenge to all organisations to ensure that their privacy notices fulfil both requirements.
The GDPR also places an express requirement on data controllers who are processing children’s data to adapt their privacy notices for the appropriate age group.
What effect will this have on UK businesses?
As you can see from the list above, the GDPR places a much bigger burden on businesses to provide information to data subjects. These changes will need to be carefully worked through and privacy notices extended and re-worded to meet the GDPR requirements. Non-compliance could not just lead to a penalty, but could also damage public trust in the organisation.
Another challenge facing businesses is the shift away from traditional methods of collecting information directly from the individual and an increase in the use of data collected by other means. The increased use of wearable tech such as smart-watches and fit-bits allows individuals to be tracked and observed. Privacy notices for this sort of data capture will need to be clear as to use of the data collected. The need for fairness and transparency in privacy notices will be of even greater importance in relation to this sort of data. In this case, the data subject may not even have considered that the data may be personal data and therefore the privacy notice must ensure that this is communicated clearly.
What will my business need to do?
Data controllers will need to carefully examine their existing privacy notices and update them to be GDPR compliant. Notices should not only provide the required information, but do so in clear language avoiding the use of legalese or jargon.
If you offer goods or services online, rather than providing a long privacy notice, you could consider implementing layering devices such as ‘just-in-time’ notices. This will ensure that information given on privacy is provided to the data subject at the most appropriate time.
For on-going choices about how data subjects’ information is used, the use of dashboards that can be easily amended and updated is a useful mechanism to ensure that privacy and consent is able to be managed by a data subject.
With the increased use of many different types of electronic devices you will also need to check that your privacy notice is accessible on mobile phones and tablets.
Q&As
How can I provide the required information?
This may depend on the nature of your business and the relationship you have with individuals. A privacy notice can be communicated:
- Orally – face to face or by telephone;
- In writing – printed media/adverts and forms;
- Through signage – posters; and
- Electronically – text messages, websites, emails, mobile apps.
Ideally you should provide the notice using the same method you use for collecting the information.
When does the information need to be provided?
Where data is obtained directly from the data subject, the information must be provided at the time the data is obtained. Where data is obtained from a third party the information must be provided within a reasonable period of time (usually one month) or before any disclosure to third parties. If the data is used to communicate with the individual then the information must be provided at the time contact is made.
Do I have to provide all of the required information in one place?
No. If it is impractical to contain all of the information in the same document you could consider a layered approach. Use a short, simple document to convey the key points and include a link to where a further more detailed document (or documents) can be found.
With online products and services, you could also consider utilising ‘just-in-time’ notices. These appear on the screen when personal data is provided. You may also consider using a dashboard where users can amend their privacy settings.
Do I need to provide a privacy notice if I obtain the data from a third party?
No, as long as:
- the individual already has the relevant information;
- providing the information would be impossible or involve disproportionate effort;
- the obtaining or disclosure of the information is allowed pursuant to Union or Member State law; or
- the information provided is subject to professional secrecy.
Can I use the same notice for everything?
It’s not advisable. The GDPR requires that privacy notices are clear and accessible. This means taking into account your intended audience and tailoring the notice to suit their circumstances. For example, younger audiences may need different wording as part of privacy notices as they may not have the same level of comprehension skills. You may also have to consider the appropriate language for the notice and may also be required to translate the notice into other languages in accordance with the intended audience.
What if I need to change a privacy notice?
Any significant changes in a privacy notice should be drawn to individuals’ attention. Depending on the impact of the changes, you will need to either directly contact the data subject or publish the changes somewhere appropriate for example, on your website.
Glossary
- DPA means the Data Protection Act 1998, the statute that previously governed the processing of personal data in the UK.
- GDPR means the General Data Protection Regulation, the EU law that is now in place of the Data Protection Act 1998.
Notes
This briefing is based on the law as it stands in April 2017. It is possible (and, indeed, likely) that, before the GDPR comes into force in May 2018, the Information Commissioner’s Office will release a number of guidance notes that will help to interpret the GDPR. These guidance notes may offer additional advice for UK businesses, and may even cause some of the information in this briefing to become incorrect. As a result, this briefing does not amount to legal advice and is provided for information purposes only. It should not be regarded as a substitute for taking up-to-date legal advice. | https://www.bpe.co.uk/services/need/data-protection-the-gdpr/brilliantly-simple-guide-to-the-gdpr/explaining-privacy-notices/ |
The European Union (EU) introduced its data protection standard 20 years ago through the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC. Because the EU required each member state to implement a Directive into national law, Europe ended up with a patchwork of different privacy laws.
Additionally, increasing security breaches, rapid technical developments, and globalization over the last 20 years have brought new challenges for the protection of personal data. To address these challenges, the EU developed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is directly applicable as law across all EU member states.
Why does the GDPR matter to our customers and to Oracle?
Any information relating to an individual that can directly or indirectly be identified by reference to identifiers such as names, identification numbers, location data, online identifiers, or, to one or more factors specific to the individual’s physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity.
These new and stronger individual rights, accountability requirements, and increased scrutiny from regulators, including potential fines up to 20 million euros or 4% of a company’s global annual turnover, means companies that collect and use offline and online personal data in the EU will need to update and manage their data handling practices and use cases more carefully than ever.
In this blog post, we’ll be exploring some of the GDPR requirements that may be particularly relevant to CX Cloud services customers, and will discuss some of the privacy and security features available for these service offerings that can help you address these requirements. However, it is important you consult your own legal counsel to understand your GDPR requirements, and to develop and implement a compliance plan designed to meet these requirements.
Data subjects are living EU citizens to whom personal data relates.
Organizations within and outside Europe leveraging EU data subjects must be GDPR compliant.
Controllers or organizations that collect data and determine the use, conditions and means of processing personal data must be GDPR compliant.
Processors or organizations that process data on behalf of controllers must be GDPR compliant.
The GDPR strengthens existing privacy and security requirements such as notice and consent, technical and operational security measures, and cross-border data flow mechanisms. It’s built on established and widely accepted privacy principles such as purpose limitation, lawfulness, transparency, integrity and confidentiality.
Companies must implement an appropriate level of security, encompassing both technical and organizational security controls to prevent data loss, information leaks, or other unauthorized data processing operations. The GDPR encourages companies to incorporate encryption, incident management, network and system integrity, availability and resilience requirements into their security program.
Companies must inform their regulators and/or the impacted individuals without undue delay after becoming aware that their data has been subject to a data breach.
Companies will be expected to document and maintain records of their security practices, audit the effectiveness of their security program, and take corrective measures where appropriate.
This encompasses an obligation to provide ‘fair processing information’, typically through a privacy notice. It emphasizes the need for transparency over how personal data will be used.
The right for data subjects to obtain from the data controller confirmation as to whether personal data concerning them is being processed, where and for what purpose.
- Have the data controller erase his/her personal data.
- Cease further dissemination of the data.
- Potentially have third parties halt processing of the data.
Under GDPR, individuals have a right to have their personal data ‘blocked’ or suppressed under certain circumstances. When processing is restricted, data controllers are permitted to store the personal data (which differentiates this right from the right to reassure above), but not further process it.
The right to data portability allows individuals to obtain and reuse their personal data they have provided to a data controller for their own purposes across different services. It allows them to move, copy or transfer personal data easily from one IT environment to another in a safe and secure way, without hindrance to usability.
Individuals have the right to object to the use of their personal data for direct marketing purposes.
The GDPR provides safeguards for individuals against the risk that a potentially damaging decision is taken without human intervention. You should work with your legal counsel to determine whether any of your processing operations constitute profiling or, by extension, profiling involving automated decision making, and to consider whether you need to update your practices and policies to deal with the corresponding requirements of the GDPR.
How is Oracle prepared to help?
Oracle can help you address the new GDPR requirements leveraging more than 40 years of experience in the design and development of secure database management, data protection, and security solutions. Oracle successfully manages business data for thousands of CX customers and tens-of-thousands of SaaS customers globally.
The Oracle CX Cloud Suite provides a consistent and unified data protection regime for global businesses. Built-in privacy and security features put users in control of the personal data they handle, helping them to build consumer trust. We are also actively engaged in product reviews to further assess which additional features and functionalities can be embedded into our applications or made available to.
Oracle CX Cloud services provide features that enable customers to capture personal data across different channels. Oracle CX Cloud Suite provides controls that can be configured by you to help meet your specific business requirements such as providing visibility on when someone is visiting your website, submitting a web-form, or sharing personal data across social media channels. These controls can also be configured to help you implement required notice mechanisms that enable your end-user customers to make informed decisions about the use of their personal data as part of these data capture processes.
Today’s businesses typically capture vast amounts of personal data. Functional business groups including marketing, sales and commerce teams require powerful tools that enable them to manage this data at scale. The Oracle CX Cloud Suite provides a comprehensive portfolio of features that makes it easy for teams of users and consumers to manage personal data. This includes tools designed to help you update personal data on request, as well as securely transfer personal data at scale leveraging modern APIs and Secure File Transform Protocol (SFTP) mechanisms.
Businesses have a responsibility to secure personal data they handle. The Oracle CX Cloud Suite is built with native security mechanisms and controls derived from ‘privacy by design and privacy by default’ principles. These controls include encryption and granular access controls that enable organizations to distinguish which individuals or groups should have access to personal data.
Accelerate Your Response to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with Oracle Cloud Applications. Download this paper to understand how Oracle Cloud Applications can be utilized to help address your GDPR compliance needs.
If you have additional data privacy and security needs beyond the standards and options built into software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, or you use platform-as-a-service (PaaS) or infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), Oracle offers additional cloud security solutions and options. These solutions are designed to help protect data, manage user identities, and monitor and audit IT environments. Oracle Cloud customers can also select additional Managed Security Services (MSS) to leverage Oracle expertise in deployment and security technology management to further accelerate your path to GDPR compliance.
Addressing GDPR Compliance with Oracle Database Security Products. Download this paper to understand how Oracle Database Security technology can be utilized to help accelerate your response to GDPR. | https://blogs.oracle.com/cx/understanding-the-gdpr-and-how-oracle-cx-helps-you-prepare-for-compliance |
Canada: Bill to reform PIPEDA "introduces interesting flexibility in certain areas"
Bill C-11 for the Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2020 ('the Bill') was introduced, on 17 November 2020, in the House of Commons, which would seek to reform Canada's privacy legislation under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act 2000 ('PIPEDA').
In particular, the bill would enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act ('CPPA'), which would protect the personal information of individuals while regulating organisations' collection, use, or disclosure of personal information in the course of commercial activities. In addition, the Bill would enact the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act for the establishment of an administrative tribunal to hear appeals of certain decisions made by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada ('OPC') under the CPPA, and facilitate the imposition of penalties.
Individual rights and enforcement
Among the various reforms the CPPA would introduce, one key area deals with enforcement and rights of individuals. The Bill introduces a new Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal ('the Tribunal') which would act as a new enforcer of the CPPA. Eloïse Gratton, Partner at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP told OneTrust DataGuidance, "The Tribunal would have powers to impose, upon recommendation by the OPC, administrative monetary penalties of CAD 10,000,000 or, if greater, the amount corresponding to 3% of the organization's global gross revenues in its previous fiscal year. There are also reinforced fines in the case of penal proceedings of a maximum of CAD 25,000,000, or, if greater, the amount corresponding to 5% of the organization's global gross revenues in its previous fiscal year. There is also a new private right of action for individuals. Moreover, the Bill introduces interesting flexibility in certain areas. For example, it introduces a new consent exception for the collection or use of personal information for various types of legitimate business activities. The intent behind this new consent exception appears to be to enhance the meaningfulness of the notion of consent by reducing the number of situations in which it must be sought, thereby mitigating the risk of 'consent fatigue'. This is great news in my view, both for businesses and consumers."
The introduction of a private right of action is an important novelty compared to PIPEDA, as it gives individuals the right to directly bring actions against organisations in specific cases. Christopher Ferguson, Associate at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP commented, "The CPPA provides a private right of action against organizations for damages for loss or injury in certain limited circumstances. Specifically, where the OPC makes a finding that an organization has contravened the CPPA and the organization does not appeal to the Tribunal or the appeal is dismissed, or the Tribunal itself makes a finding that the organization has contravened the CPPA, an individual affected by the contravention has a cause of action. The cause of action may be heard in the Federal Court or the superior court of a province, raising the spectre of increased litigation and class action proceedings in relation to non-compliance with the CPPA."
Moreover, the CPPA would establish new rights for individuals inspired by European legislation such as the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) ('GDPR'), including the right to be informed of automated decision-making, the right to disposal and the right to data mobility.
The right to be informed of automated decision-making systems, is among the new rights that will be included in the CPPA. On this, Gratton noted that, "[This new right will enable individuals] to receive an explanation about the use of an automated decision system to make a prediction, recommendation, or decision about them and of how personal information was used to that effect. Contrary to Québec Bill 64 ('Bill 64') and the GDPR however, the CPPA will not grant individuals with the right to object to such use or to have the decision reviewed by an employee of the organization."
The CPPA will also provide individuals with a right to disposal which allows individuals to have their personal information deleted upon request. Gratton outlines that, "This right applies to any personal information collected from the individual (i.e., not from third parties). It is worth noting that this right to disposal does not appear to encompass a right to de-indexation or right to be forgotten, contrary to Bill 64 and the GDPR." Additionally, Ferguson further notes here, "Section 55 of the CPPA requires an organization to dispose of the personal information it has collected from an individual, as soon as feasible, on written request unless disposing of such information will result in disposal of personal information about another individual, or the disposal is prevented by law or the reasonable terms of a contract. The organization must also inform any service provider to which it has transferred the information and obtain confirmation from the service provider that the information has been disposed of."
In addition, the right to mobility enables individuals to request their information from an entity to be moved to another entity. Gratton highlights that such disclosure can be done, "if both organizations are subject to a 'data mobility framework' provided under the regulations. The data mobility frameworks to be created through regulation will include safeguards, parameters for the technical means for ensuring interoperability, and specify the organizations subject to the framework, which will likely belong to specific industry sectors such as open banking or telecommunications. Here again, the CPPA will be more limited in scope than Bill 64 and the GDPR, as it refrains from opening the door to general portability requests aimed at organizations that may not be involved in any interoperability scheme or subject to specific competition requirements." Furthermore, Vanessa Henri, Associate at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, noted that "This could help propel Canada's FinTech industry and open banking discussions as individuals are granted more rights. This could also trigger more standards on data access, which would facilitate the use of data for good. Overall, the legislation seeks to help MedTech and health instructions by providing easier means of accessing and using information for ethical purposes. The CPPA seeks to balance many imperatives, and it remains to be seen how it will be received and amended. The danger in trying to please everyone is that it may lead to everyone rejecting the CPPA as their interests are not fully met."
Inspiration from other privacy frameworks
As highlighted above, the CPPA bears a lot of similarities with consumer privacy and data protection legislation, such as the GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 ('CCPA'). In particular, Gratton noted that "The federal government's proposal to modernize PIPEDA under the new bill includes the enactment of the Personal Information Data Protection Tribunal Act, establishing the Tribunal, which would have the ability to impose significant penalties: the most serious violations of the CPPA could result, upon prosecution, in fines, which have been described as the strongest among G7 privacy laws, including the GDPR and the CCPA. At the same time, while clearly inspired by similar initiatives in other countries, the Canadian proposal is unique in its approach in that, in many instances, it affords businesses with greater flexibility and clarity relative to the present privacy regime's requirements. Most notably, it borrows directly from past guidance and decisions issued by the OPC and provides individuals with new rights that are more narrowly framed than those currently found under the GDPR."
Interoperability
The approach of Canada with respect to privacy legislation includes laws such as PIPEDA in the federal level, as well as provincial laws, such as that of Quebec which is seeking to reform its own data protection legislation. Indeed, Gratton highlighted "It bears noting that Bill 64, a recent proposal that seeks to amendment Québec's provincial privacy regime, including the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector – is considerably more onerous than the CPPA. The concern is that this may raise a number of challenges from an interoperability standpoint for businesses operating at a national level."
Privacy Management Systems
Another requirement that is expected to have an impact on daily operations of organisations is the implementation of a privacy management program, which is also similar to what Québec's Bill 64 introduced. Henri explained, "Neither proposal includes much threshold other than being proposal, which means all companies should start aiming for a compliance system that is documented. In Québec, this would need to be published. Organizations that want to navigate different jurisdictions should consider using a standard such as ISO/IEC 27701:2019 as a means of operationalizing, demonstrating, improving and measuring compliance. This is not a new requirement, but explicit inclusion means that organizations should start being proactive – especially given the new consequences."
Consent
The CPPA also expands and develops the concept of consent in Canada's privacy regulation, with both requirements for obtaining consent and the exceptions to consent expanded. In this regard, Ferguson highlighted, "The CPPA provides that consent is only valid if obtained before or at the time of collection, or before any new use or disclosure, if organizations notify individuals, in plain language, of the type of personal information that the organization collects, uses, and discloses, and of the purposes, manner, and consequences of the collection, use, and disclosure. Organizations must also identify any third parties to who personal information will be disclosed. Individuals may withdraw their consent subject to law and the 'reasonable terms of a contract.' Relatedly, in its transparency and openness requirements, the CPPA also requires organizations to make readily available in plain language information that explains their policies and practices put in place to fulfil their obligations under the CPPA."
Moreover, Ferguson noted that, "The expanded exceptions to consent include:
- The collection or use of personal information for certain business activities, including an activity required to provide products or services to an individual or an activity where it would be impractical to obtain consent because there is no direct relationship between the organization and an individual, in each case provided the individual would expect the collection or use and it is not for the purposes of influencing the behaviors or decisions of the individual.
- Public interest purposes as set out in the CPPA.
- Transfers of personal information to service providers.
- De-identifying personal information. The CPPA defines de-identifying personal information as modifying or creating information using technical processes to ensure that it cannot be used 'in reasonably foreseeable circumstances' to identify an individual, either alone or in combination with other information. Where an organization de-identifies information, it must use technical and administrative measures proportionate to the purposes of de-identification and the sensitivity of the personal information being de-identified. The CPPA prohibits organizations from using de-identified information to identify an individual except to test the organizations safeguards to protect the information."
Conclusion
The CPPA must now go through both Houses of Parliament for consideration and it remains to be seen what may be amended during the legislative process.
Crucially, Ferguson commented, "The CPPA is certain to attract very strong attention from domestic and foreign organizations that collect information about Canadians and are subject to Canadian privacy law, particularly in light of the impacts of the COVID pandemic and the additional compliance costs and risks of material liability that the CPPA represents. Organizations and trade associations should consider the impact of the CPPA and its evolution as it progresses through Parliament and be prepared to propose improvements and to address any unintended consequences of its reforms."
Alexander Fetani Privacy Analyst
[email protected]
Pranav Ananth Privacy Analyst
[email protected]
Comments provided by: | https://www.dataguidance.com/opinion/canada-bill-reform-pipeda-introduces-interesting |
Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPs) Privacy Course
The privacy awareness training module "Fair Information Practice Principles: The Gold Standard for Protecting Personal Information" is available for UC Berkeley staff in the UC Learning Center.
This short, informative course covers the five privacy practice principles set forth by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for protecting personal information:
- Transparency -- ensures no secret data collection; provides information about the collection of personal data to allow users to make an informed choice
- Choice -- gives individuals a choice as to how their information will be used
- Information Review and Correction -- allows individuals the right to review and correct personal information
- Information Protection -- requires organizations to protect the quality and integrity of personal information
- Accountability -- holds organizations accountable for complying with FIPPs
Although these principles are not laws, they form the backbone of privacy law and provide guidance in the collection, use and protection of personal information.
You will learn why applying the Transparency principle ensures openness and honesty in data collection; how applying the Information Protection principle provides users with the confidence that the quality and integrity of their personal data will be protected; and, how broadly incorporating these principles into everyday practices Berkeley not only protects its users' personal privacy but also assumes accountability for complying with FIPPs. A short quiz is included at the end of the module to test your understanding of the principles.
To take this course, log into https://blu.berkeley.edu and navigate to the UC Learning Center link in the left menu. You can search for the course by course code (BECIO009) or by going to the category listing "UC Essentials" and clicking on "UC Policies and Practices." A pdf of the FIPPs course content is also available.
You may also wish to review FIPPs Questions for Data Proprietors to help you encorporate these five principles into your data collection and use practices.
For any privacy related questions, please contact the UC Berkeley Privacy Office. | https://ethics.berkeley.edu/privacy/fipps |
We may utilize other entities or individuals to perform functions on our behalf. To perform those services, it may become necessary for them to obtain access to MindStylz databases, which may contain personal information. Such entities or individuals may not use this information, or access it for any purpose other than that for which they are retained. We may track information about visits to our site so we can make informed decisions about how to improve our website's design, layout, accessibility, and usability. We use this information to learn about our visitors as a group, not about any individual. We log the domain names and/or IP addresses of visitors (such as aol.com, 204.39.36.39, etc.) which identifies where visitors are from, or what access service they use, without knowing their individual identities. We may also collect data on the browsers and operating systems used to access the site, and visiting data such as date, time, duration, and pages visited. We do not require users to register with us; this "host level" tracking is how we assess usage trends such as the popularity of different areas of the site. This information is used to improve the design, content, performance, and functionality of our site. We also use the information to identify other websites which send us visitors. This site links to other websites that are not under our control, and we cannot be responsible for the content or the Privacy Policies of those websites.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about individual users except when those individuals specifically provide it. The information may include names, addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers, email addresses, or other personal data in greater or lesser detail. Should you choose to provide your information, it may be shared within our organization and other closely-aligned groups for the purpose of responding to any comments or questions you submit and to provide any follow-up information about our organizations and our issues. It also may be shared with an outside company to fulfill any request you have made to us, such as charging your donation. We make no effort to link the personal information you voluntarily provide to us with the site usage information we have collected during your visit to our site.
Except for appropriate uses within our own organization and closely-affiliated groups, MindStylz does not sell, rent, or exchange the email addresses or other contact information submitted to us. We will allow access by our own organization and closely-affiliated groups for appropriate uses, but only for the purpose for which they are requested. | http://mindstylz.org/privacy.html |
Under the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018, individuals have a right to be informed about how the school uses any personal data that we hold about them. We comply with this right by providing ‘Privacy Notices’ (sometimes called ‘fair processing notices’) to individuals where we are processing their personal data.
This Privacy Notice explains how we collect, store and use personal data about pupils, parents and staff.
The Felixstowe International College are the ‘data controller’ for the purposes of Data Protection law.
Our Data Protection Officer is Andy Crow, [email protected]
The personal data we hold
Personal data that we may collect, use, store and share (when appropriate) about pupils, parents and staff includes, but is not restricted to:
- Contact details, contact preferences, date of birth, identification documents
- Bank account details, payroll records, National Insurance number and tax status information
- Results of internal assessments and externally set tests
- Pupil and curricular records
- Characteristics, such as ethnic background, eligibility for free school meals, or special educational needs
- Exclusion information
- Details of any medical conditions, including physical and mental health
- Attendance information
- Safeguarding information
- Details of any support received, including care packages, plans and support providers
- Photographs
- CCTV images captured in school
We may also hold data about pupils that we have received from other organisations, including other schools, local authorities and the Department for Education.
Why we use this data
We use this data to:
- Support pupil learning
- Monitor and report on pupil progress
- Provide appropriate pastoral care
- Protect pupil welfare
- Facilitate safe recruitment, as part of our safeguarding obligations towards pupils
- Enable staff payment
- Carry out research
- Comply with the law regarding data sharing
Our legal basis for using this data
We only collect and use personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we process it where:
- We need to comply with a legal obligation
- Fulfill a contract with you
- Carry out a task in the public interest
Less commonly, we may also process personal data in situations where:
- We have obtained consent to use it in a certain way
- We need to protect the individual’s vital interests (or someone else’s interests)
- We have legitimate interests in processing the data – for example, where:
- Fraud prevention
- Ensuring network and information security
Where we have obtained consent to use personal data, this consent can be withdrawn at any time. We will make this clear when we ask for consent, and explain how consent can be withdrawn.
Some of the reasons listed above for collecting and using personal data overlap, and there may be several grounds which justify our use of this data.
Collecting this information
While the majority of information we collect about pupils is mandatory, there is some information that can be provided voluntarily.
Whenever we seek to collect information from you or your child, we make it clear whether providing it is mandatory or optional. If it is mandatory, we will explain the possible consequences of not complying.
How we store this data
We keep personal information about pupils while they are attending our school. We may also keep it beyond their attendance at our school if this is necessary in order to comply with our legal obligations. We follow the Information and Records Management Society’s Toolkit for schools, click here Information and Records Management Society’s toolkit for schools
Data sharing
We do not share information about pupils with any third party without consent unless the law and our policies allow us to do so.
Where it is legally required, or necessary (and it complies with data protection law) we may share personal information about pupils with:
- Border Agency
- The Department for Education – to meet our legal obligations as part of data collections such as the School Census
- The pupil’s family and representatives – in case of emergencies such as a health matter
- Educators and examining bodies – necessary for the performance of our education function
- Our regulator, Ofsted – to enable it to evaluate the education we provide to your child, which is in the public interest
- Suppliers and service providers – to enable them to provide the service we have contracted them for
- Follow on schools/other schools – which your child/ward attends after leaving their current School;, in the public interest of delivering education
- Our auditors – to meet our finance obligations as part of a statutory requirement ie Annual Report and Accounts
- Health and social welfare organisations/third parties – to enable us to comply with our duty of care and statutory safeguarding duties for your child’s welfare. This may include Therapists, Clinical Psychologists, Academy Medical Staff, CAHMS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service), School Counsellors, Social Care, Educational Welfare Office (EWO)
- Professional bodies – necessary for the performance of our education function
- Police forces, courts, tribunals – in order to uphold law and order
National Pupil Database
We are required to provide information about pupils to the Department for Education as part of statutory data collections such as the school census.
Some of this information is then stored in the National Pupil Database (NPD), which is owned and managed by the Department and provides evidence on school performance to inform research.
The database is held electronically so it can easily be turned into statistics. The information is securely collected from a range of sources including schools, local authorities and exam boards.
The Department for Education may share information from the NPD with other organisations which promote children’s education or wellbeing in England. Such organisations must agree to strict terms and conditions about how they will use the data.
For more information, see the Department’s webpage on how it collects and shares research data.
You can also contact the Department for Education with any further questions about the NPD.
Transferring data internationally
Where we transfer personal data to a country or territory outside the United Kingdom, we will do so in accordance with Data Protection Law.
Photographs and Media
As part of our activities, we may take photographs and allow external organisations to take photographs or to film within our school. You will be made aware when this is happening and the context in which the photograph will be used.
We will take photographs for use by the School. Usually these will be unnamed and will generally be for internal School use but may also include photographs for publications such as:
- Photographs included in the School’s Prospectus
- Photographs to be used on display boards which can be seen by visitors to the School
- Photographs posted on the School’s official social media sites such as Twitter and its own website. Such sites can be accessed by the public and will therefore require close monitoring by School staff to ensure they are appropriate.
Named photographs will be used for internal use where there is a clear lawful basis for doing so ie, for identifying pupils such as medical or safeguarding requirements.
For all other purposes, consent will be sought from parents.
CCTV
Schools operate CCTV on their premises. This is considered necessary to protect staff and pupils’ safety and the property of the School.
Parents and pupils’ rights regarding personal data
Individuals have a right to make a ‘subject access request’ to gain access to personal information that the school holds about them.
Parents/carers can make a request with respect to their child’s data where the child is not considered mature enough to understand their rights over their own data (usually under the age of 12), or where the child has provided consent.
If you make a subject access request, and if we do hold information about you or your child, we will:
- Give you a description of it
- Tell you why we are holding and processing it, and how long we will keep it for
- Explain where we got it from, if not from you or your child
- Tell you who it has been, or will be, shared with
- Let you know whether any automated decision-making is being applied to the data, and any consequences of this
- Give you a copy of the information in an intelligible form
Individuals also have the right for their personal information to be transmitted electronically to another organisation in certain circumstances.
If you would like to make a request please contact our Data Protection Officer.
Other rights
Under data protection law, individuals have certain rights regarding how their personal data is used and kept safe, including the right to:
- Object to the use of personal data if it would cause, or is causing, damage or distress
- Prevent it being used to send direct marketing
- Object to decisions being taken by automated means (by a computer or machine, rather than by a person)
- In certain circumstances, have inaccurate personal data corrected, deleted or destroyed, or restrict processing
- Claim compensation for damages caused by a breach of the data protection regulations
To exercise any of these rights, please contact our Data Protection Officer.
Complaints
We take any complaints about our collection and use of personal information very seriously.
If you think that our collection or use of personal information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate, or have any other concern about our data processing, please raise this with us in the first instance.
To make a complaint, please contact our Data Protection Officer.
Alternatively, you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office:
- Report a concern online at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/
- Call 0303 123 1113
- Or write to: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Contact us
If you have any questions, concerns or would like more information about anything mentioned in this privacy notice, please contact our Data Protection Officer: | https://ficedu.org/privacy-notice-2/ |
GDPR is a European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) data privacy regulation that came into effect on May 25, 2018. It was drafted as a result of the Digital Age and its consequences. GDPR requires all companies that handle people’s personal data in the European Union to have a robust, written data policy compliant with it. In addition, compliance with GDPR is mandatory for any company outside the EU that takes an interest in the personal data of EU residents and “processes and analyses” their data (this includes anything like “selling” or “storing”).
How is GDPR Relevant to US Companies?
GDPR has numerous consequences for companies across the world, including US businesses that do business with EEA residents or who process the personal data of EU citizens.
According to Article 3(2) of the general provisions, the regulation “applies to the processing of personal data of data subjects who are in the Union by a controller or processor not established in the Union, where the processing activities are related to: (a) the offering of goods or services, irrespective of whether a payment of the data subject is required, to such data subjects in the Union; or (b) the monitoring of their behavior as far as their behavior takes place within the Union.“
Failure to comply with data protection rules may result in enormous fines of up to £18 million or 4% of a firm’s annual sales. The GDPR Enforcement Tracker, which displays EU firms fined due to GDPR noncompliance, provides an idea of the strictness of GDPR. Under the GDPR, users have eight fundamental rights. Organizations must incorporate these rights into their data management strategies:
- The right of access: This allows the data subject to receive a copy of their personal data, including how it is processed.
- The right of rectification: This allows the data subject to request that incorrect or incomplete personal data be updated and corrected.
- The right to erasure: This is also known as the “right to be forgotten.” It allows a subject to request that their personal data be deleted.
- The right to restrict processing: This is invoked when the subject contests the accuracy of the data.
- The right to data portability: This allows the subject to access and reuse their personal data for their purposes across different services.
- The right to object: This allows the subject to object to their personal data being processed if there are grounds relating to their particular situation.
- The right to be informed: This requires that data subjects be informed of their personal data processing.
- The right to be notified: Data breaches must be communicated to the concerned data subjects.
Seven Tenets of GDPR Compliance
Privacy policies are the cornerstone of an organization’s privacy management to ensure that it can explain what it does with personal data. GDPR compliance requires a robust policy, complete with details about how the data subject is protected.
Minimization of Personal Data Processing
Compliance requires limiting personal data processing to only what is necessary for completing tasks assigned. The data minimization principle states that organizations should only handle the data they need for a specific purpose. This requirement helps you manage your data effectively and protects you from cybercriminals obtaining confidential information in the case of a malicious attack.
Automated Database Encryption
Companies processing personal data are required to encrypt all systems containing user data. Compliance involves the development of encryption policies and continuous monitoring for access attempts, brute force attacks, and any other suspicious activity aimed at gaining access to your encrypted databases.
Consent Management Procedures
GDPR regulates how companies manage the consent that their customers give them for using their data. Therefore, it’s essential that you deploy processes that allow users to easily withdraw consent and require them to provide affirmative consent for data processing before any information is collected or stored on your servers.
Online users must be asked for and give consent before your website may collect their information. Consumers must be informed of the data collection when they visit your site, and consent is required under GDPR. This concept gives users a choice to accept or refuse trackers (cookies). Consent tracking allows a firm to cease monitoring users if they haven’t agreed to cookies in advance.
Regular Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs)
User data collection must become an integral part of DPIAs to properly assess the impact of new products and services from a privacy perspective. Compliance requires the organization to identify and assess privacy risks, document them, and offer mitigation plans. This process helps companies improve their security procedures before a data breach occurs.
A DPIA involves:
- Risk assessment of individuals and their data
- Evaluate compliance measures in place
- Identify and implement corrective actions to mitigate the risks
The UK’s independent authority for information rights, the ICO, has developed a DPIA assessment checklist for businesses to use in their platforms to identify data management gaps and set security measures.
Data Processing Record Keeping
Organizations must keep comprehensive records of their processing activities to document and provide a legal basis for any personal data they acquire and manage under the GDPR. These records should show:
- A detailed description of the different types of personal data.
- Your reason for collecting personal information.
- With whom data is shared.
- A description of the individuals who are the subject of the data.
- Delete time limits for each category of data gathered.
- The data controller’s name and contact information, as well as the data protection officer/office’s name and contact information
Mapping personal data enables you to categorize it and map how each piece of information flows through your company and is captured, who has access to the data, where it’s stored, and when it leaves your database. Such a detailed map makes dealing with large data categories easier, especially when regulators ask to see the records.
GDPR Best Practices
When it comes to GDPR, many international companies have set up their businesses in the UK and Europe to comply with GDPR. Compliance is essential when handling data from EU/EEA residents because if you don’t follow GDPR compliance, you can face expensive fines. This has been a great opportunity for European firms to expand into the US market, as they are already compliant with data protection regulations.
Also read: Are Companies Protecting Employee Data?
GDPR Best Practices for American Companies
The global reach of this law means that all American firms must take steps to ensure that they remain fully compliant with GDPR standards. The following are some best practices to help you stay on the right side of the law:
- Compliance means that every business should design and implement comprehensive security strategies and policies to protect user information and company data effectively. Compliance with GDPR should be considered early on in the planning stage since this will help avoid costly mistakes down the line.
- For any business, compliance with GDPR mandates that your firm have a designated Data Protection Officer (DPO). The DPO works closely with other executives to provide data protection measures and keep company personnel informed of relevant requirements under GDPR. All personnel who handle personal data must be aware of their responsibilities, and managers must meet these obligations. Compliance involves creating an environment where personal data is dealt with responsibly, so it’s critical for businesses to understand their obligations under this law today.
- Companies must take responsibility for protecting user information but acquiring consent from users isn’t always enough. Firms are required to implement technical security measures that protect all personal information against cyberattacks. Compliance requires close adherence to the GDPR Compliance by Design doctrine, which means that data protection should be designed into your firm’s IT systems, policies, and practices.
- Compliance requires maintaining comprehensive records of all processing activities which specify what types of personal information are collected and how it is used; this will make it easier for you to demonstrate compliance with GDPR mandates.
- Compliance entails implementing technical safeguards, data governance policies, and regular audits of your company’s personal data processing activities.
The Key Compliance Takeaway
Compliance with GDPR requirements will provide a competitive advantage and improve business processes overall. In addition, compliance with GDPR is not an arduous task and can be easily implemented by any company without facing major disruptions to their workflow. All you need to do is follow these seven tenets to create robust processes for GDPR compliance. | https://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/standards-protocols/robust-gdpr-compliance/ |
Marketic ensures conformance to global regulations and industry practices in order to maintain privacy and security of its customer’s data. All our products provide GDPR-ready capabilities to help our customers meet their compliance obligations. Marketic extends these capabilities not only to customers in the EU but to all our customers worldwide.
To strengthen an individual’s rights to privacy, the European Union brought about the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR, fortifying existing directives on data protection. The Regulation issued by the European Union applies to businesses processing personal data of European residents and has been in force since 25th May 2018.
- Lawful, fair and transparent processing: Emphasizes transparency for all individuals i.e. when data is collected, businesses must be clear as to why data is being collected and what will it be used for.
- Purpose limitation: Collect data, only for the purpose you need it for. That is, data collected for specific purposes/reasons cannot be further processed in a manner incompatible with those purposes/reasons.
- Data minimization: Ensure data captured is adequate, relevant and limited. Based on this principle, organizations must ensure they store a minimum amount of data required for their purpose.
- Accurate and up-to-date processing: Data controllers must ensure information remains accurate, valid and fit for purpose. To comply, organizations must institute processes and policies to address how they maintain data they are processing and storing it.
- Limitation of storage in a form that permits identification: Have control over storage and movement of data within the organization. This includes implementing and enforcing data retention policies and preventing unauthorized movement and storage of data.
- Confidential and secure: An organization collecting and processing data are solely responsible for implementing appropriate security measures to protect the individual’s data.
- Accountability and liability: Organizations must be able to demonstrate the adoption of necessary steps to protect an individual’s personal data, and be able to pull up every step within the GDPR strategy as evidence.
The DPO is responsible for informing employees of their compliance obligations as well as conducting monitoring, training, and audits required by the GDPR. A DPO needs to be appointed if you:
- process large amounts of personal data
- carry out large scale systematic monitoring of individuals or,
- are a public sector authority
No, the GDPR does not require EU personal data to stay in the EU, nor does it place any new restrictions on transfer of personal data outside the EU. Data transfers from the EU to outside can be legitimized in many ways including,
- EU-US Privacy Shield
- Model or Contractual clauses
Marketic uses both the above mentioned methods to legitimize data transfers. Therefore customers do not need to move their data, or restrict data to the EU.
GDPR requires fairness, transparency, accuracy, security, minimisation and respect for rights of the individual whose data businesses want to process. The GDPR helps restore consumer trust by governing rules of data protection and rights across the EU. This helps gain customer trust, and they are likely to engage better with the business. Apart from this businesses can capitalize on opportunities through:
- Cost savings and less complicated policy management by dealing with 1 law, not 28. This otherwise required expenses and efforts dealing with regulations for each member state locally.
- Consistency in practice of data protection measures both in and outside the EU. This is because the same regulation applies to all businesses, regardless of where they are based out of.
- The regulation enables innovation to flourish under the new law.
Consent is one way, but it’s not the only way to process data. The GDPR provides other ways of processing data:
- Contractual necessity
- Legitimate interests
- Vital interests
For more information please visit the website of the Information Commissioner’s Office
Data protection by design means, ensuring only that personal data which is required is collected, and also incorporate privacy features and functionality into products and services from the time they are first designed.
Data protection by default means, businesses must implement appropriate measures to mitigate privacy risks at the time of collection of the data, as well us by extending it at the time of processing it.
Individuals have the right to have their personal data deleted, in the event that it is no longer needed. | https://marketic.io/gdpr/ |
An interesting case from Quebec demonstrates the tension between privacy and transparency when it comes to public registers that include personal information. It also raises issues around ownership and control of data, including the measures used to prevent data scraping. The way the litigation was framed means that not all of these questions are answered in the decision, leaving some lingering public policy questions.
Quebec’s Enterprise Registrar oversees a registry, in the form of a database, of all businesses in Quebec, including corporations, sole corporations and partnerships. The Registrar is empowered to do so under the Act respecting the legal publicity of enterprises (ALPE), which also establishes the database. The Registrar is obliged to make this register publicly accessible, including remotely by technological means, and basic use of the database is free of charge.
The applicant in this case is OpenCorporates, a U.K.-based organization dedicated to ensuring total corporate transparency. According to its website, OpenCorporates has created and maintains “the largest open database of companies in the world”. It currently has data on companies located in over 130 jurisdictions. Most of this data is drawn from reliable public registries. In addition to providing a free, searchable public resource, OpenCorporates also sells structured data to financial institutions, government agencies, journalists and other businesses. The money raised from these sales finances its operations.
OpenCorporates gathers its data using a variety of means. In 2012, it began to scrape data from Quebec’s Enterprise Register. Data scraping involves the use of ‘bots’ to visit and automatically harvest data from targeted web pages. It is a common data-harvesting practice, widely used by journalists, civil society actors and researchers, as well as companies large and small. As common as it may be, it is not always welcome, and there has been litigation in Canada and around the world about the legality of data scraping practices, chiefly in contexts where the defendant is attempting to commercialize data scraped from a business rival.
In 2016 the Registrar changed the terms of service for the Enterprise Register. These changes essentially prohibited web scraping activities, as well as the commercialization of data extracted from the site. The new terms also prohibit certain types of information analyses; for example, they bar searches for data according to the name and address of a particular person. All visitors to the site must agree to the Terms of Service. The Registrar also introduced technological measures to make it more difficult for bots to scrape its data.
Opencorporates Ltd. C. Registraire des entreprises du Québec is not a challenge to the Register’s new, restrictive terms and conditions. Instead, because the Registrar also sent OpenCorporates a cease and desist letter demanding that it stop using the data it had collected prior to the change in Terms of Service, OpenCorporates sought a declaration from the Quebec Superior Court that it was entitled to continue to use this earlier data.
The Registrar acknowledged that nothing in the ALPE authorizes it to control uses made of any data obtained from its site. Further, until it posted the new terms and conditions for the site, nothing limited what users could do with the data. The Registrar argued that it had the right to control the pre-2016 data because of the purpose of the Register. It argued that the ALPE established the Register as the sole source of public data on Quebec businesses, and that the database was designed to protect the personal information that it contained (i.e. the names and addresses of directors of corporations). For example, it does not permit extensive searches by name or address. OpenCorporates, by contrast, permits the searching of all of its data, including by name and address.
The court characterized the purpose of the Register as being to protect individuals and corporations that interact with other corporations by assuring them easy access to identity information, including the names of those persons associated with a corporation. An electronic database gives users the ability to make quick searches and from a distance. Quebec’s Act to Establish a Legal Framework for Information Technology provides that where a document contains personal information and is made public for particular purposes, any extensive searches of the document must be limited to those purposes. This law places the onus on the person responsible for providing access to the document to put in place appropriate technological protection measures. Under the ALPE, the Registrar can carry out more comprehensive searches of the database on behalf of users who must make their request to the Registrar. Even then, the ALPE prohibits the Registrar from using the name or address of an individual as a basis for a search. According to the Registrar, a member of the public has right to know, once one they have the name of a company, with whom they are dealing; they do not have the right to determine the number of companies to which a physical person is linked. By contrast, this latter type of search is one that could be carried out using the OpenCorporates database.
The court noted that it was not its role to consider the legality of OpenCorporates’ database, nor to consider the use made by others of that database. It also observed that individuals concerned about potential privacy breaches facilitated by OpenCorporates might have recourse under Quebec privacy law. Justice Rogers’ focus was on the specific question of whether the Registrar could prevent OpenCorporates from using the data it gathered prior to the change of terms of service in 2016. On this point, the judge ruled in favour of OpenCorporates. In her view, OpenCorporates’ gathering of this data was not in breach of any law that the Registrar could rely upon (leaving aside any potential privacy claims by individuals whose data was scraped). Further, she found that nothing in the ALPE gave the Registrar a monopoly on the creation and maintenance of a database of corporate data. She observed that the use made by OpenCorporates of the data was not contrary to the purpose of the ALPE, which was to create greater corporate transparency and to protect those who interacted with corporations. She ruled that nothing in the ALPE obligated the Registrar to eliminate all privacy risks. The names and addresses of those involved with corporations are public information; the goal of the legislation is to facilitate digital access to the data while at the same time placing limits on bulk searches. Nothing in the ALPE prevented another organization from creating its own database of Quebec businesses. Since OpenCorporates did not breach any laws or terms of service in collecting the information between 2012 and 2016, nothing prevented it from continuing to use that information in its own databases. Justice Rogers issued a declaration to the effect that the Registrar was not permitted to prevent OpenCorporates from publishing and distributing the data it collected from the Register prior to 2016.
While this was a victory for OpenCorporates, it did not do much more than ensure its right to continue to use data that will become increasingly dated. There is perhaps some value in the Court’s finding that the existence of a public database does not, on its own, preclude the creation of derivative databases. However, the decision leaves some important questions unanswered. In the first place, it alludes to but offers no opinion on the ability to challenge the inclusion of the data in the OpenCorporates database on privacy grounds. While a breach of privacy argument might be difficult to maintain in the case of public data regarding corporate ownership, it is still unpredictable how it might play out in court. This is far less sensitive data that that involved in the scraping of court decisions litigated before the Federal Court in A.T. v. Globe24hr.com; there is a public interest in making the specific personal information available in the Registry; and the use made by OpenCorporates is far less exploitative than in Globe24hr. Nevertheless, the privacy issues remain a latent difficulty. Overall, the decision tells us little about how to strike an appropriate balance between the values of transparency and privacy. The legislation and the Registrar’s approach are designed to make it difficult to track corporate ownership or involvement across multiple corporations. There is rigorous protection of information with low privacy value and with a strong public dimension; with transparency being weakened as a result. It is worth noting that another lawsuit against the Register may be in the works. It is reported that the CBC is challenging the decision of the Registrar to prohibit searches by names of directors and managers of companies as a breach of the right to freedom of expression.
Because the terms of service were not directly at issue in the case, there is also little to go on with respect to the impact of such terms. To what extent can terms of service limit what can be done with publicly accessible data made available over the Internet? The recent U.S. case of hiQ Labs Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp. raises interesting questions about freedom of expression and the right to harvest publicly accessible data. This and other important issues remain unaddressed in what is ultimately an interesting but unsatisfying court decision.
Monday, 18 December 2017 13:32
Law Enforcement Use of Social Media Data Analytics: Transparency Challenges
In October 2016, the data analytics company Geofeedia made headlines when the California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued the results of a major study which sought to determine the extent to which police services in California were using social media data analytics. These analytics were based upon geo-referenced information posted by ordinary individuals to social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook. Information of this kind is treated as “public” in the United States because it is freely contributed by users to a public forum. Nevertheless, the use of social media data analytics by police raises important civil liberties and privacy questions. In some cases, users may not be aware that their tweets or posts contain additional meta data including geolocation information. In all cases, the power of data analytics permits rapid cross-referencing of data from multiple sources, permitting the construction of profiles that go well beyond the information contributed in single posts.
The extent to which social media data analytics are used by police services is difficult to assess because there is often inadequate transparency both about the actual use of such services and the purposes for which they are used. Through a laborious process of filing freedom of information requests the ACLU sought to find out which police services were contracting for social media data analytics. The results of their study showed widespread use. What they found in the case of Geofeedia went further. Although Geofeedia was not the only data analytics company to mine social media data and to market its services to government authorities, its representatives had engaged in email exchanges with police about their services. In these emails, company employees used two recent sets of protests against police as examples of the usefulness of social media data analytics. These protests were those that followed the death in police custody of Freddie Gray, a young African-American man who had been arrested in Baltimore, and the shooting death by police of Michael Brown, an eighteen-year-old African-American man in Ferguson, Missouri. By explicitly offering services that could be used to monitor those who protested police violence against African Americans, the Geofeedia emails aggravated a climate of mistrust and division, and confirmed a belief held by many that authorities were using surveillance and profiling to target racialized communities.
In a new paper, just published in the online, open-access journal SCRIPTed, I use the story around the discovery of Geofeedia’s activities and the backlash that followed to frame a broader discussion of police use of social media data analytics. Although this paper began as an exploration of the privacy issues raised by the state’s use of social media data analytics, it shifted into a paper about transparency. Clearly, privacy issues – as well as other civil liberties questions – remain of fundamental importance. Yet, the reality is that without adequate transparency there simply is no easy way to determine whether police are relying on social media data analytics, on what scale and for what purposes. This lack of transparency makes it difficult to hold anyone to account. The ACLU’s work to document the problem in California was painstaking and time consuming, as was a similar effort by the Brennan Center for Justice, also discussed in this paper. And, while the Geofeedia case provided an important example of the real problems that underlie such practices, it only came to light because Geofeedia’s employees made certain representations by email instead of in person or over the phone. A company need only direct that email not be used for these kinds of communications for the content of these communications to disappear from public view.
My paper examines the use of social media data analytics by police services, and then considers a range of different transparency issues. I explore some of the challenges to transparency that may flow from the way in which social media data analytics are described or characterized by police services. I then consider transparency from several different perspectives. In the first place I look at transparency in terms of developing explicit policies regarding social media data analytics. These policies are not just for police, but also for social media platforms and the developers that use their data. I then consider transparency as a form of oversight. I look at the ways in which greater transparency can cast light on the activities of the providers and users of social media data and data analytics. Finally, I consider the need for greater transparency around the monitoring of compliance with policies (those governing police or developers) and the enforcement of these policies.
A full text of my paper is available here under a CC Licence.
Tuesday, 26 September 2017 06:26
Bill C-58's Order-Making Powers: A Huge Disappointment
As part of Right to Know week, I participated in a conference organized by Canada’s Office of the Information Commissioner. My panel was asked to discuss Bill C-58, an Act to amend the Access to Information Act. I have discussed other aspects of this bill here and here. Below are my thoughts on the Commissioner’s order-making powers under that Bill.
Bill C-58, the Act to amend the Access to Information Act will, if passed into law, give the Information Commissioner order-making powers. This development has been called for repeatedly over the years by the Commissioner as well as by access to information advocates. Order-making powers transform the Commissioner’s recommendations into requirements; they provide the potential to achieve results without the further and laborious step of having to go to the Federal Court. This is, at least the theory. For many, the presence of order-making powers is one of the strengths of C-58, a Bill that has otherwise been criticized for not going far enough to reform a badly outdated access to information regime.
Before one gets too excited about the order-making powers in Bill C-58, however, it is worth giving them a closer look. The power is found in a proposed new s. 36.1, which reads:
36.1 (1) If, after investigating a complaint described in any of paragraphs 30(1)(a) to (d.1), the Commissioner finds that the complaint is well-founded, he or she may make any order in respect of a record to which this Part applies that he or she considers appropriate, including requiring the head of the government institution that has control of the record in respect of which the complaint is made
(a) to disclose the record or a part of the record; and
(b) to reconsider their decision to refuse access to the record or a part of the record.
Although this appears promising, there is a catch. Any such order will not take effect until after the expiry of certain periods of time. The first of these is designed to allow the head of the institution to ask the Federal Court to review “the matter that is the subject of the complaint.” The second time period is to allow third parties (for example, someone whose personal information or confidential commercial information might be affected by the proposed order) or the federal Privacy Commissioner to apply to the Federal Court for a review. (The reason why the Privacy Commissioner might be seeking a review is the subject of an earlier post here).
The wording of these provisions makes it clear that recourse to the Federal Court is neither an appeal of the Commissioner’s order, nor an application for judicial review. Instead, the statute creates a right to request a hearing de novo before the Federal Court on “the matter that is the subject of the complaint”. As we know from experience with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, such a proceeding de novo does not require any deference to be given to the Commissioner’s report, conclusions or order.
One need only compare these order-making powers with those of some of the Commissioner’s provincial counterparts to see how tentative the drafters of Bill C-58 have been. Alberta’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act states simply “An order made by the Commissioner under this Act is final.”(s. 73) British Columbia’s statute takes an approach which at first glance looks similar to what is in C-58. Section 59 provides:
59. (1) Subject to subsection (1.1), not later than 30 days after being given a copy of an order of the commissioner, the head of the public body concerned or the service provider to whom the order is directed, as applicable, must comply with the order unless an application for judicial review of the order is brought before that period ends.
Like C-58, s. 59 of B.C.’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act provides for a delay in the order’s taking effect depending on whether the head of the institution seeks to challenge it. However, unlike C-58, the head of the institution must seek judicial review of the order (not the matter more generally). Judicial review is based on the record that was before the original adjudicator. It is also a process that requires some deference to be shown to the Commissioner.
A report on the modernization of Canada’s access to information regime compared the current ombuds model with the order-making model. It found that the order making model was preferable for a number of cogent reasons. Two of these were:
These are very sound reasons for moving to an order-making model. Unfortunately, the model provided in Bill C-58 does not provide these advantages. Because it allows for a hearing de novo, there is no incentive to put everything before the adjudicator – new evidence and arguments can be introduced before the Federal Court. This will do nothing to advance the goals of accountability and transparency; it might even help to obstruct them.
Monday, 10 July 2017 12:48
Court orders disclosure of names of Ontario's top-billing physicians; doctors plan to appeal
Toronto Star journalist Theresa Boyle has just won an important victory for access to information rights and government transparency – one that is likely to be challenged before the Ontario Court of Appeal. On June 30, 2017, three justices of the Ontario Divisional Court unanimously upheld an adjudicator’s order that the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care disclose the names, annual billing amounts and fields of medical specialization of the 100 top-billing physicians in Ontario. The application for judicial review of the order was brought by the Ontario Medical Association, along with many of the doctors on the disputed list (the Applicants).
The amount that the Ontario Health Insurance Program (OHIP) pays physicians for services rendered is government information. Under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA), the public has a right of access to government information – subject to specific exceptions that serve competing issues of public interest. One of these is privacy – a government institution can refuse to disclose information if it would reveal personal information. The Ministry had been willing to disclose the top 100 amounts billed to OHIP, but it refused to disclose the names of the doctors or some of the areas of specialization (which might lead to their identification) on the basis that this was the physicians’ personal information. The Adjudicator disagreed and found that the billing information, including the doctors’ names, was not personal information. Instead, it identified the physicians in their professional capacity. FOIPPA excludes this sort of information from the definition of personal information.
The Applicants accepted that the physicians were named in the billing records in their professional capacity. However, they argued that when those names were associated with the gross amounts, this revealed “other personal information”. In other words, they argued that the raw billing information did not reflect the business overhead expenses that physicians had to pay from their earnings. As a result, this information, if released, would be misinterpreted by the public as information about their net incomes. They argued that this made converted it into “other personal information relating to the individual” (s. 2(1)(h)). How much doctors bill OHIP should be public information. The idea that the possibility that such information might be misinterpreted could be a justification for refusal to disclose it is paternalistic. It also has the potential to stifle access to information. The argument deserved the swift rejection it received from the court.
The Applicants also argued that the adjudicator erred by not following earlier decisions of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) that had found that the gross billing amounts associated with physician names constituted personal information. Adjudicator John Higgins ruled that “Payments that are subject to deductions for business expenses are clearly business information.” (at para 18) The Court observed that the adjudicator was not bound to follow earlier OIPC decisions. Further, the issue of consistency could be looked at in two ways. As the adjudicator himself had noted, the OIPC had regularly treated information about the income of non-medical professionals as non-personal information subject to disclosure under the FOIPPA; but for some reasons had treated physician-related information differently. Thus, while one could argue that the adjudicator’s decision was inconsistent with earlier decisions about physician billing information, it was entirely consistent with decisions about monies paid by government to other professionals. The Court found no fault with the adjudicator’s approach.
The Applicants had also argued that Ms Boyle “had failed to establish a pressing need for the information or how providing it to her would advance the objective of transparency in government.” (para 31). The court gave this argument the treatment it deserved – they smacked it down. Justice Nordheimer observed that applicants under the FOIPPA are not required to provide reasons why they seek information. Rather, the legislation requires that information of this kind “is to be provided unless a privacy exception is demonstrated.” (at para 32) Justice Nordheimer went on to note that under access to information legislation, “the public is entitled to information in the possession of their governments so that the public may, among other things, hold their governments accountable.” He stated that “the proper question to be asked in this context, therefore, is not “why do you need it?” but rather is “why should you not have it.”” (at para 34).
This decision of the Court is to be applauded for making such short work of arguments that contained little of the public interest and a great deal of private interest. Transparency within a publicly-funded health care system is essential to accountability. Kudos to Theresa Boyle and the Toronto Star for pushing this matter forward. The legal costs of $50,000 awarded to them make it clear that transparency and accountability often do not come cheaply or without significant effort. And those costs continue to mount as the issues must now be hammered out again before the Ontario Court of Appeal.
Thursday, 26 January 2017 11:45
Election Advertising Registration Requirements: the SCC balances transparency with civil liberties
How does one balance transparency with civil liberties in the context of election campaigns? This issue is at the core of a decision just handed down by the Supreme Court of Canada.
B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association v. Attorney-General (B.C.) began as a challenge by the appellant organization to provisions of B.C.’s Election Act that required individuals or organizations who “sponsor election advertising” to register with the Chief Electoral Officer. Information on the register is publicly available. The underlying public policy goals to allow the public to see who is sponsoring advertising campaigns during the course of elections. The Supreme Court of Canada easily found this objective to be “pressing and substantial”.
The challenge brought by the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (BCFIPA) was based on the way in which the registration requirement was framed in the Act. The Canada Elections Act also contains a registration requirement, but the requirement is linked to a spending threshold. In other words, under the federal statute, those who spend more than $500 on election advertising are required to register; others are not. The B.C. legislation is framed instead in terms of a general registration requirement for all sponsors of election advertising. BCFIPA’s concern was that this would mean that any individual who placed a handmade sign in their window, who wore a t-shirt with an election message, or who otherwise promoted their views during an election campaign would be forced to register. Not only might this chill freedom of political expression in its own right, it would raise significant privacy issues for individuals since they would have to disclose not just their names, but their addresses and other contact information in the register. Thus, the BCFIPA sought to have the registration requirement limited by the Court to only those who spent more than $500 on an election campaign.
The problem in this case was exacerbated by the position taken by B.C.’s Chief Electoral Officer. In a 2010 report to the B.C. legislature, he provided his interpretation of the application of the legislation. He expressed the view that it did not “distinguish between those sponsors conducting full media campaigns and individuals who post handwritten signs in their apartment windows.” (at para 19). This interpretation of the Election Act was accepted by both the trial judge and at the Court of Appeal, and it shaped the argument before those courts as well as their decisions.
The Supreme Court of Canada took an entirely different approach. They interpreted the language “sponsor election advertising” to mean something other than the expression of political views by individuals. In other words, the statute applied only to those who sponsored election advertising – i.e., those who paid for election advertising to be conducted or who received such services as a contribution. The Court was of the view that the public policy behind registration requirements was generally sound. It found that a legislature could mitigate the impact on freedom of expression by either setting a monetary threshold to trigger the requirement (as is the case at the federal level) or by defining sponsorship to exclude individual expression (as was the case in B.C.). While it is true that the B.C. statute could still capture organized activities involving expenditures of less than $500, and might thus have some limiting effect, the Court found that this would not be significant for a number of reasons, and that such impacts were easily reconcilable with the benefits of the registration scheme.
The decision of the Supreme Court of Canada will be useful in clarifying the scope and impact of the Election Act and in providing guidance for similar statutes. It should be noted however, that the case traveled to the Supreme Court of Canada at great cost both to BCFIPA and to the taxpayer because of either legislative inattention to the need to clarify the scope of the legislation or because of an over-zealous interpretation of the statute by the province’s Chief Electoral Officer. The situation highlights the need for careful attention to be paid at the outset of such initiatives to the balance that must be struck between transparency and other competing values such as civil liberties and privacy.
Monday, 20 June 2016 07:10
New Action Plan on Open Government Open for Comment
The federal government has just released for public comment its open government plan for 2016-2018. This is the third such plan since Canada joined the Open Government Partnership in 2012. The two previous plans were released by the Conservative government, and were called Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government 2012-2014 and Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government 2014-2016. This most recent plan is titled Canada’s New Plan on Open Government (“New Plan”). The change in title signals a change in approach.
The previous government structured its commitments around three broad themes: Open Data, Open Information and Open Dialogue. It is fair to say that it was the first of these themes that received the greatest attention. Under the Conservatives there were a number of important open data initiatives: the government developed an open data portal, an open government licence (modeled on the UK Open Government Licence), and a Directive on Open Government. It also committed to funding the Open Data Exchange (ODX) (a kind of incubator hub for open data businesses in Canada), and supported a couple of national open data hackathons. Commitments under Open Information were considerably less ambitious. While important improvements were made to online interfaces for making access to information requests, and while more information was provided about already filled ATIP requests, it is fair to say that improving substantive access to government information was not a priority. Open dialogue commitments were also relatively modest.
Canada’s “New Plan” is considerably different in style and substance from its predecessors. This plan is structured around 4 broad themes: open by default; fiscal transparency; innovation, prosperity and sustainable development; and engaging Canadians and the world. Each theme comes with a number of commitments and milestones, and each speaks to an aspirational goal for open government, better articulating why this is an initiative worth an investment of time and resources.
Perhaps because there was so great a backlash against the previous government’s perceived lack of openness, the Liberals ran on an election platform that stressed openness and transparency. The New Plan reflects many of these election commitments. As such, it is notably more ambitious than the previous two action plans. The commitments are both deeper (for example, the 2014-2016 action plan committed to a public database disclosing details of all government contracts over $10,000; the New Plan commits to revealing details of all contracts over $1), and more expansive (with the government committing to new openness initiatives not found in earlier plans).
One area where the previous government faced considerable criticism (see, for example Mary Francoli’s second review of Canada’s open government commitments) was in respect of the access to information regime. That government’s commitments under “open information” aimed to improve access to information processes without addressing substantive flaws in the outdated Access to Information Act. The new government’s promise to improve the legislation is up front in the New Plan. Its first commitment is to enhance access to information through reforms to the legislation. According to the New Plan, these include order-making powers for the Commissioner, extending the application of the Access to Information Act to the Prime Minister and his Ministers’ Offices, and mandatory 5-year reviews of the legislation. Although these amendments would be a positive step, they fall short of those recommended by the Commissioner. It will also be interesting to see whether everything on this short list comes to pass. (Order-making powers in particular are something to watch here.) The House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics has recently completed hearings on this legislation. It will be very interesting to see what actually comes of this process. As many cynics (realists?) have observed, it is much easier for opposition parties to be in favour of open and transparent government than it is for parties in power. Whether the Act gets the makeover it requires remains to be seen.
One of the interesting features of this New Plan is that many of the commitments are ones that go to supporting the enormous cultural shift that is required for a government to operate in a more open fashion. Bureaucracies develop strong cultures, often influenced by long-cherished policies and practices. Significant change often requires more than just a new policy or directive; the New Plan contains commitments for the development of clear guidelines and standards for making data and information open by default, as well as commitments to training and education within the civil service, performance metrics, and new management frameworks. While not particularly ‘exciting’, these commitments are important and they signal a desire to take the steps needed to effect a genuine cultural shift within government.
The New Plan identifies fiscal transparency as an overarching theme. It contains several commitments to improve fiscal transparency, including more extensive and granular reporting of information on departmental spending, greater transparency of budget data and of fiscal analysis, and improved openness of information around government grants and other contributions. The government also commits to creating a single portal for Canadians who wish to search for information on Canadian businesses, whether they are incorporated federally or in one of the provinces or territories.
On the theme of Innovation, Prosperity and Sustainable Development, the New Plan also reflects commitments to greater openness in relation to federal science activities (a sore point with the previous government). It also builds upon a range of commitments that were present in previous action plans, including the use of the ODX to stimulate innovation, the development of open geospatial data, the alignment of open data at all levels of government in Canada, and the implementation of the Extractive Sector Transparency Measures Act. The New Plan also makes commitments to show leadership in supporting openness and transparency around the world.
The government’s final theme is “Engaging Canadians and the World”. This is the part where the government addresses how it plans to engage civil society. It plans to disband the Advisory Panel established by the previous government (of which I was a member). While the panel constituted a broad pool of expertise on which the government could draw, it was significantly under-utilized, and clearly this government plans to try something new. They state that they will “develop and maintain a renewed mechanism for ongoing, meaningful dialogue” between the government and civil society organizations – whatever that means. Clearly, the government is still trying to come up with a format or framework that will be most effective.
The government also commits in rather vague terms to fostering citizen participation and engagement with government on open government initiatives. It would seem that the government will attempt to “enable the use of new methods for consulting and engaging Canadians”, and will provide support and resources to government departments and agencies that require assistance in doing so. The commitments in this area are inward-looking – the government seems to acknowledge that it needs to figure out how to encourage and enhance citizen engagement, but at the same time is not sure how to do so effectively.
In this respect, the New Plan offers perhaps a case in point. This is a detailed and interesting plan that covers a great deal of territory and that addresses many issues that should be of significant concern to Canadians. It was released on June 16, with a call for comments by June 30. Such a narrow window of time in which to comment on such a lengthy document does not encourage engagement or dialogue. While the time constraints may be externally driven (by virtue of OGP targets and deadlines), and while there has been consultation in the lead up to the drafting of this document, it is disappointing that the public is not given more time to engage and respond.
For those who are interested in commenting, it should be noted that the government is open to comments/feedback in different forms. Comments may be made by email, or they can be entered into a comment box at the bottom of the page where the report is found. These latter comments tend to be fairly short and, once they pass through moderation, are visible to the public.
Published in Geospatial Data/Digital Cartography
Monday, 04 April 2016 11:34
Federal Court balances the right of access to personal information with corporate secrecy
The Federal Court has released a decision in a case that raises important issues about transparency and accountability under Canada’s private sector privacy legislation.
The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) governs privacy with respect to the collection, use and disclosure of personal information by private sector organizations. Under PIPEDA, individuals have the right to access their personal information in the hands of private sector organizations. The right of access allows individuals to see what information organizations have collected about them. It is accompanied by a right to have incorrect information rectified. In our datified society, organizations make more and more decisions about individuals based upon often complex profiles built with personal information from a broad range of sources. The right of access allows individuals to see whether organizations have exceeded the limits of the law in collecting and retaining personal information; it also allows them the opportunity to correct errors that might adversely impact decision-making about them. Unfortunately, our datified society also makes organizations much more likely to insist that the data and algorithms used to make decisions or generate profiles, along with the profiles themselves, are all confidential business information and thus exempt from the right of access. This is precisely what is at issue in Bertucci v. Royal Bank of Canada.
The dispute in this case arose after the Bertuccis – a father and son who had banked with RBC for 35 and 20 years respectively, and who also held business accounts with the bank – were told by RBC that the bank would be closing their accounts. The reason given for the account closure was that the bank was no longer comfortable doing business with them. Shortly after this, the Bertuccis made a request, consistent with their right of access under PIPEDA, to be provided with all of their personal information in the hands of RBC, including information as to why their bank accounts were closed. RBC promptly denied the request, stating that it had already provided its reason for closing the accounts and asserting that it had a right under its customer contracts to unilaterally close accounts without notice. It also indicated that it had received no personal information from third parties about the Bertuccis and that all of the information that they sought was confidential commercial information.
RBC relied upon paragraph 9(3)(b) of PIPEDA, which essentially allows an organization to refuse to provide access to personal information where “to do so would reveal confidential commercial information”. On receiving RBC’s refusal to provide access, the Bertuccis complained to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. The OPC investigated the complaint and ultimately sided with RBC, finding that it was justified in withholding the information. In reaching this conclusion, the OPCC relied in part on an earlier Finding of the Privacy Commissioner which I have previously critiqued, precisely because of its potential implications for transparency and accountability in the evolving big data context.
In reaching it conclusion on the application of paragraph 9(3)(b) of PIPEDA, the OPC apparently accepted that the information at issue was confidential business information, noting that it was “treated as confidential by RBC, including information about the bank’s internal methods for assessing business-related risks.” (At para 10)
After having their complaint declared unfounded by the OPC, the applicants took the issue to the Federal Court. Justice Martineau framed the key question before the court in these terms: “Can RBC refuse to provide access to undisclosed personal information it has collected about the applicants on the grounds that its disclosure in this case would reveal confidential commercial information” (at para 16)
RBC’s position was that it was not required to justify why it might close an account. It argued that if it is forced to disclose personal information about a decision to close an account, then it is effectively stripped of its prerogative to not provide reasons. It also argued that any information that it relied upon in its risk assessment process would constitute confidential business information. This would be so even if the information were publicly available (as in the case of a newspaper article about the account holder). The fact that the newspaper article was relied upon in decision-making would be what constituted confidential information – providing access to that article would de facto disclose that information.
The argument put forward by RBC is similar to the one accepted by the OPC in its earlier (2002) decision which was relied upon by the bank and which I have previously criticized here. It is an argument that, if accepted, would bode very ill for the right of access to personal information in our big data environment. Information may be compiled from all manner of sources and used to create profiles that are relied upon in decision-making. To simply accept that information used in this way is confidential business information because it might reveal how the company reaches decisions slams shut the door on the right of access and renders corporate decision-making about individuals, based upon the vast stores of collected personal information, essentially non-transparent.
The Bertuccis argued that PIPEDA – which the courts have previously found to have a quasi-constitutional status in protecting individual privacy – makes the right of access to one’s personal information the rule. An exception to this rule would have to be construed narrowly. The applicants wanted to know what information led to the closure of their accounts and sought as well to exercise their right to have this information corrected if it was inaccurate. They were concerned that the maintenance on file of inaccurate information by RBC might continue to haunt them in the future. They also argued that RBC’s approach created a two-tiered system for access to personal information. Information that could be accessed by customers whose accounts were not terminated would suddenly become confidential information once those accounts were closed, simply because it was used in making that decision. They argued that the bank should not be allowed to use exceptions to the access requirement to shelter itself from embarrassment at having been found to have relied upon faulty or inadequate information.
Given how readily the OPC – the guardian of Canadians’ personal information in the hands of private sector organizations – accepted RBC’s characterization of this information as confidential, Justice Martineau’s decision is encouraging. He largely agreed with the position of the applicants, finding that the exceptions to the right to access to one’s personal information must be construed narrowly. Significantly, Justice Martineau found that courts cannot simply defer to a bank’s assertion that certain information is confidential commercial information. He placed an onus on RBC to justify why each withheld document was considered confidential. He noted that in some circumstances it will be possible to redact portions of reports, documents or data that are confidential while still providing access to the remainder of the information. In this case, Justice Martineau was not satisfied that the withheld information met the standard for confidential commercial information, nor was he convinced that some of it could not have been provided in redacted form.
Reviewing the documents at issue, Justice Martineau began by finding that a list of the documents relied upon by the bank in reaching its decision was not confidential information, subject to certain redactions. He noted as well that much of what was being withheld by the bank was “raw data”. He distinguished the raw data from the credit scoring model that was found to be confidential information in the 2002 OPC Finding mentioned above. He noted as well that the raw data was not confidential information and had not, when it was created, been treated as confidential information by the bank. He also noted that the standard for withholding information on an access request was very high.
Justice Martineau gave RBC 45 days to provide the applicants with all but a few of the documents which the court agreed could be withheld as confidential commercial information. Although the applicants had sought compensatory and punitive damages, he found that it was not an appropriate case in which to award damages.
Given the importance of this decision in the much broader big data and business information context, RBC is likely to appeal it to the Federal Court of Appeal. If so, it will certainly be an important case to watch. The issues it raises are crucial to the future of transparency and accountability of corporations with respect to their use of personal information. In light of the unwillingness of the OPC to stand up to the bank both in this case and in earlier cases regarding assertions of confidential commercial information, Justice Martineau’s approach is encouraging. There is a great deal at stake here, and this case will be well worth watching if it is appealed.
Tuesday, 23 February 2016 10:46
Balancing privacy and transparency in open government
I was at the United Nations last week for an Expert Group Meeting on Moving from commitments to results in building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. On February 18, 2016, I gave a presentation on balancing privacy with transparency in open government. This is a challenging issue, and one that is made even more so by digitization, information communication technologies and the big data environment.
Openness access to government information and data serve the goals of greater transparency and greater public trust in government. They are essential in fighting corruption, but they are also important in holding governments to account for their decision-making and for their spending of public funds. However, transparency must also be balanced against other considerations, including privacy. Privacy is a human right, and it protects the dignity, autonomy and integrity of individuals. Beyond this, however, the protection of privacy of personal information in the hands of governments also enhances public trust in governments and can contribute to citizen engagement.
How, then, does one balance privacy with transparency when it comes to information in the hands of government? There are no easy answers. My slides from my presentation can be found here, and these slides contain some links to some other publicly available work on this topic.
Wednesday, 11 November 2015 08:17
Promoting Transparency While Protecting Privacy in Open Government In Canada
The rise of big data analytics, combined with a movement at all levels of government in Canada towards open data and the proactive disclosure of government information have created a context in which privacy interests are increasingly likely to conflict with the goals of transparency and accountability. In some cases these conflicts may be small and easily reconciled, but in other cases they may be more substantial. In addition, some means of reconciling the conflict must be found; where privacy and transparency conflict, for example, which value should prevail and under what conditions?
Conflicts between transparency and privacy have been seen recently in, for example, concerns expressed over the amount of personal information that might be found in court and tribunal decisions that are published online. Sunshine lists – lists of salaries of public employees that are over a certain amount – also raise issues. Provinces that publish such lists have tended to do so using file formats that do not lend themselves to easy digital manipulation. But of course these modest technological barriers are routinely overcome, and individual name and salary information is absorbed into the big data universe for purposes quite distinct from meeting a government’s transparency objectives. Open municipal data files may include information about specific individuals: for example, a database of all home renovation permit applications would have privacy implications for those individuals who applied for such permits. Even with names were redacted, it is easy enough to identify the owners of any homes for which renovation permits were obtained. In some cases, the level of connection may be less direct. For example, a public restaurant inspection record that cited kitchen staff at a small local restaurant for failure to wash their hands on a specific inspection date might indirectly reveal the identity of the persons who did not wash their hands, particularly if the staff of the restaurant is quite small. And, of course, in the big data context, even anonymized data, or data that is not personal information on its face, can be matched with other available data to identify specific individuals.
The point is not that the disclosure of such information must be avoided at all costs – rather, the issue is how to determine where to draw the line between privacy and transparency, and what steps might be taken to protect privacy while still ensuring transparency. No new legislative framework has been created to specifically guide the move towards open government in Canada, notwithstanding the fact that government data is fuel for the engines of big data.
In a paper that has just been published by the Alberta Law Review, my co-author Amy Conroy and I explore these issues, using a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision as a departure point for our analysis. Although the Court’s decision in Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services v Information and Privacy Commissioner (Ontario) (Ministry of Community Safety) does not specifically address either open data or proactive disclosure, the case nevertheless offers important insights into the gaps in both legislation and case law in this area.
In our paper we consider the challenges inherent in the release of government data and information either through pro-active disclosure or as open data. A key factor in striking the balance between transparency and privacy is the definition of personal information – information that is not personal information has no privacy implications. Another factor is, of course, the meaning given to the concept of transparency. Our paper considers how courts and adjudicators understand transparency in the face of competing claims to privacy. We challenge the simple equation of the release of information with transparency and argue that the coincidence of open government with big data requires new approaches that are informed by the developing relationship between privacy and transparency.
“Promoting Transparency While Protecting Privacy in Open Government in Canada” by Amy Conroy and Teresa Scassa is published in (2015) 53:1 Alberta Law Review 175-206. A pre-print version is available here.
Monday, 02 March 2015 08:58
Back to the Future I: What Past Privacy Findings Tell us About the Future of Big Data and Privacy
A long past and largely forgotten ‘finding’* from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada offers important insights into the challenges that big data and big data analytics will pose for the protection of Canadians’ privacy and consumer rights.
13 years ago, former Privacy Commissioner George Radwanski issued his findings on a complaint that had been brought against a bank. The complainant had alleged that the bank had wrongfully denied her access to her personal information. The requirement to provide access is found in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). The right of access also comes with a right to demand the correction of any errors in the personal information in the hands of the organization. This right is fundamentally important, not just to privacy. Without access to the personal information being used to inform decision-making, consumers have very little recourse of any kind against adverse or flawed decision-making.
The complainant in this case had applied for and been issued a credit card by the bank. What she sought was access to the credit score that had been used to determine her entitlement to the card. The bank had relied upon two credit scores in reaching its decision. The first was the type produced by a credit reporting agency – in this case, Equifax. The second was an internal score generated by the bank using its own data and algorithm. The bank was prepared to release the former to the complainant, but refused to give her access to the latter. The essence of the complaint, therefore, was whether the bank had breached its obligations under PIPEDA to give her access to the personal information it held about her.
The Privacy Commissioner’s views on the interpretation and application of the statute in this case are worth revisiting 13 years later as big data analytics now fuel so much decision-making regarding consumers and their entitlement to or eligibility for a broad range of products and services. Credit reporting agencies are heavily regulated to ensure that decisions about credit-worthiness are made fairly and equitably, and to ensure that individuals have clear rights to access and to correct information in their files. For example, credit reporting legislation may limit the types of information and the data sources that may be used by credit reporting agencies in arriving at their credit scores. But big data analytics are now increasingly relied upon by all manner of organizations that are not regulated in the same way as credit-reporting agencies. These analytics are used to make decisions of similar importance to consumers – including decisions about credit-worthiness. There are few limits on the data that is used to fuel these analytics, nor is there much transparency in the process.
In this case, the bank justified its refusal to disclose its internal credit score on two main grounds. First, it argued that this information was not “personal information” within the meaning of PIPEDA because it was ‘created’ internally and not collected from the consumer or any other sources. The bank argued that this meant that it did not have to provide access, and that in any event, the right of access was linked to the right to request correction. The nature of the information – which was generated based upon a proprietary algorithm – was such that was not “facts” that could be open to correction.
The argument that generated information is not personal information is a dangerous one, as it could lead to a total failure of accountability under data protection laws. The Commissioner rejected this argument. In his view, it did not matter whether the information was generated or collected; nor did it matter whether it was subject to correction or not. The information was personal information because it related to the individual. He noted that “opinions” about an individual were still considered to be personal information, even though they are not subject to correction. This view of ‘opinions’ is consistent with subsequent findings and decisions under PIPEDA and comparable Canadian data protection laws. Thus, in the view of the Commissioner, the bank’s internally generated credit score was the complainant’s personal information and was subject to PIPEDA.
The bank’s second argument was more successful, and is problematic for consumers. The bank argued that releasing the credit score to the complainant would reveal confidential commercial information. Under s. 9(3)(b) of PIPEDA, an organization is not required to release personal information in such circumstances. The bank was not arguing so much that the complainant’s score itself was confidential commercial information; rather, what was confidential were the algorithms used to arrive at the score. The bank argued that these algorithms could be reverse-engineered from a relatively small sample of credit scores. Thus, a finding that such credit scores must be released to individuals would leave the bank open to the hypothetical situation where a rival might organize or pay 20 or so individuals to seek access to their internally generated credit scores in the hands of the bank, and that set of scores could then be used to arrive at the confidential algorithms. The Commissioner referred this issue to an expert on algorithms and concluded that “although an exact determination of a credit-scoring model was difficult and highly unlikely, access to customized credit scores would definitely make it easier to approximate a bank’s model.”
The Commissioner noted that under s. 9(3)(b) there has to be some level of certainty that the disclosure of personal information will reveal confidential commercial information before disclosure can be refused. In this case, the Commissioner indicated that he had “some difficulty believing that either competitors or rings of algorithmically expert fraud artists would go to the lengths involved.” He went on to say that “[t]he spectre of the banks falling under systematic assault from teams of loan-hungry mathematicians is simply not one I find particularly persuasive.” Notwithstanding this, he ruled in favour of the bank. He noted that other banks shared the same view as the respondent bank, and that competition in the banking industry was high. Since he had found it was technically possible to reverse-engineer the algorithm, he was of the view that he had to find that the release of the credit score would reveal confidential commercial information. He was satisfied with the evidence the bank supplied to demonstrate how closely guarded the credit-scoring algorithm was. He noted that in the UK and Australia, relatively new guidelines required organizations to provide only general information regarding why credit was denied.
The lack of transparency of algorithms used in the big data environment becomes increasingly problematic the more such algorithms are used. Big data analytics can be used to determine credit-worthiness – and such these determinations are made not just by banks but by all manner of companies that extend consumer credit through loans, don’t-pay-for-a-year deals, purchase-by-installment, store credit cards, and so on. They can also be used to determine who is entitled to special offers or promotions, for price discrimination (where some customers are offered better prices for the same products or services), and in a wide range of other contexts. Analytics may also be used by prospective employers, landlords or others whose decisions may have important impacts on people’s lives. Without algorithmic transparency, it might be impossible to know whether the assumptions, weightings or scoring factors are biased, influenced by sexism or racism (or other discriminatory considerations), or simply flawed.
There may be some comfort to be had that in this case the Commissioner was allowed to have access to the scoring model used. He stated that he found it innocuous – although it is not clear what kind of scrutiny he gave it. After all, his mandate extended only to decisions relating to the management of personal information, and did not extend to issues of discrimination. It is also worth noting that the Commissioner seems to suggest that each case must be decided on its own facts, and that what the complainant stood to gain and the respondent stood to lose were relevant considerations. In this case, the complainant had not been denied credit, so in the Commissioner’s view there was little benefit to her in the release of the information to be weighed against the potential harm to the bank. Nevertheless, the decision raises a red flag around transparency in the big data context.
In the next week or so I will be posting a ‘Back to the Future II’ account of another, not quite so old, PIPEDA finding that is also significant in the big data era. Disturbingly, this decision eats away at Commissioner Radwanski’s conclusion on the issue of “personal information” as it relates to generated or inferred information about individuals. Stay tuned!
* Because the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has no order-making powers, he can only issue “findings” in response to complaints filed with the office. The ‘findings’ are essentially opinions as to how the act applies in the circumstances of the complaint. If the complaint is considered well-founded, the Commissioner can also make recommendations as to how the organization should correct these practices. For binding orders or compensation the complainant must first go through the complaints process and then take the matter to the Federal Court. Few complainants do so. Thus, while findings are non-binding and set no precedent, they do provide some insight into how the Commissioner would interpret and apply the legislation.
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Canadian Trademark Law
Published in 2015 by Lexis Nexis
Electronic Commerce and Internet Law in Canada, 2nd Edition
Published in 2012 by CCH Canadian Ltd.
Intellectual Property for the 21st Century
Intellectual Property Law for the 21st Century: | http://teresascassa.ca/index.php?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=tag&tag=transparency&Itemid=61 |
What is recursive function in discrete mathematics?
A recursive function is a function that its value at any point can be calculated from the values of the function at some previous points. For example, suppose a function f(k) = f(k-2) + f(k-3) which is defined over non negative integer.
What is the main problem of a recursive function?
Every recursive function must have a base case in order to stop (the base case is the point at which the recursion halts); if a base case did not exist, the function would keep recurring until it exhausted the system’s resources and most likely crashed your program.
How do you solve recursion problems in math?
The Two “Phases” of solving recursion problems
- Phase I: Re-subsitute values into f(x) until you reach the “seed value” (in programming it’s often called the “base case”).
- Part II: Once you reach the Seed Value you start resubstituting values into the earlier expressions (back up the chain).
What is recursive function in 12th class?
Recursion means iteration. A function is called recursive, if the body of function calls the function itself until the condition for recursion is true. Thus, a Python recursive function has a termination condition. In other words Recursion means calling a function itself again and again.
What is recursive function in data structure?
Recursion in data structure is when a function calls itself indirectly or directly, and the function calling itself is known as a recursive function.
How do you write a recursive function?
Writing a recursive function is almost the same as reading one:
- Create a regular function with a base case that can be reached with its parameters.
- Pass arguments into the function that immediately trigger the base case.
- Pass the next arguments that trigger the recursive call just once.
Which of the following problems can be solved using recursion?
Problems like finding Factorial of a number, Nth Fibonacci number and Length of a string can be solved using recursion.
What is recursive problem solving give example?
Recursion is the process of defining a problem (or the solution to a problem) in terms of (a simpler version of) itself. For example, we can define the operation “find your way home” as: If you are at home, stop moving. Take one step toward home. | https://www.thenewsindependent.com/what-is-recursive-function-in-discrete-mathematics/ |
The newlocale() function shall create a new locale object or modify an existing one. If the base argument is (locale_t)0, a new locale object shall be created. It is unspecified whether the locale object pointed to by base shall be modified, or freed and a new locale object created.
The category_mask argument specifies the locale categories to be set or modified. Values for category_mask shall be constructed by a bitwise-inclusive OR of the symbolic constants LC_CTYPE_MASK, LC_NUMERIC_MASK, LC_TIME_MASK, LC_COLLATE_MASK, LC_MONETARY_MASK, and LC_MESSAGES_MASK, or any of the other implementation-defined LC_*_MASK values defined in <locale.h>.
For each category with the corresponding bit set in category_mask the data from the locale named by locale shall be used. In the case of modifying an existing locale object, the data from the locale named by locale shall replace the existing data within the locale object. If a completely new locale object is created, the data for all sections not requested by category_mask shall be taken from the default locale.
Specifies the minimal environment for C-language translation called the POSIX locale.
Specifies an implementation-defined native environment. This corresponds to the value of the associated environment variables, LC_* and LANG; see the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 7, Locale and Chapter 8, Environment Variables.
If the base argument is not (locale_t)0 and the newlocale() function call succeeds, the contents of base are unspecified. Applications shall ensure that they stop using base as a locale object before calling newlocale(). If the function call fails and the base argument is not (locale_t)0, the contents of base shall remain valid and unchanged.
The behavior is undefined if the base argument is the special locale object LC_GLOBAL_LOCALE, or is not a valid locale object handle and is not (locale_t)0.
Upon successful completion, the newlocale() function shall return a handle which the caller may use on subsequent calls to duplocale(), freelocale(), and other functions taking a locale_t argument.
Upon failure, the newlocale() function shall return (locale_t)0 and set errno to indicate the error.
There is not enough memory available to create the locale object or load the locale data.
The category_mask contains a bit that does not correspond to a valid category.
For any of the categories in category_mask, the locale data is not available.
The locale argument is not a valid string pointer.
Handles for locale objects created by the newlocale() function should either be released by a corresponding call to freelocale(), or be used as a base locale to another newlocale() call.
The special locale object LC_GLOBAL_LOCALE must not be passed for the base argument, even when returned by the uselocale() function. | https://readtheman.io/pages/3p/newlocale |
I2C is a two-wire protocol for communicating between devices. At the physical level it consists of 2 wires: SCL and SDA, the clock and data lines respectively.
I2C objects are created attached to a specific bus. They can be initialised when created, or initialised later on.
Printing the I2C object gives you information about its configuration.
id identifies a particular I2C peripheral. The default value of -1 selects a software implementation of I2C which can work (in most cases) with arbitrary pins for SCL and SDA. If id is -1 then scl and sda must be specified. Other allowed values for id depend on the particular port/board, and specifying scl and sda may or may not be required or allowed in this case.
scl should be a pin object specifying the pin to use for SCL.
sda should be a pin object specifying the pin to use for SDA.
freq should be an integer which sets the maximum frequency for SCL.
Turn off the I2C bus.
Scan all I2C addresses between 0x08 and 0x77 inclusive and return a list of those that respond. A device responds if it pulls the SDA line low after its address (including a write bit) is sent on the bus.
The following methods implement the primitive I2C master bus operations and can be combined to make any I2C transaction. They are provided if you need more control over the bus, otherwise the standard methods (see below) can be used.
Generate a START condition on the bus (SDA transitions to low while SCL is high).
Generate a STOP condition on the bus (SDA transitions to high while SCL is high).
Reads bytes from the bus and stores them into buf. The number of bytes read is the length of buf. An ACK will be sent on the bus after receiving all but the last byte. After the last byte is received, if nack is true then a NACK will be sent, otherwise an ACK will be sent (and in this case the slave assumes more bytes are going to be read in a later call).
Write the bytes from buf to the bus. Checks that an ACK is received after each byte and stops transmitting the remaining bytes if a NACK is received. The function returns the number of ACKs that were received.
The following methods implement the standard I2C master read and write operations that target a given slave device.
Read nbytes from the slave specified by addr. If stop is true then a STOP condition is generated at the end of the transfer. Returns a bytes object with the data read.
Read into buf from the slave specified by addr. The number of bytes read will be the length of buf. If stop is true then a STOP condition is generated at the end of the transfer.
Write the bytes from buf to the slave specified by addr. If a NACK is received following the write of a byte from buf then the remaining bytes are not sent. If stop is true then a STOP condition is generated at the end of the transfer, even if a NACK is received. The function returns the number of ACKs that were received.
Some I2C devices act as a memory device (or set of registers) that can be read from and written to. In this case there are two addresses associated with an I2C transaction: the slave address and the memory address. The following methods are convenience functions to communicate with such devices.
Read nbytes from the slave specified by addr starting from the memory address specified by memaddr. The argument addrsize specifies the address size in bits. Returns a bytes object with the data read.
Read into buf from the slave specified by addr starting from the memory address specified by memaddr. The number of bytes read is the length of buf. The argument addrsize specifies the address size in bits (on ESP8266 this argument is not recognised and the address size is always 8 bits).
Write buf to the slave specified by addr starting from the memory address specified by memaddr. The argument addrsize specifies the address size in bits (on ESP8266 this argument is not recognised and the address size is always 8 bits).
© Copyright 2014-2017, Damien P. George, Paul Sokolovsky, and contributors. Last updated on 01 Nov 2017. | http://docs.micropython.org/en/v1.9.3/esp8266/library/machine.I2C.html |
Recursion occurs when a function calls itself directly or indirectly. The classic example of recursive programming involves computing factorials. The factorial of a number is computed as that number times all of the numbers below it up to and including 1. For example, factorial(5) is the same as 5*4*3*2*1, and factorial(3) is 3*2*1.
An interesting property of a factorial is that the factorial of a number is equal to the starting number multiplied by the factorial of the number immediately below it. For example, factorial(5) is the same as 5 * factorial(4). You could almost write the factorial function simply as this:
factorial(N) -> N * factorial(N-1).
The problem with this function, however, is that it would run forever because there is no place where it stops. The function would continually call factorial. There is nothing to stop it when it hits zero, so it would continue calling factorial on zero and the negative numbers. Therefore, our function needs a condition to tell it when to stop. Incidentally, when this function hits 0, the answer would become 0 and be 0 forever afterwards. This is incorrect.
Since factorials of numbers less than 1 don't make any sense, we stop at the number 1 and return the factorial of 1 (which is 1). Therefore, the real factorial function will look like this:
factorial(N) -> case N of 1 => 1; N -> N * factorial(N-1) end.
As you can see, as long as the initial value is above zero, this function will terminate. The stopping point is called the base case. A base case is the bottom point of a recursive program where the operation is so trivial as to be able to return an answer directly. All recursive programs must have at least one base case and must guarantee that they will hit one eventually; otherwise the program would run forever or until the program ran out of memory or stack space. The function above does not utilise the pattern matching power of Erlang however, so we rewrite it as:
factorial(1) -> 1; (2) factorial(N) -> N * factorial(N-1).
In (2) we used pattern matching in the function clause to detect the case N == 1. Essentially the function clause gives us a first level if or case for free, so we can easily avoid lines as in (1). | http://www2.erlangcentral.org/wiki/?title=Recursion&oldid=1924 |
This function is used to accept a connection request on the server socket socket. The accept function waits if there are no connections pending, unless the socket socket has nonblocking mode set. (You can use select to wait for a pending connection, with a nonblocking socket.) See File Status Flags, for information about nonblocking mode.
The addr and length-ptr arguments are used to return information about the name of the client socket that initiated the connection. See Socket Addresses, for information about the format of the information.
If an error occurs, accept returns -1.
The connect function initiates a connection from the socket with file descriptor socket to the socket whose address is specified by the addr and length arguments. (This socket is typically on another machine, and it must be already set up as a server.) See Socket Addresses, for information about how these arguments are interpreted.
Normally, connect waits until the server responds to the request before it returns. You can set nonblocking mode on the socket socket to make connect return immediately without waiting for the response. See File Status Flags, for information about nonblocking mode.
The normal return value from connect is 0. If an error occurs, connect returns -1.
The listen function returns 0 on success and -1 on failure.
If nonblocking mode is set for socket, and no data are available to be read, read fails immediately rather than waiting. See File Status Flags, for information about nonblocking mode.
This function returns the number of bytes received, or -1 on failure.
The send function is like write, but with the additional flags flags. The possible values of flags are described in Socket Data Options.
This function returns the number of bytes transmitted, or -1 on failure. If the socket is nonblocking, then send (like write) can return after sending just part of the data. See File Status Flags, for information about nonblocking mode.
0 - Stop receiving data for this socket. If further data arrives, reject it.
to be sent. Stop looking for acknowledgement of data already sent; don't retransmit it if it is lost.
2 - Stop both reception and transmission.
This function creates a socket and specifies communication style style, which should be one of the socket styles listed in Communication Styles. The namespace argument specifies the namespace; it must be PF_LOCAL (see Local Namespace) or PF_INET (see Internet Namespace). protocol designates the specific protocol (see Socket Concepts); zero is usually right for protocol.
The return value from socket is the file descriptor for the new socket, or -1 in case of error.
short int sa_family - This is the code for the address format of this address. It identifies the format of the data which follows.
char sa_data - This is the actual socket address data, which is format-dependent. Its length also depends on the format, and may well be more than 14. The length 14 of sa_data is essentially arbitrary.
AF_LOCAL - This designates the address format that goes with the local namespace. (PF_LOCAL is the name of that namespace.) See Local Namespace Details, for information about this address format.
AF_UNIX - This is a synonym for AF_LOCAL. Although AF_LOCAL is mandated by POSIX.1g, AF_UNIX is portable to more systems. AF_UNIX was the traditional name stemming from BSD, so even most POSIX systems support it. It is also the name of choice in the Unix98 specification. (The same is true for PF_UNIX vs. PF_LOCAL).
AF_INET - This designates the address format that goes with the Internet namespace. (PF_INET is the name of that namespace.) See Internet Address Formats.
AF_UNSPEC This designates no particular address format. It is used only in rare cases, such as to clear out the default destination address of a "connected" datagram socket.
sa_family_t sin_family - This identifies the address family or format of the socket address. You should store the value AF_INET in this member. See Socket Addresses.
struct in_addr sin_addr - This is the Internet address of the host machine. See Host Addresses, and Host Names, for how to get a value to store here.
unsigned short int sin_port - This is the port number.
When you call bind or getsockname, you should specify sizeof (struct sockaddr_in) as the length parameter if you are using an IPv4 Internet namespace socket address.
Before to use any socket you have to create it. This can be done via socket () function. There is two general types of sockets. A network socket and local socket. TAKE A LOOK ABOUT THE FOLLOWING LINES HOW TO CREATE THE SOCKET.
The "PF_INET" argument specifies that the socket will be internet socket. Let's take a look about any of the arguments.
PF_INET - specifies the socket type (in our case - internet socket) SOCK_STREAM - specifies that the connection will be via stream. IPPROTO_TCP - the used protocol will be TCP.
PF_LOCAL - specifies the socket type (in our case - local socket) SOCK_DGRAM - specifies that the connection will be via diagrams. 0 - no protocol available.
This example create internet socket and accepts ALL CONNECTIONS from ANY ADDRESS. Let's have a closer look about the above lines.
This line make memset for ServAddr structure. This structure holds the server address and all information needed about the socket work.
This line put the socket family. So, as i said above the socket can be internet and local. It this example it is internet, because of that we put AF_INET.
The following line specifies that we accept connections from ANY address.
s_addr is variable that holds the information about the address we agree to accept. So, in this case i put INADDR_ANY because i would like to accept connections from any internet address. This case is used about server example. In a client example i could NOT accept connections from ANY ADDRESS.
After all above stuffs the next important thing is the PORT. all internet sockets need a Input-Output PORT to make a connection. You can take any port that you want the required condition is that port to be free. So, in other words it must be available for us.
NOTE: Some ports need ROOT rights to opened. If this port is compromised it put entire Operating System on risk.
So, i suggest using a NONE ROOT PORTS that are pretty much available in the computer. These ports start from 1500 - 65536. Well, you have all these ports available for ordinary NONE ROOT users.
Here is the example about the port initializing.
This above line will open port 10203 for connections.
The bind function is very important because it will make your socket available for using. So, better way to do above is to import some processing logic to make sure yourself that is really available socket.
This will do binding of the socket but will check for errors and if the binding failed ... the logic will do exit.
This marks the socket is listening and ready to accept incoming connections.
When the sockets are connected the next step is just .... using of this connection. Sending of data can be established via send() or write() functions.
Let me describe the above example... So, the first argument take a socket variable. The second argument take the data that will be sent.. and the 3rd argument is an integer variable that will specify how long is the data sent. The last argument is for additional options, if you don't need that just put 0 - like me.
NOTE: The variable "sock" is a socket that will be used. But this is your socket, not the socket of the server... I think this can confuse someone. So, i assume your make a network client and for that reason you make a client socket. That's good but throw this client socket you do all the communications. Have a closer look and see the difference between these 2 sockets. You use the client socket not the server one.. the server socket is for the server.
Just wanted to be clear because some people make mistake when they make a server and client sides.
The receiving is like sending - simple and easy. The first argument takes a socket variable, the second variable takes the BUFFER for storing incoming data and the last one takes the integer variable that specifies the length of the incoming data.
So, when you put 256 the read() function will read 256 bytes from the incoming data and it will exit when the data is more or find the symbol "END OF DATA".
IMPORTANT: Reserve BUFFER as the same or larger of the length you specify as read data. DO NOT specify buffer that is smaller of the read data. If you do that you will get "SEGMENTATION FAULT" error message and YOUR PROGRAM WILL TERMINATE.
Receiving data: Data receiving is important part of network socket communications. There is a issue with the buffer when you receive some data via network if you receive data shorter than the length of buffer data. You will receive some $%#$% data... so this is bad. Because of that you have to fix the received buffer and the sent data to be exactly the same length. BUT the receiving buffer must larger +1 character than the sent data. This is because of the last character \0 for terminating the data. So, if you send this : "some data to be send" this is 20 length message. Then buffer for the receiving MUST BE 20 + 1. This is because you send 20 characters, but you receive 20+1 characters. The last one is the terminating character.
Just import these lines in the beginning of your program .h files.
BSD sockets are the base part of the networks and internet. The entire HOW-TO is specified about the BSD socket programming but it could be used by other programmers too. Well, the sockets are the same in all operating systems.
In the general case this HOW-TO will describe about Sockets programming in all NIX-like operating systems. This include GNU/Linux, BSD, OpenSolaris and others. | https://wiki.netbsd.org/examples/socket_programming/ |
ldap_search function (winldap.h)
The ldap_search function searches the LDAP directory and returns a requested set of attributes for each matched entry.
Syntax
WINLDAPAPI ULONG LDAPAPI ldap_search( LDAP *ld, PSTR base, ULONG scope, PSTR filter, PZPSTR attrs, ULONG attrsonly );
Parameters
ld
A session handle.
base
A pointer to a null-terminated string that contains the distinguished name of the entry at which to start the search.
scope
A data type that specifies one of the following values to indicate the search scope.
LDAP_SCOPE_BASE
Search only the base entry.
LDAP_SCOPE_ONELEVEL
Search all entries in the first level below the base entry, excluding the base entry.
LDAP_SCOPE_SUBTREE
Search the base entry and all entries in the tree below the base.
filter
A pointer to a null-terminated string that specifies the search filter. For more information, see Search Filter Syntax.
attrs
A null-terminated array of null-terminated strings that indicate which attributes to return for each matching entry. Pass NULL to retrieve available attributes.
attrsonly
Boolean value that should be zero if both attribute types and values are to be returned, nonzero if only types are required.
Return value
If the function succeeds, it returns the message ID of the search operation.
If the function fails, it returns –1 and sets the session error parameters in the LDAP data structure.
Remarks
The ldap_search function initiates an asynchronous search operation.
Use the ldap_set_option function with the ld session handle to set the LDAP_OPT_SIZELIMIT, LDAP_OPT_TIMELIMIT, and LDAP_OPT_DEREF options that determine how the search is performed. For more information, see Session Options.
As an asynchronous function, ldap_search returns a message ID for the operation. Call ldap_result with the message ID to get the result of the operation. To cancel an asynchronous search operation before it has completed, call ldap_abandon.
To have the function return the results directly, use the synchronous routine ldap_search_s. Use ldap_search_ext or ldap_search_ext_s to implement support for LDAP 3 server and client controls.
Multithreading: Calls to ldap_search are thread-safe, provided that LdapGetLastError is used to retrieve the actual session error code when the function call returns the -1 failure code. | https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winldap/nf-winldap-ldap_search |
Day 02 - Range¶
Range is a built-in funtion that generates a sequence of numbers from the given values.
The syntax is as follows:
range([start,] stop [, step])
As you can see, the function receives up to 3 parameters, however only one is required
start: (Optional) The initial value in the sequence, by default is 0
stop: (required) End of the sequence, without including its value.
step: (optional) The size of steps in the sequence the default value is 1
Let’s Try¶
We’ll print out what the function range returns if we pass it number 5. Remember that it has a parameter that is required (stop).
So, In this case the sequence will start at 0 and end at 5 (not including it).
start and
step will take their default values.
print(range(5))
We’ll see that when printing it returns something similar to range(0, 5), but what we want is to see the complete sequence, so to see the values that compose it, for this we must cast this range as a list.
sequence = list(range(5)) print(sequence)
The output is now more understandable:
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4]
Two parameters¶
When we call range passing two parameters, with the first value we define where the sequence starts and with the second one where it ends.
Remember that the value where it ends is not included in the sequence
print(list(range(2, 9))) # Output: # [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
Three parameters¶
Finally, when calling the function with all its arguments, we will define where it starts, where it ends, and how many steps the sequence will be.
print(list(range(-5, 5, 2))) # Output: # [-5, -3, -1, 1, 3]
You can see that the sequence starts at -5 and ends at 5, but where’s number 4?
This is due to the steps we are indicating, which are 2, this way it will omit 1 value before returning the next number. | https://python30.readthedocs.io/en/latest/docs/02_range.html |
A trigger is a specification that the database should automatically execute a particular function whenever a certain type of operation is performed. Triggers can be attached to tables, views, and foreign tables.
On tables and foreign tables, triggers can be defined to execute either before or after any INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE operation, either once per modified row, or once per SQL statement. UPDATE triggers can moreover be set to fire only if certain columns are mentioned in the SET clause of the UPDATE statement. Triggers can also fire for TRUNCATE statements. If a trigger event occurs, the trigger's function is called at the appropriate time to handle the event. Foreign tables do not support the TRUNCATE statement at all.
On views, triggers can be defined to execute instead of INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE operations. INSTEAD OF triggers are fired once for each row that needs to be modified in the view. It is the responsibility of the trigger's function to perform the necessary modifications to the underlying base tables and, where appropriate, return the modified row as it will appear in the view. Triggers on views can also be defined to execute once per SQL statement, before or after INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE operations.
The trigger function must be defined before the trigger itself can be created. The trigger function must be declared as a function taking no arguments and returning type trigger. (The trigger function receives its input through a specially-passed TriggerData structure, not in the form of ordinary function arguments.)
Once a suitable trigger function has been created, the trigger is established with CREATE TRIGGER. The same trigger function can be used for multiple triggers.
PostgreSQL offers both per-row triggers and per-statement triggers. With a per-row trigger, the trigger function is invoked once for each row that is affected by the statement that fired the trigger. In contrast, a per-statement trigger is invoked only once when an appropriate statement is executed, regardless of the number of rows affected by that statement. In particular, a statement that affects zero rows will still result in the execution of any applicable per-statement triggers. These two types of triggers are sometimes called row-level triggers and statement-level triggers, respectively. Triggers on TRUNCATE may only be defined at statement level. On views, triggers that fire before or after may only be defined at statement level, while triggers that fire instead of an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE may only be defined at row level.
Triggers are also classified according to whether they fire before, after, or instead of the operation. These are referred to as BEFORE triggers, AFTER triggers, and INSTEAD OF triggers respectively. Statement-level BEFORE triggers naturally fire before the statement starts to do anything, while statement-level AFTER triggers fire at the very end of the statement. These types of triggers may be defined on tables or views. Row-level BEFORE triggers fire immediately before a particular row is operated on, while row-level AFTER triggers fire at the end of the statement (but before any statement-level AFTER triggers). These types of triggers may only be defined on tables and foreign tables. Row-level INSTEAD OF triggers may only be defined on views, and fire immediately as each row in the view is identified as needing to be operated on.
Trigger functions invoked by per-statement triggers should always return NULL. Trigger functions invoked by per-row triggers can return a table row (a value of type HeapTuple) to the calling executor, if they choose. A row-level trigger fired before an operation has the following choices:
It can return NULL to skip the operation for the current row. This instructs the executor to not perform the row-level operation that invoked the trigger (the insertion, modification, or deletion of a particular table row).
For row-level INSERT and UPDATE triggers only, the returned row becomes the row that will be inserted or will replace the row being updated. This allows the trigger function to modify the row being inserted or updated.
A row-level BEFORE trigger that does not intend to cause either of these behaviors must be careful to return as its result the same row that was passed in (that is, the NEW row for INSERT and UPDATE triggers, the OLD row for DELETE triggers).
A row-level INSTEAD OF trigger should either return NULL to indicate that it did not modify any data from the view's underlying base tables, or it should return the view row that was passed in (the NEW row for INSERT and UPDATE operations, or the OLD row for DELETE operations). A nonnull return value is used to signal that the trigger performed the necessary data modifications in the view. This will cause the count of the number of rows affected by the command to be incremented. For INSERT and UPDATE operations, the trigger may modify the NEW row before returning it. This will change the data returned by INSERT RETURNING or UPDATE RETURNING, and is useful when the view will not show exactly the same data that was provided.
The return value is ignored for row-level triggers fired after an operation, and so they can return NULL.
If more than one trigger is defined for the same event on the same relation, the triggers will be fired in alphabetical order by trigger name. In the case of BEFORE and INSTEAD OF triggers, the possibly-modified row returned by each trigger becomes the input to the next trigger. If any BEFORE or INSTEAD OF trigger returns NULL, the operation is abandoned for that row and subsequent triggers are not fired (for that row).
A trigger definition can also specify a Boolean WHEN condition, which will be tested to see whether the trigger should be fired. In row-level triggers the WHEN condition can examine the old and/or new values of columns of the row. (Statement-level triggers can also have WHEN conditions, although the feature is not so useful for them.) In a BEFORE trigger, the WHEN condition is evaluated just before the function is or would be executed, so using WHEN is not materially different from testing the same condition at the beginning of the trigger function. However, in an AFTER trigger, the WHEN condition is evaluated just after the row update occurs, and it determines whether an event is queued to fire the trigger at the end of statement. So when an AFTER trigger's WHEN condition does not return true, it is not necessary to queue an event nor to re-fetch the row at end of statement. This can result in significant speedups in statements that modify many rows, if the trigger only needs to be fired for a few of the rows. INSTEAD OF triggers do not support WHEN conditions.
Typically, row-level BEFORE triggers are used for checking or modifying the data that will be inserted or updated. For example, a BEFORE trigger might be used to insert the current time into a timestamp column, or to check that two elements of the row are consistent. Row-level AFTER triggers are most sensibly used to propagate the updates to other tables, or make consistency checks against other tables. The reason for this division of labor is that an AFTER trigger can be certain it is seeing the final value of the row, while a BEFORE trigger cannot; there might be other BEFORE triggers firing after it. If you have no specific reason to make a trigger BEFORE or AFTER, the BEFORE case is more efficient, since the information about the operation doesn't have to be saved until end of statement.
If a trigger function executes SQL commands then these commands might fire triggers again. This is known as cascading triggers. There is no direct limitation on the number of cascade levels. It is possible for cascades to cause a recursive invocation of the same trigger; for example, an INSERT trigger might execute a command that inserts an additional row into the same table, causing the INSERT trigger to be fired again. It is the trigger programmer's responsibility to avoid infinite recursion in such scenarios.
When a trigger is being defined, arguments can be specified for it. The purpose of including arguments in the trigger definition is to allow different triggers with similar requirements to call the same function. As an example, there could be a generalized trigger function that takes as its arguments two column names and puts the current user in one and the current time stamp in the other. Properly written, this trigger function would be independent of the specific table it is triggering on. So the same function could be used for INSERT events on any table with suitable columns, to automatically track creation of records in a transaction table for example. It could also be used to track last-update events if defined as an UPDATE trigger.
Each programming language that supports triggers has its own method for making the trigger input data available to the trigger function. This input data includes the type of trigger event (e.g., INSERT or UPDATE) as well as any arguments that were listed in CREATE TRIGGER. For a row-level trigger, the input data also includes the NEW row for INSERT and UPDATE triggers, and/or the OLD row for UPDATE and DELETE triggers. Statement-level triggers do not currently have any way to examine the individual row(s) modified by the statement.
If you see anything in the documentation that is not correct, does not match your experience with the particular feature or requires further clarification, please use this form to report a documentation issue. | https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/trigger-definition.html |
Recursion in Python
A function that calls itself is a recursive function. This method is used when a certain problem is defined in terms of itself. Although this involves iteration, using an iterative approach to solve such a problem can be tedious. The recursive approach provides a very concise solution to a seemingly complex problem. It looks glamorous but can be difficult to comprehend!
The most popular example of recursion is the calculation of the factorial. Mathematically the factorial is defined as: n! = n * (n-1)!
We use the factorial itself to define the factorial. Hence, this is a suitable case to write a recursive function. Let us expand the above definition for the calculation of the factorial value of 5.
5! = 5 X 4! 5 X4 X 3! 5 X4 X 3 X 2! 5 X4 X 3 X 2 X 1! 5 X4 X 3 X 2 X 1 = 120
While we can perform this calculation using a loop, its recursive function involves successively calling it by decrementing the number until it reaches 1. The following is a recursive function to calculate the factorial.
def factorial(n): if n == 1: print(n) return 1 else: print (n,'*', end=' ') return n * factorial(n-1)
The above recursive function can be called as below.>>> factorial(5)
5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1
120
When the factorial function is called with 5 as argument, successive calls to the same function are placed, while reducing the value of 5. Functions start returning to their earlier call after the argument reaches 1. The return value of the first call is a cumulative product of the return values of all calls. | https://www.tutorialsteacher.com/python/recursion-in-python |
# Parameter (computer programming)
In computer programming, a parameter or a formal argument is a special kind of variable used in a subroutine to refer to one of the pieces of data provided as input to the subroutine. These pieces of data are the values of the arguments (often called actual arguments or actual parameters) with which the subroutine is going to be called/invoked. An ordered list of parameters is usually included in the definition of a subroutine, so that, each time the subroutine is called, its arguments for that call are evaluated, and the resulting values can be assigned to the corresponding parameters.
Unlike argument in usual mathematical usage, the argument in computer science is the actual input expression passed/supplied to a function, procedure, or routine in the invocation/call statement, whereas the parameter is the variable inside the implementation of the subroutine. For example, if one defines the add subroutine as def add(x, y): return x + y, then x, y are parameters, while if this is called as add(2, 3), then 2, 3 are the arguments. Note that variables (and expressions thereof) from the calling context can be arguments: if the subroutine is called as a = 2; b = 3; add(a, b) then the variables a, b are the arguments, not the values 2, 3. See the Parameters and arguments section for more information.
The semantics for how parameters can be declared and how the (value of) arguments are passed to the parameters of subroutines are defined by the evaluation strategy of the language, and the details of how this is represented in any particular computer system depend on the calling convention of that system. In the most common case, call by value, a parameter acts within the subroutine as a new local variable initialized to the value of the argument (a local (isolated) copy of the argument if the argument is a variable), but in other cases, e.g. call by reference, the argument variable supplied by the caller can be affected by actions within the called subroutine.
## Example
The following program in the C programming language defines a function that is named "SalesTax" and has one parameter named "price". The type of price is "double" (i.e. a double-precision floating point number). The function's return type is also a double.
After the function has been defined, it can be invoked as follows:
In this example, the function has been invoked with the argument 10.00. When this happens, 10.00 will be assigned to price, and the function begins calculating its result. The steps for producing the result are specified below, enclosed in {}. 0.05 * price indicates that the first thing to do is multiply 0.05 by the value of price, which gives 0.50. return means the function will produce the result of 0.05 * price. Therefore, the final result (ignoring possible round-off errors one encounters with representing decimal fractions as binary fractions) is 0.50.
## Parameters and arguments
The terms parameter and argument may have different meanings in different programming languages. Sometimes they are used interchangeably, and the context is used to distinguish the meaning. The term parameter (sometimes called formal parameter) is often used to refer to the variable as found in the function definition, while argument (sometimes called actual parameter) refers to the actual input supplied at function call. For example, if one defines a function as def f(x): ..., then x is the parameter, and if it is called by a = ...; f(a) then a is the argument. A parameter is an (unbound) variable, while the argument can be a literal or variable or more complex expression involving literals and variables. In case of call by value, what is passed to the function is the value of the argument – for example, f(2) and a = 2; f(a) are equivalent calls – while in call by reference, with a variable as argument, what is passed is a reference to that variable - even though the syntax for the function call could stay the same. The specification for pass-by-reference or pass-by-value would be made in the function declaration and/or definition.
Parameters appear in procedure definitions; arguments appear in procedure calls. In the function definition f(x) = x*x the variable x is a parameter; in the function call f(2) the value 2 is the argument of the function. Loosely, a parameter is a type, and an argument is an instance.
A parameter is an intrinsic property of the procedure, included in its definition. For example, in many languages, a procedure to add two supplied integers together and calculate the sum would need two parameters, one for each integer. In general, a procedure may be defined with any number of parameters, or no parameters at all. If a procedure has parameters, the part of its definition that specifies the parameters is called its parameter list.
By contrast, the arguments are the expressions supplied to the procedure when it is called, usually one expression matching one of the parameters. Unlike the parameters, which form an unchanging part of the procedure's definition, the arguments may vary from call to call. Each time a procedure is called, the part of the procedure call that specifies the arguments is called the argument list.
Although parameters are also commonly referred to as arguments, arguments are sometimes thought of as the actual values or references assigned to the parameter variables when the subroutine is called at run-time. When discussing code that is calling into a subroutine, any values or references passed into the subroutine are the arguments, and the place in the code where these values or references are given is the parameter list. When discussing the code inside the subroutine definition, the variables in the subroutine's parameter list are the parameters, while the values of the parameters at runtime are the arguments. For example, in C, when dealing with threads it's common to pass in an argument of type void* and cast it to an expected type:
To better understand the difference, consider the following function written in C:
The function Sum has two parameters, named addend1 and addend2. It adds the values passed into the parameters, and returns the result to the subroutine's caller (using a technique automatically supplied by the C compiler).
The code which calls the Sum function might look like this:
The variables value1 and value2 are initialized with values. value1 and value2 are both arguments to the sum function in this context.
At runtime, the values assigned to these variables are passed to the function Sum as arguments. In the Sum function, the parameters addend1 and addend2 are evaluated, yielding the arguments 40 and 2, respectively. The values of the arguments are added, and the result is returned to the caller, where it is assigned to the variable sum_value.
Because of the difference between parameters and arguments, it is possible to supply inappropriate arguments to a procedure. The call may supply too many or too few arguments; one or more of the arguments may be a wrong type; or arguments may be supplied in the wrong order. Any of these situations causes a mismatch between the parameter and argument lists, and the procedure will often return an unintended answer or generate a runtime error.
### Alternative convention in Eiffel
Within the Eiffel software development method and language, the terms argument and parameter have distinct uses established by convention. The term argument is used exclusively in reference to a routine's inputs, and the term parameter is used exclusively in type parameterization for generic classes.
Consider the following routine definition:
The routine sum takes two arguments addend1 and addend2, which are called the routine's formal arguments. A call to sum specifies actual arguments, as shown below with value1 and value2.
Parameters are also thought of as either formal or actual. Formal generic parameters are used in the definition of generic classes. In the example below, the class HASH_TABLE is declared as a generic class which has two formal generic parameters, G representing data of interest and K representing the hash key for the data:
When a class becomes a client to HASH_TABLE, the formal generic parameters are substituted with actual generic parameters in a generic derivation. In the following attribute declaration, my_dictionary is to be used as a character string based dictionary. As such, both data and key formal generic parameters are substituted with actual generic parameters of type STRING.
## Datatypes
In strongly typed programming languages, each parameter's type must be specified in the procedure declaration. Languages using type inference attempt to discover the types automatically from the function's body and usage. Dynamically typed programming languages defer type resolution until run-time. Weakly typed languages perform little to no type resolution, relying instead on the programmer for correctness.
Some languages use a special keyword (e.g. void) to indicate that the subroutine has no parameters; in formal type theory, such functions take an empty parameter list (whose type is not void, but rather unit).
## Argument passing
The exact mechanism for assigning arguments to parameters, called argument passing, depends upon the evaluation strategy used for that parameter (typically call by value), which may be specified using keywords.
### Default arguments
Some programming languages such as Ada, C++, Clojure, Common Lisp, Fortran 90, Python, Ruby, Tcl, and Windows PowerShell allow for a default argument to be explicitly or implicitly given in a subroutine's declaration. This allows the caller to omit that argument when calling the subroutine. If the default argument is explicitly given, then that value is used if it is not provided by the caller. If the default argument is implicit (sometimes by using a keyword such as Optional) then the language provides a well-known value (such as null, Empty, zero, an empty string, etc.) if a value is not provided by the caller.
PowerShell example:
Default arguments can be seen as a special case of the variable-length argument list.
### Variable-length parameter lists
Some languages allow subroutines to be defined to accept a variable number of arguments. For such languages, the subroutines must iterate through the list of arguments.
PowerShell example:
### Named parameters
Some programming languages—such as Ada and Windows PowerShell—allow subroutines to have named parameters. This allows the calling code to be more self-documenting. It also provides more flexibility to the caller, often allowing the order of the arguments to be changed, or for arguments to be omitted as needed.
PowerShell example:
### Multiple parameters in functional languages
In lambda calculus, each function has exactly one parameter. What is thought of as functions with multiple parameters is usually represented in lambda calculus as a function which takes the first argument, and returns a function which takes the rest of the arguments; this is a transformation known as currying. Some programming languages, like ML and Haskell, follow this scheme. In these languages, every function has exactly one parameter, and what may look like the definition of a function of multiple parameters, is actually syntactic sugar for the definition of a function that returns a function, etc. Function application is left-associative in these languages as well as in lambda calculus, so what looks like an application of a function to multiple arguments is correctly evaluated as the function applied to the first argument, then the resulting function applied to the second argument, etc.
## Output parameters
An output parameter, also known as an out parameter or return parameter, is a parameter used for output, rather than the more usual use for input. Using call by reference parameters, or call by value parameters where the value is a reference, as output parameters is an idiom in some languages, notably C and C++, while other languages have built-in support for output parameters. Languages with built-in support for output parameters include Ada (see Ada subprograms), Fortran (since Fortran 90; see Fortran "intent"), various procedural extensions to SQL, such as PL/SQL (see PL/SQL functions) and Transact-SQL, C# and the .NET Framework, Swift, and the scripting language TScript (see TScript function declarations).
More precisely, one may distinguish three types of parameters or parameter modes: input parameters, output parameters, and input/output parameters; these are often denoted in, out, and in out or inout. An input argument (the argument to an input parameter) must be a value, such as an initialized variable or literal, and must not be redefined or assigned to; an output argument must be an assignable variable, but it need not be initialized, any existing value is not accessible, and must be assigned a value; and an input/output argument must be an initialized, assignable variable, and can optionally be assigned a value. The exact requirements and enforcement vary between languages – for example, in Ada 83 output parameters can only be assigned to, not read, even after assignment (this was removed in Ada 95 to remove the need for an auxiliary accumulator variable). These are analogous to the notion of a value in an expression being an r-value (has a value), an l-value (can be assigned), or an r-value/l-value (has a value and can be assigned), respectively, though these terms have specialized meanings in C.
In some cases only input and input/output are distinguished, with output being considered a specific use of input/output, and in other cases only input and output (but not input/output) are supported. The default mode varies between languages: in Fortran 90 input/output is default, while in C# and SQL extensions input is default, and in TScript each parameter is explicitly specified as input or output.
Syntactically, parameter mode is generally indicated with a keyword in the function declaration, such as void f(out int x) in C#. Conventionally output parameters are often put at the end of the parameter list to clearly distinguish them, though this is not always followed. TScript uses a different approach, where in the function declaration input parameters are listed, then output parameters, separated by a colon (:) and there is no return type to the function itself, as in this function, which computes the size of a text fragment:
Parameter modes are a form of denotational semantics, stating the programmer's intent and allowing compilers to catch errors and apply optimizations – they do not necessarily imply operational semantics (how the parameter passing actually occurs). Notably, while input parameters can be implemented by call by value, and output and input/output parameters by call by reference – and this is a straightforward way to implement these modes in languages without built-in support – this is not always how they are implemented. This distinction is discussed in detail in the Ada '83 Rationale, which emphasizes that the parameter mode is abstracted from which parameter passing mechanism (by reference or by copy) is actually implemented. For instance, while in C# input parameters (default, no keyword) are passed by value, and output and input/output parameters (out and ref) are passed by reference, in PL/SQL input parameters (IN) are passed by reference, and output and input/output parameters (OUT and IN OUT) are by default passed by value and the result copied back, but can be passed by reference by using the NOCOPY compiler hint.
A syntactically similar construction to output parameters is to assign the return value to a variable with the same name as the function. This is found in Pascal and Fortran 66 and Fortran 77, as in this Pascal example:
This is semantically different in that when called, the function is simply evaluated – it is not passed a variable from the calling scope to store the output in.
### Use
The primary use of output parameters is to return multiple values from a function, while the use of input/output parameters is to modify state using parameter passing (rather than by shared environment, as in global variables). An important use of returning multiple values is to solve the semipredicate problem of returning both a value and an error status – see Semipredicate problem: Multivalued return.
For example, to return two variables from a function in C, one may write:
where x is an input parameter and width and height are output parameters.
A common use case in C and related languages is for exception handling, where a function places the return value in an output variable, and returns a boolean corresponding to whether the function succeeded or not. An archetypal example is the TryParse method in .NET, especially C#, which parses a string into an integer, returning true on success and false on failure. This has the following signature:
and may be used as follows:
Similar considerations apply to returning a value of one of several possible types, where the return value can specify the type and then value is stored in one of several output variables.
### Drawbacks
Output parameters are often discouraged in modern programming, essentially as being awkward, confusing, and too low-level – commonplace return values are considerably easier to understand and work with. Notably, output parameters involve functions with side effects (modifying the output parameter) and are semantically similar to references, which are more confusing than pure functions and values, and the distinction between output parameters and input/output parameters can be subtle. Further, since in common programming styles most parameters are simply input parameters, output parameters and input/output parameters are unusual and hence susceptible to misunderstanding.
Output and input/output parameters prevent function composition, since the output is stored in variables, rather than in the value of an expression. Thus one must initially declare a variable, and then each step of a chain of functions must be a separate statement. For example, in C++ the following function composition:
when written with output and input/output parameters instead becomes (for F it is an output parameter, for G an input/output parameter):
In the special case of a function with a single output or input/output parameter and no return value, function composition is possible if the output or input/output parameter (or in C/C++, its address) is also returned by the function, in which case the above becomes:
### Alternatives
There are various alternatives to the use cases of output parameters.
For returning multiple values from a function, an alternative is to return a tuple. Syntactically this is clearer if automatic sequence unpacking and parallel assignment can be used, as in Go or Python, such as:
For returning a value of one of several types, a tagged union can be used instead; the most common cases are nullable types (option types), where the return value can be null to indicate failure. For exception handling, one can return a nullable type, or raise an exception. For example, in Python one might have either:
or, more idiomatically:
The micro-optimization of not requiring a local variable and copying the return when using output variables can also be applied to conventional functions and return values by sufficiently sophisticated compilers.
The usual alternative to output parameters in C and related languages is to return a single data structure containing all return values. For example, given a structure encapsulating width and height, one can write:
In object-oriented languages, instead of using input/output parameters, one can often use call by sharing, passing a reference to an object and then mutating the object, though not changing which object the variable refers to. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actual_parameter |
SET CONSTRAINTS.
BEFORE
AFTER
INSTEAD OF
Determines whether the function is called before, after, or instead of the event. A constraint trigger can only be specified as
AFTER.
event
One of
INSERT,
UPDATE,
DELETE, or
TRUNCATE; this specifies the event that will fire the trigger. Multiple events can be specified using
OR, except when transition relations are requested.
For
UPDATE events, it is possible to specify a list of columns using this syntax:
UPDATE OF column_name1 [, column_name2 ... ]
The trigger will only fire if at least one of the listed columns is mentioned as a target of the
UPDATE command.
INSTEAD OF UPDATE events do not allow a list of columns. A column list cannot be specified when requesting transition relations, either.
table_name
The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the table, view, or foreign table the trigger is for.
referenced_table_name
The (possibly schema-qualified) name of another table referenced by the constraint. This option is used for foreign-key constraints and is not recommended for general use. This can only be specified for constraint triggers.
DEFERRABLE
NOT DEFERRABLE
INITIALLY IMMEDIATE
INITIALLY DEFERRED
The default timing of the trigger. See the CREATE TABLE documentation for details of these constraint options. This can only be specified for constraint triggers.
REFERENCING
This keyword immediately precedes the declaration of one or two relation names that provide access to the transition relations of the triggering statement.
OLD TABLE
NEW TABLE
This clause indicates whether the following relation name is for the before-image transition relation or the after-image transition relation.
transition_relation_name
The (unqualified) name to be used within the trigger for this transition relation.
FOR EACH ROW
FOR EACH STATEMENT
This specifies whether the trigger procedure should be fired once for every row affected by the trigger event, or just once per SQL statement. If neither is specified,
FOR EACH STATEMENT is the default. Constraint triggers can only be specified
FOR EACH ROW.
condition
A Boolean expression that determines whether the trigger function will actually be executed. If
WHEN is specified, the function will only be called if the
condition returns
true. In
FOR EACH ROW triggers, the
WHEN condition can refer to columns of the old and/or new row values by writing
OLD.
column_name or
NEW.
column_name respectively. Of course,
INSERTtriggers cannot refer to
OLD and
DELETE triggers cannot refer to
NEW.
INSTEAD OF triggers do not support
WHEN conditions.
Currently,
WHEN expressions cannot contain subqueries.
Note that for constraint triggers, evaluation of the
WHEN condition is not deferred, but occurs immediately after the row update operation is performed. If the condition does not evaluate to true then the trigger is not queued for deferred execution.
function_name
A user-supplied function that is declared as taking no arguments and returning type
trigger, which is executed when the trigger fires.
arguments
An optional comma-separated list of arguments to be provided to the function when the trigger is executed. The arguments are literal string constants. Simple names and numeric constants can be written here, too, but they will all be converted to strings. Please check the description of the implementation language of the trigger function to find out how these arguments can be accessed within the function; it might be different from normal function arguments.
To create a trigger on a table, the user must have the
TRIGGER privilege on the table. The user must also have
EXECUTE privilege on the trigger function.
Use DROP TRIGGER to remove a trigger.
A column-specific trigger (one defined using the
UPDATE OF
column_name syntax) will fire when any of its columns are listed as targets in the
UPDATE command's
SET list. It is possible for a column's value to change even when the trigger is not fired, because changes made to the row's contents by
BEFORE UPDATE triggers are not considered. Conversely, a command such as
UPDATE ... SET x = x ... will fire a trigger on column
x, even though the column's value did not change.
In a
BEFORE trigger, the
WHEN condition is evaluated just before the function is or would be executed, so using
WHEN is not materially different from testing the same condition at the beginning of the trigger function. Note in particular that the
NEW row seen by the condition is the current value, as possibly modified by earlier triggers. Also, a
BEFORE trigger's
WHENcondition is not allowed to examine the system columns of the
NEW row (such as
oid), because those won't have been set yet.
In an
AFTER trigger, the
WHEN condition is evaluated just after the row update occurs, and it determines whether an event is queued to fire the trigger at the end of statement. So when an
AFTER trigger's
WHEN condition does not return true, it is not necessary to queue an event nor to re-fetch the row at end of statement. This can result in significant speedups in statements that modify many rows, if the trigger only needs to be fired for a few of the rows.
In some cases it is possible for a single SQL command to fire more than one kind of trigger. For instance an
INSERT with an
ON CONFLICT DO UPDATE clause may cause both insert and update operations, so it will fire both kinds of triggers as needed. The transition relations supplied to triggers are specific to their event type; thus an
INSERT trigger will see only the inserted rows, while an
UPDATE trigger will see only the updated rows.
Row updates or deletions caused by foreign-key enforcement actions, such as
ON UPDATE CASCADE or
ON DELETE SET NULL, are treated as part of the SQL command that caused them (note that such actions are never deferred). Relevant triggers on the affected table will be fired, so that this provides another way in which a SQL command might fire triggers not directly matching its type. In simple cases, triggers that request transition relations will see all changes caused in their table by a single original SQL command as a single transition relation. However, there are cases in which the presence of an
AFTER ROW trigger that requests transition relations will cause the foreign-key enforcement actions triggered by a single SQL command to be split into multiple steps, each with its own transition relation(s). In such cases, any statement-level triggers that are present will be fired once per creation of a transition relation set, ensuring that the triggers see each affected row in a transition relation once and only once.
Statement-level triggers on a view are fired only if the action on the view is handled by a row-level
INSTEAD OF trigger. If the action is handled by an
INSTEAD rule, then whatever statements are emitted by the rule are executed in place of the original statement naming the view, so that the triggers that will be fired are those on tables named in the replacement statements. Similarly, if the view is automatically updatable, then the action is handled by automatically rewriting the statement into an action on the view's base table, so that the base table's statement-level triggers are the ones that are fired.
Modifying a partitioned table or a table with inheritance children fires statement-level triggers attached to the explicitly named table, but not statement-level triggers for its partitions or child tables. In contrast, row-level triggers are fired on the rows in affected partitions or child tables, even if they are not explicitly named in the query. If a statement-level trigger has been defined with transition relations named by a
REFERENCING clause, then before and after images of rows are visible from all affected partitions or child tables. In the case of inheritance children, the row images include only columns that are present in the table that the trigger is attached to. Currently, row-level triggers with transition relations cannot be defined on partitions or inheritance child tables.
In PostgreSQL versions before 7.3, it was necessary to declare trigger functions as returning the placeholder type
opaque, rather than
trigger. To support loading of old dump files,
CREATE TRIGGER will accept a function declared as returning
opaque, but it will issue a notice and change the function's declared return type to
trigger.
每當要更新資料表 accounts 的資料列時，執行函數 check_account_update：
CREATE TRIGGER check_updateBEFORE UPDATE ON accountsFOR EACH ROWEXECUTE PROCEDURE check_account_update();
一樣，但只有在 UPDATE 命令中將欄位 balance 作為更新標的時才執行該函數：
CREATE TRIGGER check_updateBEFORE UPDATE OF balance ON accountsFOR EACH ROWEXECUTE PROCEDURE check_account_update();
如果欄位 balance 實際上已變更其值，則此語法才會執行該函數：
CREATE TRIGGER check_updateBEFORE UPDATE ON accountsFOR EACH ROWWHEN (OLD.balance IS DISTINCT FROM NEW.balance)EXECUTE PROCEDURE check_account_update();
呼叫函數來記錄 accounts 的更新，但僅在變更了某些內容時：
CREATE TRIGGER log_updateAFTER UPDATE ON accountsFOR EACH ROWWHEN (OLD.* IS DISTINCT FROM NEW.*)EXECUTE PROCEDURE log_account_update();
對每一個資料列執行函數 view_insert_row，資料列被插入到檢視表中時：
CREATE TRIGGER view_insertINSTEAD OF INSERT ON my_viewFOR EACH ROWEXECUTE PROCEDURE view_insert_row();
對每個語句執行函數 check_transfer_balances_to_zero 以確認所傳輸的資料列與淨值的差異：
CREATE TRIGGER transfer_insertAFTER INSERT ON transferREFERENCING NEW TABLE AS insertedFOR EACH STATEMENTEXECUTE PROCEDURE check_transfer_balances_to_zero();
對每一個資料列執行 check_matching_pairs 函數以確認同時對相對應的資料列對進行變更（透過相同的語句）：
CREATE TRIGGER paired_items_updateAFTER UPDATE ON paired_itemsREFERENCING NEW TABLE AS newtab OLD TABLE AS oldtabFOR EACH ROWEXECUTE PROCEDURE check_matching_pairs();
第 38.4 節中有使用 C 撰寫的觸發器函數完整範例。
The
CREATE TRIGGER statement in PostgreSQL implements a subset of the SQL standard. The following functionalities are currently missing:
While transition table names for
AFTER triggers are specified using the
REFERENCING clause in the standard way, the row variables used in
FOR EACH ROW triggers may not be specified in a
REFERENCING clause. They are available in a manner that is dependent on the language in which the trigger function is written, but is fixed for any one language. Some languages effectively behave as though there is a
REFERENCING clause containing
OLD ROW AS OLD NEW ROW AS NEW.
The standard allows transition tables to be used with column-specific
UPDATE triggers, but then the set of rows that should be visible in the transition tables depends on the trigger's column list. This is not currently implemented by PostgreSQL.
PostgreSQL only allows the execution of a user-defined function for the triggered action. The standard allows the execution of a number of other SQL commands, such as
CREATE TABLE, as the triggered action. This limitation is not hard to work around by creating a user-defined function that executes the desired commands.
SQL specifies that multiple triggers should be fired in time-of-creation order. PostgreSQL uses name order, which was judged to be more convenient.
SQL specifies that
BEFORE DELETE triggers on cascaded deletes fire after the cascaded
DELETE completes. The PostgreSQL behavior is for
BEFORE DELETE to always fire before the delete action, even a cascading one. This is considered more consistent. There is also nonstandard behavior if
BEFORE triggers modify rows or prevent updates during an update that is caused by a referential action. This can lead to constraint violations or stored data that does not honor the referential constraint.
The ability to specify multiple actions for a single trigger using
OR is a PostgreSQL extension of the SQL standard.
The ability to fire triggers for
TRUNCATE is a PostgreSQL extension of the SQL standard, as is the ability to define statement-level triggers on views.
CREATE CONSTRAINT TRIGGER is a PostgreSQL extension of the SQL standard. | https://docs.postgresql.tw/reference/sql-commands/create-trigger |
Inputs tab is provided by the scripts; the scripts are in complete control of what is shown there.
However, there are a few "core" settings that are outside the control of the scripts, and therefore cannot be configured via the
Inputs tab. These additional "core" settings can be changed via the
Properties tab.
The options found on the
Properties tab of the strategy configuration window is automatically provided by TradingView. A script creator doesn't have any control over what is shown there.
For more info on the
Properties tab please see https://www.tradingview.com/support/solutions/43000628599-strategy-properties/
While strictly speaking, the
Properties tab and its settings are not part of the Whitebox Strategy Engine, we think it makes sense to discuss it in this section, as the
Properties tab is shared by all strategies.
Let's review each of these settings one by one.
This is the amount of capital the strategy is going to start trading with. The currency can be set below via Base currency.
The currency used for calculations. Results appearing in the
Strategy Tester tab (profit, loss, drawdown, etc.) are expressed in this currency.
If you leave the Base currency on
Default, TradingView will assume your capital is in the quote currency. For
EUR/USD that will be
USD. For
BTC/USDT it will be
USDT, etc.
If you set a custom Base currency, the Trading Widget will display the relevant values in both the quote currency and your custom currency.
For more information about how the currency conversion works on TradingView, please see the following article: https://kodify.net/tradingview/strategy-settings/strategy-currency-setting/#how-does-currency-conversion-in-tradingview-work
The size of each order the strategy will use to enter into long/short positions.
It requires a value and a calculation mode.
On most charts, the calculation mode dropdown will display the following values (on an
EUR/USD chart):
Where
USD is the quote currency of the chart.
There are some charts however, where TradingView cannot recognise the quote currency, and will display
NONE instead (e.g.
BTC/USDC):
While slightly annoying, it is really just a cosmetic issue. Whereever TradingView displays values related to how much
USDC you've made or lost (i.e. under the Strategy Tester tab), the values will be shown without a currency.
Finding the options listed in the calculation mode dropdown quite limited, we decided to implement our own position sizing mechanism under the
Inputs tab. For more info please see Order Size Settings.
Pyramiding specifies the maximum number of successive entries allowed in the same direction.
This setting is completely ignored by our strategies as there can only ever be a single position open at a time (except when you have DCA enabled, however even in that case the strategy is not affected by the pyramiding settings).
It is the amount paid in trading fees for each trade. A value and calculation mode must be supplied. Note that commission is applied on both entries and exits, and that when a percentage is used, the calculated commission will vary with the value of the transaction:
Makes the conditions for entering a position using limit orders more strict. By default, this value is 0, i.e. limit orders are filled on historical data as soon as the price indicated in the order is reached. If the parameter is not zero, then limit orders can enter a position within the bar only if the market price has exceeded the level of the limit order by the specified number of ticks.
Specifies the value in ticks to be added to the fill price of market or stop orders. It can be used to account for the spread.
Specifies the margin for each trade, i.e., the percent of the position that the trader must fund. For example, if the Margin for long positions is set to 25%, the trader has to have enough funds to cover 25% of the open trade and can potentially spend up to 400% of their equity on every trade.
If a trade has been opened and it starts losing money to the extent where the trader's funds are not enough to cover their portion of the trade, a Margin Call occurs and forcibly liquidates a part of the original position. The precise number of units that will be liquidated is 4 times the amount it takes to simply cover the loss.
For more info please see the following articles:
The checkboxes in this section control how often the strategy script should get executed on each bar.
Please do not change the default settings, always keep:
enabled
enabled
disabled
If you change any of these settings the strategy will not function properly.
It allows the strategy to make backtesting more accurate. This feature is also known as the Bar Magnifier.
Unfortunately the Bar Magnifier is only available for Premium TradingView subscribers.
If you have a Premium TradingView subcription, please make sure that this checkbox is always enabled. | https://docs.whitebox.so/whitebox-strategy-engine/properties |
Police departments across the U.S. have been drawn to digital technology for surveillance and predicting crime in the hope that it will make law enforcement more accurate, efficient and effective.
United Nations human rights experts warned on Thursday that they risk reinforcing racial bias and abuse, reports the New York Times.
The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, an 18-member panel, conceded that artificial intelligence in decision-making “can contribute to greater effectiveness in some areas,” but found that the use of facial recognition and other algorithm-driven technologies for law enforcement and immigration control may risk deepening racism and xenophobia and could lead to human rights violations.
In its report, the committee warned that using these technologies can be counterproductive, as communities exposed to discriminatory law enforcement lose trust in the police and become less cooperative.
“Big data and A.I. tools may reproduce and reinforce already existing biases and lead to even more discriminatory practices,” said Dr. Verene Shepherd, who led the panel’s discussions on drafting its findings.
“Machines can be wrong,” she told the Times. “They have been proven to be wrong, so we are deeply concerned about the discriminatory outcome of algorithmic profiling in law enforcement.”
The panel cited the danger that algorithms driving these technologies can draw on biased data, including, historical arrest data about a neighborhood that may reflect racially biased policing practices.
“Such data will deepen the risk of over-policing in the same neighborhood, which in turn may lead to more arrests, creating a dangerous feedback loop,” she said.
The panel’s warnings add to deepening alarm among human rights groups over the largely unregulated use of artificial intelligence across a widening spectrum of government, from social welfare delivery to “digital borders” controlling immigration.
Additional Reading: | https://thecrimereport.org/2020/11/27/digital-policing-tools-reinforce-racial-bias-un-panel-warns/ |
Articles 6, 8, 9 and 20 of the draft Regulation contain a number of important rules regarding the processing of personal data. These articles determine the legal grounds for processing, the grounds for processing data of children, rules for the processing of special categories of data and rules for the profiling of data subjects. These rules, in particular articles 6 and 20, must set significant minimum safeguards as to the lawfulness of both offline and online processing including for the profiling of data subjects. Data subjects as well as data controllers will both benefit from such strong rules, as they keep data processing fair, predictable and transparent and provide certainty and guidance. The online environment in particular needs strong and clear rules to ensure and, increasingly, to restore trust in online services. Trust is an important condition for the growth of the online sector.
EDRi broadly welcomes the fact that these important articles provide at least a similar level of detail as Directive 95/46/EC. However, the number of limitations to the important principles enumerated by these articles maintain existing loopholes and create new gaps in the protection of personal data. This paper outlines these limitations and describes the problems that they cause. In conclusion, we propose amendments to address these flaws.
Article 6(1)(f), legitimate interest as a legal ground for processing
Article 6(1) defines six grounds for processing of personal data. Legitimate interest currently serves as the basis for virtually unrestricted and unregulated forms of data processing. Examples of these forms of such data processing include direct marketing, fraud detection, monitoring of employees and further use of data originally collected for other purposes.
Using the legitimate interest justification for data processing is appealing for data controllers, because this basis does not carry the same obligations as the other legal grounds included in article 6(1)(a) through 6(1)(e). Legitimate interest allows data controllers to process personal data of data subjects for any purpose, provided that the processing serves a ‘legitimate interest’ and that the interests of the controller are being balanced against the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject. However, data controllers will naturally give more weight to their own interests than to those of data subjects. It can therefore not be left to the controller to balance its interests with those of data subjects. It is impossible to verify if the ‘balance test’ in fact took place as few data subjects have yet been able or willing to test reliance on this criterion in court. This gives data controllers the freedom to let their interests prevail over the theoretical interests of data subjects, causing a serious imbalance. In short, the legitimate interest ground is very broad and its proper use is hard to verify. This leads to uncertainty regarding the scope and lawfulness of certain forms of processing. The more thorough safeguards included in the other grounds for processing suggest that this loophole will be used by even more data controllers in the future.
The online environment has seen a number of cases where data processing was extremely hard to understand and assess. Google’s merging of data privacy policies across all its services is one of these examples. The investigations lead by the CNIL have not yet resulted in a clear ruling on the lawfulness of these practices, which are extremely hard to grasp for the average user. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission has four large online multinational companies, namely Google, Facebook, Twitter and Myspace under 20 years consent decrees, requiring them to liaise with the FTC in case of changes to the way they handle the personal data of their users. This measure was introduced as a result of unlawful processing in the past. EDRi firmly believes that such incidents will lead to a decrease of trust in online services, which is why such situations must be prevented in the EU, by avoiding further unrestrained use of the legitimate interest clause. We therefore suggest amending article 6(1)(f) to achieve the following outcomes:
- Specifically exclude direct marketing as a ‘legitimate interest’. Article 6(2) in the interservice draft required consent for direct marketing, which provides a better balance between the rights of data subjects and data controllers. It would also bring this Article more in line with the e-privacy directive, which requires consent for direct marketing and consent for online behavioral advertising. It seems illogical to set lower standards for offline direct marketing. It should also be noted that direct marketing techniques changed significantly since the adoption of the 95/46/EC Directive. Today “direct marketing” often refers to complex and intrusive activities performed by data controllers, such as the use of advanced profiling techniques, behavioral advertising and very precise targeting schemes (sometimes leading to price or service differentiation). It is essential to educate users and increase their awareness of how direct marketing may affect their private life. In this context the requirement of obtaining informed consent may play a vital role to the benefit of the data subjects
- Data subjects should be able to object (opt-out) from any form of processing based on legitimate interest. Opting out must be directly effective and free of charge. Objection must be possible at any moment, including the moment of collection of personal data, via the same channel as the data are being collected or the direct marketing is being sent. Recital 38 as well as Article 6(5) must be amended to achieve this and no longer contain a reference to ‘specific situations’ as a prerequisite for objection based on legitimate interest.
- Clarify the meaning of the ‘legitimate interest’ provision in the preamble. Recitals should clarify what will be considered legitimate interests, define the notion of data subjects’ interests in more details and clarify how these interests should be weighed or verified.
- Clarify that public authorities cannot rely on Article 6(1)(f) as a ground for lawfulness, in line with recital 38. The current drafting is unclear.
Article 6(4): further non-compatible use of personal data
Purpose limitation is one of the pillars of data protection law. By specifying for which specific purpose data are being collected and used, it is possible for data subjects to give their informed consent or object to such use. Directive 95/46/EC established that data could only be processed further, e.g. for other, new purposes, provided that such further use is compatible with the original purpose and the data subject is informed about such use. This requirement keeps data processing fair, transparent and predictable.
The Regulation, in article 6(4), leaves this principle behind and states that further use of personal data is permitted, even if such use is incompatible with the purpose for which the data had originally been collected. As stated in the previous paragraph, this damages the very basis of data protection and is inconsistent with one of the fundamental principles of data processing as laid down in article 5(b) of the Regulation, which states that data cannot be processed further for incompatible purposes, be that by the controller or a third party.
Legitimising further non-compatible use of data will inevitably lead to situations where data subjects are confronted with unexpected instances of such of further use. For instance, one can imagine a case when a data subject has provided his or her data in order to conclude a contract and subsequently finds out the data are further used by this company in order to exercise ‘public tasks’. Allowing incompatible use is not transparent, not predictable and not fair, as it creates uncertainty for data subjects and too much leeway for controllers to use, re-use, combine and transfer data to other parties without restrictions or without being bound to the purpose for which the data were originally collected. Especially in a time where the collection of personal data has greatly increased, and where it becomes more and more clear that personal data are becoming a commodity, the processing thereof must adhere to the principle of purpose limitation. EDRi strongly recommends that article 6(4) be deleted and replaced with guidelines setting the boundaries of compatible further use of personal data.
Article 8: processing personal data of children
The extra protection of minors as provided by this article must not implicate the need to collect even more data for the mere purpose of determining the age of a child. Secondly, rules for the processing of personal data of children, including methods to obtain verifiable consent, must apply alike for enterprises of all sizes. Relieving smaller enterprises will lead to a gap in the protection of minors given the fact that company size does not relate to the number of records of data subjects (including minors). Furthermore, the size of a business in the digital environment often has little or no relationship to its financial power – the selling of Instagram – which had only ten employees – at the time for a sum of one billion dollars being an example of this.
Article 9: processing of sensitive data
The protection of sensitive data under the Regulation suffers from the following loopholes:
- Member States remain entitled to prohibit certain processing of sensitive personal data, even with the data subjects’ consent (Art. 9(2)(a)). This runs counter to the harmonization intended by the Regulation and will inevitably lead to some processing being allowed in some Member States, while being prohibited in others, which is out of line with the broad consensus on consistency.
- Member States are obliged to provide (undefined) “adequate safeguards” in relation to the processing of sensitive data under employment law (Art. 9(2)(b)), as well as in relation to processing of criminal data. Furthermore they must provide (also undefined) “suitable measures” to safeguard data subjects’ legitimate interests in relation to the processing of such data when “necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest” (Art. 9(2)(g)). Here again, the risk is created of a lack of harmonisation which, in turn, will lead to forum shopping and a “race to the bottom” in relation to the elimination of data protection standards and safeguards for the protection of the right to privacy.
- The list of sensitive data under the Directive and the Regulation should be identical; beliefs should include philosophical beliefs; criminal convictions as well as offences must both be treated as sensitive data.
Article 20: measures based on profiling
What is profiling exactly and why is it problematic?
Data controllers can create profiles of data subjects by collecting personal data about them. Such profiles and ‘categories’ of data subjects are being created in order to ‘map’ a person and to evaluate as well as analyze and predict (future) behavior. When more data become available, the profile becomes more precise and, consequently, becomes more valuable. The creation of profiles relies on increasingly complex algorithms, dynamically corrected and improved. The ever-increasing generation, capture and matching of personal information as well as information about objects that relate to individuals, such as cars, mobile phones, IP addresses and RFID chips, obtained in very different contexts, and of widely varying quality, create a new data environment that facilitates the ever-wider use of profiles for commercial as well non-commercial purposes. Profiles can be used for many different purposes, from marketing through the screening of job applicants, to credit-referencing and “-scoring”, to law enforcement and the fight against terrorism. Online profiling, based on IP addresses and other online identifiers such as cookies, create profiles of internet users based on which they can be identified or singled out in the online environment. On the basis of their online profile, data subjects can be confronted with special offers, while other content may be withheld or prioritized differently.
Generally speaking, EDRi recognizes three main problems in relation to profiling of data subjects:
- Profiles can get it wrong, particularly when assessing uncommon characteristics. Where a profile is used as the basis for a fully automated decision, there is a risk that this decision is made on the basis of data that statistically apply to this person but that nonetheless give a wrongful impression of this person’s behavior, health, preferences or reliability.
- Profiles can be hard or impossible to verify. Profiles are based on complex and dynamic algorithms that evolve constantly and that are hard to explain to data subjects. Often, these algorithms qualify as commercial secrets and will not be easily provided to data subjects. This non-transparency undermines trust in data processing and may lead to loss or trust in especially online services. There is a serious risk of unreliable and (in effect) discriminatory profiles being widely used, in matters of real importance to individuals and groups, without the required checks and balances to counter these defects.
- Profiles are likely to perpetuate and reinforce societal inequality and discrimination against racial, ethnic, religious or other minorities; this risk grows dramatically with the massive, almost explosive growth in data we are witnessing today. Continuous close scrutiny of the outcomes of decisions based on profiles, and of the underlying algorithms, is essential if these effects are to be avoided. Profiling creates an inherent risk of discrimination (e.g. in the context of access to goods and services) or other forms of unfair treatment, in particular increased surveillance if it is performed by public entities either directly or using data collected and processed by private companies.
What are the rules for profiling and what amendments are necessary?
Article 20 contains rules with respect to profiling. It states that every person has the right not to be subjected to measures that produces legal effects if these measures are solely based on automated processing. In order to build profiles of data subjects as described above, personal data is being collected and categorized. Both the collection and categorization can take place on one out of six legal grounds (article 6(1)), including the legitimate interest of the data controller. Sadly, the right not to be subjected to automated decisions is being diluted in article 20(2) through to article 20(4), resulting in too few safeguards against the negative effects of profiling on data subjects’ privacy and other rights. EDRi proposes the following changes in order to protect data subjects from unwanted consequences of profiling.
- Article 20(1) should state explicitly that it applies to all kinds of profiling, both online and offline. It is clear that the online environment allows for the creation of profiles of data subjects based on their behavior, through cookies, device fingerprinting or other means of gathering of user data.
- In order to regulate online profiling activities, it is necessary to recognise that online identifiers are personal data. Contrary to the initial draft and the interservice version, recital 24 currently states that online identifiers do not necessarily have to be considered personal data. This creates uncertainty as well as a legal loophole because it means that profiling online can take place based on these so-called identifiers, without the guarantee that the Regulation applies. EDRi therefore proposes the deletion of this recital, replacing it with the recital originally included in the interservice version, which stated that the Regulation will apply to online identifiers because these are associated with individuals and because online identifiers leave traces which can be used to create profiles of the individuals and identify them or single them out.
- Article 20(2)(a) must include the right for data subjects to be provided with meaningful information about the logic used in the profiling as part of the information duty applicable to data controllers, and, if human intervention has been obtained, the right to an explanation of the decision reached after such intervention. Also, data controllers must be accountable to DPAs in case there is a need for a DPA to assess whether profiling was lawful or not. They must therefore document the results of profiling and be able to demonstrate that profiling does not lead to discrimination. This will help make profiling more transparent and prevent discriminatory practices.
- Where Union or Member State law provides for ‘suitable measures’, as referred to in article 20(2)(b), such measures must specifically contain protection against discrimination as a result of automated decisions (profiling). This requirement also applies to the ‘suitable safeguards’ that must exist in the case where data subjects give their informed consent to the profiling.
- Use of sensitive personal data: in the private sector, profiling may never be based on or include sensitive personal data. In the public sector, profiling shall only involve use of sensitive personal data when these data are manifestly relevant, necessary and proportionate to the purposes of the legitimate public interest pursued, and even then should never be based solely or predominantly on those special categories of personal data.
- The Commission must adopt delegated acts for the purpose of further specifying the criteria and conditions for suitable measures to safeguard the data subjects’ legitimate interests referred to in paragraph 2 within six months of entry in to force and after consultation of the Data Protection Board on these proposals. | https://protectmydata.eu/topics/limitations/ |
But while there may be efficiency gains from these techniques, they can also harbor biases against disadvantaged groups or reinforce structural discrimination. In terms of criminal justice, for example, is it fair to make judgments on an individual's parole based on statistical tendencies measured across a wide group of people? Could discrimination arise from applying a statistical model developed for one state's population to another, demographically different population?
Existing transparency techniques, when applied to algorithms, could enable people to monitor, audit and criticize how those systems are functioning -- or not, as the case may be. Unfortunately, government agencies seem unprepared for inquiries about algorithms and their uses in decisions that significantly affect both individuals and the public at large.
Last year the federal government began studying the pros and cons of using computerized data analysis to help determine prison inmates' likelihood of reoffending upon release. Scoring individuals as low-, medium-, or high-risk can help with housing and treatment decisions, identifying people who can safely be sent to a minimum security prison or even a "halfway house," or who would benefit from a particular type of psychological care.
That information can make the justice process more efficient and less expensive, and even reduce prison crowding. Treating low-risk offenders like high-risk offenders has been shown in some studies to lead to them internalizing being a "sick" criminal and in need of treatment for their deviant behavior. Separating them can thus reduce the development of negative behaviors that would lead to recidivism upon release.
One of several worksheets laying out an algorithm for sentencing convicted criminals.
Data and algorithms for scoring inmates' reoffending risk are already used extensively by states for managing pretrial detention, probation, parole and even sentencing. But it's easy for them to go unnoticed -- they often look like unassuming bureaucratic paperwork.
The form itself, as well as its scoring system, often discloses key features about the algorithm, like the variables under consideration and how they come together to form an overall risk score. But what's also important for algorithmic transparency is to know how such forms were designed, developed and evaluated. Only then can the public know whether the factors and calculations involved in arriving at the score are fair and reasonable, or uninformed and biased.
Our primary tool for getting our hands on those forms, and their supporting material, is the law, and specifically, freedom of information laws. They are among the most powerful mechanisms the public has at its disposal for ensuring transparency in government. At the federal level, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) allows the public to formally request -- and expect to receive in return -- documents from the federal government. Analogous statutes exist for each state.
I set out to answer this question at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, where I am an assistant professor. In the fall of 2015, working with my colleague Sandy Banisky's media law class, we guided students in submitting FOIA requests to each of the 50 states. We asked for documents, mathematical descriptions, data, validation assessments, contracts and source code related to algorithms used in criminal justice, such as for parole and probation, bail or sentencing decisions.
As a semester-long project, the effort was necessarily constrained by time, with plenty of hurdles and relatively few successes. As with many journalists' investigations, even figuring out whom to ask -- and how -- was a challenge. Different agencies may be responsible for different areas of the criminal justice system (sentencing might be done by courts, but parole management done by a Department of Corrections).
Even after identifying the right person, students found government officials used different terminology that made it hard to communicate what information they wanted. At times, students had to work hard to explain "criminal justice algorithms" to a not-so-data-savvy public servant. In retrospect, it might have been more effective to ask for "risk assessment tools," as that is a term often used by state governments.
Some states, such as Colorado, flat-out denied our request, saying that the algorithms were contained in software, which was not considered a "document" that open government laws required officials to make public. Different states have different rules about disclosing software use. This has sometimes surfaced in the courts, such as a 2004 suit against the city of Detroit over whether the formula for calculating water fees charged to an adjacent city should be made public.
As a society we should require that public information officers be trained so they are literate and indeed fluent in the terminology they may encounter when the public is asking for algorithms. The federal government might even create a new position for an "algorithms czar," an ombudsman whose task it would be to communicate about and field inquiries into government automation.
None of the documents we received in our research told us how criminal justice risk assessment forms were developed or evaluated. As algorithms govern more and more of our lives, citizens need -- and must demand -- more transparency. | https://www.huffpost.com/entry/we-need-to-know-the-algor_b_13928928 |
Summary:
This is a short-term research assistant position on the topic of algorithmic fairness and debiasing of graph embeddings. Specifically, the work consists on performing research along two axes -- first, to identify ways in which the use of graph embeddings in tasks such as node classification, link prediction, and graph-based recommendations, may introduce biases due to correlations between nodes’ personal, sensitive attributes and their connections to other nodes in the graph, and two, to develop new methods that can mitigate such biases when detected without severely impacting the performance of embedding algorithms along traditional measures such as accuracy.
Description:
Graph embeddings are continuous, low-dimensional, vector representations of nodes estimated from the graph topology as well as nodes’ personal attributes/metadata. Graph embeddings have increasingly been used in downstream tasks such as node classifications (eg. predicting the political affiliations of users of a social network), link prediction (eg. predicting the presence/absence of an edge between a given pair of nodes), and recommendation systems. This is because metadata can enhance graph learning models and graph topology can be used for regularization in supervised learning.
Methods to generate these embeddings typically rely on the homophily assumption. That is, they assume that nodes connected by a link are more likely to have similar attribute values and belong to the same class compared to nodes that are not connected by a link (Peel et al., Science Advances 2017). This may potentially introduce unwanted biases in some cases, for instance when fraudsters or inauthentic accounts in social media "camouflage" themselves by following many authentic accounts.
If users are segregated into groups and offered or excluded different products, services, or prices on the basis of their sensitive attributes (eg. gender, location), or their connections to other users of a protected group, this can potentially lead to indirect discrimination by association. Moreover, by taking a universalizing lens (eg. graph convolution networks that create node representations by aggregating attribute values from its neighbours), embeddings algorithmically redefine the relationship between the individual and the collective, blending preference, similarity, and identity (Latour et al., British Journal of Sociology 2012).
We want to obfuscate the embeddings during construction such that when they are used in a black-box fashion in a downstream task, information about sensitive attributes does not leak through. This is not as straightforward as simply choosing to not use sensitive attributes during training (disparate treatment) because this may be indirectly captured by the connections between nodes. Mitigation procedures must first analyze the potentially causal influences between attributes and graph topology and then provably debias topology embeddings from attribute embeddings to enable fairness at the subgroup and individual levels.
The goal of the research is to determine different ways and the extent to which bias may occur in graph embeddings by conducting experiments on synthetic graphs (to highlight limitations of existing approaches) as well as real-world datasets (to examine their impacts), and then design alternative methods for mitigating these potential harms.
This includes at least the following tasks: literature review; conceptualization and development of algorithms; creation of reference implementations; data collection and curation; experimentation; writing and presentation of results.
This job will be conducted at the Web Science and Social Computing Group.
More Information
Required Research Experiences
-
RESEARCH FIELDComputer science
-
YEARS OF RESEARCH EXPERIENCE1 - 4
Offer Requirements
-
REQUIRED EDUCATION LEVELComputer science: Master Degree or equivalent
-
REQUIRED LANGUAGESENGLISH: Excellent
Specific Requirements
- Two years of research experience:
Computer Science - Information Technology.
EURAXESS offer ID: 604551
Disclaimer:
The responsibility for the jobs published on this website, including the job description, lies entirely with the publishing institutions. The application is handled uniquely by the employer, who is also fully responsible for the recruitment and selection processes.
Please contact [email protected] if you wish to download all jobs in XML. | https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/604551 |
10 threats to migrants and refugees
This article presents some of the tools and techniques deployed as part surveillance practices and data-driven immigration policies routinely leading to discriminatory treatment of peoplee and undermining peoples’ dignity, with a particular focus on the UK.
- Migrants are bearing the burden of the new systems and losing agency in their migration experience, particularly when their fate is being put in the hands of systems driven by data processing and so called tech innovations.
- Large amounts of data are being requested from migrants, from their fingerprints to their digital data trails, while they are often put in a situation of constant surveillance.
- Private military and security companies play essential roles in providing a variety of surveillance tech and data exploitation ‘solutions’and services to governments.
Over the last two decades we have seen an array of digital technologies being deployed in the context of border controls and immigration enforcement, with surveillance practices and data-driven immigration policies routinely leading to discriminatory treatment of people and undermining peoples’ dignity.
And yet this is happening with little public scrutiny, often in a regulatory or legal void and without understanding and consideration to the impact on migrant communities at the border and beyond.
These practices mean that migrants are bearing the burden of the new systems and losing agency in their migration experience, particularly when their fate is being put in the hands of systems driven by data processing and so called tech innovations. There is a need to demand a more humane approach to immigration based on the principles of fairness, accessibility, and respect for human rights.
In this article we present some of these tools and techniques widely used, looking at the situation worldwide and adding a particular focus on the UK.
1. Data Sharing: turning public officials into border guards
Increasingly every interaction migrants have within the immigration enforcement framework requires the processing of their personal data. The use of this data and new technologies are today driving a revolution in immigration enforcement which risks undermining people’s rights and requires urgent attention.
Large amounts of data are being requested from migrants, from their fingerprints to their digital data trails, while they are often put in a situation of constant surveillance. Life-changing decisions are being made on the basis of the data being collected but also inferred and observed, and yet there are limited safeguards in place to regulate and oversee the use of tech and data processing in immigration processes.
Launching the Care Don’t Share report, Liberty wrote:
In the UK, as part of its discredited ‘hostile environment’ policy, the Government has set up a series of shadowy deals letting Home Office immigration enforcement teams access data – like personal addresses – collected by schools, hospitals, job centres, and the police and use it to track down children and adults for deportation.
People should be able to access essential public services – like sending their children to school, seeking medical care and reporting crime – without fear of immigration enforcement.
In view of existing and expanding data processing policies and practices for immigration purposes, there is an urgent need to regulate and monitor entities who undertake or are involved in the processing of migrants’ data to ensure they comply with internationally recognised data protection principles and standards, as well as human rights.
Immigration enforcement and border management authorities cannot be exempt from having to protect migrants and their data. This is why in 2019 Privacy International, and several migrant and digital rights organisations, joined a formal complaint filed by the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM) against the United Kingdom for failing to respect, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), by including an “immigration control” exemption in the Data Protection Act adopted in 2018.
2. Mobile Phone Extraction: your phone is fair game
Governments are increasingly using migrants’ electronic devices as verification tools often to corroborate the information they provide to the authorities. This practice is enabled by the use of mobile extraction tools, which allow an individual to download key data from a smartphone, including contacts, call data, text messages, stored files, location information, and more.
These practices constitute a serious interference with the right to privacy and are neither necessary nor proportionate. Also, the assumption that data obtained from digital devices leads to reliable evidence is flawed. If a person claims certain information is true, and there exists information on their smartphone suggesting otherwise, it is not evidence that they are being disingenuous. They are a variety of legitimate reasons why the data extracted would differ from the information provided by an applicant.
Germany, Denmark, Austria Norway, the United Kingdom and Belgium are among the countries where we have seen laws allowing for the seizure of mobile phones from asylum or migration applicants from which data is then extracted and used as part of asylum procedures.
These technologies are also used by local police: in March 2018, we uncovered that 26 out of 47 UK police forces used mobile phone extraction – and three were about to trial it for the first time.
3. Social Media Intelligence: what does a Facebook like say about you?
Over the last decade, we have seen governments across sectors including for immigration enforcement purposes resorting to social media intelligence (SOCMINT), the techniques and technologies that allow companies or governments to monitor social media networking sites (SNSs), such as Facebook or Twitter.
Some of these activities are undertaken directly by government themselves but in some instances, governments are calling on companies to provide them with the tools and/or knowhow to undertake this sort of activities.
In September 2010, Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, published a call for tender to pay €400,000 to a surveillance company to "track people on social media.” After we asked whether Frontex had gone through the necessary checks to make sure their plan was legal, they decided to cancel the tender process.
Our recent report “Is your local authority looking at your Facebook likes?” looks at how councils and local authorities in Great Britain are increasingly using this technique as part of their intelligence gathering and investigation tactics in areas such as council tax payments, children’s services, benefits and monitoring of protests and demonstrations. Could you be a target?
4. Predictive Policing: a feedback loop that reinforces racial bias
Predictive policing programs are used by the police to estimate when and where crimes are likely to be committed – or who is likely to commit them. These programs work by feeding historic policing data through computer algorithms. For example, a program might evaluate data about past crimes to predict where future crimes will happen – identifying “hot spots” or “boxes” on a map.
But the data these programs use is incomplete and biased, leading to a “feedback loop” – sending officers to communities that are already unfairly over-policed. Other predictive policing programs may suggest how people will behave. These programs are fed information about a person, and then they decide whether that person is likely to commit an offence.
While we might be tempted to assume that computer programs and algorithms are neutral, this is not the case. The data that is fed into these systems is incomplete or based on human biases, leading to decisions that perpetuate pre-existing social inequalities. For example, mapping programs often send officers back to monitor the same over-policed communities again and again. As shown by several studies, data-driven policing can lead to racial profiling and reinforce racial bias in the criminal justice system.
In the UK, the use of predictive policing programs is not covered by any law or regulation. This makes it incredibly difficult to understand how these programs are used, how they come to decisions about us or our communities, and how we can challenge those decisions.
And yet, Police forces across the UK use or have used predictive policing programs:
- Kent police hit headlines with its use of PredPol, a program developed in the United States, which directs officers where to patrol based on predictive mapping software.
- Durham Constabulary is renowned for its Harm Assessment Risk Tool (HART), which assesses whether someone is likely to reoffend using crude profiling from data about a person’s family, housing and financial status.
- Avon and Somerset Police has reportedly used analytics platform
- West Midlands Police has trialled predictive policing tools
Much like for social media monitoring, knowing that our data is being collected and used to make decisions about us may ultimately lead to us censoring our own behaviour. For example, if our local community is a “hot spot” for policing activity, we may change where we go and what we do in our local area and even who we spend time with.
5. Lie Detectors: security on scientifically dubious grounds
There are few places in the world where an individual is as vulnerable as at the border of a foreign country.
The use of extraction tools is part of a broader trend of aiming surveillance and other security technology at asylum seekers and migrants, often on scientifically dubious grounds. In Europe, this includes the use of technology which supposedly identifies if a person is lying based on their ‘micro-gestures’, a person’s origin based on their voice, and their age based on their bones.
The European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme has been funding a project called iBorderCtrl, defined as “an innovative project that aims to enable faster and thorough border control for third country nationals crossing the land borders of EU Member States”. In addition to other features, the system undertakes automated deception detection.
This is highly experimental technology whose results cannot be trusted, as reported by media investigations, and yet they are used to make life-changing decisions.
6. Border Externalisation: outsourcing border controls and surveillance
“Border Externalisation”, the transfer of border controls to foreign countries, has in the last few years become the main instrument through which the United States and the European Union (EU) seek to stop migratory flows.
It relies on utilising modern technology, training, and equipping authorities in third countries to export the border far beyond its shores.
Countries with the largest defence and security sectors are transferring technology and practices to governments and agencies around the world, including to some of the most authoritarian countries in the world. China, European countries, Israel, the US, and Russia, are all major providers of such surveillance worldwide, as are multilateral organisations such as the European Union. The surveillance industry is playing an essential role in the process.
Their involvement is enabled by the adoption of ad hoc funds, like the controversial “EU-Turkey deal”, an agreement which saw €6 billion given to Turkey in exchange for its commitment to seal its border with Greece and Syria, and the EU Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF).
This facilitates serious violations of human rights, reinforces authoritarianism, undermines governance, and drives corruption. It also diverts money and other resources away from development and other aid, instead giving billions of dollars to security agencies and surveillance companies.
7. Biometrics Processing: a feast of databases
As with many other sectors, we have seen the deployment of biometric systems in immigration and border management mechanisms. Biometric technology is provided by companies to serve a variety of purposes including in screening and/or determination of asylum as part of age and origin verification, as well registration, authentication and verification of identity.
Inconsistencies and errors in databases also result in large numbers of wrong identity identification. Failure rates in identification affects disproportionately people from some races, class and age groups.
In 2003, the Identification of applicants (EURODAC) was adopted and set-up an EU asylum central fingerprint database. It is to this central database that the fingerprints of any person seeking asylum over the age of 14 anywhere in the European are transmitted. It is used for fingerprint comparison evidence to assist with determining the Member State responsible for examining an asylum application made in the EU to ensure compliance with the Regulation (EU) No. 604/2013 (‘the Dublin Regulation’) which requires those seeking asylum to submit their claim in the first country of the EU they enter. Legislative negotiations are ongoing to expand this database, with the aim of gathering more personal data from more people and lowering the age of data collection from fourteen to six years of age.
As of August 2018, according to the United States Department of State International Narcotics Control Strategy Report for the year 2019, the biometric data sharing program between the governments of Mexico and the United States was active in all 52 migration processing stations in Mexico. The program uses biometric information to screen detained migrants in Mexico that have allegedly tried to previously cross the U.S. border or are “members of a criminal gang” .
There is also a lack of transparency in this process: for example, despite contradicting evidence, Mexico’s National Institute of Migration has denied processing biometric data in answers to freedom of access to information requests submitted by our Mexican partner R3D.
In the UK, not even a pandemic deters the government: asylum-seekers are still required by the Home Office to physically register their application for asylum at selected venues. This requirement persists even in the face of legislation allowing for the suspension of biometrics collection in the event of a public health emergency.
- Read the report “Data Protection, Immigration Enforcement and Fundamental Rights: What the EU’s Regulations on Interoperability Mean for People with Irregular Status” by our partner Statewatch and PICUM
8. Facial Recognition: making surveillance frictionless
Facial recognition typically refers to systems which collect and process data about a person’s face. Such systems are highly intrusive because they rely on the capture, extraction, storage or sharing of people’s biometric facial data.
In the context of policing, facial recognition can capture individuals’ facial images and process them in real time (“live FRT”) or at a later point (“Static” or “Retrospective FRT”). The collection of facial images results in the creation of “digital signatures of identified faces”, which are analysed against one or more databases (“Watchlists”), usually containing facial images obtained from other sources to determine if there is a match. This image processing can be done with the purpose of either identifying someone at that moment, training the facial recognition system to get better at identifying, or feeding their face to the system for further uses.
The use of this technology by both police and/or private actors has a seismic impact on the way our society is policed or broadly monitored, in particular on communities of colour.
There are a lot more misidentification errors when it comes to minority groups which will then be more likely to be overpoliced by being wrongly stopped and questioned. For example, past facial recognition trials in London resulted in an error rate greater than 95 per cent, leading even to a 14-year-old black schoolboy being “fingerprinted after being misidentified”.
The rollout of such intrusive technology not only poses significant privacy and data protection questions, but also ethical questions around whether modern democracies should ever permit its use and to what extent.
Following extensive civil society campaigns, some cities are banning facial recognition and companies like Amazon, IBM and Microsoft have announced temporary moratoriums in their use of facial recognition - but these announcements seem more PR stunts made under pressure rather than a true commitment.
9. Artificial Intelligence: your fate in the hands of the system
The term ‘AI’ is used to refer to a diverse range of applications and techniques, at different levels of complexity, autonomy and abstraction. This broad usage encompasses machine learning (which makes inferences, predictions and decisions about individuals), domain-specific AI algorithms, fully autonomous and connected objects and even the futuristic idea of an AI ‘singularity’. This lack of definitional clarity is a challenge: different types of AI systems and applications raise specific ethical and regulatory issues. Different applications and uses of AI can affect the right to privacy and other fundamental rights and freedoms in different ways.
AI methods are being used to identify people who wish to remain anonymous; to infer and generate sensitive information about people from their non-sensitive data; to profile people based upon population-scale data; and to make consequential decisions using this data, some of which profoundly affect people’s lives. And these are just some examples.
New technologies have been deployed in immigration enforcement including AI and automated decision making in a variety of ways. These have included lie detectors at the border (see number 5), automated decision making about visitor visa applications, for the identification refugees or as part of digital border monitoring systems.
These practices mean that for many migrants their fate is being put in the hands of an automated system.
10. Private Companies: when the border is a good business
The use of powerful and intrusive technology that enables authorities to gather intimate details about people’s lives carries significant dangers.
In this context, private military and security companies have come to play essential roles in providing a variety of surveillance tech and data exploitation ‘solutions’ and services to governments. The interjection of for-profit actors such as surveillance companies offering what they present as easy technological solutions into immigration enforcement mechanisms is inherently dangerous.
Cellebrite is a surveillance firm marketing itself as the “global leader in digital intelligence”. In 2019, the company was promoting its digital extraction devices to a new target: authorities interrogating people seeking asylum.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency at the centre of the deployment of President Trump’s “zero tolerance” approach to immigration enforcement and family separation, has for years been contracting a US surveillance company to intercept peoples’ communications across the United States.
Millions of people being forced to migrate because of war, persecution, and climate change is a call for urgent political and social action, not a business opportunity. These companies are installing and often operating immigration and border surveillance systems with no consideration of the protections of the rights of migrants.
But technology at the border seems to be a good business for them.
- Read our submission to the ‘UN Working Group on the use of mercenaries’ on the role of private companies in immigration and border management and the impact on the rights of migrants
Conclusion
To respond to migration flows, governments worldwide have prioritised an approach that criminalises the act of migration and focuses on security.
Borders are not only those we can see: we are witnessing an increasing externalisation of migration controls with the transfer of border management to third countries and digital borders, like digital portals and databases. Technological developments, such as the ones mentioned above, turn immigration enforcement borders invisible.
This list is not exhaustive - and it will soon become obsolete.
We will keep fighting for governments and public authorities to stop using invasive techniques for immigration control and for companies to stop supplying invasive techniques that curtail the rights of migrants. | https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/4000/10-threats-migrants-and-refugees |
Abstract: Automated decision making based on big data and machine learning (ML) algorithms can result in discriminatory decisions against certain protected groups defined upon personal data like gender, race, sexual orientation etc. Such algorithms designed to discover patterns in big data might not only pick up any encoded societal biases in the training data, but even worse, they might reinforce such biases resulting in more severe discrimination. The majority of thus far proposed fairness-aware machine learning approaches focus solely on the pre-, in- or post-processing steps of the machine learning process, that is, input data, learning algorithms or derived models, respectively. However, the fairness problem cannot be isolated to a single step of the ML process. Rather, discrimination is often a result of complex interactions between big data and algorithms, and therefore, a more holistic approach is required. The proposed FAE (Fairness-Aware Ensemble) framework combines fairness-related interventions at both pre- and postprocessing steps of the data analysis process. In the preprocessing step, we tackle the problems of under-representation of the protected group (group imbalance) and of class-imbalance by generating balanced training samples. In the post-processing step, we tackle the problem of class overlapping by shifting the decision boundary in the direction of fairness.
Submission historyFrom: Vasileios Iosifidis [view email]
[v1] Mon, 3 Feb 2020 13:05:18 UTC (137 KB)
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arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.
Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.
Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs and how to get involved. | https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.00695 |
This is the first in a series of three symposia that discuss societal challenges in computational social sciences. In the first year, the focus will be on “Inequality and Imbalance” (London, 2017). Future events will be focused on “Bias and Discrimination” (Cologne, 2018) and “Polarization and Radicalization” (Zurich, 2019).
With these three events we provide a platform to address one of the most pressing challenges in today’s digital society: understanding the role that digital technologies, the Web, and the algorithms used therein play in the mediation and creation of inequalities, discrimination and polarization.
By addressing inequality as the topical issue for the symposium series we intend to explore how CSS can contribute to opening up new ways of thinking about, of measuring, detecting and coping with social inequality, discrimination, and polarization. We will discuss how divides and inequalities are proliferated in digital society, how social cleavages can be observed via web data, how the organizational structure of the web itself generates biases and inequality, and how, in contrast, algorithms and computational tools might help to reduce discrimination and inequality. We will also investigate how bias and unequal social structures foster political tension and polarization, including issues of radicalization and hate.
Call for Workshops and Tutorials
The organizing committee of the First Symposium on Societal Challenges in Computational Social Science welcomes submissions for workshops and tutorials proposals on any emerging topic at the intersection of the social sciences and the computer sciences. The workshop and tutorial day will be held at the Alan Turing Institute in London, UK on November 15th, 2017.
Workshops will give the opportunity to meet and discuss issues with a selected focus, providing an excellent forum for exploring emerging approaches and task areas and bridging the gaps between the social science and technology fields.
Tutorials will be an opportunity for cross-disciplinary engagement and a deeper understanding of new tools, techniques, and research methodologies. Tutorials should provide either an in-depth look at an emerging technique or software package or a broad summary of an important direction in the field.
Members of all segments of the social media research community are encouraged to submit proposals. To foster interaction and exchange of ideas, the workshops will be kept small, with 30 participants maximum. Attendance is limited to active participants only.
Important Dates
Workshops and tutorials proposal submission deadline: September 8th, 2017
Workshops and tutorials acceptance notification: September 12th, 2017
Workshops and tutorials day: November 15th, 2017
Submission Guidelines
Authors are kindly requested to submit a PDF file via email to [email protected]
Proposals for workshops and tutorials should be no more than three (3) pages in length (10pt, single column, with reasonable margins), written in English, and should contain the following:
- A concise title
- The names, affiliations, and contact information of the organizing committee
- Duration of the event (half-day or full-day meeting)
- A short abstract describing the scope and main objective of the event
- A short description of the main topic and themes (2 paragraphs maximum)
- A description of the proposed event format and a detailed list of proposed activities
- An approximate timeline of the activities
- Historical information about the event, when available
- [Workshops only] A description of how workshop submissions will be evaluated (invited contributions, peer review, etc.)
Workshops and tutorials will be selected based on the following criteria:
- Timeliness of the topic
- Potential to attract the interest of researchers in computer science and social/organizational sciences
- Promotion of activities that are different from the classic mini-conference format; those include challenges, games, interactive sessions, brainstorming and networking.
- Involvement people of different backgrounds in the organizing committee
- Addressing topics at the intersection of different disciplines
ORGANIZATION AND VENUE
The Symposium will take place in London, UK. The workshop day will be held at the Alan Turing Institute and the main conference will be hosted by the British Library.
We aim to keep registration costs as low as possible (approx. around 50 GPB for a three-days pass). More information will be made available soon.
Paper/poster submission is not a requirement for attendance.
Travel Grants
Due to the generous funding by Volkswagen Foundation we are able to offer up to 40 travel grants to early career researchers whose talks are accepted for the symposium. Both plenary talk presenters and workshop/ tutorial presenters are eligible for the travel grants.
The travel grant consists of 500 EUR for authors from non-European countries or 250 EUR for authors from Europe and also covers the registration fee for the symposium. Travel grant recipients will be selected by a committee of experts based on their academic excellence, financial needs and diversity (e.g. gender, geographical and disciplinary diversity).
Please indicate in your submission 1) if you wish to apply for a travel grant, 2) your motivation for the grant application and 3) whether you will still attend the symposium without a travel grant.
The grants aim to especially support attendees with limited travel resources and attendees from countries where Computational Social Science is not yet well established.
For more information please click "Further Official Information" below. | https://armacad.info/symposiumcfp-societal-challenges-in-computational-social-science-15-17-november-2017-uk |
Last February at the World Government Summit 2019 in Dubai, Christine Lagarde, the first woman managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), sat in front of her audience and gave them some news: “AI and the fourth industrial revolution will have a more severe impact on women than men,” she told the crowd, explaining that’s “not because women are stupid, but simply many of the tasks done by women are more routines tasks, are more easily automated.” She added that 11% of women’s jobs will be affected by technology in the future, compared to 9% for men.
The way in which AI could potentially reduce the need for specific segments of the human workforce is indeed a massive concern, but it falls within a larger issue related to the way artificial intelligence will interact with various human groups and categories: bias. As explained by Theodoros Evgeniou, one of the most urgent AI issues to be looked into today is fairness; how algorithms can reproduce the bias of developers, or even create their own biases due to flawed original datasets.
For example, a research conducted by the university of Virginia in 2016 showed that two large image collections used in machine learning, one of which is backed by Microsoft and Facebook, demonstrated severe gender biases: images of shopping and cooking were linked to women, while visuals of coaching and shooting were associated with men.
Biased dataset, biased AI
The problem came most to the fore last April, when a group of AI researchers from Google, Facebook, Microsoft and various universities penned an open letter calling on Amazon (a frontrunner in the field) to stop selling its facial recognition technology to law enforcement. A study by the MIT Media Lab in January had indeed found that Amazon’s Rekognition had a significantly higher rate of errors when identifying an individual’s gender if they were female or darker skinned. “Flawed facial analysis technologies are reinforcing human biases,” Morgan Klaus Scheuerman, a PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder and one of 26 signatories of the letter, told The Verge.
Another signatory, Caltech professor and former principal scientist at Amazon’s AWS subsidiary Anima Anandkumar, told Wired that the risks AI systems will cause harm to certain groups are higher when research teams are homogenous. Her work shows that as a group of similar people input data, their biases are entered into the algorithms as well, resulting in biased outputs. With only 12% of leading machine learning researchers being women, according to a research by Wired and Canadian startup Element AI, no wonder that the gender imbalance in the development field translates into skewed AI results.
Even worse, machine learning doesn’t just mirror biases; it amplifies them, as explains Harvard PhD and data scientist Cathy O’Neil in her book Weapons of Math Destruction. O’Neil looked at how biases can manipulate mathematical models and ultimately reinforce discriminations. “Models are opinions embedded in mathematics,” she writes, warning that algorithms can affect our lives in aspects we wouldn’t even imagine, from finance to health, education, justice and recruitment.
Countering amplified discrimination
If AI can be used anywhere, including HR departments that go through resumes, its embedded gender biases become more worrisome than what it first seemed. Take Amazon’s aborted AI hiring and recruitment system: the algorithm went through and analyzed candidates but displayed the exact same biases that Amazon has originally used the technology to avoid, rating male applicants better than females due to the dataset’s historical preference.
Writing for the World Economic Forum last January, Ann Cairns, vice chairman of Mastercard, says that “the major problem with AI is what’s known as ‘garbage in, garbage out’. We feed algorithms data that introduces existing biases, which then become self-fulfilling. In the case of recruitment, a firm that has historically hired male candidates will find that their AI rejects female candidates, as they don’t fit the mould of past successful applicants.” According to Cairns, inclusion, empowerment and equality can help yield better results.
Similarly, Megan Bigelow, founder and president of PDX Women in Tech, a American nonprofit that strives to empower women and underrepresented groups in tech, tells Communicate that women and other minorities are indeed affected by AI due to the biases of scientists seeping into the technology. “Behind every new tech company or product are the humans who built it – each with their own assumptions, beliefs, values, biases, hopes and dreams,” she wrote in one of her pieces for Oregonbusiness.com in 2018. Bigelow also argues that to fix the problem, “First, we need to recognize that this is a problem for all of us, not just for women […] Diversity and inclusion are the right things to do for the healthy existence of humanity. Second, the systemic issue is a lack of financial access.” Therefore, people should get equal access to opportunities regardless of their background, gender or any other criteria.
Moreover, developing and testing standards for AI to identify biases early on is yet another strategy scientists are exploring, even though “the question is: what will be included in the algorithm to adjust for such biases?”, as asks Abeer El Tantawy, an educational specialist working for a chemoinformatics company.
MIT researcher and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League (a collective aiming to fight bias in algorithms) Joy Buolamwini’s thesis uncovered major racial and gender bias in AI services from multinationals such as Microsoft, IBM and Amazon. In her view, who, how and why we code matter. By answering these three questions, organizations can identify biases and curate training sets inclusively, taking into consideration the social impact of technology on people.
And another team at MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) is working on a solution, building an algorithm that can “de-bias” the data automatically. This algorithm would be designed to look at hidden biases within the data but is yet to be tested.
The search for solutions continues as AI evolves and increasingly becomes a reality, along with the challenges it brings.
This article has been part of Communicate’s June print edition. | https://www.communicateonline.me/digital/ai-reflects-the-biases-of-its-creators/ |
What's the conference about?
New technical and legal developments pose greater and greater privacy dilemmas. Governments have in the recent years increasingly established and legalised surveillance schemes in form of data retention, communication interception or CCTVs for the reason of fighting terrorism or serious crimes. Surveillance Monitoring of individuals is also a threat in the private sector: Private organisations are for instance increasingly using profiling and data mining techniques for targeted marketing, analysing customer buying predictions or social sorting. Work place monitoring practices allow surveillance of employees. Emerging pervasive computing technologies, where individuals are usually unaware of a constant data collection and processing in their surroundings, will even heighten the problem that individuals are effectively losing control over their personal spheres. At a global scale, Google Earth and other corporate virtual globes may have dramatic consequences for the tracking and sorting of individuals. With CCTV, the controlling power of surveillance is in few hands. With live, high resolution imagery feeds from space in the near future, massive surveillance may soon be available to everybody, a development whose consequences we do not yet grasp. New means of surveillance are also enabled by social networks, in which individuals are publishing many intimate personal details about themselves and others. Such social networks are today already frequently analysed by employers, marketing industry, law enforcement or social engineering.
The aim of this conference Track is to discuss and analyse such privacy risks of surveillance for humans and society as well as countermeasures for protecting the individuals’ rights to informational self-determination from multi-disciplinary perspectives. | http://www.wcc2010.org/content/conferences/ifip/human-choice-and-computers-international-conference-hcc9-2010-track-3-surveillance-and-privacy/ |
The process of collecting information about public spaces via mobile phones continues to further impact the privacy and rights of citizens. This is the conclusion of PhD student Gerard Ritsema van Eck’s research. Ritsema van Eck will be awarded a PhD by the University of Groningen on 16 September.
As a result of popular smartphone games like Pokémon GO, companies and government bodies have begun ‘crowdsourcing’ data on public spaces. Using location data, camera images or short surveys, information is collected from a large number of participants on topics such as traffic jams and areas where people feel safe or unsafe. Tech companies and the police then pool this information and use it for various purposes, but individuals may struggle to protect themselves against any potential negative consequences of these actions.
The role of smartphones in society is only getting bigger. Anyone can use their camera or be caught on camera at any given time. ‘This makes smartphone cameras more invasive than shop cameras or police cameras’, explains Ritsema van Eck. ‘Those are in fixed places and you can avoid them to a certain degree. But you cannot get away from smartphones, those are everywhere. Even though we may not intend to, our smartphones transmit lots of data even from the most remote places on earth.’
The insights gained from smartphone data usually apply to groups of people, such as a neighbourhood. And that’s where things get tricky – because the right to privacy only protects the individual. Ritsema van Eck: ‘The application of traditional human rights can be very difficult, as they focus on the individual and cannot be applied in the same way to privacy violations of entire streets or neighbourhoods. As a result, groups may be negatively impacted. Or a person may be stigmatized because they are part of that group, although not one individual is singled out. As a result, there would appear to be no legal issues. It’s a kind of no-man’s-land.’
What’s wrong with filming private citizens if they have nothing to hide? This is a frequently heard counter-argument. ‘First of all, everyone has biases’, explains Ritsema van Eck. ‘People decide to film certain things but not other things. This means that the data is not objective. And also: in India, for example, neighbourhoods are classified as unsafe for women based on reports from citizens. Sounds good, you might say. But it also puts a stigma on residents in that specific area. Caution is therefore required, because profiling and discrimination are just around the corner.’
Profiling, or identifying possible suspects or places by applying group attributes using algorithms, is a hot topic. Ritsema van Eck explains that this is basically happening through the collection of smartphone data. ‘People supply data on locations and all of the information combined leads to a profile of a location that may or may not be entirely accurate. But: as long as individuals are not singled out, nobody appears to care. However, that does not mean that these actions are right or even harmless. I advocate for privacy rights for groups or streets to limit the disastrous impact of this type of crowd-sourced data.’
Gerard Ritsema van Eck
Uit onderzoek, verricht door onderzoekers van de Faculteit Rechtsgeleerdheid en gefinancierd door Instituut GAK, volgt dat de universele benadering, berustend op gelijkwaardige bescherming op toereikend niveau voor alle leden van de samenleving,...
Dr Francesco Giumelli, associate professor of International Relations and International Organizations at the Faculty of Arts, and Dr Pim Geelhoed, associate professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure at the Faculty of Law, are participating in...
PhD candidate Michele Molè received a grant from the UG incentive fund for interdisciplinary research for his project Panoptiwork - The Human and the Digital at Work .
The UG website uses functional and anonymous analytics cookies. Please answer the question of whether or not you want to accept other cookies (such as tracking cookies). | https://www.rug.nl/about-ug/latest-news/news/archief2021/nieuwsberichten/mobiele-telefoons-zetten-privacy-verder-onder-druk |
SCI has been working to promote peace, non-violence, human rights, social justice and international understanding as an alternative to war since 1920. Gender inequalities arise from different treatment of people according to their gender and sexual orientation. They are expressed in economic, social, and political institutions that systematically reinforce unequal roles, rights, and opportunities. In most societies, structural inequalities result in the marginalisation and discrimination of people with non-normative gender and/or sexuality from childhood on. Connected stereotypes and prejudices influence everyday life experiences, often leading to exclusion. SCI sees this as violence and therefore works on this issue, connecting it to its vision of peace.
Gender Blenders
SCI’s efforts in the topic of gender and sexuality have been supported by a group of international volunteers and activists who organised themselves in the Gender Blenders working group.
The group developed different local activities and international campaigns. One example is the social media campaign #UnmaskingCOVID, which informed and reflected on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women and members of the LGBTIQ+ community.
Gendered Realities project
The Gendered Realities project is an annual Work Plan for the year 2019, aimed at increasing understanding of the gender topic and the present realities in SCI activities. The Work Plan consisted of two international activities and a series of local follow-up actions, and produced different useful resources.
Explore our gender tools, activities and methods in the Gendered Realities project page
Resources
SCI has worked hard to create a toolkit that can be used to look into and address Gender on different levels and with different communities. The toolkit is freely available below.
You can find other resources on the topic by filtering your search of our publications by “Gender”.
Going further…
Following this toolkit and the work done by our Movement, SCI Italy organised The Gender Effect. In April 2022, 27 young professionals came together in Italy to explore, learn and develop skills within the various aspects related to the topic of gender. This training was aimed at future trainers, coordinators and facilitators to make sure that there are no gender inequalities in training and workcamps organised with SCI.
This is also an important part of the FUNding Peace training organised by the International Secretariat. | https://sci.ngo/our-work/themes/gender/ |
The volunteers who come to work at Coetir Anian / Cambrian Wildwood are the heart and driving force of the project. A great part of what happens on the land is down to the work of volunteers on the monthly work days. It is also a fundamental way for people to be part of Coetir Anian, and to not only give time and work, but also to influence how the project evolves and to interact directly with the landscape.
One of the popular activities on the land is tree planting. Last winter we planted three small areas of new woodland at high density, to establish some foundation areas in thick bracken. These will provide new habitat in the short term and over the longer term they will be seed sources for the further spread of trees. This winter we will start an ongoing programme of ‘No Fence Planting’, which will be continued indefinitely into future years, planting a few hundred trees a year.
No Fence Planting covers a range of techniques to establish trees in the presence of herbivores and without the use of protective fencing. Generally the trees are planted at low density, as single trees or small groups. A couple of years ago, we published an article on the website, Sabre Planting with the Tree Shepherd.
The article describes the work of Steve Watson who has pioneered and refined the techniques. Over 35 years, he has established hundreds of acres of woodland in Snowdonia, with the agreement of the landowners, and in the presence of sheep grazing.
The results are resounding improvements for the landscape, for wildlife, for carbon sequestration, and significantly for the livestock. Pasture is improved and opportunities for shelter greatly enhanced, resulting in noticeable increases in the productivity of the land.
These acres challenge the debate presenting an opposition between grazing and trees. As Steve points out, trees and woodlands evolved in the presence of herbivores, and a wooded landscape without herbivores is not natural. His techniques are taken directly from close observation of how trees naturally become established in the presence of browsing pressure. The potential for increasing tree cover in the uplands through No Fence Planting is huge.
There are three main techniques used:
‘Sabre’ planting: This makes use of topography in the landscape. Trees at about 4 feet (1.2 metres) in height are planted on a steep slope at a right-angle to the ground. The leading shoot is out of reach of browsing, or if it is browsed a less accessible shoot takes over as the lead. Often the trees take on a curved form as they correct their original planting angle to grow vertically.
Use of cover: Existing cover in the landscape, for example gorse, bramble, thorns and bracken, are used to provide cover for the new trees.
Again, trees at about 4 feet (1.2 metres) in height are planted on the edge of thickets or within bracken. It is not only the difficulty of access that protects the trees here; another factor is the way the trees are hidden from view by the cover vegetation.
Forked willows: This technique uses 9 foot (2.7 metre) willow cuttings – single cuttings are vulnerable to the wind and so forked cuttings are chosen to provide stability. The cuttings are pushed 4 foot into the ground, with the fork just below the ground surface and two 5 foot stems above ground.
Coetir Anian will use all these techniques to establish more tree cover.
Steve has also developed a new planting method in response to the challenges presented by Bwlch Corog. A large part of the site is covered in purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea) which creates a dense mat of vegetation difficult for trees to establish into; in addition, the topography of this area does not include much steep ground and there is very little cover. We will use willow cuttings as sticks pushed almost completely into the ground. Planting a large number in dense groups will in theory enable some to escape from browsing pressure. Additionally, as willow is the most favoured species for browsing by the horses, they will act as a decoy from other species of trees growing.
With the development of willow scrub in the purple moor grass, and the addition of downy birch, a very special type of habitat will be restored to the landscape. The National Vegetation Classification identifies this as ‘W4 Betula pubescens – Molinia caerulea woodland’. | https://www.cambrianwildwood.org/no-fence-tree-planting/ |
Sloan Peak/Southeast Face
Sloan Peak's Southeast Face is a Grade II, 5.7 alpine rock climb.
getting there
Drive the Mountain Loop Highway to Barlow Pass. Turn onto Forest Service road 4096 (marked by a very small sign). Follow this road to its end (~3.5 miles) and the Bedal Creek Trailhead (2,800 ft).
APPROACH
Hike up an old mining trail through dense forest and streams with many downfall trees until you reach Bedal
Creek. The trail follows the creek. A few cairns mark the way and eventually you must cross the creek to regain a well worn trail that leads to Bedal Basin passing a huge boulder. Follow the trail through thin forest and boulders until you see the West Face of Sloan Peak with a distant ridge coming off it. Travel cross country aiming for this ridge. The terrain up this ridge gets steep and is covered in vegetation and can be slick in the morning. Once on top of the ridge follow a worn trail through the trees that exits on a large scree field below the South West face. The ridge for the South East face should be visible in the distance. Contour and gradually gain elevation but don't go as high as the South West wall until you reach the top of the ridge. The South East face should now be visible. There is a good bivy site at this ridge and the views are spectacular.
Traverse the basin along the South East face. Dropping below rock bands reduces exposure to rockfall. In warmer weather water from snowmelt can be found running along these smooth granite surfaces. Continue to contour the
basin almost until you reach the rock wall that marks the ridge with the North East face. There will be a ramp on the South East face that runs up into a series of vegetation covered ledges.
Access to this ramp can be problematic and access to the ledges an even greater problem depending on snow conditions. Late in the season a large moat will form between the snow and the rock of the South West face that can block access to the ramp. It might be possible to drop into the moat and access the ramp. Given the right conditions one might be able to climb up what remains of the snow that covered the ramp, a snow tongue that no doubt melts out later in the season. Whatever method you use make sure you have a plan for how to get back onto the snow since the descent requires to
transition from the rocky ledges back to the snow.
The ramp itself is generally sound granite and easy 3rd class. Scramble along the ramp over boulders, rocks and vegetation covered slopes. No doubt you'll see evidence of rappel anchors used by others to exit the ramp system, most of questionable quality. Continue to follow the ramp up the face, staying close to the wall until you encounter the base of a gulley with a low 5th class friction step-up required for access. The move isn't exposed but thin. Ascend the gulley which is very loose and steep. It tops out at a trail which is the popuar "corkscrew route". Turning left heads uphill towards the summit. Heading right heads towards the base of the climb. Remember this spot as you will return here when it's time to
descend.
Turn right (downhill) and follow the corkscrew route. Soon you see a broken section of 5th class rock with a roof. This is the base of the climb. The route can be climbed in four pitches with a 60m rope.
ASCENT
Pitch 1 (5.7, 200 feet): Rope up to the left of the roof. Climb blocky Class 5 up and generally to the right until you reach a ledge just under one,
Pitch 2 (5.4-5.4, 200 feet): Climb straight up easy 5th class until reach a sand bench at roughly 100 feet out. Belaying from here will greatly reduce rope drag.
Pitch 3 (5.4-5.5, 200 feet): From the belay on the sandy ledge walk left until you see an granite wall with a few chicken heads and ridges. Super fun slab to climb, although way too short. This leads to a rough chimney system, more like an extended open book. Very easy climbing to another large open ledge on the arm that leads to the summit.
Pitch 4 (low Class 5 to Class 4): Climb up the arm until you reach scramble terrain, perhaps 200 feet from the belay. The climbing is super easy, perhaps bordering on Class 4. From here it's an easy scramble up blocks to the ridge leading to the summit.
DESCENT
The descent follows the famous corkscrew route off the summit. Follow trail and cairns until you reach the top of the gully that granted access from the South East face ledge system to the corkscrew route. Carefully descend the gully as it's very loose. Downclimb the low 5th class step or rig a hand line or rappel. It's not steep or exposed. Reverse the route down the ramp to the snow, then return via the approach route.
- Suitable Activities: Climbing
- Climbing Category: Intermediate Alpine
- Seasons: July, August, September
- Weather: View weather forecast
- Difficulty: Intermediate Rock Climb
- 7,835 ft
-
Land Manager:
Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest
Henry M Jackson Wilderness
- Parking Permit Required: Northwest Forest Pass
- Recommended Party Size: 12
- Maximum Party Size: 12
- Maximum Route/Place Capacity: 12
- USGS Sloan Peak
Upcoming Activities
There are no activities scheduled at this location.
There are no resources for this route/place. Log in and send us updates, images, or resources. | https://www.mountaineers.org/activities/routes-places/sloan-peak-southeast-face |
The Quokka is one of the smallest Wallaby species with a short tail, small hind legs, and a rounded compact body. Its dense fur is fairly coarse and usually brown or grey in color, with reddish tinges around the face and neck, and generally lighter in color on the underside. The Quokka also has small and rounded ears, and a rounded snout that is tipped with a black nose. At only about a meter tall, these features are much smaller than many others in the wallaby species, but they enable the Quokka to hop through vegetation quickly. They live in groups defended by dominant males in tall grass near water sources. Quokkas are nocturnal animals that spend most of the hot, Australian day resting in the shade of the trees, often returning to the same spot every day. At night, the Quokka then begins to browse for food using tunnels to move about unseen.
Quokkas feed on different grasses that line that tunnels that they make through the dense vegetation. They also eat leaves, and fruits and berries when they are available. Although they mainly browse for food on the ground, they are also known to climb about a meter or so up into the trees to obtain food. Quokkas swallow their food without chewing it, and then regurgitate the undigested material as a cud, which is also eaten. They get most of their hydration from their food and have no need to drink vast amounts of water. In fact, they are able to go for long periods of time without food or water, instead living off the fat stored in their tails.
Quokka’s breeding season differs from location. On the mainland quokkas breed all year round, but on Rottnest Island they only breed from January to August. Breeding tends to occur in the cooler months between January and March. A single joey is born after a gestation period of only month. The joey crawls into its mother’s pouch unaided, a trait shared with other marsupials, when it then attaches itself to one of the female’s teats. The Quokka babies suckle from their mother in the pouch for around 6 months whilst they continue to develop. At this time, the joey emerges for the first time and begins to explore it’s surroundings but remains close to the female, continuing to rely on her milk for two more months. Females can give birth starting at the age of 1.5 years old and up to twice a year.
Quokka populations used to be thriving and widespread through the coastal regions of southwest Australia, but since the advent of European colonists in the 1930s, their numbers have dropped considerably. The settlers brought with them domestic predators such as cats, foxes, and dogs, which in turn attracted birds of prey and dingoes. Red foxes however have caused the most damage to quokkas. Now, quokkas live in small pockets of mainland Australia and Bald Island, with Rottnest Island as their primary home. Interestingly, a Dutch man, Willem de Vlamingh, accidentally mistook the quokkas for large rats when he arrived to the island in 1696. He named the island “Rattennest” which is Dutch for Rat’s Nest. This was adapted to Rottnest. Even these small areas of land to which they are confined are being threatened due to deforestation and development of the land, mainly for recreational purposes. The demise of their daytime resting sites has been linked to the declining population. The Quokka has been listed by the IUCN on their Red List as “vulnerable in its surrounding environment”. | http://bvnwbiology.net/biology/1143/ |
The short answer to this question is no. Skunks are slightly smaller than raccoons, and they have short legs and clawed paws that aren’t made for climbing trees.
The chances of seeing a skunk climb any tree are quite low, and it would be an extremely odd sight if one did so anyway. It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean you can never see a skunk in a tree.
Can skunks climb trees?
Even with their claws, skunks aren’t very good climbers. They have no trouble ascending flat surfaces or even low tree trunks, but they can’t climb overhanging branches or steep slopes like raccoons and cats can.
If a skunk wants to get up into a tree, he can chew through the bark and push his way in—but it’s hard to imagine why a skunk would want to do that. It makes more sense for them to stay on ground level: there are more insects for them to eat, after all!
Related posts:
Can You Eat Skunk?
Do Baby Skunks Spray?
Can Skunks Climb?
Do skunks climb trees?
A skunk’s main defense is his foul-smelling spray, but despite what many pet owners believe, a skunk can climb trees and does so to escape predators. They don’t like to climb down because their claws don’t dig well into the bark, making it difficult for them to descend from heights.
The typical tree-climbing route for a skunk is up one branch, across another branch or two, then down another branch back onto ground level—which makes them fairly easy targets for predators that are less agile than they are. For example, raccoons will follow a skunk’s climbing path to get above and attack him on his way down.
Can striped skunks climb?
Yes, striped skunks can climb trees. They are good climbers and prefer to sleep in them. They will eat birds’ eggs from up high.
Female skunks are often known to carry babies with them when they climb because climbing is easier for baby skunks than staying on ground level. Baby skunks will stay with their mothers for about 12 weeks before going off on their own.
Why are striped skunks, bad climbers?
Skunks can climb trees, but it’s not easy for them. They have special climbing claws that help with gripping and climbing. These claws aren’t made for pulling themselves up a tree trunk. The biggest challenge for striped skunks is climbing to those claw-friendly branches. Their average weight is about 4 pounds or 2 kilograms; they don’t have trouble moving along branches and can weigh down a limb enough to break it off if they move around on it a lot. As long as there are close trees nearby with strong enough limbs, skunks shouldn’t have trouble moving from one tree to another to climb around on them.
Can Hooded skunks climb?
In general, no. Their claws aren’t suitable for climbing, and they don’t have a climbing instinct to help them get high. However, some people have reported that skunks were able to climb trees. So it is possible that it may manage to do so if given enough time and motivation (such as being chased by something that can catch it).
But at least according to everything we know about skunk behavior, they generally can’t climb trees. As far as I know, no one has ever scientifically tested whether striped skunks can climb, which means they probably can’t, either!
Can spotted skunks climb?
The name spotted skunk refers to several species of North American skunk. If you’re lucky enough to live near these animals, you might know that they can climb trees and make dens in them. This might seem unusual for a creature whose sole purpose is protection, but it does serve several purposes for spotted skunks.
By creating a den or other shelter in tree cavities and crevices on high tree branches, skunks can easily hide from potential predators than those living on or near ground level. The higher vantage point also makes spotting potential threats easier so that when spotted by a predator, they can quickly get back into their den and remain safe from harm.
Can American Hog-Nosed skunks climb?
If a skunk needs to get from point A to point B, it will generally opt for a road or trail if available. If not, it might be able to clamber up a tree, but that isn’t exactly what you want to do with skunks – because once they get up there and feel threatened, they can spray.
Well, in terms of average leg length, American Hog-Nosed skunks can climb trees just like raccoons (they don’t go very far, though). The average height of an American Hog-Nosed skunk when on all fours is around 20 inches (51 cm), and they stand nearly 40 inches (102 cm) tall when fully upright.
Why do skunks climb?
Because it’s fun! Skunks are extremely playful animals. During playtime, a skunk will climb trees, jump off objects, and perform high-flying acrobatics. If you want to bring out your inner child and let go of all your worries, then maybe you should also start climbing trees! As much as you try to resist, it can be hard not to have fun in a tree while looking down at everyone below you. Most adults just don’t have that type of freedom anymore. We spend most of our days being serious with our noses stuck in our cell phones or computers at work.
Are skunks good climbers?
Have you ever wondered if skunks can climb trees? If so, you aren’t alone. The short answer is yes; skunks are excellent climbers! They can climb better than other members of their family. Why do skunks climb trees so well? Part of it has to do with their paws.
They have soft pads on their front paws, allowing them to be extra sticky and grip things easily. Their feet don’t even have claws like most mammals, although they have vestigial claws instead of fingernails (they still have these in case they need them). These hind feet are very useful for climbing branches, but skunks don’t use them while walking around on land.
Do skunks like trees?
Skunks live mostly on ground level. They use trees for sleeping and to escape predators. They will climb a tree if one is available, but their climbing skills are limited to that of a sloth—in other words, they’re very slow and have no real way of keeping their balance.
However, that doesn’t mean they won’t be able to climb down again quickly when startled or threatened by an animal (or human) below. If you see a skunk in a tree, there’s probably another reason why it chose to ascend: because it feels threatened by an enemy below.
Skunks and their climbing ability
Skunks can climb trees, but only certain types of trees. If a skunk is climbing a tree trunk, then it will be a deciduous tree, which means that it loses its leaves during part of its year (summer or winter). A coniferous tree is evergreen and does not lose its leaves at any time of year.
If you happen to spot a skunk climbing up your pine tree outside, there is likely something in that pine cone that caught their attention, like some pesky grubs or an insect larva. Be grateful for their clean-up services! The same cannot be said for most other climbing animals; thankfully, most animals don’t want to mess with an angry skunk! Can squirrels climb trees?
Why don’t skunks climb trees?
It seems like such a simple question. Can skunks climb trees? The answer to that question depends on who you ask and how they define climbing and tree. A true tree-climber is an arboreal animal that uses its limbs, claws, and prehensile tail to move among branches. However, it’s important to note that not all arboreal animals are true climbers.
For example, although squirrels scamper about in trees, their short front limbs prevent them from being able to use their paws for gripping purposes.
Do skunks climb?
The most common answer to skunk climbing is no, but there’s more to it than that. While skunks aren’t known for their climbing abilities, they are extremely good at making use of what’s available, and if a tree happens to be in their way, they just might find a way around it.
Like other small mammals such as squirrels and chipmunks, skunks have a keen sense of balance and excellent gripping ability. This means that if a tree happens to have smaller branches or low-hanging limbs that make it easier for them to pass through an area, then your average skunk will happily use these supports.
Do skunks live in trees?
Skunks do not typically live in trees. They live in caves and are most active at night when feeding or looking for mates. Skunks that humans have fed may approach during daylight hours, but those skunks usually will retreat to their burrows at night.
If you find a skunk during daylight hours, it is probably a sick or injured animal that a veterinarian should check out.
Do skunks sleep in trees?
This is a question that most people have wondered about at one time or another. Like all animals, skunks need sleep just like we do. Most species of skunk spend between 8 and 10 hours a day sleeping. While some may think that they sleep in trees, they sleep in dens such as hollow logs, underground burrows or under tree roots.
While they may appear to nest in trees, it’s a defense mechanism. Skunks are fairly low-to-ground creatures and can only climb vertical surfaces when very little vegetation is available to use as natural traction between their paws and other environmental factors.
Do skunks climb fences?
One of the skunk’s defining features is its odor. The chemicals in skunk spray make it stick to anything and anyone, human or otherwise. This characteristic makes it easy for a threatened skunk to ward off predators: When a predator approaches, all a skunk has to lift his tail and send out a warning spray.
However, despite their capacity for climbing fences and trees, skunks are not known for climbing them on purpose – usually, when one climbs up and away from ground level, it is an accident. Still, given that they can climb fences but not trees means that if you see one climbing up your fence, try not to be alarmed; they’re probably just looking for an easier way down.
Do skunks hide in trees?
In short, no. However, several factors need to be considered before making a blanket statement about whether or not skunks can climb trees. It all depends on how far from ground level you’re talking. And it’s worth noting that most animals don’t climb trees unless they have to. It’s much easier for them to stay on flat ground.
How high can a skunk climb?
Most people assume that skunks can’t climb trees because they have short legs. Yet these little creatures are one of nature’s most perfect climbers. With long claws and powerful hind legs, a skunk can easily scamper up a tree trunk (or even an animal den!) to find safety or food—even though its rear end drags across branches and twigs as they go. They use their tail for balance, grasping it with their front paws like a balancing pole, which helps them reach farther than they could by themselves. As long as there aren’t too many obstructions on or around a tree trunk, there isn’t anything stopping them from climbing!
Can skunks climb into your house?
The skunk climbs into your attic at night and makes a smelly mess. A skunk can climb into an open window or door and let itself in. The first line of defense is to ensure all windows and doors are closed and have screens to keep out most unwanted visitors. Secondly, it’s a good idea to get rid of any food you might have on your deck or patio that attracts raccoons, opossums, mice, squirrels and other animals looking for their next meal. | https://bugmasterpestcontrol.com/can-skunks-climb-trees/ |
A Senegal bushbaby or galago has an intriguing, distinctive, resounding cry, huge eyes shaped like saucers, and a long bushy tail. This little primate has fur that is thick and, silvery-brown fur and overall has a very appealing look. Its large, round eyes provide good night vision and its delicate bat-like ears enable it to track insects in the dark. When jumping through thick growth or thorn bush, it folds its ears flat against its head to protect them and it folds them also when resting.
NoNocturnal
Nocturnality is an animal behavior characterized by being active during the night and sleeping during the day. The common adjective is "nocturnal",...
OmOmnivore
An omnivore is an animal that has the ability to eat and survive on both plant and animal matter. Obtaining energy and nutrients from plant and ani...
ArArboreal
Arboreal locomotion is the locomotion of animals in trees. In habitats in which trees are present, animals have evolved to move in them. Some anima...
JuJumping
Jumping (saltation) can be distinguished from running, galloping, and other gaits where the entire body is temporarily airborne by the relatively l...
AlAltricial
Altricial animals are those species whose newly hatched or born young are relatively immobile. They lack hair or down, are not able to obtain food ...
ScScansorial
Scansorial animals are those that are adapted to or specialized for climbing. Many animals climb not only in tress but also in other habitats, such...
ViViviparous
Among animals, viviparity is the development of the embryo inside the body of the parent. The term 'viviparity' and its adjective form 'viviparous'...
PoPolygyny
Polygyny is a mating system in which one male lives and mates with multiple females but each female only mates with a single male.
SoSocial
NoNot a migrant
Animals that do not make seasonal movements and stay in their native home ranges all year round are called not migrants or residents.
Sstarts with
BiBig-Eyed Animals
Senegal bushbabies live in Africa, south of the Sahara, from Senegal in the west, through the savanna and open woodland of Africa, to Sudan, Somalia, and Ethiopia in the east, and Kenya and Tanzania in the south. They also inhabit some nearby islands, Zanzibar among them.
Senegal bushbabies are arboreal, gregarious, and nocturnal, and sleep during the day in tree forks, hollow trees, dense vegetation, or old birds' nests, usually in groups of a few individuals. Adult females maintain territories but share them with their offspring. Males leave their mothers' territories after puberty, but females remain, forming social groups consisting of closely related females and their immature young. Adult males maintain separate territories, which overlap with those of the female social groups. Males who have not established such territories sometimes form small bachelor groups. When disturbed in the daytime, Senegal bushbabies may be very slow, but at night they are active and agile and can jump 3 to 5 meters in one go. On level surfaces, they hop like miniature kangaroos, but they usually travel by climbing and jumping through the trees. They moisten their feet and hands with urine, which is thought to assist in holding onto branches and may function as scent marking as well. Senegal bushbabies have a high-pitched, chirping call which is made most often during mornings and evenings. Tactile communication, during play, grooming, and aggression, is important for these animals, especially between mothers and their offspring and between mates.
Senegal bushbabies are omnivores. They mostly eat grasshoppers, but also small birds, eggs, seeds, fruits, and flowers.
Senegal bushbabies are usually polygynous. A male competes for access to several females and their home ranges. They breed twice per year: when the rains begin in November and during the period when the rains end in February. A female builds a nest from leaves in which to bear and raise her young. Litters usually number one or two (rarely three) and young are born from April to November, following gestation from 110 to 120 days. The young typically nurse until they are three and a half months old, although they will eat solid food after one month. They are usually transported by clinging to their mother's fur or in her mouth by her holding onto the back of their necks. Mothers will leave their young in the nest unattended while they forage. Females usually become sexually mature at 240 days of age and males at 300 days of age.
There are currently no significant threats to Senegal bushbabies.
According to IUCN, Senegal bushbaby is common and widespread throughout its range but no overall population estimate is available. Currently, this species is classified as Least Concern (LC) and its numbers today remain stable.
As insect predators, this species probably helps control their prey populations. They may also play a part in the dispersal of seeds due to their frugivory diet. Being a potential prey species, they also may affect predator populations. | https://animalia.bio/senegal-bushbaby |
Bonners Ferry, ID: Gem Lake
Tackle a steep climb to the immaculately clear Gem Lake on this 3.6-mile out-and-back deep in the Cabinet Mountains.
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True to its name, Gem Lake serves up idyllic mountain scenery and blissful solitude high in Idaho’s remote Cabinet Mountains. From the trailhead off the U-bend in Forest Road 419, head east alongside the babbling Gem Creek through a forest bustling with lodgepole pine, Douglas fir and Western larch. Negotiate your way over the occasional fallen tree before the trail bends upward at a noticeable grade near mile 0.5. Over the next 0.9 mile, you’ll gain 900 feet of vertical before earning a brief respite just below the lake.
Along the way up, catch a glimpse of the old Lunch Mountain Fire Tower through a break in the trees near mile 0.6. After the trail levels out for a quick 100-yard stretch, navigate your way through a maze of fallen trees to complete the hike’s final climb. The shores of Gem Lake are shrouded by dense forest, but the water is crystal clear and brimming with small cutthroat trout. Cliffs along the lake’s southern edge provide magnificent aerial views of the water (which unfortunately is not deep enough for jumping), and a primitive campsite is nestled into the lush woods east of the lake. Return to the trailhead via the route you hiked in on.
-Mapped by Travis Lesicka
Trail Facts
- Distance: 5.0
Waypoints
GLK001
Location: 48.38334, -116.155282
From the clearly-marked trailhead, head east on Gem Lake Trail (554).
GLK002
Location: 48.383917, -116.154649
Car camping and additional parking is available just north of the trailhead.
GLK003
Location: 48.384007, -116.149043
Grade increases here: you’ll gain 900 feet over the next 0.9 mile.
GLK004
Location: 48.378463, -116.142263
The trail narrows and levels out for a 100-yard stretch before climbing a final hill to the lake.
GLK005
Location: 48.377718, -116.13803
Follow a short side trail to a campsite tucked into the woods south of the lake.
GLK006
Location: 48.377715, -116.136974
The trail becomes faint as it wanders through a boulder field.
Grotto Stream
Location: 48.383251, -116.151093
Pass a babbling stream shrouded by a lush hallway of green. The stream is fullest in spring, but becomes lower as summer stretches on.
Gem Lake Trail
Location: 48.383508, -116.150545
Heading east on the well-defined trail.
Lunch Peak Fire Lookout
Location: 48.383141, -116.147423
Look west through a break in the trees for a glimpse of the old Lunch Peak Fire Lookout.
Fallen Trees
Location: 48.378085, -116.141925
Maneuver through a field of fallen trees as you take on the hike’s final climb.
Final Hill
Location: 48.377629, -116.138953
The trail is somewhat rough throughout the hike’s final climb, but becomes clearer near the lake.
Campsite
Location: 48.377786, -116.138148
This site is tucked into woods off the lake’s southern shore.
Southern Shore
Location: 48.377707, -116.137108
Traverse a boulder field resting on Gem Lake’s southern shore.
Fish
Location: 48.377704, -116.13553
Fish are small but plentiful in Gem Lake.
Gem Lake
Location: 48.377964, -116.13523
Looking west from the southeastern corner of Gem Lake.
Gem Lake: Southeastern Shore
Location: 48.378142, -116.134951
Gem Lake’s southeastern shore is soggy and laden with fallen trees. | https://www.backpacker.com/trips/bonners-ferry-id-gem-lake/ |
Temperatures are high all year, but there is a better-developed dry season than in the tropical rain forest. Evapotranspiration exceeds precipitation for enough of the year to have a significant effect on the vegetation. Edaphic conditions (dryer, better-drained soil) may produce this vegetation type in the rain-forest zone.
Soils
Soils are essentially like those of tropical rain forests, with the same processes.
Vegetation
The deciduousness of most tree species is a significant difference from the tropical rain forest. Many evergreen tree species of the rain forest become deciduous in this zone. Growing conditions are not so optimal, thus the tree canopy is lower (10-30m) than in the tropical rain forest and the trees less dense where drought is more extreme. The undergrowth is often dense and tangled because of greater light penetration. Lianas are much less common than in the rain forest, not such an important growth form where light is less limiting and also perhaps highly susceptible to desiccation. Drought-resistant epiphytes (orchids, bromeliads and cacti) may be abundant. The trees have thicker, more ridged, bark; deeper roots without buttresses; much more variable leaves, including many compound-leaved legumes; and more species with thorns.
Diversity
Species diversity is invariably lower than in nearby tropical rain forests. Environmental stress increases with instability (seasonality) of the environment, and fewer plants and animals can generate homeostatic mechanisms (for internal stability) to cope. There is still relatively high diversity on a world scale, but most of the taxonomic groups in the dry forest are less diverse than in the rain forest. Dry forest is important as habitat for migratory birds in their nonbreeding season (Central America, India).
Plant Adaptations
Trees have thicker bark (antifire adaptation), thicker and smaller leaves (antidesiccation adaptation), thorns (antiherbivore adaptation), longer roots (to reach deeper water table), and other features along a gradient toward the well-developed drought adaptations of woody plants of the savanna and desert zones (which see).
Animal Adaptations
With more spaces between trees, larger mammals are more prominent in this environment. There is more seasonality in reproductive cycles, timed with rains in most groups. In motile species, migration may occur in the dry season to wetter environments, including nearby rain forest, gallery forest, and wet bottomlands.
Human Effects
The high productivity during the rainy season, coupled with relief from rains during the dry season, makes this a favorable environment for humans and domestic stock, so much of the zone has been cleared and developed for pastureland as well as agriculture. Dry forests vary from largely extirpated to still extensive, depending on the geographic region, but in some regions they are more endangered than rain forests. | https://www.pugetsound.edu/slater-museum-natural-history-1/world-biomes/characteristics-bioclimatic-zones/tropical-dry-forest |
Jacob, one of our sixth form students has embarked on a series of rewilding courses at Wildwood Kent. Read his account of his first day:
One of our Big Grazers for Big Landscapes: My visit to the Blean Bison
Back in November I attended a conservation course at Wildwood. This was the 1st of the 4 rewilding courses that shed light on the importance of reintroducing native animals to ecosystems where they’d previously perished due to humans hunting them to extinction in the past.
This course focused on the “Big Grazers”, which are large herbivorous mammals such as European Bison that increase biodiversity by creating a wide range of habitats as they graze through the forest. This key role they play gives them the nickname ‘ecosystem engineers’. It also mentioned rewilding as a term itself, and whether certain projects should be branded as ‘rewilding’ and whether different terms should be used as an alternative, because of the toxicity the word has gained over the years.
Although Big Grazers were the focus of the day, we were also briefly introduced to the controversial conversation of carnivore reintroduction and how our extinct species like the European Bear, Wolf and Lynx would help maintain the populations of Large Herbivores. Consequently, stopping overgrazing as their presence would cause the large herds of grazers to constantly be moving from one location to another rather than grazing in one spot, thus having a positive impact on the ecosystem. I found this incredibly intriguing and will be looking to attend the carnivore rewilding course in the near future
We learnt about the different types of grazers, and their unique functions in ecosystems. Wild boar act like ploughs; churning up the forest floor, unearthing even the thickest of roots like Bracken. The beloved Bison loosen plant roots and clear dense vegetation alongside the other grazers, which make space for new species of plant to colonise. Wild Horse act like clippers, cutting back vegetation; all grazers work in cooperation altering the ecosystem by their own actions, allowing other species to colonise and thrive!
The benefits of reintroducing are immense for many reasons; their fur can be used as material for bird’s nests, dung can be a food source and habitat for invertebrates such as beetles (approximately 60 species of dung beetle in the UK), as well as a fertilizer, the trees that’ve fallen due to the grazers can lead to forest regeneration and make space for more light to pass through the new spaces in the tree canopies (allowing different species to colonise) resulting in more biodiverse vegetation and a more complex root and vegetation system leading to greater carbon sequestration. The mosaic of habitats Bison create also greatly benefit the species associated with these habitats including Nightingale which need dense open woodlands with thickets and the incredibly rare Heath Fritillary that live in primarily coppiced woodland or sheltered heathland which has a stronghold in West Blean and Thornden woods.
After learning about what Bison can do in the Education Centre classroom, we ventured outside to Wildwood itself. First, we went to see the captive American and European Bison to get a close-up view of the amazing animal they are, and I was lucky enough to see them get fed. ‘European bison are a little taller than American bison, with less dense fur, and American bison are a bit stockier than European bison. They feed differently to one another due to their necks being differently set – American bison will graze on low-lying grass and leafy vegetation, whereas European bison will browse on leaves, fruit, and woody parts of plants and trees, perfect for UK woodlands. In the past there were more species of bison that have now gone extinct. These are the only remaining species that can do the job they do’. We also walked up onto the viewing platform, overlooking the beautiful woodland the celebrity Bison live in! This was all fantastic, but nothing compared to the finale of the day; it was time to meet the real deal; the Wilder Blean Bison!
We walked over to the Wildwood carpark, where the Bison Ranger escorted us a gate which led to the entrance of their enclosure. The chances of us seeing the Bison were incredibly slim, this is because they live in a huge section of the West Blean woodland which is owned by Kent Wildlife Trust. I waited with nervous excitement whilst the Ranger quickly checked if any of the herd were there, to all of our surprise they were!
The entire herd including the matriarch was right at the entrance, as well as the new baby Bison with its mother. We all peered through the gate; I was in awe of these remarkable mammals. What was intriguing was that the Bison Rangers weren’t sure whether she was pregnant when they arrived at wildwood up until the day it was suddenly born! This concealment is an adaptation as it helps bison not appear vulnerable in the wild when they’re pregnant. Unfortunately, I cannot share any photos of the Bison but can tell you that the baby is just as cute as the images online show it to be!
I hope you enjoyed this article and learnt a thing or two. I’m aiming to make short film on the entire project in the future and in the next few weeks I’m attending a harvest mouse ecology training and Beaver rewilding conservation course at Wildwood, so stay tuned for an article on that! | https://biojoyversity.org/conservation-courses-at-wildwood/ |
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by David, 12 December 2014 | 0 comments
Written by Beth Askham Researchers have made sticky hand pads that let you climb walls like Spiderman. Inspired by gecko feet, a research lab at Stanford University in America developed the climbing device. This technology recently allowed a person weighing 70 kilograms to climb a sheer glass wall. The team have also used the structure…
If you're after more activities for kids sign up today! | https://blog.doublehelix.csiro.au/tag/climbing/ |
A beautiful trek into red rock canyon country that keeps a slow but steady climb, Long Canyon is a great mid-length day hike near Sedona. You’ll pass some surprising riparian vegetation and head into ponderosa pine country. The keen-eyed may spot Sinaguan ruins and petroglyphs, while the vibrationally-tuned may tap into the storied Long Canyon Vortex.
The trail to Long Canyon begins just off Long Canyon Road on the remains of a wide fire road. Much of the trail is on similarly wide track, making this a great choice for a leisurely group stroll, especially near sunset.
This broad, open trail continues meandering to the north, staying relatively flat along the way. To the west, the frame of Mescal Mountain rises in telltale Sedona white and red layers, as small but surprisingly dense pinyon, juniper, and cypress provide swaths of green in the foreground. Also keep an eye out for manzanita, especially if it’s showing off its delicate blooms.
In 0.9 mile, stay to the right to continue heading north at the junction with the Deadman’s Pass Trail, which heads west toward Boyton Canyon. Here, the trail skirts the western edge of the Seven Canyons Golf Club, but at 1.5 miles you’ll leave behind the views of development as the trail enters into the bed of the seasonal arroyo that runs through Long Canyon. This is also where the trail enters the Red Rock-Secret Mountain Wilderness, so be sure to follow standard wilderness regulations (Leave No Trace principles, no music or noise, no bikes or mechanized transportation, etc).
Here, the vegetation around the trail becomes even more dense, and depending on the time of year you’re hiking, you may even get to see some grass! Views of the red rock mountains in the distance get a little tougher to come by with all this extra greenery, but the trail will get nice and close to some of the rocks themselves, where you can see the effects of erosion up close and personal.
If you look back down the canyon the way you came in, though, you may still be able to get some of those big Sedona red rock views — but it seems the true draw of this trek is its ability to somehow make you forget about the overwhelmingly predominant landscape in the region and just pay attention to the little details in front of you instead. When you can spot the towering formations alongside you, keep your eyes peeled for Sinagua ruins and petroglyphs hidden among the rock folds.
By 3.4 miles, Long Canyon narrows considerably, and in the last half mile or so the trail climbs steadily upward, narrowing even more along the way. The trail requires a little bit of scrambling and squeezing through narrow spaces here, but there’s nothing that requires any sort of technical skill or gear. If you’re uncomfortable using your hands to hike, you can always just enjoy the dense shade of oaks, sycamores, and even maple trees up here in the higher reaches of Long Canyon.
The trail stops abruptly just past the 3.7 mile mark, tucked away into a narrow fold just west of Maroon Mountain.
A very much non-maintained and at-your-own-risk scramble / climb route can bring you farther than this point if you have the necessary skills. Please do note two rules beyond the standard issue safety stuff: 1). Do not touch, move, alter, or vandalize ANY ruins or artifacts you may find hidden in the ridges here and 2). As much as you can (and this applies throughout much of the region) stay on the established trail to avoid damaging any fragile cryptobiotic soil.
But for most of you, just enjoy this quiet, hidden space for as long as you like, then return back the way you came. Keep your head up, and you’ll have more great views of the red rocks on the way back to the trailhead. | https://modernhiker.com/hike/hiking-long-canyon/ |
The barking tree frog is the largest native tree frog in the United States. The adult size ranges from 2-2¾ inches and can live for more than 10 years. This frog is distinguished from similar-looking Mississippi tree frogs, such as the squirrel tree frog and the green tree frog, by its heavy body, rough skin, and presence of dark circular spots all over its back. The skin color can vary from lime green to brown, and the intensity of the spots can vary as well.
Like other tree frogs, the barking tree frog has round, sticky pads at the end of its toes. These toe pads excrete a mucus that allows the frog to climb smooth and rough surfaces with ease. Barking tree frogs breathe through the lining of their mouth and their skin as well as their lungs. The exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen (respiration) is much more efficient in a moist environment, which is why frogs have wet, slimy skin.
In Mississippi, barking tree frogs are found primarily within the Pine Belt, located in the southern third of the state. Their preferred habitat includes grassy, temporary ponds that dry up during periods of limited rain, surrounded by sandy pine savannas. They can also be found in lowland forest wetlands and swamps. During the active season, they seek shelter and food high in tree canopies, then burrow underground in sandy soil over winter and during periods of drought.
Breeding occurs from March to August, with a peak in early summer. Most other tree frog species call from vegetation surrounding their breeding site, but male barking tree frogs inflate themselves for buoyancy and call from the water. The call of “Tonk” or “Donk” is repeated every one to two seconds. When a full chorus erupts, it sounds like a pack of dogs barking. Once a male has found a mate, the female lays 1,500-4,000 eggs that typically hatch in around a week. The resulting tadpoles feed on algae and can grow more than 2 inches long. This life stage is a dangerous time as many tadpoles are lost to disease and predators, such as aquatic insects, fish, snakes, and turtles. The surviving tadpoles will change (metamorphose) into froglets that are 3/4-1 inch long, and their diet also changes from algae to insects. After metamorphosis, if they can avoid being eaten by snakes, birds, and mammals, it will be two to four years before they reach maturity and return to the wetland to breed.
Aaron Holbrook is Research Coordinator at MDWFP’s Mississippi Museum of Natural Science. | https://mdwfp.com/media/news/wildlife-hunting/species-portrait-barking-tree-frog/?fbclid=IwAR1FIk2gG0fapd9WE-3WzMHLtrGea7Do7SJW1QqEBxv7UPwhNjViclCYi-c |
Located near the Tokyo Imperial Palace, the new Otemachi tower is tucked into a kind of forest measuring thirty-six hundred square meters, directly connected with Otemachi station and its five metro lines. The landscape is neither a square nor a park. Through its vegetation, its topography, and the presence of water, the forest was conceived in a sufficiently dense and lush manner to lessen the urban heat island phenomenon in this area in the heart of the city. Furthermore, trees are interspersed along the vast mineral surfaces in order to provide comfort and warmth to the flow of pedestrian urban traffic. The significant amount of activity taking place on Naka-dori street passes through the forest before spreading out into the surrounding neighborhoods.
The forest constitutes a key element within the network of many small gardens that cover the city. Because each of these gardens has an official status, they are all maintained, and constantly conjure up the presence of nature in the city. The project has the ambition of providing an urban ecosystem directly linked with the regeneration of the city. Following research into which flora and fauna would be suitable for the site's environment, and repeated exchanges with botanists, we selected a large diversity of plants, of large tress (including the Akagashi tree, a Japanese variety of green oak), and of plant ground cover of varying size and age.
An innovative “pre-forest” approach allowed for the preparation and adaptation of numerous plant strata outside of the city, during the year before their actual establishment on site. Following its inauguration in 2013, the urban forest immediately had an impact through the force of its presence. | http://micheldesvignepaysagiste.com/en/otemachi-%E5%A4%A7%E6%89%8B%E7%94%BA%E3%82%BF%E3%83%AF%E3%83%BC |
Last Oasis- Beeswax Farming Location And Tips For Collection Guide
In Last Oasis there are various resources and materials that are used to craft and among them, Beeswax is hard to find. It is not rare but can be overlooked as it is located at high altitude. In this guide, we have mentioned where you can find and locate the Beeswax easily whenever you are out farming and storing up the resources.
Beeswax Farming Location And Tips For Collection Guide On Last Oasis
To locate Beeswax, you can navigate and roam around places where green vegetation is found. There you would find various trees that can be cut down to collect resources and XP but before attacking any of it, you must look at the top branches to locate a white cocoon. These white cocoon as shown in the image above can be collected on Redwood Tree which provides you with Beeswax.
These Beeswaxes are an important resource as these are limited per area depending on how dense the forest is or the number of Redwood trees grown in the area. You can store and stash these Beeswax alongside Fragments and other important resources that you don’t want to lose against Raiders.
Grapple your hook and ascend through the tree to collect Beeswax and then cut down the tree with advanced Pickaxe as it has served its purpose. For more guides on the Last Oasis, click on the following links that have been mentioned below the description: | https://prodigygamers.com/2020/04/08/last-oasis-beeswax-farming-location-and-tips-for-collection-guide/ |
The Purple gallinule is a medium-sized swamphen native to the Americas. This beautifully colored bird belongs to the rail family that includes crakes, coots, and gallinules. An adult Purple gallinule has purple-blue plumage that will shine green and turquoise when in good lighting. Adults also have a pale blue shield on their forehead, which connects with the red and yellow bill. Darkness or low light can dim the bright purple-blue plumage of the adult to make them look dusky or brownish. Immature Purple gallinules are brown-bronze in color, with purple feathers on the chest, and the bill and forehead shield is pale in color. Juvenile birds are light brown with hints of green-bronze on the wings and back and white under-tail coverts. Adults have bright yellow legs and feet, immatures have brown-yellowish legs and feet, and juveniles have brown legs and feet.
During the breeding season, Purple gallinules are found in the southeastern states of the United States. They are resident species in southern Florida, the Gulf and Pacific coast of Mexico, parts of Central America, and the Caribbean. During the non-breeding season, they are found more inland in parts of Central America. They can also be found within South America during migration, and sometimes strays can be found as far north as Canada. Their habitat is freshwater marshes with dense stands of vegetation. They can also be found in lakes, ponds, reservoirs, and wet rice fields.
Purple gallinules are diurnal birds and outside of the breeding season prefer to spend time singly. They are not strong fliers and spend most of their time swimming, or walking across lilly pads and other floating vegetation. If disturbed they hide quickly undercover or run, swim, dive or fly away. These colorful birds are also able to climb marshy vegetation and in bushes. Purple gallinules produce squawking, cackling and guttural grunts. During the flight, they communicate with kek-kek-kek and when disturbed make keh-keh.
Purple gallinules are omnivorous birds. They consume a variety of plant and animal matter within their diet; these include seeds, leaves, and fruits of both aquatic and terrestrial plants, insects, frogs, snails, earthworms, and fish. Purple gallinules may also take the eggs and young of other bird species.
Purple gallinules are monogamous and form long-lasting pair bonds. In North America, they breed in May-August, but in South America - from March to November. The courtship of Purple gallinules occurs when the birds of a pair have been separated and then wander close to one another. They then perform the principle display, which is performed by both sexes at the same time. The display entails the bird standing in a slightly bent forward position, with the neck outstretched. The wings are held at an almost right angle to the body and bent at the wrist, so that the primaries are angled down. Following the principle display, one or both of the birds will strut and cut across the path of the other with half-lowered wings, or they will make a deep bow as they approach each other. Purple gallinules nest in the dense vegetation along the shallow margins of lakes and marshes' shorelines. The nest is a cup-shaped floating structure built by both adults. The female lays between five and ten eggs that are buff or pale pink with brown and purple spots. The nest and territory are defended strongly by the breeding pair. Eggs are incubated with 18-20 days by both parents. Chicks are precocial; they are hatched with eyes open and are covered with black down. They are able to leave the nest within one day. The young are usually fed by both parents during the first week, and after that, they are able to find food themselves. Chicks are able to fly when they are around 9 weeks old.
Purple gallinules are not globally threatened. However, populations of these birds are decreasing due to the loss of their wetland habitat, pesticides, and predation from alligators and turtles.
According to the What Bird resource, the total population size of the Purple gallinule is around 100,000-1,000,000 individuals. Currently, this species is classified as Least Concern (LC) on the IUCN Red List but its numbers today are decreasing. | https://animalia.bio/purple-gallinule |
A car is coasting backwards down a hill at -3.0 m/s when the driver gets the engine started. After 2.5s, the car is moving uphill at a velocity of +4.5 m/s. What is the car's acceleration?
Asked by vijayparmar555115 | 1st May, 2020, 03:03: PM
Expert Answer:
Given :
u = - 3 m/s
v = +4.5 m/s
t = 2.5 s
a=?
According to first equation of motion,
v=u +at
Thus,
4.5 =(-3) + a(2.5)
4.5 +3 = a(2.5)
7.5 = a(2.5)
a = 7.5/2.5 = 3 m/s2
Thus, car's acceleration is 3 m/s2 .
Answered by Shiwani Sawant | 1st May, 2020, 03:21: PM
Application Videos
Concept Videos
- A ball thrown up vertically returns to the earth after 12 seconds. Find the velocity with which it was thrown up.
- Equation for position time relation
- Two balls are dropped to the ground from different heights. one ball is dropped two second after the other but both hit the ground at the same time if the first ball takes 6 second to reach the ground then what is the initial difference between their heights take g is equal to 10 metre per second square
- a rocket which is moving with velocity 50m/s. eject out its secondary engine and its start to accelerate with 5m/s². for next 10 seconds while entering into space. than it moves with uniform velocity. calculate this uniform velocity and the distance covered in 27 seconds. after ejection of secondary engine.
- Brake applied to a car produce a uniform retardation of 90m/s .if the car was travelling with a velocity of 27m/s.than what distance will it cover before coming to rest?
- A car is travelling with a speed of 36km/h. The driver applies the brakes and retards the car uniformly. The car is stopped in 5 seconds. Find i) Retardation of the car ii) Distance travelled before it is stopped.
- A stone is thrown vertically upward after how much time it will be at height of 5m
- A particle which is moving in a straight line with constant acceleration describes distances of 10 m and 15 m in two successive seconds. find the acceleration
- a car has uniform acceleration of 8m/s². what distance will it cover in 20 s after starting from rest.? | https://www.topperlearning.com/answer/a-car-is-coasting-backwards-down-a-hill-at-30-m-s-when-the-driver-gets-the-engine-started-after-25s-the-car-is-moving-uphill-at-a-velocity-of-45-m-s-w/rpgoctqq |
Mission design, before we get into the nitty gritty of hardware, requires us to consider the very basics. Energy, power, speed, distance and time. How quickly do we want to get to Proxima Centauri b, which is 267,000 AU (4.224 light-years or 1.295 parsecs) away? If we say “20 years” like most extreme Deep Space missions closer to home, then we have an average speed of 13,350 AU/year or 63,279 km/s. A bit more than 1/5 the speed of light. How quickly we get to that speed will determine more hardware related questions like just how much the engine masses for the amount of power it produces – the specific Power or Power-to-Mass ratio. The Power-to-Mass ratio is the chief performance metric for rockets. For example, a torch is a simple photon rocket, but its battery stored energy is insufficient to accelerate it in a measurable way. Likewise any other reaction engine – the acceleration depends on the average power applied to every newton of thrust and the mass of the engine/generator/battery supplying that power.
Also, acceleration takes time – a bit over 30,000,000 seconds is needed to reach light-speed at 1 gee. Relativity makes that relationship a bit more complicated, though not from the point-of-view of an observer on the rocket. An integrating accelerometer, which adds up every moment of acceleration to give a speed, will tell you that your ship has exceeded light-speed in a bit under a year at 1 gee. This ‘speed’ is otherwise known as the ‘rapidity’ and can be plugged straight into Tsiolkovskii’s Rocket Equation.
The basic equations are available here: The Relativistic Rocket …though Wikipedia’s discussion is pretty decent these days.
Rapidity is related to the speed measured by an observer at the local standard of rest (LSoR) by:
r = gT/c and v = c.TANH(r)
Where T is the ship-measured elapsed time under thrust. The acceleration, g, is constant for this example. So 1 c (measured on-ship) is 0.761 c measured by LSoR observers. Applied to the Tsiolkovskii Rocket Equation:
r = u.LN(Mo/Mf)
where u is the exhaust velocity.
If we want to know the mass-ratio (Mo/Mf) for a rocket that accelerates, then brakes to a stop under thrust, the equation in terms of LSoR measured velocity is quite simple:
(Mo/Mf) = ((v+1)/(v-1))(c/u)
…where v is in c units. The mass-energy in the reaction mass as the exhaust velocity gets close to c is factored into the equation already. With a pure photon exhaust, all pointed in the direction of thrust, the equation is just:
(Mo/Mf) = (v+1)/(v-1)
If v is 0.99 c, then (Mo/Mf) = 1.99/0.01 = 199
That’s some mass-ratio! If you can slam on the space-brakes instead and not need rockets to stop, it’s…
(Mo/Mf) = SQRT((v+1)/(v-1)) = 14.1 for v = 0.99c
To boost all the way to Proxima b at 1 gee will take 5.85 years Earth-time and about 3.535 years via ship’s clocks. Top r is 1.824 c while v is 0.9493 c, and the pure photon-rocket mass-ratio is 38.425 (6.2 with space-brakes.)
For the case consider above, 20 years to Proxima b, the acceleration required can be computed from the trip-time equation:
t = SQRT[ (S/c)2 + 4.S/g ]
…which doesn’t factor in any period of cruising at constant velocity. Big ‘S’ is the ‘displacement’ or distance traveled. Solving for g, we get:
g = 4.S / [t2 – (S/c)2]
It’s interesting to compare with the non-relativistic version:
g = 4.S / t2
…notice how the ‘light-travel time’ (S/c) becomes an additional component of time in the relativistic case. | https://crowlspace.com/?paged=4&cat=15 |
Expert Answer:
A scalar quantity is one which has only magnitude, while a vector quantity is one which has magnitude as well as direction.
That is, a scalar quantity can be understood just by a number, say 5 kg sugar. Here, to buy sugar you only need a quantity known as mass, i.e. 5 kg is the only information that is needed to buy sugar.
On the other hand if one needs to go to school, you would need the distance that you have to walk as well as the direction in which you need to walk.
Examples of scalar quantities: Mass, time, distance, speed, etc.
Examples of vector quantities: Weight, displacement, velocity, acceleration, etc.
Answered by Romal Bhansali | 28th Apr, 2016, 08:41: AM
Application Videos
Concept Videos
- Equation for position time relation
- Two balls are dropped to the ground from different heights. one ball is dropped two second after the other but both hit the ground at the same time if the first ball takes 6 second to reach the ground then what is the initial difference between their heights take g is equal to 10 metre per second square
- a rocket which is moving with velocity 50m/s. eject out its secondary engine and its start to accelerate with 5m/s². for next 10 seconds while entering into space. than it moves with uniform velocity. calculate this uniform velocity and the distance covered in 27 seconds. after ejection of secondary engine.
- Brake applied to a car produce a uniform retardation of 90m/s .if the car was travelling with a velocity of 27m/s.than what distance will it cover before coming to rest?
- A car is travelling with a speed of 36km/h. The driver applies the brakes and retards the car uniformly. The car is stopped in 5 seconds. Find i) Retardation of the car ii) Distance travelled before it is stopped.
- A stone is thrown vertically upward after how much time it will be at height of 5m
- A particle which is moving in a straight line with constant acceleration describes distances of 10 m and 15 m in two successive seconds. find the acceleration
- a car has uniform acceleration of 8m/s². what distance will it cover in 20 s after starting from rest.?
- a=-0.5 Speed = 90km/h find distance
- An object starting from rest travels 20m in the first 2s and 160m in the next 4s. What will be the velocity after 7s from the start? | https://www.topperlearning.com/answer/what-is-vector-and-scaler-quantity/5kifluww |
One definition of velocity is the speed of something in a given direction (illustrated in the picture below). Velocity is measured as a change in position over time, such as 25 miles per hour, or 5 feet in a second. If velocity is constant, it’s the amount of time that it takes to travel the distance.
Isaac Newton defined an important law for velocity in the 17th century stating that an object at rest (no velocity) stays at rest unless a force is applied. Velocity and force are linked together in Newton’s first law of motion.
The first law also states that an object in motion will stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction (i.e. velocity) unless a force is applied. This means that an object can change its position, i.e. it is moving, even if there is no force. This led to Newton’s second law, explaining a change in velocity over time, which is acceleration.
Velocity is a change in position over time. Acceleration is a change in velocity over time.
See also: Acceleration
Newton’s First Law of Motion
The first law of motion states that a body will remain at rest, or continue at a constant velocity, unless a force is applied. Essentially, velocity is always constant. At rest, velocity remains zero. While in motion, velocity remains the same until a force is applied.
At rest, a particle or body’s acceleration (a) is zero and velocity (v) is zero. The figure below describes a particle that has a particle core of one or more wave centers, a standing wave structure that extends to the particle’s radius, and spherical, longitudinal traveling waves beyond this radius. Standing waves are generated by in-waves that are reflected to become out-waves. At rest, the wavelength of the standing waves (λlead) matches the wavelength of the in-waves (λl). There is no wavelength/frequency difference between the particle and its surrounding environment. The particle is at rest and will remain at rest.
Note: The traveling wave is a spherical, longitudinal wave. The figure above illustrates a simple sine wave as this wave due to the difficulties describing a three-dimensional wave in a two-dimensional image. But it’s important to note that it is a not the transverse wave associated with photon energy (described separately in the Photons section).
A particle in motion has a velocity greater than zero. With no acceleration (a=0), velocity remains constant according to Newton’s first law of motion. To an observer, the wavelength on the leading edge (λlead) of the particle is compressed, in the direction of motion, relative to the longitudinal, traveling in-waves (λl). There is a wavelength or frequency difference with the external environment, which was shown to follow Doppler equations. This frequency difference is the basis of the calculation for velocity, as it will be shown mathematically. It is also the reason particles (and thus objects that are built upon particles) experience time dilation and length contraction in the direction of motion.
The figure below illustrates a particle in motion with no acceleration. Wave amplitude is constant and equal on all sides of the particle. The particle will maintain its standing wave frequency on both the leading and lagging edges of the standing wave structure, although it is different than its external environment. Wavelength on the leading edge is less than the wavelength of the in-waves (λlead < λl) and will remain constant. The smaller the leading edge wavelength, the greater the velocity. If the particle core reaches the edge of its standing wave radius, the leading edge wavelength is near zero, and its velocity is nearly the speed of light.
Doppler and the Velocity Equation
Velocity results in a difference in wavelength. The Doppler effect is apparent in the image above of a moving particle and is the basis of how the Velocity Equation is derived. The ratio of the fundamental wavelength and the wavelength of the leading edge of the particle is defined as:
Now, velocity (v) is introduced in wave constant terms. Since the speed of light (c) and the fundamental wavelength (λl) are both constants, velocity is proportional to the leading edge wavelength (λlead).
To solve for velocity, the next step was to solve for the leading edge wavelength. The leading edge wavelength is derived from acceleration (Acceleration Wavelength at Time equation), which itself is derived from the Force Equation because acceleration and force are related. When substituting the leading edge wavelength equation from acceleration, velocity can be finally solved. The detailed derivation is found in Section 6 of the Forces paper.
Velocity Equation
The Velocity Equation can be used to model any group of particles (Q) at distance (r) at time (t), assuming constant acceleration. Also, note that the simplified version of the Velocity Equation assumes a particle begins at rest.
Gravity is a form of constant acceleration, at least when measured close to the surface of a planet. For example, calculations for gravity on Earth are normally calculated at 9.81 m/s2 – constant acceleration. Thus, velocity was cross-checked with velocities of falling bodies due to gravity to validate the equation. However, the equation requires a modification for the amplitude factor for gravity, as gravity is a slight loss of wave amplitude. The equation is modified to have this factor. Q is the particle count for large bodies and αGp is the amplitude difference for nucleons; both are described in the section on Gravity. μ is the proton-to-electron mass ratio.
Velocity Equation for Gravity
A benefit of deriving velocity based on wavelength is that relativity is naturally built into the equation. Velocity can never be greater than the speed of light. It’s true in the equation, but it also has an explanation. The particle’s leading edge wavelength cannot be less than zero. This was also proven in the velocity calculations when using relativistic speeds (as a result of large accelerations over a long period of time). The maximum speed is the speed of light in these calculations.
Proof
The velocities of falling bodies on various planets at various times were calculated accurately in the calculations as proof of the Velocity Equation for Gravity. Velocity can be modeled based on wave constants and a difference in wavelength. An example is provided to illustrate the calculation and proof.
Earth – Velocity of Falling Body after 50 seconds from rest: Velocity is based on time, so the first calculation is based on a falling object on Earth, which starts at rest, and has a calculated velocity after 50 seconds (t). Using the Velocity Equation for Gravity above, the number of nucleon particles for Earth was calculated is used as Qgroup (refer to the Gravity section for calculation of nucleons). The radius of the Earth, rgroup, is 6,375,223 meters. The proton to electron mass ratio is μ = 1836.152676.
t = 50 s
r earth = 6,375,223 m
Qearth = 3.570 x 1051
Calculated Value: 490.33 m/s
Difference: 0.000%
Note: A summary of various velocity calculations is found on this site; more detailed calculations with instructions to reproduce these calculations is found in the Forces paper. | http://energywavetheory.com/forces/velocity/ |
What is the kinetic energy of an object with a mass of # 5 kg# that has been in freefall for # 2 s#?
2 Answers
960.4 J
Explanation:
The formula of Kinetic energy is
We know mass, so lets find velocity. It is given that it has been falling for two seconds. So its velocity
Plugging it into the equation, if it has been falling for 2 seconds, then its velocity is
Now since we have velocity, we can find Kinetic energy by simply putting the values of mass and velocity in the first equation
K.E.=
Explanation:
Well, kinetic energy is defined through the equation,
-
#m#is the mass of the object in kilograms
-
#v#is the velocity of the object in meters per second
The velocity of the free-fall object is defined through the equation,
-
#u#is the initial velocity
-
#a#is the acceleration of the object
-
#t#is the time in seconds
In this case,
If the object was dropped from something, then
Therefore, the kinetic energy is: | https://socratic.org/questions/what-is-the-kinetic-energy-of-an-object-with-a-mass-of-5-kg-that-has-been-in-fre-4 |
Up and down motion
We throw the body from a height h = 5 m above the Earth vertically upwards v0 = 10 m/s. How long before we have to let the second body fall freely from the same height to hit the Earth at the same time?
Correct result:
Correct result:
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Sample text
Re going to be in the ballpark of the right answer. This is often the first step in working out a physics problem. 1 Type of measurement Commonly used symbols Fundamental units length or position meters time seconds velocity or speed meters per second mass kilograms force Newtons energy Joules power Watts electric charge Coulombs temperature Kelvin electric current Amperes electric field Newtons per Coulomb magnetic field Tesla magnetic flux Webers Pronunciation table for commonly used Greek letters Units and Problem Solving Problem Set 1.
1 m) in the air. 5 m straight up. 15. 16. 23 m/s b. 5 seconds if using ) c. 28 m (27 m if using ) d. 45 m 17. Click here to watch the video 18. 25 m/s b. 30 m c. 19. 20. a. b. c. d. 60 m 21. a. b. 5 m/s Chapter 4: Two-Dimensional and Projectile Motion The Big Idea In this chapter, we aim to understand and explain the parabolic motion of a thrown object, known as projectile motion. We can break down any initial velocity vector into its vertical and horizontal components. Motion in one direction is unrelated to motion in perpendicular directions, so we can treat the individual components as separate one-dimensional motion problems using all the equations from the last chapter.
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The teachings of Mahavira are characteristically simple, practical and ethical, but they have gradually developed into a detailed, intricate system, relating not only to the nature of the true and the ideal, but also to the practical path for their realisation. The ultimate object of the teaching of Mahavira is liberation or salvation, which can be attained through annihilating karma attached to the soul. It can be achieved by the practice of austerities and preventing the influx of additional karma through self-restraint of the body, speech and mind. Liberation of the soul is a state of perfection, of infinite bliss in an eternal abode, where there is no ageing, no disease, no cycle of birth and death and no suffering. Mahavira was very practical, possessing universal vision. His explanation of the six 'real entities' displays his deep insight into the nature of the universe. A number of his teachings, for example, argue that spoken words can be heard throughout the universe (modern radio broadcasts); that microscopic germs are engendered in excreta, sputum, and urine; and that plants have life, are now widely accepted by science.
His teaching of the five vows of 'non-violence', truthfulness, 'non-stealing', sexual restraint (and restraint of the activities of the sensory organs), non-attachment, and his theories of 'relative pluralism', guide ethical thinkers today. His descriptions of the range of mental states and 'psychic colours' are supported today by some psychic researchers and theosophists, and what we would today term science and psychology were as important to him as spiritual knowledge. Elements of his teachings are now seen to have been centuries ahead of their time, as having a recognisable 'scientific' basis, and are relevant even to present-day concerns. His teaching consists of the threefold path of Right Faith, Right Knowledge and Right Conduct, which together lead to liberation, the status he himself achieved.
The Threefold Path
The ultimate object of human life is liberation or salvation, the purification of the soul (moksa). Jainism describes how the path of purification is to be achieved through one's own efforts. The Tattvartha Sutra, one of the most sacred texts of Jainism, emphatically states in its first aphorism that Right Faith (samyag darsana), Right Knowledge (samyag jnaana), and Right Conduct (samyag caritra) together constitute the path to the state of liberation. These are called the three jewels of Jainism. These three are not to be considered as separate but collectively forming a single path, which must be present together to constitute the path.
In the view of this firm conviction, the Jain seers over emphasise that these three must be pursued simultaneously. By way of illustration, one could use a medical analogy: In order to bring about the cure of a disease, three things are essential, faith in the efficacy of the medicine, knowledge of its use, and its ingestion by the patient. Likewise, to achieve liberation, faith in the efficacy of the path, knowledge of it and the practising of it - these three together are indispensable. Similarly, the path to liberation is compared in Jain works to a ladder: The two sides of the ladder represent right faith and right knowledge, and the rungs of the ladder represent the (fourteen) stages of right conduct. It is obvious that it is possible to ascend the ladder only when all the three elements, the two sides and the rungs, are intact. As the absence of sides or rungs would make a ladder ineffective, so the absence of one element makes the spiritual ascent impossible.
Figure 4.1 'Ladder' of spiritual progress showing the fourteen steps.
Right Faith
The term Right Faith (or the right attitude, right vision or right belief), samyag darsana, has been defined in the Tattvartha Sutra as the true and firm conviction in the existence of the 'real entities' of the universe. Right Faith. The Uttaraadhyayan (28: 14,15) defines Right Faith as the belief in nine 'real entities' (nava tattvas). The Niyamsaara (1931: 5) explains the Right Faith as the belief in the liberated souls, Jain scriptures and the "real entities'. Samantabhadra defines samyag darsana as the belief in true deities, true scriptures and true teachers (Ratnakaranda sraavakaacaara 1955: 4) and mentions eight essential characteristics of Right Faith and the necessity of renunciation from eight types of pride.
The Jain scriptures emphasise that Right Faith should be characterised by eight essential requisites or components. These are:
- One should be free of doubt about the truth or validity of the Jain tenets.
- One should be detached from worldly, materialistic things.
- One should have an appropriate regard for the body, as the body is the means by
which one achieves liberation, but one should feel no 'attachment' to it.
- One should take care not to follow a faith or path which will not lead to liberation; one should avoid harbouring credulous or superstitious beliefs.
- One should foster spiritual excellence, and protect the prestige of the faith from belittlement, by praising the pious and not deriding others.
- One should be steadfast in one's convictions and help others towards the path of Right Faith and Right Conduct, whenever they falter.
- One should have affectionate regard and respect for the virtuous and one's coreligionists, and show due reverence towards the pious.
- In one's own conduct one should demonstrate Jain values and teachings: one should attempt to demonstrate the Jain concept of true religion both through religious observances and in the performance of charitable deeds, such as the provision of food, medicine, education and shelter to all those in need.
The first five are for the self and the last three are the duties of the community. A true aspirant should always be ready to help others.
Right Faith should be free from erroneous beliefs such as:
- Pseudo-holiness: Some people falsely believe that practices such as bathing in certain rivers or fire walking are a means of acquiring merit for themselves or for their family.
- Pseudo-gods: Some people have faith in gods and goddesses who are credited with divine and destructive powers, but praying to such deities in order to gain worldly favours is false faith, leading to karmic bondage.
- Pseudo-ascetics: Some self-styled ascetics consider their teaching to be the only truth, but such ascetics should be recognised for what they are and should not be sustained in the hope of gaining favours through their magical or mysterious powers.
Jainism teaches that the mind must be freed from eight forms of pride: learning; worship; family; status by birth (or contacts and family connections); power (including physical strength); wealth or achievements; penance or religious austerities; bodily beauty or personality.
Any form of pride disturbs the equilibrium of the mind, creating likes and dislikes, and in such case discretion, judgement and the 'vision' may be clouded and can lead to error.
The Jain texts describe at length the importance of Right Faith and they enumerate the benefits that can be accrued by a person possessing it, and note that asceticism without Right Faith is inferior to faith without asceticism; even a humble believer with Right Faith can attain spiritual progress.
The Uttaraadhyayan (28: 16-27) classifies aspirants of the Right Faith into ten categories according to the methods of attainment:
- Intuition: those who have inborn inclination towards righteousness.
- Tuition: those who learn by instructions from others.
- Command: those who obey the command of the enlightened people.
- Sutra: those who obtain righteousness by learning the sutras.
- Seed: those who have an inner attitude that grows like a seed.
- Study: those who study the sacred texts.
- Comprehension: those who learn truth by logic and comparison.
- Conduct: those who observe Right Conduct and the rituals as prescribed.
- Exposition: some aspirants understand truth though a brief exposition
- Dharma: those who believe in the Jina and follow his teachings.
The Aacaaranga Sutra (1.3: 2.1) argues, ' He who has Right Faith commits no sin'. The texts imply that a person with Right Faith should possess the moral qualities such as fearlessness, detachment, freedom from negativism or scepticism, alertness, selflessness, sincerity of purpose, single minded devotion, calmness, kindness and the desire for selfrealisation. Such individuals should have friendship towards all, appreciation of the virtuous, compassion for the underprivileged, indifference to those, who do not listen to them or other enlightened individuals, and should be free from egoism or pride in any form.
Right Knowledge
Any knowledge which facilitates spiritual progress is by definition Right Knowledge. Right Faith and Right Knowledge are closely related as are cause and effect, an analogy of which might be similar to a lamp and light: One may have a lamp without light, but not light without a lamp, similarly, one may have Right Faith without knowledge, but not knowledge without Right Faith.
The scriptures describe Right Knowledge as 'that knowledge which reveals the nature of things neither insufficiently, nor with exaggeration, nor falsely, but exactly as it is and with certainty'. It has also been stated that Right Knowledge consists in having full comprehension of the real nature of living beings and non-living things, and that such knowledge should be beyond doubt, misunderstanding, vagueness or uncertainty (Sanghave 1990: p.40).
Jain seers assert that knowledge is perfect when it does not suffer from the above three defects of insufficiency, exaggeration and falsehood, as these pervert both one's understanding and one's mental and behavioural attitudes. The Jains have developed a systemic theory of knowledge, which is discussed in chapter 4.5, and five forms of knowledge:
- Sensory knowledge (mati jnaana): is knowledge of the world acquired by means of any or all of the five senses and the mind.
- Scriptural knowledge (sruta jnaana): is derived from the reading or listening to the scriptures, and mastery of such knowledge may make one a 'scriptural omniscient'.
- Clairvoyant knowledge (avadhi jnaana): is a form of direct cognition of objects without the mediation of the sensory organs. This knowledge apprehends physical objects and events, which are beyond the normal grasp of the sensory organs, and is acquired in two ways: (1) Inherent in both celestial and infernals and acquired in the case of humans and animals. Celestial beings possess a higher quality of knowledge than their hellish counterparts. (2) One can acquire clairvoyant knowledge by progressing on the spiritual path, but its degree differs according to one's spiritual progress. The soul of the tirthankara is born with an extensive type of clairvoyant knowledge.
- 'Telepathic' knowledge (manahparyaaya jnaana): is direct cognition of the mental activity of others, and can be acquired by those who are spiritually far advanced; some call it 'mind-reading' knowledge, although the terms 'telepathic' and 'mindreading' are inadequate translations.
- Perfect knowledge or 'omniscience' (kevala jnaana): is full or complete knowledge of all material and non-material objects without limitations of time or space. It is the knowledge possessed by all souls in their pristine state and its acquisition is the goal for a human life.
Right Knowledge has eight requirements:
- The reading, writing and pronouncing of every letter and word of the religious texts should be undertaken correctly with care and faith.
- Reading should be directed towards understanding the meaning and full significance of the words and phrases of the texts. Mere mechanical study without understanding the meaning serves no purpose.
- For Right Knowledge, both reading and understanding the meaning are essential, as they together complete the process and the purpose of knowledge.
- Study should be undertaken in quiet places regularly and at times when one is free from worries and anxieties. · Humility and respect towards the scriptures and the teachers should be cultivated.
- If one encounters difficult expressions and ideas while studying, one should not jump to hasty conclusions that may lead to an improper understanding.
- Enthusiasm for mastering of a subject is essential to sustain an interest so that one continues to study.
- One must keep an open mind and attitude so that prejudice will not hinder a proper understanding and the completeness of knowledge.
Thus, Right Knowledge is acquired by studying the scriptures through understanding their full meaning and significance at appropriate regular times, imbued with zeal, with a correct attitude and an open mind.
The Uttaraadhyayan (28: 30) states that without Right Faith there is no Right knowledge; without Right knowledge there is no Right Conduct and without Right Conduct there is no liberation. For liberation, perfection in Right Faith is the necessity, whereas it is unnecessary to know more than the bare fundamental truths of spirituality. All knowledge of a wrong believer is wrong knowledge. Jainism gives more importance to conduct and faith than knowledge, and believes that knowledge is a power that can be utilised only by a person having the right attitude.
Right Conduct
After Right Faith and Right Knowledge, the third, but the most important path to the goal of liberation, is Right Conduct,, and Jainism attaches utmost importance to it. Right Faith and Right Knowledge equip the individual with freedom from delusion and with the true knowledge of the 'real entities'. Right Knowledge leads to Right Conduct, which is why conduct that is inconsistent with Right Knowledge, is considered to be wrong conduct. The conduct is perfected only when it is harmonised with Right Faith and Right Knowledge.
Right Conduct presupposes the presence of Right Knowledge, which, in turn, presupposes the existence of Right Faith. The Jain seers have enjoined upon those who have secured Right Faith and Right Knowledge to observe the rules of Right Conduct.
Right Conduct includes rules of discipline which:
- restrain all unethical actions of mind, speech and body;
- weaken and destroy all passionate activity;
- lead to non-attachment and purity.
Right Conduct is of two types, which depends upon the degree of practice or the rules of behaviour:
- Complete or perfect or unqualified conduct.
- Partial or imperfect or qualified conduct.
Of these two forms of Right Conduct, the former involves the practice of all the rules with zeal and a high degree of spiritual sensitivity; the latter involves the practice of the same rules with as much diligence, severity and purity as possible. Unqualified and perfect conduct is aimed at, and is observed by ascetics who have renounced worldly ties. Qualified and partial conduct is aimed at, and observed by, the laity still engaged in the world. The various rules of conduct prescribed for both laymen and ascetics constitute the ethics of Jainism.
One of the most striking characteristics of Jainism is its concern with ethics, which has led some to describe Jainism as 'ethical realism', while others have called it a religion of Right Conduct. Jain ethics see no conflict between the individuals' duty to themselves and their duty to society. The aim of the Jain path is to facilitate the evolution of the soul to its 'highest capacity' and the means to achieve this is through ethical conduct towards others.
The ultimate ideal of the Jain way of life is perfection in this life and beyond, yet Jainism does not deny mundane values but asserts the superiority of spiritual values. Worldly values are a means to the realisation of spiritual values, and the activities of everyday life should be geared to the realisation of spiritual values (dharma), leading to liberation (moksa). Liberation is attainable through a gradual process of acquiring moral excellence, and Right Conduct is a very important element of the threefold path of purification. Ethics for the Jains is the weaving of righteousness into the very fabric of one's life.
One may achieve different levels of Right Conduct in one's life: complete and partial. The complete commitment to Right Conduct entails the vigorous practice of Mahavira's teachings through the renunciation of the world and adoption of the ascetic life. For the majority who has not renounced the world, it is still possible to seek the truth 124 and pursue the path of righteousness, although to a lesser degree. This is the path for laypeople, often referred to in Jain and other Indian texts as 'householders'. This path represents a more attainable form of social ethics. The two level commitments, of the ascetic and of the householder, are a characteristic feature of the Jain social structure. Laypeople have the (appropriate and moral) obligation to cherish their family and society; the ascetics sever all such ties.
The ethical code of the Jains is based on five main vows for both the ascetic and the householder. These vows are unconditional and absolute for ascetics and are called major vows (mahaavratas), but they have been modified as minor vows (anuvratas) in consideration of the social obligations of householders. The vows are 'non-violence' (ahimsaa), truthfulness (satya), non-stealing (acaurya), celibacy (brahmacarya) and nonattachment (aparigraha). Though these vows, taken at face value, appear to be merely abstentions from certain acts, their positive implications are extensive and they permeate the entire social life of the community.
Five Main Vows
'Non-violence' (Ahimsaa): Ahimsaa is the opposite of himsaa, which may be translated as 'injury' and defined as any acts, including thoughts and speech, which harm the 'vitalities' of living beings. The nature of these 'vitalities' is described later in this section. Harm, whether intended or not, is caused through a lack of proper care and the failure to act with due caution, but the meaning of himsaa is not exhausted by this definition and a more detailed examination of the concept is found in the next section.
Truthfulness (Satya): The opposite of truthfulness is falsehood (asatya). In simple terms, asatya is words that result in harm to any living being, even unintentionally. This is why Jainism teaches that the utmost care must be taken in speaking. The implication of this vow is extended to prohibit spreading rumours and false doctrines; betraying confidences; gossip and backbiting; falsifying documents; and breach of trust. Other examples of falsehood would be the denial of the existence of things, which do exist, and the assertion of the existence of non-existent things; or giving false information about the position, time and nature of things.
One's speech should be pleasant, beneficial, true and unhurtful to others. It should aim at moderation rather than exaggeration, esteem rather than denigration, at distinction rather than vulgarity of expression, and should be thoughtful and expressive of sacred truths. All untruths necessarily involve violence. One should protect the vow of truthfulness by avoiding thoughtless speech, anger, and greed, making others the butt of jokes or putting them in fear. Even if a person suffers through telling the truth, Jain teaching holds that truthfulness is ultimately always beneficial. Interestingly, the motto of the Republic of India: 'truth always wins' (satyam ev jayate), accords with Jain teaching.
Non-stealing (acaurya): Theft (caurya) is the taking anything which does not belong to oneself or which is not freely given. To encourage or to teach others to commit theft, to receive stolen property, to falsify weights and measures, to adulterate foods, medicine, fuels and so on, and to exploit others are all considered forms of theft. To evade the law, for example, by tax evasion or selling goods at inflated prices and to act against the public interest for personal benefit or greed are also theft, and one should guard oneself against it. The vow of non-stealing is comprehensive, covering the avoidance of dishonesty in all areas of life. As material goods are external 'vitalities' for people, whoever harms them, e.g. by stealing, commits violence.
Celibacy (brahmacarya): The vow of celibacy (brahmacarya) literally means 'treading into the soul', but conventionally it is taken to mean abstinence from sexual activities. The vow prohibits sexual relations other than with one's spouse and the consumption of anything likely to stimulate sexual desires. Ascetics, of course, abstain totally from sexual activity. Jain teachings also discourage excessive sensual pleasures.
Lack of chastity (abrahma) is considered to take several forms. The search for marriage partners should be limited to one's immediate family. Matchmaking by those outside the family is contrary to Jain teaching. Unnatural sexual practices, using sexually explicit or coarse language, visiting married or unmarried adults of the opposite sex when they are alone, and relations with prostitutes (of both sexes) are all forms of lack of chastity. Misusing one's senses, such as reading pornography or seeing explicit films, should be avoided.
Non-attachment (aparigraha): Attachment to worldly things or possession (parigraha) means desiring more than is needed. Even the accumulation of genuine necessities can be parigraha, if the amount exceeds one's reasonable needs. Other examples of parigraha would be greediness or envy of another's prosperity. In a similar way, if one were in a position of influence or power, such as in a voluntary or political organisation, but did not make way for another person when one should have done so, that would be a form of 'possessional' attachment.
The five vows described above, together with 'relative pluralism' and austerities form the basis of Right Conduct. Relative pluralism is the fundamental mental attitude, which sees or comprehends 'reality' from different viewpoints, each viewpoint being a partial expression of reality. Austerities, as discussed in the Satkhandaagama, are the extirpation of desire in order to strengthen the three jewels of Right Faith, Right Knowledge and Right Conduct. The ethical code and austerities are discussed later in this section.
The soul, which is the central theme in Jain philosophy, has traversed an infinite number of cycles in the universe and occupied differing types of bodies. The knowledge of the 'real entities' of the universe (discussed in the next chapter) and their usefulness to the soul is necessary for its spiritual advancement. The soul guides itself and other souls towards spiritual progress. Matter serves the soul by providing the body, necessary for spiritual advancement, through which a soul expresses itself, provides nutrition, and objects of comfort and material pleasure. | https://www.herenow4u.net/?id=109813 |
It is a commonplace that living religions only survive and progress by being adaptable and undergoing change. Among the changes which religions often experience are schisms, and the Jain sangha is no exception. Egoism is a characteristic of human society: it may be at the personal, family, social, regional, or religious strata, at the individual or the level of the community. The egoism of the community strata, if it is for a region or a country, we term as 'patriotism'; if it is for a religion, it is 'fundamentalism'. The egocentric propensity created at a community level is the begetter of schism. From what we know of the history of the Jain religion up to the time of Mahavira, it seems that no sects or sub-sects had emerged; yet later, they did emerge and, as a result, Jainism became irreconcilably divided into many sects. Why did this happen?
During the lifetime of Mahavira Jainism's compass was limited, and it seems to have been mainly confined to the kingdoms of Anga and Magadha, which comprise modern Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal. After the death of Mahavira, his successors and followers succeeded in extending Jain influence throughout the whole of India, among the ruling classes as well as the people. Once this occurred, Jainism encountered a wide range of customs, languages, manners and ways of life that prevailed in different parts of the sub-continent. Over time, these encounters gave rise to changes in religious practices and, more importantly, in beliefs. Ultimately, this resulted in variations in the form of Jainism which inevitably was to become a source of conflict and, with the successful spread of Jainism throughout India, religious leaders found it increasingly difficult to foster and organise their widely-dispersed community.
The situation in which variations of practice and belief were appearing was aggravated by the lack of agreed authoritative scriptures. As the doctrines, principles and tenets of Jainism were not committed to writing during the lifetime of Mahavira, his religious teachings were memorised by his immediate successors and handed down from one generation to next, and were not finally canonised until the council of Valabhi in 453 or 466 CE. Even then, the decisions of the Valabhi council were not acceptable to all, as the Digambars maintained that the canon did not contain the actual teachings of Mahavira and designated them as the Svetambar canon. The Digambars produced their own canon in the 6th century CE, although their earlier writers do not hesitate to quote from the Svetambar canon (Chatterjee 1978: p.395). Long before Valabhi, differences of opinion had arisen regarding the interpretation of many tenets, and these disagreements led to the establishment of separate schools of thought, which eventually crystallised into sects and sub-sects.
From Mahavira to Shayyambhava the sangha was led by only one aacaarya, but Yasobhadra introduced the system of two aacaaryas in 205 BCE. This separation of the leadership may have been felt necessary due to the geographical spread of Jainism; however, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that it exacerbated to the development of schismatic tendencies in the community.
Early Jain literature (Avasyaka Niryukti) notes seven minor schismatic 'schools', although these failed to generate substantive divisions, and no trace of them is found in the Jain community (Roy 1984: pp. 86-87), but it was the eighth schism which came to predominate in the first century CE and eventually led to an irreconcilable division of the Jain community. The two groups, the result of this schism, are known as Svetambars and Digambars, a division well documented in the historical sources, but the schism, which originated during the fourth century BCE, was an accomplished fact by the first century of the Common Era.
According to the Digambar version (Harsena 931: Brihatkathakosha), in the fourth century BCE, Aacaarya Bhadrabahu realised that a long and severe famine was imminent in the kingdom of Magadha. In order to avoid its terrible effects, he and thousands of ascetics migrated from Pataliputra, the capital of Magadha, to Sravanbelgola in southern India. Candragupta Maurya abdicated his throne in favour of his son, joined Bhadrabahu's entourage as disciple, and resided with him at Sravanbelgola. Candragupta lived for twelve years after the death of his teacher, and died according to the strict Jain ritual of sallekhanaa on the hill at Sravanbelgola - a 'holy death'. This traditional account is not supported by earliest Digambar epigraph found in Sravanbelgola which says that Bhadrabahu had predicted the famine in Ujjayini, hence some believe this incident occurred later in the time of Bhadrabahu II and the king concerned was Candragupta, the emperor of Avanti and not Candragupta Maurya.
When some ascetics of the Bhadrabahu sangha eventually returned after a twelveyear absence, they found two significant changes that had taken place among the ascetics of Magadha under the leadership of Aacaarya Sthulabhadra. First, the rule requiring ascetics to wear no garments had been relaxed, instead, ascetics wore a simple piece of white cloth; second, a council had been convened at Pataliputra with the intention of editing the canon of the Jain literature. This council was the first of five councils, which were to undertake the work of editing the Jain canon over subsequent centuries, a process that was to be the focus of much disagreement.
The group of returned ascetics would neither accept the change concerning garments, nor were they agreed upon the proposals of the Pataliputra council regarding the canon, rather they proclaimed themselves as the 'true' followers of Mahavira. Eventually, the Jain sangha split into two distinct sects: the Digambar and the Svetambar.
According to other accounts of the first century CE, Sivabhuti founded the Bodiya sect, which argued nudity for the monks on the example of Jinakalpi ascetics; later, the Bodiyas were designated as Digambars. Svetambars believe the eighth schism occurred in 83 CE (Roy 1984: p.41). It is worth reminding readers that the monks who followed Parsvanatha wore garments while some ascetic followers of Mahavira kept total nudity. The modern German scholar Hermann Jacobi believes, the separation of the sangha took place gradually and, he maintains, there was and is little difference in their articles of faith. With the passage of time, the attitudes and approaches of the two sects began to harden and distinctive sectarian outlooks arose.
The iconographic evidence supports the theory that the two sects actually parted company shortly after the Valabhi council. By the Kusana period (3rd to 4th century CE), images found at Kankali-tila in Mathura depict the tirthankaras either in standing position and nude or in sitting position in such a way that neither genitals nor garments are visible, and were worshipped by both sects, and this can be proved by the epigraphic inscription of the donors who belonged to sakhas and ganas of the Svetambar sect. The earliest image of a tirthankara with lower garment is a standing Risabhdeva discovered at Akota in Gujarat from the later part of the 5th century CE of the period shortly after the Valabhi Council (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, vol. 10: p.8).
The Digambar and Svetambar Sects
From the earliest times, the majority of Jains living in South India, Uttar Pradesh and surrounding areas were Digambars, while those living in Gujarat and Rajasthan were Svetambars. The geographical separation made both the sects to discord.
There are no fundamental doctrinal differences between these two main Jain sects and both accept as canonical the major sacred text of Umasvati known as the Tattvartha Sutra. The differences in certain beliefs, are of historical importance and are described thus:
The Digambars insist upon their ascetics going unclothed (sky-clad) as an absolute pre-requisite of the mendicant's path and the attainment of salvation, but the Svetambars assert that the practice of complete nudity is not essential to attain liberation. The dispute centres upon the question of whether the possession of an item of clothing signifies attachment to that garment. The Digambars assert that attachment is implied and therefore reject clothing, but the Svetambars refer to the example of Parsvanatha's disciples, who wore clothing, to defend their view.
Digambars believe that women lack both the physical and mental strength necessary to attain liberation; hence women must be reborn as men before such an attainment is possible, but the Svetambars hold the view that men and women are equally capable of attaining liberation; in the Svetambar tradition, the nineteenth tirthankara, Malli(natha), was a woman, and Marudevi, Risabhdeva's mother, was the first person to attain liberation in this aeon.
Digambars, believe once someone becomes omniscient, he (not she) has no need of food; Svetambars believe that, as even an omniscient still has a body, it is necessary to sustain it.
Svetambars believe that Mahavira was born of a ksatriya woman, Trisala, although conception took place in the womb of a Brahmin, Devananda. The 'migration' of the embryo from one woman's body to another is believed to have been effected on the order of the deity Indra, on the eighty-third day after conception, but Digambars, dismiss the whole episode as unreliable and absurd.
Svetambars believe that Mahavira married Princess Yasoda at a young age, and that they had a daughter named Priyadarsana, Digambars do not even accept that he was married.
The Svetambar tradition depicts images of tirthankaras wearing loincloths and jewels, the images have eyes inserted made of a variety of materials, Digambars represent images of tirthankaras as unclad, unadorned and with eyes downcast in contemplative mood.
Svetambars believe in the validity and sacredness of the collection of forty-five canonical texts, and they have been accepted over many centuries; Digambars dispute the validity of the Svetambar canon, holding that many original and genuine texts were lost over the centuries.
Svetambars regard the records of the great Jain personages of the past as 'biographies'; Digambars prefer the term 'legends' for these accounts.
Svetambars perform their daily meditation practices in the presence of a representation of Sudharma and venerate Sthulibhadra in the benedictory prayers, while in their prayers Digambars venerate Kundakunda, who is believed to be the disciple of Bhadrabahu II and who has composed 84 Digambara sacred books including texts such as the Samayasaara, Pravacanasaara and Pancastikaayasaara.
The Digambars made Bahubali one of their most important luminaries building colossal statues to him, while Svetambars revere the images of the tirthankaras and Bahubali is hardly worshipped at all in their temples.
Svetambar ascetics live on food given freely to them by householders in the community. As they go from house to house and collect their food, they use bowls and similar vessels to contain food and may eat more than one meal in a day; ascetics, as well as observant Jain laypeople, eat only in daylight hours. By contrast, Digambar ascetics eat a single dish from just one household each day, and receive food in their cupped, upturned hands.
In principle, ascetics renounce possessions. However, the practicalities of life and religious ritual do allow some concessions: the Svetambar ascetics are allowed up to fourteen possessions including articles such as a loincloth and shoulder-cloth; Digambar ascetics are allowed only two possessions: a whiskbroom made from peacock feathers and a wooden water-pot. Both sects allow ascetics to carry scriptures.
Differences between the sects over rituals, customs and manners are trivial and do not play a spiritually significant role. Until the middle of the fifteenth century CE all members of both sects were image worshippers, after which iconoclastic and other influences led to the emergence of offshoots which ceased to worship images. Most scholars agree that Digambars embrace a more severe ascetic life-style and are conservative with regard to doctrine. Svetambars are more 'liberal', pragmatic and concerned with maximising the influence of Jainism within society. It is this attitude which has led Svetambars to play an important role in shaping large areas of the culture, history, politics and economic development of India.
During the medieval period, subdivisions arose among both sects: differences in the interpretation of religious texts, the observance of rituals, and discontent over authoritarian trends in religious leadership, were among the contributory factors. While Jains were characterised by a strong spiritual discipline, political pressures and religious fervour led many towards forms of ritualism as a means of counteracting Hindu devotional (bhakti) movements.
In the course of time, some in the community became disillusioned with ritualism and turned away from the established temples and its rituals. They saw the conduct of the temple 'authorities' as without merit. Increasing Muslim influence brought with it iconoclastic trends and encouraged the growth of non-image worship in both Jain sects, leading to yet further internal subdivisions.
Digambar Sects
From earliest times the Digambars called their main body, the Mula Sangha, which was further, divided in the four major sanghas such as the Sinha, Nandi, Sena and Devas; none of these exist today. The main sub-sects that are found today are:
Bisapantha: The followers of Bisapantha (Twenty-fold Path) support the institutions of bhattarakas, worship the images of the tirthankaras, and celestials (ksetrapala, Padmavati) and other guardian deities. They worship these images with offerings such as saffron, flowers, fruit, sweets and incense sticks, and while performing these acts of ritual, the Bisapanthis sit on the ground. They offer the flame to the images (aarati), and distribute to other worshippers the gifts offered to the luminaries (prasaada). The Bisapantha, according to some, is the original form of the Digambar sect and today practically all Digambar Jains from Maharastra, Karnataka and South India, together with a large number of Digambar Jains from Rajasthan and Gujarat, are Bisapantha.
Terapantha: The Terapantha (Thirteen-fold or Your Path) movement arose in northern India in the year 1626 CE as a result of dissatisfaction with the domination and conduct of the bhattarakas, and are most numerous in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh (There is also an unrelated major Svetambar sect of the same name, discussed below). In their temples, the Terapanthas install only the images of tirthankaras, worship images with dried materials, for example: sacred white rice and rice coloured with sweet-smelling sandalwood paste, cloves, sandalwood, almonds, dry coconuts and dates. They avoid using flowers and fruits, which are regarded as living, whereas the dried products are not; and as a rule, they do not perform aarati nor distribute prasaada in their temples. The Terapanthas are reformers, opposed to some ritual practices, which they do not accept as authentic.
Taranapantha: The Taranapantha takes its name from its founder Tarana Svami or Tarana-tarana Svami (1448 to 1515 CE) and this sub-sect is also known as the Samaiya-Pantha as its followers worship sacred texts (Samaya Saara) and not images. Tarana Svami died at Malharagarth, Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, which is the central place of pilgrimage for the Taranapanthis.
Taranapanthis have scripture-halls in which they keep their sacred texts for worship, but besides the scriptures common to all Digambars, they regard as sacred the fourteen books written by their founder Tarana Svami. They attach great importance to inward spiritual practices, such as meditation and the study of sacred literature, and as a result of this emphasis, they practise little outward religious ritual. Tarana Svami was religiously 'liberal', even by Jain standards, and welcomed all, including Muslims and low-castes into the sect. The Taranapanthis are few in numbers and they are mainly found in Madhya Pradesh and Maharastra.
Gumanapantha: The Gumanapantha is a numerically small sub-sect about which very little is known, and it was founded by Pandit Gumani Rama or Gumani Rai, a son of the Jain scholar Pandit Todaramal. According to this pantha, the lighting of lamps in the Jain temples is a violation of ahimsaa, and hence they do not perform aarati. Gumanapanthas revere the images in their temples but do not make offerings to them.
Totapantha: The Totapantha came into existence as a result of differences between the Bisapantha and Terapantha sub-sects. Many sincere efforts were made to strike a compromise between the Bisa (i.e. twenty) pantha and the Tera (i.e. thirteen) pantha. The surprisingly (or not surprisingly) arithmetical outcome gave the Jain world the sadhe solaha (i.e. sixteen and a half) pantha or 'Totapantha', whose followers believe in some doctrines of the Bisapantha and some of the Terapantha. This sub-sect is small in numbers and is found only in Madhya Pradesh.
Kanjipantha: In recent years, a new Digambar sub-sect known as the Kanjipantha, followers of Kanji Svami, has been formed and is growing in popularity, especially among the educated. Kanji Svami, a Svetambar Sthanakvasi ascetic, left the Svetambars to become a Digambar layman. He succeeded in popularising the ancient sacred texts of Aacaarya Kundakunda, which stressed an idealistic position, rather than the practical observances of daily religious life. The influence of the Kanjipantha is steadily increasing, and Sonagadh in Gujarat and Jaipur in Rajasthan have become the sub-sect's centres of religious activity; both Digambars and Svetambars have been attracted to the Kanjipantha. There are Kanjipantha temples in Nairobi and in London.
Svetambar Sects
From the tenth century, literary evidence suggests that Svetambars were divided into various groups, known as gacchas (a group of monks), formed by important ascetics, although there was no recognisable doctrinal difference between them. By the thirteenth century it is said that there were 84 such gacchas in existence. However, as time passed, most gacchas either did not survive or merged with one another. At the present time, the Svetambars sects are:
Murtipujaka: While it is not clear when the worship of images of the tirthankaras first began, it is the case that from earliest times all Svetambars were image-worshippers; the majority of Jains are Svetambar Murtipujaka (image worshippers). The followers of this tradition are also known by terms such as Deraavaasi, Caityavaasi (both mean 'temple residents'), Mandirmargi ('temple goers') or Pujera ('worshippers').
They make ritual offerings including flowers and saffron paste to their images and they adorn them with rich clothes and jewelled ornaments. Rice, fruit, incense and sweets are also offered during prayers. Both in India and outside, such edible items are not used by the Jains, but are given to the temple employees (pujaaris) or distributed to the needy. Murtipujak worshippers cover their mouths when washing, anointing or touching the images and perform aarati. Their ascetics also cover their mouths with a muhupatti (mouth kerchief) while speaking; this is otherwise kept in the hand. The purpose of this practice is to avoid harm to airborne microscopic life.
Svetambars reside in all parts of India, especially in large urban centres where they are engaged in modern businesses, although the largest populations are found in Gujarat, Maharastra and Rajasthan. Many have migrated abroad and settled successfully in countries as diverse as the United Kingdom, Belgium, the United States, East Africa, the Far East, and even Israel.
Sthanakvasi: Although now generally counted among the Svetambars, the Sthanakvasis (hall dwellers) arose originally as reformers among the Lonka sect of Jainism. Lonkasaha, a well-read merchant of Ahmedabad, founded the Lonka sect in 1460 CE. The main reform instituted by this sect was a total rejection of image worship. Later, members of the Lonka sect, led by Lavaji Rishi, disapproving of the lax way of life of Lonka ascetics, insisted upon reform based more closely upon the teachings and example of Mahavira.
A Lonka layman, Viraji of Surat, received initiation as a yati and won great admiration for the assiduity of his asceticism, and many devotees of the Lonka sect followed Viraji's example. They took the name Sthanakvasis, meaning those, whose religious activities are not in temples but in places known as sthanaks or prayer halls. They are also known as 'searchers' (dhundhiya) and 'followers of ascetics' (saadhumaargis). Except on the crucial point of image worship, Sthanakvasis do not greatly differ from other Svetambar Murtipujaka Jains.
What differences occur between the Sthanakvasi and the Murtipujaka Svetambars in the observance of religious practices, are minor; for example, the ascetics of the Sthanakvasi always keep their mouths covered with a muhupatti. The Sthanakvasi admit the authenticity of only thirty-two of the forty-five scriptures of the Svetambars; they reject the practice of pilgrimage, and do not participate in the religious rituals or festivals of Murtipujaka Svetambars. In practice, today, many Sthanakvasi do partake in these religious activities. The Sthanakvasis are found in the major business centres in India but most live in Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Maharastra and some have settled outside India.
Terapanthi: This sub-sect arose among the Sthanakvasi. It was founded by Muni Bhikhanji (later on known as Aacaarya Bhiksu), formerly a Sthanakvasi holy man, who was initiated by his guru, Aacaarya Raghunatha. He had differences of opinion with his guru on several aspects of Sthanakvasi ascetic practices and when these differences took a serious turn, he founded the Terapantha in 1760 CE. As Bhikhanaji stressed thirteen religious principles: five major vows, five carefulness and three guards, his sub-sect was named as the Tera (thirteen) pantha.
The Terapanthis are non-image worshippers and are well organised under the direction of a single aacaarya. In its history of little more than 200 years, the sect has had only ten aacaaryas, from the first (founder) Aacaarya Bhiksu to Aacaarya Mahaprajna, who took office, in 1994. The ninth Aacaarya Tulsi was given the special title of 'head of the group of ascetics' (ganaadhipati), in appreciation of his services to the sub-sect.
This practice of having a single aacaarya is a characteristic feature of this subsect. Ascetics and female ascetics of the Terapantha follow the instructions of their aacaarya scrupulously. They observe a remarkable annual festival, the Maryaadaa Mahotsava (festival of restrainment) where all ascetics and lay disciples, male and female, meet together in one place to discuss the events of the past year and plans for the future.
The Terapanthis are considered as reformists who believe in simplicity; for example, they do not construct monasteries for their ascetics, who inhabit part of the home of ordinary householders, instead their efforts are directed towards two activities: meditation and the literary work of translating and interpreting the scriptures. Like Sthanakvasi ascetics they also wear a muhupatti.
Aacaarya Tulsi promoted the anuvrata movement ('minor vow'), that attempts to utilise the Jain spiritual teachings for the moral improvement of the whole population. Terapanthis have established a worldwide peace and 'non-violent action' organisation and a university, the Jain Vishva Bharati, which has achieved provisional recognition by the Indian government.
The Terapanthis are growing in number, and though they are present in many cities of India, they are mainly concentrated in Rajasthan. They are progressive in thought and action: recently they have developed a semi-ascetic group (samana and samani) among their followers, who are permitted to use modern transport, travel overseas, and cook in emergencies. The (male) samanas and (female) samanis visit the West regularly and undertake the propagation of Jainism and the message of their founder, Aacaarya Tulsi.
Minor Divisions of Murtipujakas
From about a century prior to Hemcandra, we find evidence for the Svetambar divisions: these groups, called gacchas, comprised the followers of the leading ascetics. The gacchas evolved from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, and reputedly eighty-four gacchas were formed, however, most gacchas did not survive their founders and others would have amalgamated. Today, most Svetambars of Gujarat and Rajasthan belong to the following three gacchas: the Kharataragaccha, Tapaagaccha and Ancalagaccha. Each gaccha has its own temples, ascetics and aacaaryas.
Kharataragaccha: There is no reliable history of the formation of this group, though epigraphic evidence suggests that it was formed before 1090 CE, the evidence is taken from the special residences for ascetics, a feature of many towns in that period. One legend claims that Aacaarya Jinesvara Suri defeated the temple-dwelling ascetics (caityavaasis) in a religious debate at the court of King Durlabharaja of Anahilavada in 1022 CE, winning thereby the title of 'person of bold character' (kharatara). Another legend says that Jinadatta Suri in 1147 CE started this group. A third variant of the story holds that Jinavallabha Suri started it. This gaccha is very popular in Gujarat and Rajasthan. It is known for establishing socio-religious institutions, called dadawadis or dadabaris in the major cities of India.
Tapaagaccha: The legend about the origin of this group is that aacaarya Jagacchandra Suri, had earned the epithet 'austere' (tapa) in 1228 CE, from King Jaitrasinha of Mewar, for his severe austerities. Thereafter his disciples and followers have been called Tapaagaccha. The members of this, the largest gaccha, are found all over India but largely in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharastra, Punjab and Haryana.
Ancalagaccha: The ascetics of this group use a small strip of cloth (ancala) in place of a full muhupatti to cover their mouth at the time of daily penitential ritual, thus they take the name Ancalagaccha. Also known as the 'upholders of sacred rituals' (vidhipaksha), it is said to have been formed in 1156 CE in Northern India. There are very few members of this group.
In addition to Digambars and Svetambars, there was, in the past, another sect of Jainism, which flourished in Karnataka at least from the 5th to the 14th century CE with some royal patronage. It was known as Yapaniya, which was begun by a Svetambara monk in the 2nd century CE (Roy 1984: p.128). Yapaniyas accepted practices of both Svetambars and Digambars, followed Svetambar sacred texts and tried to bring about reconciliation between Svetambars and Digambars. It is believed that Umasvami, the author of the Tattvarthagima Sutra, was a Yapaniya and Sakatayana, a Yapaniya monk, composed the Sabdaanusasana (a grammar), Stri-mukti-prakaran and the Kevali-bhuktiprakaran. At the end of the 14th century Yapaniyas are presumed to have merged with the Digambars, but there is no evidence for this amalgamation.
The above account is based on Roy (1984: pp.99-149), Sangave (1990: pp. 74-87) Jain J (1964: scattered references), Chatterjee (1978 and 1984 scattered references), and Modi (1977 scattered references).
In spite of these divisions, all Jains believe in the same basic principles and philosophy, and for many years they have sought to celebrate major functions together and to promote the teachings of Mahavira. Some differences, however, remain between Svetambar and Digambar Murtipujaka groups, largely concerned with the ownership of certain temples and places of pilgrimage. | https://www.herenow4u.net/?id=109803 |
Jainism is an ancient religion from India that teaches that the way to liberation and bliss is to live a life of harmlessness and renunciation.
The aim of Jain life is to achieve liberation of the soul.
Along with other Indian systems, it prescribes a path to liberation (Moksha), which consists of the three jewels (trinity or ratna-traya) of Jainism:
- right perception
- right knowledge
- right conduct
Right perception creates an awareness of reality or truth, right knowledge impels the person to proper action, and proper conduct leads him to the attainment of the total freedom. They must coexist in a person if one is to make any progress on the path of liberation.
Right Perception
Right perception consists in seeing the true nature of every substance of the universe. Jainism advocates that one should first try to know, comprehend, and understand the nature of reality, one’s own self, religious goal, and the path. One should analyze it, examine it, test it, and verify it, and then, if satisfied, be convinced of its truth and efficacy.
Right Knowledge
Right perception or faith makes us realize the reality of life and the seriousness of our purpose in life. Right knowledge is the true, correct, proper, and relevant knowledge of the reality, the tattvas.
Mainly one has to know the following:
Six Universal Entities (Substances) soul, matter, motion, rest, space, and time.
Nine Tattvas (Principles) Jiva, Ajiva, Asrava, Bandh, Punya, Papa, Samvara, Nirjara, and Moksha.
Philosophically, this is known as the theory of non-absolutism (Anekantavada) and calls for an attitude of openness. Our limitations of knowledge dictate a style of relativity. The style of Syadvada allows no room for assertions. This Jain theory of knowledge, incorporating the two principles of non-absolutism and relativity, has made an esteemed contribution toward liberalizing the mind of human being.
Right knowledge makes us examine in detail the matter brought into the mind by right conviction. Both are mental processes. Right knowledge must be free from three main defects: doubt, delusion, and indefiniteness.
Right Conduct:
Proper, correct, appropriate, and truly natural conduct of the living being (soul) is known as right conduct. The main purpose of a human being is to free himself from attachment (raga) and aversion (dvesha). That is to be free from all impure activities of thought, word, and deed. This will attain the state of perfect equanimity.
For practical purposes, right conduct comprises ethical codes, rules, and disciplines which an aspirant is required to pursue the ultimate freedom.
This resolves into taking the five vows of an ascetic or householder.
- Ahimsa – Non-violence
- Satya – Truth
- Achaurya – Non-stealing
- Brahmacharya – Chastity
- Aparigraha – Non-possession/Non-attachment
Right faith and right knowledge are required for right conduct, and all are interdependent. | https://healings.co.in/september-19th-2015/ |
In the course of time, right faith, right knowledge and right conduct have so often been known as the ‘three gems’ that this notion now appears in various areas of religious practice. The gems occur in symbolism, worship ceremonies, mantras and hymns. The Digambara Jains seem to favour it as an element of worship more than their Śvetāmbara fellows.
In modern times, the triplet is depicted on the Jain flag in the form of three dots on the same horizontal plane. The dots also appear as part of other symbolic representations of the Jain faith, such as the designs of rice grains lay Jains make on tables of offerings in the context of worship – pūjā. In its complete and most common form, this design shows:
Religious practices centring on the three gems seem to be more popular among Digambara circles. Or, at least, more evidence is available from this sect.
The diagrams known as ratna-traya-yantras – ‘three-jewel diagrams’ – focus on the triplet, with relevant formulas – mantras – inscribed in their centres. These mantras either venerate each of the three jewels individually or pay ‘homage to right faith, right knowledge and right conduct’ in Sanskrit – samyag-darśana-jñāna-cāritrebhyo namaḥ (see drawings in Jainendra Siddhānta Kośa, volume 3, 1987: 358).
These diagrams may be used in connection with ‘worship of the three gems’ – ratna-traya-pūjā. Accompanied by hymns, in Sanskrit or in the vernaculars, each term is praised, with its details described (Jñānapīṭha Pūjāñjali 1957: 220–289; 313–323).
Both diagrams and hymns of worship appear in the performance of the ratna-traya-vrata – ‘specific observance relating to the three gems’. A Digambara manual describing the ceremony says that the three-gem observance should be undertaken in the months of:
It implies forms of fasting and, more specifically, recitation of the formula ‘homage to right faith, right knowledge and right conduct’ every morning (Siṃhanandī Vrata-tithi-nirṇaya 1956: 195–196). The duration of the observance varies on the ability of the performer. Worshippers should draw a relevant diagram – yantra – either in their own house or in a temple, near a Jina image.
A significant aspect of right conduct is penance, mainly fasting – tapas. This is encouraged in the Jain faith as it helps to expel karmas that have already become attached to the soul. This expelling process is known as nirjarā. Given the central place of ascetic practices in Jainism, it is not surprising to see that samyak-tapas – ‘correct asceticism’ – is sometimes regarded as a fourth gem. As noted previously, one of the main Śvetāmbara writings on the three jewels, chapter 28 of the Uttarādhyayana-sūtra, adds a fourth jewel.
‘Austerities’ – tapas – is the fourth term supplementing the list in chapter 28 of the Uttarādhyayana-sūtra:
Right knowledge, faith, conduct and austerities; this is the road taught by the Jinas who possess the best knowledge
28.2
translated by Herman Jacobi, 1895: 152
The text explicitly sets out this additional element as part of the road to salvation and gives it the same status as the other three gems. It also clearly relates to the third jewel, which is concerned with behaviour.
The fourth gem is echoed in contemporary Jain conceptions, although in common parlance Jains speak only of the ‘three gems’.
The principle of non-violence that is one of the five chief vows of Jainism.
The 'Five Lesser Vows' that householder Jains take. These are not as strict as the 'Five Greater Vows' that ascetics observe but are more practical in daily life. Few Jains take these non-compulsory vows these days. The vows are to:
A term used by Digambaras for thinking about the 12 topics that stress the negative nature of the world of rebirths and that help to overcome it:
A dialect of the Prākrit language used for many Śvetāmbara Jain scriptures.
Someone who withdraws from ordinary life to meditate and practise physical hardships in order to advance spiritually. Jain ascetics or mendicants beg for food from devout lay followers and wander the land.
Also used as an adjective to describe the practice of rigorous, even extreme, physical hardships in the belief that it leads to a higher spiritual condition.
Infraction, violation of conduct. There are five infractions for each of the five mendicant vows and for each of the 12 lay vows. For instance, overburdening pack animals breaks the vow of non-violence for a lay Jain.
Favourable or lucky. Auspicious objects bring good fortune and may predict good events or a bright future.
Title meaning ‘Enlightened One’ in Sanskrit and Pali. It is most frequently used for Siddhārtha Gautama, whose teachings form the basis of the Buddhist faith. He lived about 563 to 483 BCE in the north-eastern area of the Indian subcontinent, around the same time and in the same area as Mahāvīra, the last of the 24 Jinas.
His life story is similar to that of the Jinas in certain ways, such as:
After six years he reached enlightenment while meditating and from then on was known as Buddha – 'Awakened One' or 'Enlightened One'.
The religion founded by Buddha, often called the 'Middle Way' between the self-indulgence of worldly life and the self-mortification of a very ascetic way of life. Buddhism has similarities to Jain belief but some significant differences. For example, Buddhists hold that the world around us is a short-lived illusion and do not believe in individual, everlasting souls.
A religion based on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ or Anointed One. Jesus is an historically attested figure, who lived around 4 BCE to 30 CE in modern Israel. Adherents hold that Jesus is the Messiah or saviour, fulfilling a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible.
An essay explaining a text. Commentaries on the scriptures are common in the Jain tradition and there are various types, including the:
A belief system about the universe that covers its origin, structure and parts, and natural laws and characteristics such as space, time, causality and freedom.
A god or divine figure, often with physical powers beyond those of a human and with superhuman abilities.
Duty, religious codes or principles, the religious law. Jains think in terms of dharma or underlying order in the universe.
Related to this, the term is also used for the true nature of an object or living entity. For example, the dharma of:
The 15th Jina of the present age is called Dharmanātha or Lord Dharma. His symbolic colour is gold and his emblem the vajra – diamond thunderbolt. There is no historical evidence of his existence.
'Sky-clad' in Sanskrit, used for one of the two main divisions of Jainism, in which monks are naked. There are some differences of doctrine or belief between these two sects and to some extent their followers consider themselves as belonging to distinct branches. Divisions can be fierce in practical matters, for example, over the ownership of pilgrimage places, but all sects see themselves as Jains.
A principle or system of teachings, especially religious philosophy.
Giving up or limiting food or specified foods for a period of time, usually as part of a religious practice. Fasting is a key part of Jainism, chiefly because it is believed to:
Type of destiny, mode of rebirth in the cycle of rebirth. There are four:
Also one of the 14 'gateways' or categories of investigation of mārgaṇā or 'soul-quest'.
The language that developed in Gujarat, in western India. It is also spoken in neighbouring states. Also a term for someone or something associated with or coming from Gujarat.
The 14 stages of spiritual development the soul passes through to gain liberation from the cycle of birth. The stages go from the state of delusion to the state of omniscience without activity, which is reached just before death of the body. When the body dies after the soul has attained the 14th stage, the soul instantly becomes liberated – a siddha.
A set of three restraints on Jain householders that is meant to reinforce the practice of the minor vows or aṇu-vrata:
Sanskrit term meaning both:
Follower of the majority faith in India and an adjective describing something belonging to Hinduism. Hindus have numerous gods and diverse beliefs and practices, though many believe in the soul, karma, the cycle of births and liberation. Roughly a billion Hindus comprise the third largest religion in the world.
The terms stavan, stavana, stava, stotra and stuti are all used for a prayer, song, chant or hymn to a Jina, a god or any other holy figure. Religious songs are always hymns of praise in Jainism. These devotional songs may be performed during daily rites or on special occasions, such as completion of a fast or a wedding. The hymns may be performed:
An image of a deity or concept that is worshipped either as a god or as a representation of the deity.
Follower of the 24 Jinas or an adjective describing Jain teachings or practices. The term 'Jaina' is also used although 'Jain' is more common.
A 'victor' in Sanskrit, a Jina is an enlightened human being who has triumphed over karma and teaches the way to achieve liberation. A synonym for Tīrthaṃkara, which means 'ford-maker' or one who has founded a community after reaching omniscience through asceticism. The most famous 24 – Ṛṣabha to Mahāvīra – were born in the Bharata-kṣetra of the middle world, but more are found in other continents. There have been Jinas in the past and there will be some in the future.
Sanskrit for 'self', 'soul' or 'that which is sentient'. It makes up the universe along with ajīva, or non-sentient material substance. It is a material substance that changes in size according to the body it inhabits in each life. It is born in different bodies in various places in the Jain universe based on karma from earlier lives. The soul is liberated from the cycle of birth when it has achieved spiritual purity and omniscience. Also called ātma or ātman.
'Knowledge', of which there are five main types:
With spiritual progress, one can gain the different types of knowledge.
Also one of the 14 'gateways' or categories of investigation of mārgaṇā or 'soul-quest'.
Action or act, thought of as physical in Jainism. Created by mental or physical action, karma enters the soul, which then needs religious restraints and practices to make it flow out. Karma can be both:
Both types of karma trap a soul in continual rebirth. A pan-Indian concept, karma has extremely complex, detailed and technical divisions and subdivisions in Jainism.
Omniscience, enlightenment or perfect knowledge – the highest of the five types of knowledge, where one knows everything wherever and whenever it is. It is extremely difficult to attain, equivalent to the 13th stage of spiritual purity in the guṇa-sthāna. Digambaras believe only men can achieve it whereas Śvetāmbaras believe that both men and women can become enlightened.
The five vows taken by ascetics. Monks and nuns must follow these ‘absolute’ vows of:
The 24th Jina Mahāvīra added a fifth vow to his predecessor Pārśva's four, making the vow of celibacy not just implicit but a separate vow.
A sacred sound, syllable, word or phrase that is believed to produce spiritual change if recited correctly. A mantra can be recited aloud or silently, and is often repeated. Mantras are closely associated with religions that originated in India, such as Hinduism and Buddhism as well as Jainism. The chief Jain mantra is the Namaskāra-mantra, which is recited daily, while another mantra very popular in Indian culture generally is Auṃ.
The 'liberation' of the soul from its body and thus from the cycle of rebirth because it has no karma and becomes omniscient. The ultimate aim of Jainism is to achieve mokṣa and become a liberated soul in siddha-śilā.
A man who has taken a public vow to withdraw from ordinary life to formally enter religious life and advance spiritually. Frequently, monks perform physical austerities or undergo physical hardships in order to progress spiritually.
A system of contemplative prayer, meditation and complete detachment from worldly affairs in the hope of gaining direct spiritual experience of the divine. In Jainism those who practise mystical techniques hope to gain true self-realisation and thus destroy karma and be liberated.
The highest soul, the liberated soul, the Absolute, often used instead of siddhi. Jains believe that a soul or ātman can achieve liberation from the cycle of birth through its own spiritual development. This concept has been called God in Western thought since the start of the Christian era.
'Affliction’, used especially for mendicants, who have to overcome the 22 traditional afflictions or hardships that could shake their commitment:
A voluntary action undertaken to make up for a sin or breach of a religious principle, frequently an act of self-punishment or physical hardship.
Sanskrit for 'worship' or 'homage'. All Jains perform rites of honour to the 24 Jinas. Rites of worship take place daily, with more elaborate ceremonies performed on holy days. Mendicant and lay Jains perform different rituals. Some sects worship images – mūrti-pūjaka – and others do not, and different sects have various practices. Focused on images or not, worship can be:
A sequence of actions that must be followed to perform a religious ceremony. The set of actions is largely symbolic, for example offering food to statues symbolises sacrificing to a deity. The ritual actions are often accompanied by set phrases.
Sanskrit term meaning 'with a home’ – that is, a ‘householder’ or lay Jain. A synonym for a lay person, emphasising that he or she is a member of a household, with responsibilities to the family, community and society that a Jain mendicant does not have.
Someone who is declared by a religious organisation or by popular acclaim to be of outstanding goodness and spiritual purity, usually some time after his or her death. The person's holiness is often believed to have been demonstrated in the performance of miracles. Saints are frequently held up as examples for followers of a religious faith.
Cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth caused by karma binding to the soul as a result of activities. Only by destroying all karma can this perpetual cycle finish in mokṣa – liberation. The karma gained in life affects the next life, and even future lives, for example:
Sanskrit for 'community'. The Jain ‘fourfold community’ is composed of monks, nuns, lay men and lay women.
A classical language of India, originally used by priests and nobility. Sanskrit has a rich literary and religious tradition. With only a few thousand native speakers nowadays, it is predominantly used in Hindu religious ceremonies and by scholars.
Set of sacred texts that believers accept as authoritative within a religion. Synonymous with canon.
An organised group of believers in a religion, often distinguished from other groups within the same religious faith who have differences of doctrine or practice.
In common use it refers to any sacred text. However, strictly speaking, it means an extremely concise style of writing, as illustrated in the Tattvārtha-sūtra, or a verse.
Austerity or asceticism in general. A tapas is an act of austerity or self-discipline that produces bodily heat – tapas – that burns up karma. Austerities may be internal – mental – or external – physical. Both lay and mendicant Jains practise austerities. Fasting is the most common external austerity for lay people these days.
Extremely famous Jain holy text written in Sanskrit in perhaps the fifth century CE. Śvetāmbaras call the author Umāsvāti while Digambaras know him as Umāsvāmin. Going into the principles of karma in ten chapters, it discusses the principles and the reality of existence in a concise style – sūtra. The Tattvārtha-sūtra is a key text, fundamental to all Jain sects. Its title is often translated into English as That Which Is.
An ancient Jain text outlining the rules of monastic conduct, said to be Mahāvīra's final sermon. These 36 lectures provide rules for ascetics but also discuss various topics, such as karma and the substances in the universe, and recount the tale of Nemi's renunciation.
The everyday or common language spoken by people in a particular country or region, often contrasting with the literary form or the national or official language. Similarly, vernacular architecture reflects local conditions and conventions more than other considerations, such as national or international design trends, and may be built by non-professional architects.
Vows are extremely important in Jain religious life. Mendicants take the compulsory Five Great Vows – mahā-vratas – as part of their initiation – dīkṣā.
Lay people can choose to take 12 vows, which are divided into:
All of these vows are lifelong and cannot be taken back. The sallekhana-vrata is a supplementary vow to fast to death, open to both ascetics and householders.
Sanskrit for 'instrument' or 'machine', a yantra is a mystical diagram used in religious rituals. Yantras are typically formed of symmetrical, concentric circles and may also have the diagram of a lotus in the middle of numerous squares. Containing the names of the Jinas and sacred mantras, such as oṃ, yantras are meditation aids.
Spiritual discipline. But Jains also use it to mean an ‘activity’ that produces vibrations.
Also one of the 14 'gateways' or categories of investigation of mārgaṇā or 'soul-quest'. | http://www.jainpedia.org/themes/principles/jain-beliefs/the-three-gems/contentpage/4.html |
En jainist kan inte ägna sig åt jordbruk. För när man plöjer kan man döda en del småkryp. Därför håller de flesta av lekmännen på med hantverk, handel och affärsverksamhet. Det finns också många jainister inom det ekonomiska och kulturella livet. En hängiven jainist försvarar sig inte om de blir anfallna av en tiger Jainism (/ ˈ dʒ eɪ n ɪ z əm /), traditionally known as Jain Dharma, is an ancient Indian religion. Jain dharma traces its spiritual ideas and history through a succession of twenty-four leaders or tirthankaras, with the first in current time cycle being Lord Rishabhanatha, whom the Jain tradition holds to have lived millions of years ago, the twenty-third tirthankara Parshvanatha whom. Jainist synonyms, Jainist pronunciation, Jainist translation, English dictionary definition of Jainist. n. An ascetic religion of India, founded in the sixth century bc, that teaches the immortality and transmigration of the soul and denies the existence of a. Define Jainist. Jainist synonyms, Jainist pronunciation, Jainist translation, English dictionary definition of Jainist. n. An ascetic religion of India, founded in the sixth century bc, that teaches the immortality and transmigration of the soul and denies the existence of a..
Definition of Jainist in the AudioEnglish.org Dictionary. Meaning of Jainist. Who is/Who was Jainist. What does Jainist mean? Proper usage and audio pronunciation of the word Jainist. Information about Jainist in the AudioEnglish.org dictionary, synonyms and antonyms Jainism definition, a dualistic religion founded in the 6th century b.c. as a revolt against current Hinduism and emphasizing the perfectibility of human nature and liberation of the soul, especially through asceticism and nonviolence toward all living creatures. See more Guide to Jainism, an ancient Indian religion of harmlessness and renunciation, including worship, beliefs, Jain living and history Jainist - a believer in Jainism 2. Jainism - religion founded in the 6th century BC as a revolt against Hinduism; emphasizes asceticism and immortality and transmigration of the soul; denies existence of a perfect or supreme bein Jain monasticism refers to the order of monks and nuns in the Jain community and can be divided into two major denominations: the Digambara and the Śvētāmbara.The monastic practices of two the major sects vary greatly, but the major principles of both are identical. Five mahāvratas (Great Vows), from Mahavira's teachings, are followed by all Jain ascetics
Jainism, Indian religion teaching a path to spiritual purity and enlightenment through disciplined nonviolence (ahimsa, literally 'non-injury') to all living creatures. Along with Hinduism and Buddhism, Jainism is one of the three ancient religious traditions and an integral part of South Asian belief and practice Synonymer.se - Sveriges största sökmotor för det svenska språket. Över 95 000 uppslag med synonymer, motsatsord, definitioner, betoningar, böjningar samt uttal Jainism at a glance. Jainism is an ancient religion from India that teaches that the way to liberation and bliss is to live lives of harmlessness and renunciation Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Jump to navigation Jump to search. English Noun . Jainist (plural Jainists) . a follower of Jainism, a religion based primarily in India; Anagrams . Tijanis, istinj Looking for Jainist? Find out information about Jainist. religious system of India practiced by about 5,000,000 persons. Jainism, Ajivika Ajivika , religious sect of medieval India, once of major importance. Explanation of Jainist
jainist översättning i ordboken svenska - franska vid Glosbe, online-lexikon, gratis. Bläddra milions ord och fraser på alla språk Welcome to JAINISM.org. Welcome to Jainism.org, your definitive resource on JAINISM. We have organized the site in three distinct sections. Once you select a section, use the navigation frames to navigate topics Go to https://nordvpn.org/cogito and use code cogito to get 75% off a 3-year plan and an extra month for free. Last chance to get this deal for $2.99! Jainis.. . Astăzi, practica Santara stârnește controverse în India și în exteriorul ei, iar în statul indic Rajasthan un avocat va duce demersuri pentru scoaterea inaniției voluntare în afara legii Find the perfect Jainist Digambara stock photos and editorial news pictures from Getty Images. Select from premium Jainist Digambara of the highest quality
Jainism (jī`nĭzəm) [i.e., the religion of Jina], religious system of India practiced by about 5,000,000 persons. Jainism, Ajivika Ajivika, religious sect of medieval India, once of major importance. The Ajivikas were an ascetic, atheistic, anti-Brahmanical community whose pessimistic doctrines are related to those of Jainism Jainist: 1 adj relating to or characteristic of Jainism Synonyms: Jain n a believer in Jainism Type of: adherent , disciple someone who believes and helps to spread the doctrine of anothe
Years ago, one of my history professors told the class a story to illustrate the concept of Jainism.Although perhaps slightly hyperbolic, it served to communicate the concept and entrench it in our memories.I will attempt to recreate it from memory.. A Tiger was prowling about the forest one day, when he came upon a Jainist sitting underneath an apple tree Jainist worship is thus little more than a veneration of a few saints and heroes of the past. On its ethical side—the sphere of Right Conduct—Jainism is largely at one with Brahminism and Buddhism. There are, however, a few differences in the application of the principle of not killing Jainism definition is - a religion of India originating in the sixth century b.c. and teaching liberation of the soul by right knowledge, right faith, and right conduct Jainism is one of the oldest religions in the world. The name comes from jiva (soul or life force but, capitalized, is also given as Spiritual Conqueror) as it maintains that all living things possess an immortal soul which has always and will always exist and that one's soul may be liberated from suffering by self-discipline in adhering to Jain tenets Jainism - Beliefs and Practices . Jainism is a very ancient world religion with a history of over 3000 years, which originated in the Indian subcontinent, like Hinduism and Buddhism
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube Jain definition, an adherent of Jainism. See more (The Jainist definition of karma differs from the Hindu and Buddhist meaning. To a follower of Jainism, all karma is bad. To Hindus and Buddhists, karma can result from a good or a bad deed.) Moksha (liberation from an endless succession of lives through reincarnation) is achieved by enlightenment, which can be attained only through asceticism
Oshwals are followers of the Jain faith, an ancient religion originating from India. Jainism was preached by 24 Tirthankaras (liberated souls) of which Lord Mahavir was the 24th Tirthankar and who propounded the current form of Jainism.. Mahavir. Lord Mahavir was born in 599 BCE in Bihar, India and was a prince 2. Jainist is not a word, Jain is... 4.2 M Jains in India; 10-12 M outside India - westerners! 3. Jains follow the teachings of 24 Jina (means conquerer) or Tirthankar (a human who achieves enlightenment (perfect knowledge), through asceticism). Parshwanath (heard of Parshwanath Builders?) was the 23rd, and Mahavir Jain was the 24th Jainism is an ancient Indian religion that preaches complete non-violence, peace, and kindness towards all creatures of nature. The followers of the religion take five main vows including non-violence, not lying, not stealing, chastity, and non-attachment Jainism is a religion whose ultimate goal is to rise through the spiritual ladder in successive incarnations to reach the state of godhood called Jina, one who has achieved perfect liberation from the bondage of Karma. 24 of the spirits that have risen to this level during this time period are identified and referred to as tirthankaras, the oldest (at a YEC-challenging 592 quintillion years. 'Jains celebrate the attaining of Moksha (Nirvana, or eternal bliss) by the founder of Jainism, Lord Mahavira.' 'Even today Jainism is practiced in many parts of India especially in the State of Gujarat and parts of Karnataka.
Look at other dictionaries: jainist — JAINÍST, Ă, jainişti, ste, adj., s.m. şi f. (Adept) al jainismului. [pr.: ja i ] - Din fr. jaïniste. Trimis de cata, 02. . No animal can be killed within its walls; not even insects should be harmed. Worshipers look at its thousands of statues through mirrors in order no to insult the gods and goddesses with a direct gaze
Jainism began in India around the 5th century. It promotes a life of non-violence and vegetarianism. Jains believe that the world was not created and will never cease to exist What is the definition of Jainist? What is the meaning of Jainist? How do you use Jainist in a sentence? What are synonyms for Jainist Though most of the world knows little about Jainism, God knows every Jain intimately, down to the number of hairs on their heads. He loves them so much that He sent His own Son, Jesus, to pay the penalty for their sins. Jainism originated around the 7th century BC during a time when many groups - including Buddhists - were breaking away from Hinduism
I noun a believer in Jainism • Derivationally related forms: ↑Jainism • Hypernyms: ↑disciple, ↑adherent • Member Holonyms: ↑Jainism I Jainism - Jainism - Early medieval developments (500-1100): There is archaeological evidence of the presence of Jain monks in southern India from before the Common Era, and the Digambara sect has had a significant presence in what is now the state of Karnataka for almost 2,000 years. The early medieval period was the time of Digambara Jainism's greatest flowering u/Jainist: Press J to jump to the feed. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. u/ Jainist. log in sign up. User account menu. Overview Posts Comments. Sort. new. new. hot top. Jainist commented on . Daily Discussion Thread 07/04/19. Jai|nịst 〈[dʒaı ] m.; Gen.: en, Pl.: en〉 = Jain
Definition of jainist in the Definitions.net dictionary. Meaning of jainist. What does jainist mean? Information and translations of jainist in the most comprehensive dictionary definitions resource on the web Your Jainist Temple stock images are ready. Download all free or royalty-free photos and vectors. Use them in commercial designs under lifetime, perpetual & worldwide. . The Stones, animals, clouds, or the sun are part of the universe, and therefore must be respected. For this reason, one of the pillars of Jainism is the concept of the Non-Violence (Ahimsa), a supreme principle Universal-Lexikon. Jainist. Erläuterung Übersetzun
jainist (a = adj.pert) jain - relating to or characteristic of Jainism; Jain gods Derived form noun jainist 1 For further exploring for jainist in Webster Dictionary Onlin The Jainist Diet. An important life choice. An important part of being human is finding the right balance between a busy fulfilling working life and a healthy home life. Such a balance is by no means always easy to achieve, and stressful working days can often lead to unplanned and unhealthy diets where the emphasis is laid on convenience rather than dietary need Anekantavada: Emphasises that the ultimate truth and reality is complex, and has multiple-aspects i.e theory of plurality. It refers to the simultaneous acceptance of multiple, diverse, even contradictory viewpoints. Syadvada: All judgments are conditional, holding good only in certain conditions, circumstances, or senses. Syadavada literally means the 'method of examining different. Your Jainist stock images are ready. Download all free or royalty-free photos and vectors. Use them in commercial designs under lifetime, perpetual & worldwide rights.
Jain nuns meditating In the time of Lord Mahavira, Jainism brought an enlightened attitude to Indian religious culture, forming the tradition as a religion of equality. As a religion of spiritual equality, Jainism devote itself to protecting the rights of all living creatures, accepting that women play a part in their paths to liberation Find the perfect jainist temple stock photo. Huge collection, amazing choice, 100+ million high quality, affordable RF and RM images. No need to register, buy now The Jainist. 66 likes. A collection of short stories by Ghanaian author, J.Y. Frimpon Find the perfect jainist stock photo. Huge collection, amazing choice, 100+ million high quality, affordable RF and RM images. No need to register, buy now
Jain Philosophy. Jainism is properly the name of one of the religious traditions that have their origin in the Indian subcontinent. According to its own traditions, the teachings of Jainism are eternal, and hence have no founder; however, the Jainism of this age can be traced back to Mahavira, a teacher of the sixth century BCE, a contemporary of the Buddha Jainist writings note Mahavira as a being who descended from the sky, lived without sin, and freed himself from earthly pleasures through his intense meditation. The main teachings of Jainism include the Five Great Vows Definition of Jainist in the Fine Dictionary. Meaning of Jainist with illustrations and photos. Pronunciation of Jainist and it's etymology. Related words - Jainist synonyms, antonyms, hypernyms and hyponyms. Example sentences containing Jainist
Although this seems confusing given a Jainist assertion that supernatural forces are nonexistent, it is part of a tradition tying him to a long cycle of thirthankara rebirths. In any case, Trishala Devi and King Siddhartha were Kshatriyas and pious Jains who had been taught by the 23rd thirthankara, Parswanatha Words That Rhyme with Jainist. Citation styles. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA) Dear Readers, today we are providing some important facts about Buddhism & Jainism which is a very important topic for the CTET and other teaching exams and you should not ignore it to score well in these exams. Buddhism and Jainism are two branches of the Samana tradition that still exists today.Buddhism and Jainism originated from the prevailing pessimism of the time and both the creeds had.
For Samvatsari Pratikaman Vidhi, You can visit the below site: Why Jains dont eat Potatoes, Onions, Garlic or any underground vegetables ? Why do Jains refrain from eating after daylight ? W The Jainist Theory of Karma is founded on simple law of cause and effect. No effect is without a cause. One has to bear, sooner or later, the consequences of one's actions; it is not possible to escape from them
Jainist translated between English and French including synonyms, definitions, and related words jainist. Jainist is a 7 letter word, which we have found to be the crossword answer to 0 clues. The word JAINIST has been seen on 0 crossword clues While Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism see each other as sister concerns, their individual destiny and developments have been different JAINISM. JAINISM.Jainism is a South Asian religious tradition which takes its name from those (Sanskrit, Jaina; English, Jain) who follow the teachings and example of authoritative teachers called Jina (conqueror). These teachers are also called makers of the ford (Sanskrit, t ī rtha ṃ kara), signifying their construction of a community of monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen that provides.
Jainist translated from English to French including synonyms, definitions, and related words We found 15 dictionaries with English definitions that include the word jainist: Click on the first link on a line below to go directly to a page where jainist is defined. General (14 matching dictionaries) Jainist: Oxford Dictionaries [home, info] Jainist: Collins English Dictionary [home, info Vi skulle vilja visa dig en beskrivning här men webbplatsen du tittar på tillåter inte detta
Jainist doctrine holds that Tirthankaras cannot respond to such worship, but that veneration of the image can function as a meditative aid. (open, save, copy Jainist (disciple) definition: a believer in Jainism. Type of: disciple. Member of: Jainism. +Audio pronunciation +Reference
Jain architecture is an offshoot of Hindu and Bhuddhist styles. In the intial years, many Jain temples were made adjoining the Bhuddhist temples following the Bhuddhist rock-cut architecture jainist. This is not a dictionary! - Search for jainist in The Danish Dictionary February 28. 2016 from wordnet.princeton.edu Jainist — noun — english . a believer in Jainis
39 Jainist stock photos on GoGraph. Download high resolution Jainist stock photos from our collection of 41,940,205 stock photos We've got 0 rhyming words for jainist » What rhymes with jainist? This page is about the various possible words that rhymes or sounds like jainist.Use it for writing poetry, composing lyrics for your song or coming up with rap verses
Translation of Jainist in German. Translate Jainist in German online and download now our free translator to use any time at no charge 5 Great Vows: The main habit that Jains practice is the chanting of the Five Great Vows, or the Mahavratas. These vows are: Non-violence - Ahimsa Truth - Satya Non-stealing - Achaurya or Asteya. | https://svar-doivent.com/dj9p98868p/jainist.html |
Rudra Vaisnava Sampradaya:
Lord Krishna speaks this verse with a view to instruct how the preceding practice is based on the sacred syllable OM which is the personal, transcendental sound vibration of the Supreme Lord. The utilisation of the sacred OM mantra is a more direct means than the mere practice of directing the life force to the proper place in the physical body. The word aksaram means imperishable. The imperishable condition that adepts of Vedic scriptures describe as in the Brihadaranya Upanisad III.VIII.IX which states: Under the mighty control of this imperishable the sun and the moon are held coursing in their positions. Which aspirants is Lord Krishna referring to? Those aspirants who are striving, who have eradicated all desires, who have dedicated themselves to celibacy and the abstinent life with their spiritual preceptor. These aspirants are qualified to attain the ultimate goal. Lord Krishna speaks the word sangrahena or in summary meaning He will explain these things in brief revealing how to attain them.
Brahma Vaisnava Sampradaya:
The ultimate goal to be attained is explained by Lord Krishna in this verse. Since the aspirants attain that consciousness it is known as padam or state and once that state is reached it is designated by the word visanti meaning to enter. The Narada Purana states: That the ultimate goal to be attained is Lord Krishna is confirmed in the Vedic scriptures. Since that consciousness is achieved by the ascetics, it is known as padam.
Now begins the summation.
Brahmacarya or voluntary celibacy for spiritual purposes denotes attuning one's consciousness in full devotion to the Supreme Lord excluding everything else.
Sri Vaisnava Sampradaya:
Now Lord Krishna explains the other padam or state which is for those aspirants who wish for atma-tattva or realisation of the soul and the secure and permanent destination of moksa or liberation from material existence. This state is aksaram or imperishable. In the Brihadaranya Upanisad V.VIII.VIII beginning sahovacha-itad vai tad explains that this state is not material. It is that which the ascetics of the worlds attempt to gain access to. It is that ardent longing for which men strictly follow the vow of brahmacaryam or voluntary celibacy. Padam is that which one mentally proceeds to achieve the goal of their endeavours. Padyate is non- different from gamyate meaning that which is followed being the method adopted by the mind. The purport is that Lord Krishna is giving a brief description of the methodology by which an aspirant for atma-tattva and moksa must meditate on Him to achieve the ultimate goal they have envisioned. Meditation upon Lord Krishna in His aspect of aksaram or imperishable is described in the Brihadaranya Upanisad V.VIII.VIII-XI.
Kumara Vaisnava Sampradaya:
After presenting the normal practice of meditation Lord Krishna introduces the topmost method designated by the word aksaram meaning imperishable which He promises to reveal in summary how to attain this imperishable, ultimate goal and that once it is attained the Supreme Lord who is saccidananda or the embodiment of eternal truth, knowledge and bliss which the Vaisnavas and Brahmins who are knowers of the Vedic scriptures describe as imperishable and indestructible. The Brhadaranyaka III.IX.VIII states:To this state the Brahmins attribute the term indestructible to that which is not material and that which is not subtle, etc. This state is where determined ascetics free from passion and desire for sense objects strive to enter. This is the state where the enlightened ascetics perceive the experience of the atma or soul as omnipresent and omniscient. Their consciousness resides in the highest substratum and they become totally detached from contact with three dimensional material nature and are incapable as such of performing any action that is in separation from the Supreme Lord. They becoming His own, remain in this state adhering to Him, taking full shelter in Him, desiring to know that for which the brahmacarya's or voluntary celibates remain firm in their vow. | http://bhagavad-gita.org/Gita/verse-08-11.html |
Jainism is basically a non-theistic ancient religion founded in India. It teaches non-violence, and respect for all living beings. Jains believe that salvation can be attained by perfection through successive lives. There are a small number of Jains who fast to the death. This practice is called santhara, and can be viewed as Jain extremism. Such devotees give up their physical existence, so they do not cause suffering to other beings. Though, it is not an illegal practice in India there are some controversies around it.
Jainism preaches that all souls are identical. Different organisms are bound by different karmas, so you should treat every living being with respect and kindness, and do not harm them. According to Jainism, to attain nirvana, one needs to liberate himself of bad karma, and remove all good karma as well. To explore the Jain philosophy, you can read books written by Subhadra Muni Ji Maharaj.
Jains go barefoot, carrying a small broom, so they do not crush any insects in their way. Many Jains put on a piece of cloth (muhapattis) over their mouth, so to avoid disturbing surrounding microorganisms in the air through the warm air of their breath.
Jain literature
As per the Digambara sect of Jainism there is no more Jain canon. The council of Pataliputra was held to accumulate the most significant Jain literature, but unfortunately it had failed. Previously Jain teachings or philosophy had been passed on through oral tradition. If you are interested in knowing more about Jainism, you can consider listening to the pravachan of Mahashraman Ji Maharaj. | https://www.parastvchannel.com/blog_detail/17 |
The Sravaka Sangha and the Sadhu Sangha are interdependent. The Sravakas look to all of the needs of the sadhus, while the Sadhu via his discourses shows the right path to the Sravakas. In case of difference of opinion between the two, the Sadhu Sangha voluntarily accepts the control of the Sravaka Sangha. In the same way the Sravaka Sangha too readily accepts the control of the Sadhu Sangha. Both of them thus with mutual interdependence and co-operation, work together for the welfare of the community.
Rules in Jain Sangha
In Jainism, there are rules prescribed for the Sadhus and Sravakas. Both of them are required to follow the same code of conduct. The Sadhus need to observe them rigorously whereas, the householders observe them partially. This is because the householders have to shoulder many socio-economic responsibilities.
The Sangha of Lord Mahavira came up with some very much needed reforms. It framed rules about life, mutual behavior and the duties that needed to be carried out by one and all.
The Vratas or vows prescribed for the sadhus are called ‘Mahavratas’ or great vows which need to be meticulously and perfectly practiced by the monks and nuns, while those t be observed by the house-holder, are called ‘Anuvratas’ or small or partial vows.
Duties of Sadhus and Sadhvis
The duties of Sadhus and Sadhvis aims to attain liberation form cycles of birth and death but, they are also given the additional duty to lead Sravakas on the path of salvation.
Duties of Sravakas and Sravikas
Mutual consent and co-ordination of ascetics and lay people are important for smooth functioning of Jain community. The several duties of Sravakas and Sravikas are as follows:
1. Attempt for Salvation - listen to sermons of ascetics, understand, discuss and clear doubts if any and follow the path of liberation.
2. Responsibility towards Sadhus - Sravaka and Sravika are the mother and father of Sadhus. On taking Diksha, Sadhu leaves family, home, town and relatives. On their journey, the Sravakas have responsibility to ensure prescribed space, food and water and clothes for them. They shall accompany them in Gochari and Vihar. Over and above this Sravaka is supposed to provide best medical care for them.
3. Watch the conduct of Sadhus - Sravakas and Sravikas have been entrusted with the task of watching and warning Sadhus for their conduct as specified by scripture. They need to keep distance from money, opposite sex and popular ways of fame and unwarranted other philosophies, astrology and fund raising activities.
4. Care of Religious Places - Sravakas in co-ordination with Sadhus take care of religious places.
According to the Jain texts, the sangha will be maintained till the very end of the present time. With the end of the sangha, the dharma (religion) will also end. | https://www.indianetzone.com/80/jain_sangha.htm |
Vardhamana (meaning "prosperous") was an important Indian religious figure who became the leader of a sect of wanderer ascetics (Sramanas), one of the many sects which existed at that time in India. He is best known under the name of Mahavira, which is not an actual name, but a title that means “Great Victor”. The teachings of Vardhamana are considered to be the core of Jainism, one of the major early sects of Sramanas in India, which later evolved into an important religious tradition.
Even though Vardhamana is generally credited as the founder of Jainism, he appears to have built his doctrine upon the ideas of Parsva, a teacher who lived roughly two centuries before the Buddha. So rather than its founder, Vardhamana is the reformer of Jainism: his input and legacy were so strong that his figure as an authoritative source overshadowed all earlier figures in Jainism.
Buddhist texts normally refer to Vardhamana as Nirgrantha Jnatiputra and sometimes as Nataputta, as he is usually called in Buddhist Pali sources. The term Nirgrantha is a Sanskrit word which means “Free from all ties”, and it is normally used in Sanskrit Buddhist texts to refer to the followers of Vardhamana.
At the time when Vardhamana lived, Northern India was composed of numerous small independent states competing for resources. This was a time when the traditional religious order in India was being challenged by a number of new philosophical and religious schools that were not in line with the orthodox Indian religion. All components of the Vedic religion, along with its ever growing complexity of rituals and sacrificial fees, were being questioned. The reputation and authority of the traditional priestly class were being undermined by new philosophical schools, which led to a temporary religious anarchy. By the time Vardhamana was born, the intellectual decay of Brahmanism had begotten a strong skepticism and moral vacuum which was filled by new religious and philosophical views.
Vardhamana’s principles of non-violence and strict vegetarianism were adopted by the Jains and became their core convictions.
Around the 7th century BCE, a culture of world-renunciation developed in India. This culture is the common origin of many Indian religions including Jainism and Buddhism. Some groups who rejected the conventional teachings of the Vedic tradition became mendicant ascetics: they renounced conventional society. These renunciants were known as Sramanas. Some of these mendicants were merely vagabonds similar to the type we still meet in India today, while others were organized under a recognized leader. Vardhamana was a recognized teacher who led one of these Sramanas groups.
Reliable documented information about Vardhamana is very scarce. Details about his life can be pieced together by looking into the early Jain and Buddhist sources, which is a challenging job for historians given the fact that most of these accounts are filled with myth and legendary stories that slowly but surely changed the initial attributes of Vardhamana’s biography.
In Pali Buddhist sources and in some Jain sources, Vardhamana is presented as the Buddha’s senior contemporary, which is one of the reasons why the dates of Vardhamana’s life relies on synchronicity with the dates of the Buddha. Modern scholarly consensus dates the birth of the Buddha in a period that goes from 490 to 450 BCE. The current accepted date for Vardhamana’s death is around 467 BCE. All accounts agree that Vardhamana was 72 years old at the time of his death, which would make around 539 BCE an acceptable estimation for Vardhamana’s birth. Jain tradition claims that Vardhamana was born in 599 BCE, which is not supported by historical evidence.
Vardhamana was born into the Kshatriya caste (the warrior rulers caste). He also belonged to the Jnatrika clan: His father was Siddhartha of Kundagraam and his mother was named Trishala. The place where Vardhamana was born is also a debated topic. Jain sources claim that he was born in the kingdom of Kundagraam, but the exact location of this place remains unknown. Many modern cities have been suggested as the possible birthplace of Vardhamana, but none of them is free of controversy.
The background of the Jnatrika clan deserves some comments. Most of what we know about the Jnatrikas is through Jain and Buddhist sources, where we read that the father of Vardhamana, Siddhartha of Kundagraam, was the king of Kundagraam. However, there are good reasons to believe he was not actually a king. During that time, most Indian states were organized as aristocratic tribal republican systems, which means that Vardhamana’s parents were surely the heads of aristocratic ruling clans, not monarchs.
During the first stage of his life, Vardhamana lived a life of luxury. From an early age, he became interested in spiritual matters and soon became dissatisfied with the life that surrounded him: the increasing inequalities between rich and poor, warfare, and social struggle. Around the age of 30 his parents died, so he gave up his kingdom, his royal privileges along with his possessions, and even his family, and for the next twelve years he wandered around northern India as an ascetic, rejecting physical pleasures and engaged in the pursuit of spiritual progress. Fasting and meditation were some of the key methods used by Vardhamana.
It is believed that at the age of 42, Vardhamana gained full enlightenment. The state attained by Vardhamana is known as kevala, a term which the Jain traditions understands as omniscience or supreme knowledge. From this moment onwards he became known as Mahavira. After this event, he became the head of a group of Sramanas and taught others about what he had learned. Vardhamana's great insight was to substitute the authority of old religious doctrines with logical experience and a more rational approach. In other words, he introduced important changes in Jainism by framing traditional Jain doctrines in a more logical fashion.
Regarding the idea of the soul, Vardhamana introduced a small change that made a significant difference in his approach to life and the shaping of the Jain code of conduct. It was widely accepted by Indian society that animals, humans, and even the gods had souls, but Vardhamana went even further, claiming that nearly everything is alive. Everything is made up, according to his view, of Jiva or “living intelligence”, trapped in matter. Living beings were divided into different categories.
Beings with five senses, including humans and major animals.
Beings with four senses, they cannot hear (wasps, flies, butterflies).
Beings with three senses, they can neither hear nor see (ants, moths, fleas).
Beings with two senses, they can only taste and touch (worms, leeches, shellfish).
Beings with only one sense, they only have the sense of touch (plants, microscopic organisms, wind, fire, water).
These ideas became the basis of the most important component of the ethical code of Jainism, named ahimsa or “non-violence”: Violence against any living creature in any form is strictly forbidden. Because Jains believed that everything was alive, non-violence was taken very seriously, to the point that the followers of Vardhamana veiled their mouths for fear of inhaling and killing the organisms of the air. They also screened their lamps to protect insects from the flame and swept the ground before walking in order to avoid the risk of accidentally trampling out any life. Some sources claim that Vardhamana would allow mosquitoes to feed on his blood, and while other ascetics would carry sticks with them to scare off the dogs, Vardhamana would allow the dogs to bite him. Even vegetables were considered to be alive, along with inanimate objects, such as rocks and fire. For this reason, the most strict Jains would only eat vegetables and grains of rice that were already lying on the floor, no longer attached to their source, and would never cut up a plant to obtain their food.
All these descriptions are accurate and incorrect at the same time. The point of the parable is clear: all points of view are partial and there is no such thing as an absolute truth when it comes to human knowledge. All human notions are imperfect, incomplete, tentative. This parable illustrates the fundamental doctrine of Jain epistemology known as Anekantavada, which maintains that no single point of view or human notion can be regarded as the complete truth. This parable is also mentioned in other traditions as well, such as Buddhism and Sufism, but it is most strongly linked to Jainism as it is perfectly consistent with the Jain epistemological approach.
No deity was recognized by Vardhamana: The only road to liberation was people’s own personal effort. This is the reason why Jainism is considered an atheist religion. Vardhamana emphasized the importance of individual actions.
Vardhamana’s popularity grew significantly and the sources report thousands of members in his community. At the age of 72, consistent with his ideas, he took the austerity ideal to the extreme by gradually reducing his daily food intake and finally starved himself to death. Fourteen thousand followers are reported by the time Vardhamana passed away.
The followers of Vardhamana’s teachings attempted to demonstrate that what their master taught was nothing new, but rather the rediscovery of an eternal truth. This was a very widespread strategy in many religious communities at that time: they wanted to challenge some rival schools, especially the Vedic tradition, which supported their authority by claiming to have originated a long time ago. Therefore, the Jains claimed that Vardhamana was the 24th and the last teacher in a long line of teachers known as Tirthankars or “ford-makers”. Jains see the Tirthankars as people who help others to cross the ocean of ordinary worldly life and achieve a higher spiritual state free of misery and pain.
The biographies of all 24 Tirthankars share the same general outline: They were all born into royal families, renounced the world, engaged in asceticism and meditation, achieved enlightenment and taught the Jain doctrine, retired to a mountain when they felt death approaching, and died after a final meditation, never to be reborn again.
Different Jain texts present many previous reincarnations of Vardhamana. There are also accounts describing the miraculous nature of Vardhamana’s conception and also a number of many different dreams that Trishala (Vardhamana’s mother) had before his birth. These dreams were interpreted by the priests, who anticipated the fate of Vardhamana: he would become either a political leader or a Tirthankar. After his enlightenment, Vardhamana never slept again, never blinked his eyes again, his fingernails and hair stopped growing, and his body cast no shadow.
The legacy of Vardhamana is hard to distinguish from the legacy of Jainism. Vardhamana’s emphasis on non-violence and strict vegetarianism has had an enormous influence in Indian culture. These ideas, whether original or not to Vardhamana, were adopted by Jains as a fundamental way of living and became their core convictions. Even today, Jains still take great care to avoid unnecessary harm to all creatures.
Many values in Hinduism and Buddhism are the result of Jain cultural influence: Non-violence was adopted by many sects of Hinduism and also by Buddhists, and there were two important monarchs in India, Ashoka and Akbar, who were fervent proponents of the principle of non-violence.
Vardhamana’s belief on the transformative power of human effort, self-help, and his philosophy of non-violence still inspire millions of men and women today all over the world. During the 20th century CE, Mahatma Gandhi took the advice of a Jain teacher named Raichandbhai Mehta and adopted the principle of non-violence. The resistance to British rule in India might have been different, perhaps bloodier, without the Jain influence.
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Durant, W. Our Oriental Heritage Part 1. (Simon & Schuster, 1963).
Paniker, A. Jainism: History, Society, Philosophy and Practice. (Motilal Banarsidass, 2010).
Pruthi, R. Jainism and Indian Civilization. (Discovery Publishing House, 2004).
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Wilkinson, P. Eyewitness Companions. (Dorling Kindersley Publishers Ltd, 2008).
Violatti, Cristian. "Vardhamana." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Last modified February 03, 2013. https://www.ancient.eu/Vardhamana/.
Violatti, Cristian. "Vardhamana." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia, 03 Feb 2013. Web. 24 Apr 2019.
Written by Cristian Violatti, published on 03 February 2013 under the following license: Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.
Traditional dating of the life of Vardhamana, according to Jain tradition.
Life of Mahavira according to modern scholar consensus. | https://www.ancient.eu/Vardhamana/ |
This section (Book: pp. 49 - 69) was written by Surendra Bothra, Jaipur, India, and is used with his kind permission.
Anukampā, compassion or grace, as it is defined in the Digambara Sūdha Sagar Hindi-English Jain Dictionary , means "If anyone is moved at the sight of the hungry and the miserable offers relief to him, out of pity, then such behavior of that person is love or charity." Nevertheless, compassion can, and has been, interpreted in two different aspects: the passive and the active. It has sometimes been said by outsiders, and even by some sects within Jainism, that ahimsā, non-violence, and anukampā, compassion, are to be interpreted in a passive way only. Such people will not take initiatives to help those who are suffering; they will not actively lend a helping hand to those in need. If this is practiced by common people, including monks and ascetics, it seems to point to a dogmatic interpretation (perhaps born of hidden arrogance) of the highest aspect of compassion, but without really understanding the teaching. Only when one has really acquired the wisdom of the Great Souls is genuine judgment possible. The teaching is this: Though the omniscient liberated souls are filled with compassion, they are not moved by it. Though they see the suffering of all beings, they have done the only thing which is appropriate: to preach the universal doctrines of self-liberation and karma, which includes the path of shedding of karmas with the aim of reaching ultimate freedom. As this doctrine is given to everyone, the choice is also for everyone. Great saints and monks continuously remind the people of this path. Interfering with the karma of someone who deviates from the innate harmony of his own nature is like numbing his own hand before he puts it in the fire: he will never learn that fire is hot and dangerous, because he lacks the pain which nature has given to sentient beings to teach and warn them. The highest ascetics would no doubt apply this interpretation of compassion and nonviolence to themselves, and when in particular cases, they judge it the best, to others.
For the well-being of the confused creatures in the world that most of us are, the layman will follow his natural feeling and emotion of active compassion. The greatest saints, including Mahāvīra himself, have proclaimed the necessity of active compassion, and this is what made Jains (together with Mahayana Buddhists) the greatest practical benefactors in the world. In Christianity the core teaching is also love, compassion and helpfulness for one's neighbor, and they practice it worldwide and on a large scale; but the first and highest meaning of compassion seems almost completely lost among them. The result is that in the modern world the "right to suffer" for those who choose that as their noble individual path, is almost denied.
Both aspects of compassion are clearly explained by Lord Mahāvīra himself, 2550 years ago, when he defines ahimsā thus:
"The saint with true vision conceives compassion for all the world, in east and west and south and north, and so, knowing the Sacred Lore, he will preach and spread and proclaim it, among those who strive, and those who don't, among all those who are willing to hear him... He should do no injury to himself or anyone else... A great sage becomes a refuge for injured creatures like an island which the waters can not overwhelm."
- Sūtra (1.6.5)
In the authoritative Tattvārtha Sūtra we find: "One should cultivate the feelings of fraternity toward all beings, pleasantness towards the proficient, compassion toward the destitute and equanimity toward the disrespectful disbelievers." Of course the destitute will not feel warmth in their heart when passive compassion is practiced on them: they will feel left alone, desperate and disappointed, and they may as a reaction only harden their character, causing even unpleasant karma for themselves (Ts 7.6).
And elsewhere: "Be ready to help and provide refuge to the destitute and helpless."
- Sthānānga Sūtra, Ch. VIII
And perhaps the clearest statement supporting active compassion is found in a dialogue between Mahāvīra himself and his main disciple, Gandhara Gautama, in the Avaśyaka Sūtra:
Bhagavan! Who is to be commended, the one who serves you or the one who serves the ailing and distressed?
Gautama! He who serves the ailing and distressed is to be commended.
Bhagavan! Why is this so?
Gautama! He who serves the ailing and the distressed, serves me. He who serves me serves the ailing and the distressed. This is the pith and substance of the doctrine of the arhats. Therefore, O Gautama! I say: He who serves the ailing and the distressed, serves and worships me.... Therefore, one who serves is to be commended.
- Avaśyaka Sūtra, leaves 661-662
A book, available in Hindi only written by K.L. Lodha, called Sakaratmak Ahimsā; Shastriya aur Charitrik Aadhar , is entirely dedicated to this topic of the meaning of practical compassion in authoritative Jain literature, both Śvetambara and Digambara. The following quotes are taken from this book:
A person when moved by seeing a thirsty, hungry or distressed being acts with sympathy towards him; this is his compassion.
- Panchāstikāya by Kundakundāchārya (137)
Compassion is the intrinsic nature of soul (living being), therefore there is an inherent contradiction in accepting it to have been caused by karma.
- Dhavala Tika by Vīrasena (13/362)
Dharma (religious duty) is that which has been refined by compassion.
Bodha Pahuda by Kundakundāchārya (25)
We have thus seen that the idea that Jainism is negative and passive is completely erroneous, and that the opposite is more than clear if we observe the daily practice of the Jain community. | http://www.herenow4u.net/?id=65952 |
The practice of meditation in India dates back to the time of Lord Rishabh, who was the propounder and the first Tirthankara (ford founder) of Jainism. Evidences in the Agamas (Jain Scripture) reveal that Bahubali, son of Lord Rishabh attained salvation after he practiced uninterrupted Kayotsarg, a form of meditation for twelve months. It is believed that he was so immobile that even creepers grew around his body.
Chakravarti Bharat, brother of Bahubali also attained seamless knowledge through contemplation and meditation. His dedication and perfection in the art of contemplation and meditation led him to become the omniscient - all knowing'.
Similarly, we know that the entire penance (sadhana) of the twenty-fourth, the last tirthankar of Jainism, Lord Mahavir, revolved around meditation (dhyan) and relaxation (kayotsarg). Hundreds of his ascetics were clairvoyants, telepathists, and omniscients, who had achieved special powers through the practice of meditation. Successive Acharyas (head of the sect) and the current ascetics of Jain community still continue to live with the same tradition.
The roots of the Jain tradition of meditation are found in the Jain Agamas. In the 28th chapter of Uttaradhyayan, we find a brief and systematic description of the path to salvation. References of this kind of penance can also be found in 32nd chapter of Uttaradhyayan. Findings in the ancient literature Ayaro, illustrates the process of Jain-sadhana in detail. Meditation and Asanas are also expounded in certain chapters of Sutrakritang, Bhagwati, and Sthananga. The description of penance is given in Aupapatika Sutra.
The later Jain Acharyas also contributed significantly towards the development of the practice of meditation. Acharya Kunda Kunda (1st Cent., A.D.), wrote Samayasara, Pravacanasara and introduced a new way to meditate. Acharya Umaswati (2nd and 3rd Cent., A.D.) edited Tattvartha Sutra in which he expounded the path to salvation through meditation. Acharya Bhadrabahu had practiced Mahaprana Meditation for twelve years. Acharya Haribhadrasuri added a new chapter to Jain-yoga in the 8th Cent., A.D. He introduced a new method and compared Jain-yoga with other methods. He wrote several books including Yoga Bindu, Yoga Drishti Samuccaya, Yoga Shatak, and Yoga Vinshika. In the 12th Cent., A.D. Acharya Hemchandra wrote Yoga Shastra. The most recent contributions of Acharya Tulsi and Acharya Mahapragya (21st Cent. A.D.) 9th and 10th Acharyas of the Jain Terapanth sect, respectively include extensive review and revival of the ancient tradition of meditation known as Preksha Meditation.
Foundation
In the middle age, the practice of meditation was overlooked in Jain tradition.
Acharya Tulsi was the pioneer to lay the foundation for the revival of this ancient art of meditation. Under his supervision, research was also initiated on the ancient Agam texts. The scholastic insight into the Uttaradhyayan Agam and other scriptures reveal the facts related to the Swetambar and Digambar (two major Jain-sects) traditions. During the course of the study, diverse elements of meditation also came into light. Acharya Tulsi directed Muni Nathmal (present Acharya Mahapragya) to rediscover this ancient art of meditation and bring it back to life in the context of Jainism. Subsequently, during the Udaipur Chaturmas in 1948 (Vikram Sam vat 2019), work in this direction was initiated. The fundamental elements of meditation were sorted out, experimented, and then put back into practice. Twenty years of dedicated efforts of Acharya Mahapragya finally bore fruits and the scientific path of Preksha Meditation along with spiritual vision came into existence at Jaipur in 1975. | https://www.herenow4u.net/?id=70273 |
In Jain tradition the twenty-four tirthankaras are born in each half of the cycle of time. We are currently in the regressive half-cycle (avasarpini), when it is steadily becoming more and more degenerative. Risabhdeva, the first tirthankara of the present half cycle, lived during the latter part of the third phase of this half-cycle, when life was on balance rather happier than unhappy. His successors, the other twenty-three tirthankaras, lived during the fourth phase when unhappiness prevailed but did not completely exclude happiness. The twenty-four tirthankaras and their iconographic symbols are set out in table 2.1.
Table 2.1 The twenty-four tirthankaras and their iconographic symbols
[Note: the suffix Nath(a) or swami meaning lord or protector is commonly added to many of these names.]
The succession was not continuous: there were long periods between one tirthankara's leaving the world and another's appearance to teach the faith to the people. The Jain scriptures relate the extraordinary attributes, dimensions and longevity of these teachers. We are on the verge of history, albeit still shadowy, with the twentieth tirthankara Munisuvrata, said to have been a contemporary of Rama, the hero of the great epic, the Ramayana, but who is also prominent in the Jain biographical literature, the Padmapuraana. Neminatha, the twenty-second, is described as a cousin of Lord Krishna who figures so prominently in the Mahabharata, and if Krishna is accepted as an historical figure, then we can probably argue that Neminatha was also historical. With Parsvanatha there is little doubt as to his historicity: according to the traditional dating he lived and preached in the eighth century BCE, 250 years before Mahavira and, of course, there can be no serious challenge to the historical existence of Mahavira. In this chapter we shall look briefly at the lives and teachings of the last two tirthankaras before Mahavira, Neminatha and Parsvanatha. The life of Mahavira, who was certainly not the founder of Jainism, though he can have some claim to be considered as the founder of the modern Jain faith, as we know it today, will be considered in the next chapter.
Plate 2.1
Image of Shantinatha at Jain Centre Leicester, England.
(Note the iconographic symbol of a deer)
It is well to be aware that scholars in comparison with the Brahmanical 'orthodoxy' have relatively neglected the non-Vedic (sramana) schools of thought. This is hardly surprising, given the numerical preponderance of adherents to Hinduism in the Indian sub-continent and the multiplicity of philosophical and religious traditions embraced within that indefinable term. The sramanic schools, represented particularly by Jainism and Buddhism, have tended to be regarded as a revolt against the orthodox Vedic tradition with its sacrifices and rituals, rather than as independent traditions. There has been little study of the lesser sramana currents of thought. Buddhism has certainly had its full share of attention but a great deal of its history has lain outside the geographical bounds of India, Jainism has produced over the centuries many distinguished scholars but until fairly recently the Jain tradition was introspective and little known outside a limited circle.
Neminatha
Neminatha (or Aristanemi) is referred to on four occasions in the Rigveda (vol 1: 1,14,89,6) as well as in the Samaveda. In the Yajurveda (Radhkrishnan 1929-31: vol. 1 pp 287) three tirthankaras are noted: Risabhdeva, Ajitanatha and Neminatha. Dharmananda Kosambi maintains that Angirasa Ghora who appears in the Candogya Upanishad was Neminatha (Bhagvati Sutra: 1, 1 quoted by Kalghatgi 1988: pp 55). Indeed the path to self-realization, which Angirasa Ghora taught to Krishna, bears a striking resemblance to the five great vows, which Mahavira was later to expound. Angirasa Ghora spoke of honesty, asceticism, charity, non-violence and truthfulness. In the Mahabharata Neminatha is described as teaching the way to liberation (moksa) to King Sagara (Mahabharata: Santi Parva 288, 5, 6). The dating of the different parts of the Mahabharata is very uncertain in spite of modern scholarship, and since moksa was a relatively late concept in orthodox Brahminical thought, this must represent an early example of sramanic teaching. The identification of Neminatha with a Scandinavian or Chinese deity, propounded by some, may be regarded as fanciful (Annuals, Bhandarkar Institute date n.a: Vol. 23 p. 122). Leaving aside Jain tradition, the evidence for the historical existence of Neminatha may be regarded unproven, though there is no reason to reject him as an historical figure, but the traditional accounts of his life are both interesting and inspiring.
Neminatha's birthplace is given as Shauripur (Uttaradhyayana Sutra: 22.3-4), near the modern city of Agra in Uttar Pradesh and at that time the capital of a small state where two princes ruled, Vasudeva and Samudravijaya; Krishna was the son of Vasudeva, and Neminatha was the son of Samudravijaya. Neminatha grew up as a handsome, dark complexioned, strong youth, endowed with unprecedented knowledge. Krishna loved and respected him. There are tales of his great strength even as a boy, his spinning of the great cakra, the discus, on the tip of his finger, or, also from the armoury, swinging with ease a mighty club. He could also blow the conch-shell bugle so loudly that it frightened the people of the whole town.
The story of Neminatha, as given in numerous Jain works, is seen as one of the most inspiring examples of non-violence (ahimsaa). When he was old enough Neminatha was betrothed to a beautiful princess, Rajamati, the daughter of King Ugrasena of Bhojakula. A great wedding feast was arranged and the sheep that were to be slaughtered and cooked for the meal were brought in and penned up ready for the butchers.
Neminatha set off in great style for the wedding, splendidly clothed and bejewelled, mounted on a magnificent elephant and surrounded by a huge escort and many musicians. On the way he saw the animals in their pens, frightened and miserable, bleating piteously. He asked what was the meaning of this and was told that these were to form the wedding meal for all those present. (Uttarapurana: 71.163, and Kalpa Sutra, 1971: p.251). Neminatha was touched with sadness at this news that the feast would be provided for the guests at the cost of the lives of all those innocent creatures, and that he himself, as the person for whom the celebration was to take place, must take responsibility for the slaughter. He ordered the sheep to be released and, profoundly affected by the incident, he decided to renounce the world and seek salvation as a homeless mendicant ascetic. Not surprisingly, his bride-to-be was very upset but after a period of grieving she realized the value of Neminatha's renunciation and she too followed his example and renounced the world.
After taking this decision, Neminatha discarded his jewels, gave them to a servant and left his possessions to be distributed to the poor. He left his hometown and, once more in a great procession, though different from his marriage, went to a park or garden called Revatika. There he gave up his princely clothes, plucked out his hair, and took the vow of renunciation. His cousin Krishna was full of admiration. (Uttaradhyana Sutra 25, 26, 27). It was after a period of fifty-four days and nights, indifferent to worldly things and deeply meditating, that he attained supreme knowledge, omniscience (kevala jnaana), on the day of the new moon, the first day of the bright half of the month of Asvin. Then he preached the way of salvation to a great assembly of people, and thousands of devotees including royalty, joined him and took the vow of renunciation.
Krishna especially celebrated Neminatha's achievement of omniscience with great dignity and splendour. Later on, Krishna's chief queen, Padmavati, also took the vow of renunciation and his other wives took lesser vows of self-restraint. Krishna went to Neminatha and asked him why he himself could not make up his mind to take the path of renunciation. 'O Krishna,' he replied, 'you are in the world and your services are needed by society so you cannot become a ascetic'. Nevertheless, he predicted from his omniscient knowledge that in a future age, Krishna's soul would be reborn as the eleventh tirthankara, in a city called Shatadvara, and his name will be Amama (Shah J 1990: 3.407, Jaini P. 1979: p.305). It is believed that at the time of the destruction of Krishna's capital city Dwaraka Neminatha was in southern India and after the death of Krishna, his kinsmen the Pandavas, who played a prominent role in the famous epic Mahabharata, realised the impermanent nature of things of the world and took the vows of renunciation. In their ascetic lives, they practised severe austerities and ultimately achieved liberation on the Satrunjay hill (Shah J 1990: 3.418-420). Their statues have been erected on Satrunjay Hill.
After his enlightenment, Neminatha travelled in Saurastra, central, sothern and northern India preaching the principles of non-violence (ahimsaa) and non-attachment to material things (aparigraha). In the course of time (after a phenomenally long life, according to the old traditions) Neminatha finally, on the eighth day of the bright half of the month of Asadha, passed away. As the Kalpa Sutra records, he passed beyond the bounds of karma, was uplifted after having left the world, cut asunder the ties of birth, old age and death, and became perfected and liberated; this occurred on Mount Girnar in Saurastra (Gujarat), a place of pilgrimage to this present day.
Parsvanatha
If the life of Neminatha lies on an uncertain boundary between legend and history, there is no reason to doubt the historical existence of Parsvanatha, the twenty-third tirthankara of the present age. As he is said to have lived some 250 years before Mahavira, taking the traditional dates of Mahavira's life would place Parsvanatha in the ninth to eighth centuries BCE. He preached a fourfold code of conduct involving non-violence, truthfulness, and abstinence from taking what is not given and, fourthly, non-attachment to material possessions. It is said that this fourfold code was enjoined by all the twentytwo tirthankaras after Risabhdeva, with only Risabhdeva and Mahavira including the fifth vow, chastity, among the great vows. Other sources, however, attribute the fivefold code to Mahavira alone. (It has been argued that chastity was simply implicit in the other four vows and did not need separate mention). The last sermon delivered by Mahavira (Uttaraadhyayana Sutra), has an interesting discussion between Kesi, a follower of the way of Parsvanatha, and Indrabhuti Gautam, the chief disciple of Mahavira, in which Gautam dispels the doubts of Kesi on the articles of faith, including the fivefold vows, which mark the way preached by the twenty-fourth tirthankara. There is a reference to the 'fourfold rule' in the Tripitaka, the Buddhist collection of scriptures. The Buddhist scholar, Dharmananda Kosambi states in 'Parsvanathaka Caturyama Dharma' that the Buddha accepted the practices of Parsvanatha tradition for some time (Kosambi date n.a: pp.28-31). Mrs Rys Davids in Gautama the Man (1928: pp.22-25) confirms that the Buddha adopted Jain practices of austerity in the early days of his search for the truth. The Jain tradition of non-violence, exemplified in the first rule of Parsvanatha's code of conduct, may have been the basis for the revulsion at the practice of sacrifices, which appears in the Upanishads.
Parsvanatha, the twenty-third tirthankara, was born in Varanasi (Benares) traditionally in 877 BCE and died at the age of 100. His father, Asvasena, was the ruler of the Kashi kingdom, of which Varanasi was the capital, and his mother was called Vamadevi. Needless to say, the sources describe Parsvanatha as handsome and strong, but much is made, however, of an incident showing his compassion. When he was out with his friends in the forest he saw an ascetic named Kamath who was enduring selfinflicted pain by exposing himself both to the blazing sun and to blazing fires. In one of the logs of wood, which the man was putting on the fire young Parsvanatha noticed two snakes and he implored the ascetic not to burn those living creatures. The ascetic had not seen the snakes and Parsvanatha had to get someone to split open the log to reveal them and set them free. The two snakes were severely burnt and in their dying moment Parsvanatha recited the Namokara Mantra to them, and because of this, the two snakes were reborn in their next lives as Dharanendra, King of the Nagas, the serpent deity, and Queen Padmavati. Kamath was reborn as a demon called Meghamali. The lives of these remained intertwined for, later, when Parsvanatha was an ascetic, the demon Meghamali assaulted him in various ways, and when the assault took the form of a fearful storm, Dharanendra protected him with a cobra hood above his head. This is why Parsvanatha's recognised symbol is a cobra and his images are depicted with a cobra hood.
It was seeing a picture of Neminatha, which is said to have directed the mind of Parsvanatha as a young man to renouncing the worldly life. Accounts differ as to whether he was married before he became an ascetic, the Digambar tradition makes no mention of it whilst according to the Svetambar he was married to the daughter of King Prasanjit, Prabhavati. At any rate, at the age of thirty he distributed his wealth and, to the rejoicing of crowds customary on these occasions, took his mendicant vows on the eleventh day of the bright half of the month of Maagha, on the outskirts of Varanasi. After some four months of severe austerities he attained omniscience (kevala jnaana), becoming an arhat, a kevali. Thereafter for seventy years he travelled preaching and gathering converts to the faith. He was well respected and many people of all classes came to greet him and to pay their regards. His followers were great in number and he organised them in the same way as Neminatha, before him, into the fourfold order. He had eight, or ten, principal disciples, and the first of these was Svayambhu. The leader of the female ascetics was Sulocana. Parsvanatha revived the teachings of the earlier tirthankaras and taught the shape and eternity of the world in the way, which was later to be shown by his successor Mahavira. He had great influence, not only in his own time but long after: his teachings were still followed two and a half centuries later when Mahavira was born. His emphasis on non-violence may well have been a cause of the discontinuance of the cruel Vedic sacrifices.
After seventy years as a wandering mendicant Parsvanatha's life on earth ended. Realising that final liberation (moksa) was at hand, he went with thirty-three ascetics to the mountain Sammeta Sikhara, in modern Bihar, and there, after a month of austerities, the last remaining karma destroyed, he achieved liberation from birth and death. The mountain where Parsvanatha attained moksa is still a place of pilgrimage. | https://www.herenow4u.net/?id=109796 |
The Holy Feet of the Sri Gomatheswar statue, Shravanabelagola (Sravanabelagola)
The hill of Shravanabelagola, 120 kilometers west of Bangalore in the state of Karnataka, is a noted place of pilgrimage for the Jains. The large hill, also called Vindhyagiri or Per-kalbappu, is 3347 feet above sea level. A flight of 614 steps, finely chiseled into the granite of the mountain, leads to the summit, where stands an open court and the great statue of Sri Gomatheswar. Shravanabelagolameans 'the monk on the top of the hill' and hermits, mystics and ascetics have resided here since at least the 3rd century BC. In those early times the hill was thickly wooded and hermits could feed themselves from the vegitation of the forest. Near the middle of the 10th century AD, temples began to be constructed upon the hill and from that time the place has become one of the most important pilgrimage sites of the Jain religion. The 58 foot, 8 inch statue of Sri Gomatheswar, carved between 978-993 AD, out of the granite bedrock of the mountain is the tallest free-standing statue in the world. Sri Gomatheswar, also known as Bahubali, was the son of the legendary first Tirthankara, Adinatha (tirthankaras are the mythical, enlightened sages of Jainism).
The chief festival of Shravanabelagola is called Maha Masthaka Abhisheka, or the 'Head Anointing Ceremony'. Prior to the festival an enormous wooden scaffolding is built around the statue of Sri Gomatheswar and more than one million pilgrims assemble around and upon the slopes of the sacred hill. During the climax of the festival, priests and devotees standing atop the scaffolding chant holy mantras and ritually pour thousands of gallons of milk, honey and precious herbs over the head of the statue. While flowing downwards over the body of the statue these sacred offerings are believed to acquire a powerful charge of spiritual energy from the great deity. Collected at the feet of the statue and distributed to the throngs of waiting pilgrims, the magical libations are considered to assist individuals in their quest for enlightenment. The festival is performed only once every twelve to fourteen years during periods of rare astrological significance. Recent festivals occurred in February 1981, December 1993, and February 2006.
Sacred lake and hill of Shravanabelagola, Karnataka, India
Great statue of Sri Gomatheswar, Shravanabelagola
Additional notes on Jain Pilgrimage
Tirtha and Tirthamkara
The etymological basis of a Tirtha as a holy place of worship can be properly traced to the term Tirthamkara which signifies a liberated soul according to Jain religions tradition. A Tirthamkara is one who has eliminated the last vestiges of Karmic pollution attaching to the soul through a rigorous ascetic regimen prescribed in Jain religious canon, known as agamas and has attained omniscience. He thus becomes a creator of a Tirtha or a Tirthamkara, a fordmaker. It is by means of this Tirtha, or ford, a worldly being can cross this life and attain moksa. It is in this context of the unique Jain connection of the term Tirtha, a historic genesis of the temple tradition and idol or icon worship can be traced in Jain religious practices since prehistoric times.
In the allegorical or spiritual sense, the dictionary meaning of the term‘pilgrim’ is “one journeying through life as a stranger in this world.” As a matter of fact, in Jainism a place of pilgrimage is called a tirtha or tirtha-ksetra. A tirtha (Literally, a ford) is so called because it helps the aspirant in crossing the ocean of samsara which is full of pain and suffering and in attaining liberation from the unending round of rebirths.
A Jain Tirthamkara is a maker of such a ford or bridge. The very concept of pilgrimage, of going to a sacred place for spiritual edification is embodied in the term Tirthamkara which is the ultimate symbol of Jain liberation and also the ideal. It is thus are extension of the process of ritual of worship in Jainism.
Pilgrimage to holy places, Tirtha-Ksetras for a Jain is a concrete reminder of the Jain Tirthamkaras, deities, and events in their lives such as birth, nirvana which is held to be sacred and memorable. A visit to such places is meritorious and spiritually purifying.
Such exalted sites of Jain pilgrimage fall into four categories. The Kalyanaka Ksetras associated with the birth and other memorable events in the life of the Tirthamkara ; the Siddha-Ksetras or Tirtha-Ksetras where countless arahats- liberated non-Tirthamkaras- attained liberation; nirvana-bhumi, where certain Tirthamkaras attained liberation; the Atishaya-Ksetras associated with miraculous events in the lives of great monks and Kala-Ksetras reputed for their artistic monuments, temples and images many a time, more than one of these characteristics are present at one and the same site.
As the Jain Tirthamkaras and ascetics have always carried out their austerities in secluded places, forests, far from the human habitation and mountain-tops, it is not surprising that the Jain Tirtha-Ksetras are situated in such places in the midst of captivating scenery and peaceful surroundings conducive to concentrated meditation and spiritual contemplation.
The sacred association of the place (such as nirvana, birth of Tirthamkara) give it an added sanctity. Jains place great value upon pilgrimage to such shrines. Indeed, a common Jain considers it an important goal of his life to make at least one visit, with his family if possible, to one or more of several Tirtha-Ksetras Jainism holds as sacred.
During the pilgrimage the entire time is spent in different religious activities such as continence, abstinence, fasting worship, meditation, study of scriptures, listening to religious discourses, chanting and recitation of religious hymns or devotional songs and charity.
In Jainism, pilgrimage is a ritual that is shared by the laity and the monastic community. Pilgrimage lends structure to the wanderings of Jain monks and nuns, who are forbidden from living long in one place and who thus spend their ascetic life in traveling on feet from one place to another except during the rainy season- Varshayoga or Chaturmasa.
Mythological Background of Gommateswara
Bahubali Gommateshwara was the second son of Rishabhanatha, the first Jain Tirthankara and his queen Sunanda. He had a step-brother named Bharata. After the renunciation of Rishabha, the two sons, Bharata and Bahubali, get two different regions of the Rishabha’s kingdom to rule over. Bharata soon began to subdue the various principalities around him, and even wanted his brother Bahubali and ninety eight others to submit to him. All except Bahubali gave up their kingdoms and became monks. Bahubali alone refused to surrender.
So Bharata challenged Bahubali on the battlefield and engaged him in duel. As Bahubali was about to overpower Bharata, he suddenly realized the absurdity of pride in physical victory and gave up the fight and became a monk and began to perform various penances as a Jain Sramana. He steadfastly observed penance in a Kayotsakga pose braving the rigors of sun, rain and storm. The beasts of the Jingle attacked him. Ants built their little mounds at his feet. Serpents crawled up his legs. Creepers sprang up and entangled his body. But undeterred he remained firm in his resolve to attain liberation.
Yet, unable to attain Kevala-Jnana, as he still harboured pride, he stood erect conscious of his suffering. His father, Rishabhanatha the Tirthamkara asked his daughters Brahmi and Sundari to go and persuade him to give up his pride. Bahubali did so and achieved enlightenment.
Bharata erected a stature of his brother at Podanpura. In the course of time, this region was overgrown with forest and the image became invisible to all but the initiated. According to Jain tradition, it was Bahubali who attained salvation first during the Avasarpini, Descending half-cycle of time-era, and so being the first man to attain liberation he became an object of universal worship.
Mahamastakabhisheka festival of Sravana Belagola Gommatesvara
The pratishthapana mahotsava, the consecration ceremony, of the great Gommateswara image took place on Sunday, 13th March, 981 from 3.12 a.m. to 5.06 p.m. the day according to Indian calendar being from sunrise to sunset.
The consecration rites were conducted according to the rules prescribed in the Jain texts by Chamundaraya, the commander-in -chief of the kings of the Ganga dynasty of Talkad. It was a grand event, its scale befitting both the huge rise of the image as well as the exalted statue of the Yajamana, the host, Chamundaraya.
Among the many rituals in the consecration ceremony there is the abhisheka or the sacred bath, According to a legend, when Chamundaraya attempted to perform the ‘panchamrita-abhisheka’ ceremony, or bathing of the image with five liquids, viz. milk, butter, honey, sugar, and water with a faint air of vanity.
Vast quantities of these five substances were collected in many hundreds of pots, but to the intense annoyance of Chamundaraya, when the liquids were poured from a great scaffolding upon the head of the image they would not descend below the navel of the image. He tried again and again but in vain, and thus the intention of bathing the image from head to foot was frustrated. Then a celestial nymph Kushmandini appeared disguised as an old poor woman, holding the five liquids in a small silver pot a beliya gola – and declared that she would accomplish what the valiant commander had failed to achieve.
Chamundaraya first laughed at the suggestion but later permitted her to make the attempt. Whereupon she poured the contents of her small silver pot, and lo, the sacred liquid at once flowed down and completely bathed the image! This old woman was none else than the Gullikajiji and her devotion did a miracle which a mighty minister like Chamundaraya could not do. Chamundaraya, the great warrior and creator of the image accepted his defeat at the feet of this humble devotee and repented for having succumbed to the feelings of pride and arrogance at having caused such a magnificent statue to be sculpted.
He now approached the task with humble devotion and the panchamritabhisheka covered the image from head to toe. From that time the town came to be known as Beliya gola, the silver pot or a tank of pure water, and the head-anointing ceremony was performed periodically. Chamundaraya erected an image of the old woman Gullikajiji just opposite to the colossus outside the door. No better homage could ever have been paid by a magnanimous vanquished to his victor in more dignified manner than this.
The abhisheka, as a rule, is a daily event for any image in worship, but the colossal size of the Gommateshwara image makes it impossible. Thus only the feet of the image are bathed daily in what is known as pada puja, and the head-anointing ceremony, or the mastaka-bhisheka performed occasionally.
Later the ceremony of mastakabhisheka came to be termed as maha mastakabhishakas. As it was performed at certain conjunctions of the planetary bodies at intervals of 10 to 15 years. The ritual is impressive and spectacular with many monks and priests and thousands of pilgrims taking part in it. The mahamastabhisheka is thus popularly known as the Grand Festival of Head-Anointing Ceremony of Sravana Belagola.
The festival begins a few days earlier and terminates a few days after the day of mahamastakabhisheka. During this period various festivals and pujas take place. On the morning of the Grand abhisheka the courtyards in front of colossus presents a glorious sight. On the ground, strewn with layers of fresh green paddy, 1008 coloured Kalasha or pots are arranged in a geometrical pattern. Each pot has a cocoanut with green mango leaves fastened to it with auspicious colour thread. Of the 1008 pots, 900 are used for the first anointing 103 for the second and only 5 for the third and last anointing.
When the ceremony is due to start a number of Jain priests take up their positions on a high scaffolding especially erected for the purpose. Each priest holds in his hands one Kalasha, or pot of milk and one of ghee. At the signal of the officiating dignitary they lustrate the image first with milk and then with ghee.
After this first purifying bath or anointing, the Jain priests offer worship to the Gommatesvara image till noon. At the stroke of one O’clock the great mahamastakabhisheka begins. In the former times, when Sravana Belagola was within the territories of Mysore State, the Maharaja of Mysore State had the hereditary privilege of per-forming the first puja of the image on the occasion.
As the appointed hour draws near, a thousand priests climb to their places on the scaffolding with pots of water. Suitable music is played by the temple musicians while the priests chant hymns and prayers from the Jain sacred texts. At the auspicious moment the thousand pots of water are emptied over the image amidst shouts of Jai Jai.
The huge proportions of the graceful colossus, whose head is anointed on that day by thousands of priests and pilgrims gives to the ritual an impressive character. The festival begins about a fortnight earlier and terminates after a fortnight of the Mahamastakabhisheka.
Chamundaraya, the Builder of Gommateswara
Chamundaraya, the illustrious general of the Ganga kings of Mysore, in the last quarter of the Tenth Century A.D. caused the present colossus of Gommata to be built by Arishtanemi a superb artist, under the guidance of his own gurus, Ajitasen Acharya and Nemichandra Siddhantha Chakravartin, in order to fulfill the pious wish of his own mother, Kalala Devi.Short film of Shravanabelagola festival by Karoki Lewis
For additional information: | https://sacredsites.com/asia/india/shravanabelagola.html |
Contributed by Nalini Balbir
The five ‘story Aṅgas’ form a distinct group within the group of 11 Śvetāmbara holy scriptures called the Aṅgas. The label of ‘story Aṅgas’ is here given to works numbered 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11. All of these use narrative techniques to pass on key beliefs of the Jain faith. These are mostly parables or tales that follow the fortunes of characters as they move through the cycle of rebirth. The story Aṅgas translate complex religious concepts such as karma and soul into clear narratives, working religious, ethical and philosophical notions into the action of the tales. These Aṅgas show how an individual’s behaviour influences the courses of later lives that are played out in different parts of the Jain universe.
The tales give interesting insights into socio-cultural aspects of daily Indian life in the past. The characters come from various backgrounds, with the kings, merchants, sea-traders, thieves, fishermen, butchers and so on being described in their normal activities. This data, however, is not easy to make use of because of uncertainties relating to chronology.
Many of the stories first found here have become favourites, told and retold down the centuries. The 19th Jina, Mallinātha or Lord Malli, features in Aṅga Number 6. In contrast to the Digambaras, the Śvetāmbaras believe that Malli was female, the only Jina to be a woman. This crowns the often opposing beliefs surrounding women and spirituality held by these two main Jain sects.
The other six Aṅgas cannot be categorised so easily, as their subjects and forms are more varied. Despite this, they can be thought of as the ‘reference Aṅgas'. They mostly set out details of the rules for mendicants and fundamental Jain concepts, such as cosmology and ethics and details of Jain doctrine.
Meaning ‘limbs’ in Sanskrit, the Aṅgas are the main set of canonical scriptures or Āgamas for the Śvetāmbara Jains. The other primary Jain sect of the Digamabaras has a different canon, known as the Siddhānta. Along with the Aṅgabāhyas – ‘not limbs’ – the Aṅgas comprise various texts, all written in Ardhamāgadhī Prakrit and all composed at different times.
There are 12 Aṅgas in the Jain tradition, although one of them – known as the Dṛṣṭi-vāda – has been considered lost since early times. Therefore only 11 Aṅgas were first written down by the forerunners of the Śvetāmbara sect. Rejected as canonical scriptures by the Digambara sect, these 11 Aṅgas are emblematic of Śvetāmbara Jain identity.
The titles of the Aṅgas can be understood in various ways. This table gives rough equivalents.
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Number
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Prakrit title
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Sanskrit title
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Translated meanings
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1
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Āyāraṃga
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Ācārāṅga
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‘On monastic conduct’
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2
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Sūyagaḍa
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Sūtrakṛtāṅga
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‘On heretical systems and views’
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3
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Ṭhāṇaṃga
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Sthānāṅga
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‘On different points [of the teaching]’
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4
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Samavāyaṃga
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Samavāyāṅga
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‘On “rising numerical groups”’ (Kapadia 1941: 126)
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5
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Viyāha-pannatti or Bhagavaī
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Vyākhyā-prajñapti or Bhagavatī
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‘Exposition of explanations’ or ‘the holy one’
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6
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Nāyā-dhamma-kahāo
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Jñāta-dharmakathānga
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‘Parables and religious stories’
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7
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Uvāsaga-dasāo
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Upāsaka-daśāḥ
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‘Ten chapters on the Jain lay follower’
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8
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Antagaḍa-dasāo
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Antakṛd-daśāḥ
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‘Ten chapters on those who put an end to rebirth in this very life’
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9
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Aṇuttarovavāiya-dasāo
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Anuttaropapātika-daśāḥ
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‘Ten chapters on those who were reborn in the uppermost heavens’
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10
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Paṇha-vāgaraṇa
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Praśna-vyākaraṇa
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‘Questions and explanations’
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11
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Vivāga-suya
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Vipākaśruta
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‘Bad or good results of deeds performed’
There are five Aṅgas that are narrative works. These demonstrate the significance of stories in the passing on of the teachings of the Jinas.
The following Aṅgas may be described as 'story Aṅgas':
These works take the form of short parables, or, mostly of life sketches featuring men and women from various backgrounds. The purpose is to show how one’s own behaviour determines results in future births and is determined by past lives as well. Apart from exceptional cases when one has the ability to remember one’s own past life, the mediator, who knows both about past and future, is a Jina, especially Mahāvīra.
Repetition is used as a pervading narrative technique (Bruhn 1983). In the second parts of Aṅgas 6 and 11, only the first story is narrated at length. The other ones are identical, with minimal changes of names, location, numbers and so on. This method is a way to increase the population of Jain heroes and heroines.
Food, money, medicine, clothing or anything else given to another person as a religious or charitable act. Asking for and giving alms is a significant part of Jainism, as it forms a daily point of contact between lay people and mendicants. Seeking, donating and receiving alms are highly ritualised ceremonies in the Jain tradition, and spiritual purity is essential for both giver and recipient. Giving alms is a way for lay Jains to gain merit – puṇya.
The 'Five Lesser Vows' that householder Jains take. These are not as strict as the 'Five Greater Vows' that ascetics observe but are more practical in daily life. Few Jains take these non-compulsory vows these days. The vows are to:
Someone who withdraws from ordinary life to meditate and practise physical hardships in order to advance spiritually. Jain ascetics or mendicants beg for food from devout lay followers and wander the land.
Also used as an adjective to describe the practice of rigorous, even extreme, physical hardships in the belief that it leads to a higher spiritual condition.
The practice of rigorous, even extreme, physical hardships in the belief that it leads to a higher spiritual condition. Asceticism involves self-denial – for example refusing tasty food or warm clothes – and sometimes self-mortification, such as wearing hair-shirts or whipping oneself.
Infraction, violation of conduct. There are five infractions for each of the five mendicant vows and for each of the 12 lay vows. For instance, overburdening pack animals breaks the vow of non-violence for a lay Jain.
Extra-sensory knowledge, clairvoyance. One of the five traditional types of knowledge, it is inborn in heavenly and hellish beings. Humans can attain it only through special yogic practices and it is linked to a high level of spirituality.
A member of the highest caste in Hinduism, the priests or brahmins. 'Brahminical' means 'of or like brahmins'.
The head nun of Mahāvīra’s community, who first came to his notice by offering him an appropriate gift of food after he had been fasting for five months.
The ‘fourfold society’ of Jain tradition, which is made up of ascetics and the laity, and of males and females.
Formally recognised leaders within a religion. The clergy often perform rituals, lead worship and instruct believers in religious principles. Lay men and women usually complete formal study before being initiated into the clergy. Clerics are active among lay believers, often living in society. They may have specific roles or ranks and may progress through a hierarchy to become top leaders of the religious organisation.
A belief system about the universe that covers its origin, structure and parts, and natural laws and characteristics such as space, time, causality and freedom.
Giving, specifically alms-giving to mendicants.
A god or divine figure, often with physical powers beyond those of a human and with superhuman abilities.
Sanskrit for 'meditation', one of the six internal austerities or tapas that help purify the soul of karma. Meditation is deep thought about religious doctrine or mental focus on spiritual matters over a period of time. An important part of many religions, meditation is especially important in Jain belief because it forms key elements of religious practice and spiritual development.
'Sky-clad' in Sanskrit, used for one of the two main divisions of Jainism, in which monks are naked. There are some differences of doctrine or belief between these two sects and to some extent their followers consider themselves as belonging to distinct branches. Divisions can be fierce in practical matters, for example, over the ownership of pilgrimage places, but all sects see themselves as Jains.
Religious initiation through which a man or woman leaves the householder or lay status to become a mendicant. Parts of this ritual renunciation are public ceremonies, depending on the sect.
An active follower of a religion, especially one who passes on teachings to others.
A principle or system of teachings, especially religious philosophy.
A donor gives freely. He or she may give alms to a mendicant or money to an institution. This donation may be for specific items or purposes, such as the creation of art. A donor, sponsor or patron may be named or pictured in the artwork.
Giving up or limiting food or specified foods for a period of time, usually as part of a religious practice. Fasting is a key part of Jainism, chiefly because it is believed to:
The westernmost state in India, which is a stronghold of Śvetāmbara Jainism.
A believer in a system of beliefs, usually religious, that differs from established dogma. A heretic does not normally think his beliefs are heretical, often asserting that his heresies are correct while the orthodoxy has become corrupted from the original.
Follower of the majority faith in India and an adjective describing something belonging to Hinduism. Hindus have numerous gods and diverse beliefs and practices, though many believe in the soul, karma, the cycle of births and liberation. Roughly a billion Hindus comprise the third largest religion in the world.
Sanskrit word for 'king' and the name of the king of the gods in the Saudharma heaven. Called Śakra by Śvetāmbaras and known as Saudharma to Digambaras, this deity is involved in all five auspicious moments – kalyāṇakas – in a Jina's life.
Chief disciple of Mahāvīra, the 24th Jina. From a brahmin family, he was the first of Mahāvīra's 11 chief disciples. He became enlightened on the day Mahāvīra was liberated. He achieved liberation himself 12 years later.
Formal or ceremonial admission into an organisation or group.
Follower of the 24 Jinas or an adjective describing Jain teachings or practices. The term 'Jaina' is also used although 'Jain' is more common.
A 'victor' in Sanskrit, a Jina is an enlightened human being who has triumphed over karma and teaches the way to achieve liberation. A synonym for Tīrthaṃkara, which means 'ford-maker' or one who has founded a community after reaching omniscience through asceticism. The most famous 24 – Ṛṣabha to Mahāvīra – were born in the Bharata-kṣetra of the middle world, but more are found in other continents. There have been Jinas in the past and there will be some in the future.
Sanskrit for 'self', 'soul' or 'that which is sentient'. It makes up the universe along with ajīva, or non-sentient material substance. It is a material substance that changes in size according to the body it inhabits in each life. It is born in different bodies in various places in the Jain universe based on karma from earlier lives. The soul is liberated from the cycle of birth when it has achieved spiritual purity and omniscience. Also called ātma or ātman.
'Knowledge', of which there are five main types:
With spiritual progress, one can gain the different types of knowledge.
Also one of the 14 'gateways' or categories of investigation of mārgaṇā or 'soul-quest'.
Action or act, thought of as physical in Jainism. Created by mental or physical action, karma enters the soul, which then needs religious restraints and practices to make it flow out. Karma can be both:
Both types of karma trap a soul in continual rebirth. A pan-Indian concept, karma has extremely complex, detailed and technical divisions and subdivisions in Jainism.
Omniscience, enlightenment or perfect knowledge – the highest of the five types of knowledge, where one knows everything wherever and whenever it is. It is extremely difficult to attain, equivalent to the 13th stage of spiritual purity in the guṇa-sthāna. Digambaras believe only men can achieve it whereas Śvetāmbaras believe that both men and women can become enlightened.
One of the best-known avatars of the deity Viṣṇu the preserver, Kṛṣṇa is one of the principal Hindu gods. Since his name means ' dark blue', 'dark' or 'black' in Sanskrit, he is usually depicted with blue or black skin. Often shown as a boy or young man playing a flute, Kṛṣṇa is a hero of the Indian epic, Mahābhārata, and protagonist of the Bhagavad Gītā. Jains believe he is the cousin of Lord Nemi, the 22nd Jina.
Believers in a religion who are ordinary worshippers, not clergy or members of religious orders. In Jainism, lay people are often called 'householders', indicating that they live in houses and have domestic responsibilities, unlike ascetics.
The universe in Jain cosmology, composed of the upper, middle and lower worlds. Human beings can live only in part of the Middle World.
In Jain cosmology, one of the Lands of Action or karma-bhūmi in the first continent, Jambū-dvīpa, in the middle world of humans. Mahā-videha consists of 32 provinces between the Niṣadha and the Nīla mountain ranges. Thanks to the repetitive nature of Jain cosmology, there are also two Mahā-videhas on each of the continents of Dhātakīkhaṇḍa and Puṣkara-dvīpa.
The five vows taken by ascetics. Monks and nuns must follow these ‘absolute’ vows of:
The 24th Jina Mahāvīra added a fifth vow to his predecessor Pārśva's four, making the vow of celibacy not just implicit but a separate vow.
One of the major works of Indian literature, this epic poem revolves around a legendary battle between two camps within the same family, the Pāṇḍavas and the Kauravas. Fusing Jain values into the story, Jain versions of the Mahābhārata also include biographies of the 22nd Jina Neminātha or Lord Nemi and his cousin Kṛṣṇa, who is identified with the Hindu god. The Jain Mahābhāratas cast the leading figure of Kṛṣṇa and other characters in the tale as some of the 'great men' of Jain Universal History.
The 24th Jina of the present age. His symbolic colour is yellow and his emblem the lion. Mahāvīra or 'the great hero' is his title. His birth name was Vardhamāna, meaning 'ever increasing'. His existence is historically documented but the two main sects of Digambara and Śvetāmbara Jains have slight differences in their accounts of his life.
The 19th Jina of the present age. There is no historical evidence of his existence.
Śvetāmbara Jains believe Mallī was a woman – the only female Jina – and often spell her name with ī, indicating feminine gender. However, Digambaras hold that Malli was a man, like all the other Jinas.
For Śvetāmbaras, her symbolic colour is dark blue whereas for Digambara Jains it is golden. Both sects believe Mallinatha's emblem is the water pot – kalaśa.
Someone who is killed for his or her religious beliefs. Originally it referred to someone who willingly died for his or her religious faith. Nowadays it can also mean someone who suffers or is killed for following a religion or other beliefs, whether willingly or not. Also a verb meaning to carry out the killing.
The 'liberation' of the soul from its body and thus from the cycle of rebirth because it has no karma and becomes omniscient. The ultimate aim of Jainism is to achieve mokṣa and become a liberated soul in siddha-śilā.
A man who has taken a public vow to withdraw from ordinary life to formally enter religious life and advance spiritually. Frequently, monks perform physical austerities or undergo physical hardships in order to progress spiritually.
Elder brother of the 24th Jina Mahāvīra. The eldest son of King Siddhārtha and Queen Triśalā.
Hell. There are seven levels of hells in the lower world of Jain cosmology.
The 22nd Jina of the present age, also called Ariṣṭanemi. His symbolic colour is blue or black and his emblem the conch. There is no historical evidence of his existence.
The Jains hold that Nemi is the cousin of the Hindu god Kṛṣna. The tale of his renunciation and jilting of his fiancée Princess Rājīmati are famous among the Jains.
A woman who has taken a public vow to withdraw from ordinary life to enter religious life and advance spiritually. Frequently, nuns perform physical austerities or undergo physical hardships in order to progress spiritually.
The five Pāṇḍava brothers are the heroes of the Hindu epic poem, the Mahābhārata, and its Jain versions. The Jain Mahābhārata is quite different from the Hindu version, demonstrating Jain virtues and religious beliefs.
A voluntary action undertaken to make up for a sin or breach of a religious principle, frequently an act of self-punishment or physical hardship.
A term for any of the dead vernacular languages of ancient and medieval India. It may be contrasted with classical Sanskrit, the language used by priests and the aristocracy. The Jains used a large variety of Prakrits, with the Jain canon written chiefly in Ardhamāgadhī Prākrit.
'Introspection’ in Sanskrit. The elaborate ritual of confession and repentance that involves reciting liturgical texts and performing set gestures at dawn and dusk. It is one of an ascetic's six daily duties – āvaśyaka. For many lay people, pratikramaṇa is the essence of Jainism.
A religious communication offered by a believer to a god or object of worship. It may:
To deliver a speech on a religious topic, usually given by a prophet or member of the clergy. It may be a formal task of a religious office or open to all believers in a religious faith. Often covering social and moral subjects, preaching may be intended to:
Sanskrit for 'worship' or 'homage'. All Jains perform rites of honour to the 24 Jinas. Rites of worship take place daily, with more elaborate ceremonies performed on holy days. Mendicant and lay Jains perform different rituals. Some sects worship images – mūrti-pūjaka – and others do not, and different sects have various practices. Focused on images or not, worship can be:
Giving up something. A lay person who becomes an ascetic renounces the life of a householder within society, instead choosing the physical hardships of being a monk or nun. The formal renunciation ceremony in Jainism is dīkṣā.
A sequence of actions that must be followed to perform a religious ceremony. The set of actions is largely symbolic, for example offering food to statues symbolises sacrificing to a deity. The ritual actions are often accompanied by set phrases.
Sanskrit term meaning 'with a home’ – that is, a ‘householder’ or lay Jain. A synonym for a lay person, emphasising that he or she is a member of a household, with responsibilities to the family, community and society that a Jain mendicant does not have.
The progressive eradication of passions and other negative features in order to reach total spiritual purity. In practice, it is the ritual of fasting unto death.
Literally, Sanskrit for 'universal gathering'. A holy assembly led by a Jina where he preaches to all – human beings, animals and deities alike – after he has become omniscient. In this universal gathering, natural enemies are at peace.
Cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth caused by karma binding to the soul as a result of activities. Only by destroying all karma can this perpetual cycle finish in mokṣa – liberation. The karma gained in life affects the next life, and even future lives, for example:
'Right conduct'. A person who has faith in the principles of Jainism and knows them should put them into practice. This is the third of the Three Jewels vital for spiritual progress.
Sanskrit for 'community'. The Jain ‘fourfold community’ is composed of monks, nuns, lay men and lay women.
A classical language of India, originally used by priests and nobility. Sanskrit has a rich literary and religious tradition. With only a few thousand native speakers nowadays, it is predominantly used in Hindu religious ceremonies and by scholars.
Set of sacred texts that believers accept as authoritative within a religion. Synonymous with canon.
An organised group of believers in a religion, often distinguished from other groups within the same religious faith who have differences of doctrine or practice.
A speech on a religious topic, usually delivered by a member of the clergy. Frequently a sermon has a moral lesson or is based on a sacred text.
'Hearer’ of the teaching. This commonly refers to the Jain lay man, who follows the teachings of the 24 Jinas and is not a member of the clergy or a religious order. The feminine form is śrāvikā.
'White-clad’ in Sanskrit, the title of one of the two main divisions of Jainism, in which both male and female mendicants wear white robes. There are some differences of doctrine or belief between these two sects and to some extent their followers consider themselves as belonging to distinct branches. Divisions can be fierce in practical matters, for example, over the ownership of pilgrimage places, but all sects see themselves as Jains.
Austerity or asceticism in general. A tapas is an act of austerity or self-discipline that produces bodily heat – tapas – that burns up karma. Austerities may be internal – mental – or external – physical. Both lay and mendicant Jains practise austerities. Fasting is the most common external austerity for lay people these days.
A Jain lay man, similar to the term śrāvaka. The feminine form is upāsikā.
The highest of the three worlds in Jain cosmology, the home of the various types of gods.
A Sanskrit term that describes the wandering lifestyle of Jain mendicants. Jain monks and nuns are expected to travel around, not stay in one place as householders do. They wander constantly on foot, never staying more than a few days in one place. They may walk around 30 kilometres a day in small groups. However, every year, during the monsoon, monks and nuns stay in one location to avoid travelling.
Vows are extremely important in Jain religious life. Mendicants take the compulsory Five Great Vows – mahā-vratas – as part of their initiation – dīkṣā.
Lay people can choose to take 12 vows, which are divided into:
All of these vows are lifelong and cannot be taken back. The sallekhana-vrata is a supplementary vow to fast to death, open to both ascetics and householders.
The male attendant of a Jina, one of the pair of guardian or protector gods for each Jina. The śāsana-devatā protect his teachings – śāsana – and can appease evil powers. The yakṣa and yakṣī's closeness to the Jina and their divine powers mean they are popular subjects of worship. | http://www.jainpedia.org/themes/principles/sacred-writings/svetambara-canon/angas/story-angas.html |
Vardhamana (meaning "prosperous") was an important Indian religious figure who became the leader of a sect of wanderer ascetics (Sramanas), one of the many sects which existed at that time in India. He is best known under the name of Mahavira, which is not an actual name, but a title that means “Great Victor”. The teachings of Vardhamana are considered to be the core of Jainism, one of the major early sects of Sramanas in India, which later evolved into an important religious tradition.
Even though Vardhamana is generally credited as the founder of Jainism, he appears to have built his doctrine upon the ideas of Parsva, a teacher who lived roughly two centuries before the Buddha. So rather than its founder, Vardhamana is the reformer of Jainism: his input and legacy were so strong that his figure as an authoritative source overshadowed all earlier figures in Jainism.
Buddhist texts normally refer to Vardhamana as Nirgrantha Jnatiputra and sometimes as Nataputta, as he is usually called in Buddhist Pali sources. The term Nirgrantha is a Sanskrit word which means “Free from all ties”, and it is normally used in Sanskrit Buddhist texts to refer to the followers of Vardhamana.
Historical Context
At the time when Vardhamana lived, Northern India was composed of numerous small independent states competing for resources. This was a time when the traditional religious order in India was being challenged by a number of new philosophical and religious schools that were not in line with the orthodox Indian religion. All components of the Vedic religion, along with its ever growing complexity of rituals and sacrificial fees, were being questioned. The reputation and authority of the traditional priestly class were being undermined by new philosophical schools, which led to a temporary religious anarchy. By the time Vardhamana was born, the intellectual decay of Brahmanism had begotten a strong skepticism and moral vacuum which was filled by new religious and philosophical views.
Around the 7th century BCE, a culture of world-renunciation developed in India. This culture is the common origin of many Indian religions including Jainism and Buddhism. Some groups who rejected the conventional teachings of the Vedic tradition became mendicant ascetics: they renounced conventional society. These renunciants were known as Sramanas. Some of these mendicants were merely vagabonds similar to the type we still meet in India today, while others were organized under a recognized leader. Vardhamana was a recognized teacher who led one of these Sramanas groups.
The Historical Vardhamana
Reliable documented information about Vardhamana is very scarce. Details about his life can be pieced together by looking into the early Jain and Buddhist sources, which is a challenging job for historians given the fact that most of these accounts are filled with myth and legendary stories that slowly but surely changed the initial attributes of Vardhamana’s biography.
In Pali Buddhist sources and in some Jain sources, Vardhamana is presented as the Buddha’s senior contemporary, which is one of the reasons why the dates of Vardhamana’s life relies on synchronicity with the dates of the Buddha. Modern scholarly consensus dates the birth of the Buddha in a period that goes from 490 to 450 BCE. The current accepted date for Vardhamana’s death is around 467 BCE. All accounts agree that Vardhamana was 72 years old at the time of his death, which would make around 539 BCE an acceptable estimation for Vardhamana’s birth. Jain tradition claims that Vardhamana was born in 599 BCE, which is not supported by historical evidence.
Vardhamana was born into the Kshatriya caste (the warrior rulers caste). He also belonged to the Jnatrika clan: His father was Siddhartha of Kundagraam and his mother was named Trishala. The place where Vardhamana was born is also a debated topic. Jain sources claim that he was born in the kingdom of Kundagraam, but the exact location of this place remains unknown. Many modern cities have been suggested as the possible birthplace of Vardhamana, but none of them is free of controversy.
The background of the Jnatrika clan deserves some comments. Most of what we know about the Jnatrikas is through Jain and Buddhist sources, where we read that the father of Vardhamana, Siddhartha of Kundagraam, was the king of Kundagraam. However, there are good reasons to believe he was not actually a king. During that time, most Indian states were organized as aristocratic tribal republican systems, which means that Vardhamana’s parents were surely the heads of aristocratic ruling clans, not monarchs.
During the first stage of his life, Vardhamana lived a life of luxury. From an early age, he became interested in spiritual matters and soon became dissatisfied with the life that surrounded him: the increasing inequalities between rich and poor, warfare, and social struggle. Around the age of 30 his parents died, so he gave up his kingdom, his royal privileges along with his possessions, and even his family, and for the next twelve years he wandered around northern India as an ascetic, rejecting physical pleasures and engaged in the pursuit of spiritual progress. Fasting and meditation were some of the key methods used by Vardhamana.
It is believed that at the age of 42, Vardhamana gained full enlightenment. The state attained by Vardhamana is known as kevala, a term which the Jain traditions understands as omniscience or supreme knowledge. From this moment onwards he became known as Mahavira. After this event, he became the head of a group of Sramanas and taught others about what he had learned. Vardhamana's great insight was to substitute the authority of old religious doctrines with logical experience and a more rational approach. In other words, he introduced important changes in Jainism by framing traditional Jain doctrines in a more logical fashion.
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Vardhamana developed a philosophy in which its metaphysics was consistent with the ethics. This metaphysical system revolved around the idea of samsara (reincarnation), a widespread belief that harmful actions led to bad karma, and good actions to good karma: good karma would improve the conditions in the next life while bad karma would make it worse. The goal for Jains was to break free from the never-ending cycle of death and rebirth by avoiding the generation of karma entirely, either good or bad. According to this view, extreme austerity was key in cancelling the karma of all past actions so one could finally be set free from reincarnation:
As a large pond, when its influx of water has been blocked, dries up gradually through consumption of water and evaporation, so the karmic matter of a monk, which has been acquired through millions of births, is annihilated by austerity—provided there is no further influx. (Campbell, p.234)
Regarding the idea of the soul, Vardhamana introduced a small change that made a significant difference in his approach to life and the shaping of the Jain code of conduct. It was widely accepted by Indian society that animals, humans, and even the gods had souls, but Vardhamana went even further, claiming that nearly everything is alive. Everything is made up, according to his view, of Jiva or “living intelligence”, trapped in matter. Living beings were divided into different categories.
- Beings with five senses, including humans and major animals.
- Beings with four senses, they cannot hear (wasps, flies, butterflies).
- Beings with three senses, they can neither hear nor see (ants, moths, fleas).
- Beings with two senses, they can only taste and touch (worms, leeches, shellfish).
- Beings with only one sense, they only have the sense of touch (plants, microscopic organisms, wind, fire, water).
These ideas became the basis of the most important component of the ethical code of Jainism, named ahimsa or “non-violence”: Violence against any living creature in any form is strictly forbidden. Because Jains believed that everything was alive, non-violence was taken very seriously, to the point that the followers of Vardhamana veiled their mouths for fear of inhaling and killing the organisms of the air. They also screened their lamps to protect insects from the flame and swept the ground before walking in order to avoid the risk of accidentally trampling out any life. Some sources claim that Vardhamana would allow mosquitoes to feed on his blood, and while other ascetics would carry sticks with them to scare off the dogs, Vardhamana would allow the dogs to bite him. Even vegetables were considered to be alive, along with inanimate objects, such as rocks and fire. For this reason, the most strict Jains would only eat vegetables and grains of rice that were already lying on the floor, no longer attached to their source, and would never cut up a plant to obtain their food.
Vardhamana is credited as the author of an interesting parable known as, “The blind men and the elephant”, which is a form of criticism of the conventional assumptions on the nature and scope of human knowledge. A group of blind men are taken to an elephant and asked to inspect the animal while describing it:
[...] the one whose hand landed on the trunk said, "This being is like a drain pipe". The one whose hand reached its ear said, “This being is like a kind of fan”. The one whose hand touched its leg said, "This being is like a pillar". The one who placed his hand upon its tail said...
All these descriptions are accurate and incorrect at the same time. The point of the parable is clear: all points of view are partial and there is no such thing as an absolute truth when it comes to human knowledge. All human notions are imperfect, incomplete, tentative. This parable illustrates the fundamental doctrine of Jain epistemology known as Anekantavada, which maintains that no single point of view or human notion can be regarded as the complete truth. This parable is also mentioned in other traditions as well, such as Buddhism and Sufism, but it is most strongly linked to Jainism as it is perfectly consistent with the Jain epistemological approach.
No deity was recognized by Vardhamana: The only road to liberation was people’s own personal effort. This is the reason why Jainism is considered an atheist religion. Vardhamana emphasized the importance of individual actions.
Vardhamana’s popularity grew significantly and the sources report thousands of members in his community. At the age of 72, consistent with his ideas, he took the austerity ideal to the extreme by gradually reducing his daily food intake and finally starved himself to death. Fourteen thousand followers are reported by the time Vardhamana passed away.
Myth & Legendary Accounts
The followers of Vardhamana’s teachings attempted to demonstrate that what their master taught was nothing new, but rather the rediscovery of an eternal truth. This was a very widespread strategy in many religious communities at that time: they wanted to challenge some rival schools, especially the Vedic tradition, which supported their authority by claiming to have originated a long time ago. Therefore, the Jains claimed that Vardhamana was the 24th and the last teacher in a long line of teachers known as Tirthankars or “ford-makers”. Jains see the Tirthankars as people who help others to cross the ocean of ordinary worldly life and achieve a higher spiritual state free of misery and pain.
The biographies of all 24 Tirthankars share the same general outline: They were all born into royal families, renounced the world, engaged in asceticism and meditation, achieved enlightenment and taught the Jain doctrine, retired to a mountain when they felt death approaching, and died after a final meditation, never to be reborn again.
Different Jain texts present many previous reincarnations of Vardhamana. There are also accounts describing the miraculous nature of Vardhamana’s conception and also a number of many different dreams that Trishala (Vardhamana’s mother) had before his birth. These dreams were interpreted by the priests, who anticipated the fate of Vardhamana: he would become either a political leader or a Tirthankar. After his enlightenment, Vardhamana never slept again, never blinked his eyes again, his fingernails and hair stopped growing, and his body cast no shadow.
Legacy
The legacy of Vardhamana is hard to distinguish from the legacy of Jainism. Vardhamana’s emphasis on non-violence and strict vegetarianism has had an enormous influence in Indian culture. These ideas, whether original or not to Vardhamana, were adopted by Jains as a fundamental way of living and became their core convictions. Even today, Jains still take great care to avoid unnecessary harm to all creatures.
Many values in Hinduism and Buddhism are the result of Jain cultural influence: Non-violence was adopted by many sects of Hinduism and also by Buddhists, and there were two important monarchs in India, Ashoka and Akbar, who were fervent proponents of the principle of non-violence.
Vardhamana’s belief on the transformative power of human effort, self-help, and his philosophy of non-violence still inspire millions of men and women today all over the world. During the 20th century CE, Mahatma Gandhi took the advice of a Jain teacher named Raichandbhai Mehta and adopted the principle of non-violence. The resistance to British rule in India might have been different, perhaps bloodier, without the Jain influence. | https://www.ancient.eu/Vardhamana/ |
Contributed by Jérôme Petit
Progressing from the lay part of the Jain community to the mendicant element is understood to be very difficult. To help the lay person move from the fifth guṇa-sthāna up to the sixth, the Jain doctrine proposes 11 more steps – the pratimās.
The Sanskrit term pratimā means 'image' or 'statue'. In particular, it refers to the Jinas represented in art in the kāyotsarga posture. This involves standing as immobile as a statue, with arms held loosely alongside the body, which is seen as a model to follow because it is associated with very deep meditation.
The 11 steps are meant to allow lay people who wish to progress spiritually to live increasingly similarly to the mendicant lifestyle. The pratimās involve meditation and gradually renouncing activities and habits to improve self-control and improve detachment.
The table gives details of the 11 pratimās.
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Stage
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Sanskrit term
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English meaning
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Detail
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1
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darśana
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step of belief
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The lay person simply has a firm faith in the Jain teaching.
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2
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vrata
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step of taking the vows
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The believer becomes a full 'member' of the Jain community by taking the fundamental vows of all Jains, namely to:
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3
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sāmāyika
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step of equanimity
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The lay person practises meditation in the posture of kāyotsarga and tries to consider everything with the same eye, giving the same weight to all points of view.
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4
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poṣadha
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step of fasting during holy days
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The devotee fasts on certain days, training to face the difficulties of fasting.
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5
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sacitta-tyāga
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step of renouncing food containing living beings
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The lay person pays attention to the habits of daily life by rejecting food containing living beings. Examples include roots and tubers, such as potatoes, onions and aubergines.
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6
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rātribhakta
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step of renouncing sexual enjoyment
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The lay person renounces sexual enjoyment during the daytime, which is a first step before complete celibacy. It is sometimes read as rātri-bhukta-tyāga – the ‘renunciation of eating at night’ – which prevents accidentally harming living beings.
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7
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brahmacarya
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step of complete celibacy
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The devotee accomplishes total celibacy.
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8
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ārambha-tyāga
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step of renouncing daily activities
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This step marks a real transition from the 'householder life' to that of a mendicant, in that the devotee does not take an active role in the normal duties of the household and business.
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9
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parigraha-tyāga
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step of renouncing possessions
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This step sees the lay person definitively leave the life of a householder by renouncing all possessions.
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10
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anumati-tyāga
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step of renouncing permitted activities
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The devotee only eats what other people give him and does not cook his own food, which is permitted before this stage. Even advisory roles in standard household and business life are given up.
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11
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uddiṣṭa-tyāga
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step of renouncing prescribed food
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This point marks the lay person's final stage towards initiation as a mendicant. He or she is now ready to attain the sixth guṇa-sthāna and to take the vows of monk or nun.
The Digambara belief that souls cannot be emancipated while embodied within women means that women are technically not permitted to become nuns among the sect. The highest pratimā level a Digambara woman can reach is the 11th stage, according to Wiley (2004). Therefore she remains a lay woman, although she lives as a mendicant and takes the vows of a mendicant, albeit with a slightly modified vow of non-attachment.
It is quite difficult to trace the history of these two scales of perfection in Jainism. Literary references are sparse until the first list of the guṇa-sthānas appears in the Digambara text called Ṣaṭkhaṇḍāgama – Treatise in Six Parts, composed around the third century CE. The Tattvārtha-sūtra, the only scripture accepted as authoritative by both main sects of Digambara and Śvetāmbara, also mentions the guṇa-sthānas.
The most influential text to discuss the guṇa-sthāna is Nemicandra's two-volume work, the Gommaṭasāra – Essence of Mahāvīra’s Teachings. Written in the tenth century, it remained persuasive for centuries, especially among Digambaras. Writings on the scales of perfection became more technically involved during the 19th century, which may have helped reduce their readership among lay Jains.
Although nowadays Jains retain the idea of spiritual progression, the formal, highly technical theories of the scales of perfection are far less widespread than in previous centuries. Scholarly interest in the concept also seems to be quite unpopular, with the work of Von Glasenapp in the early 20th century followed some eighty years later by more modern research. Despite this lack of substantial academic investigation, scholars of Jain studies generally recognise the importance of the guṇa-sthānas in the journey towards liberation.
The Uvāsaga-dasāo – Ten Lay Men – is the seventh Aṅga of the Śvetāmbara canon and describes right conduct for lay Jain society. It does not evoke the guṇa-sthānas but mentions the pratimās. This text invites the devotee to reaffirm his faith in the Jain doctrine and encourages him to focus on his inner religious life. Thus the 'Story of Ānanda' shows how a lay man feels ready to progress through the stages of being an upāsaka, becoming the steady 'ideal lay man' who is the central figure of the text.
Then that Āṇanda, the servant of the Samaṇa, engaged in conforming himself to the standards of an uvāsaga. Perfectly, in thought, word and deed, he practised, maintained, satisfied, accomplished, proclaimed and completed the observance of the first standard of an uvāsaga according to the sacred writings, according to the rules prescribed in them, according to the right way, and according to the truth.
Then that Āṇanda, the servant of the Samaṇa, completed the observance of the second standard of an uvāsaga, and likewise that of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh standards.
Verses 70 to 71
translation by Hoernle, page 46, 1885
On the Digambara side, Kundakunda refers to the scales of perfection, mentioning both guṇa-sthānas and pratimās, but he never develops the theory. His own doctrine focuses on the purity of the self and follows an absolute point of view away from a conventional point of view where these scales take place.
The soul possesses neither stages of biological development (jῑva-sthāna) nor states of spiritual development (guṇa-sthāna), all these are modifications of the matter.
Samayasāra 2.17
translation by Zaveri / Kumar 2009
The one author to describe the scales is the philosopher Umāsvāti, whose authority is recognised by both Śvetāmbaras and Digambaras. In the ninth chapter of his Tattvārtha-sūtra, he evokes the guṇa-sthānas in their ancient form. Indeed, the scale begins with the fourth stage, at the very moment when the individual becomes a resolved Jain.
The first complete list is given in the Ṣaṭkhaṇḍāgama – Treatise in Six Parts. It is a voluminous treatise seen as a pro-canonical text by the Digambaras and the ultimate source of their teachings. Written around the third century CE, it provides a simple list of the 14 stages without any technical information.
Literally 'limb' in Sanskrit, Aṅga is a term for the first category of 11 texts that form the Śvetāmbara scriptures. There were originally 12 but the last has been lost for centuries.
Someone who withdraws from ordinary life to meditate and practise physical hardships in order to advance spiritually. Jain ascetics or mendicants beg for food from devout lay followers and wander the land.
Also used as an adjective to describe the practice of rigorous, even extreme, physical hardships in the belief that it leads to a higher spiritual condition.
Avoiding or stopping sexual relations, often after taking a religious vow. A celibate practises celibacy.
The period of time starting with the year when Jesus Christ was traditionally believed to have been born. Using CE is a more secular way of dating events in a multinational, multi-religious world.
Not feeling attached to any things, people or emotions in the world, whether positive or negative. Jains believe that detachment from the world is necessary to progress spiritually towards the ultimate aim of freeing the soul from the cycle of rebirth.
An enthusiastic follower of a religion. Can also describe a keen enthusiast of an individual, concept or activity.
Sanskrit for 'meditation', one of the six internal austerities or tapas that help purify the soul of karma. Meditation is deep thought about religious doctrine or mental focus on spiritual matters over a period of time. An important part of many religions, meditation is especially important in Jain belief because it forms key elements of religious practice and spiritual development.
'Sky-clad' in Sanskrit, used for one of the two main divisions of Jainism, in which monks are naked. There are some differences of doctrine or belief between these two sects and to some extent their followers consider themselves as belonging to distinct branches. Divisions can be fierce in practical matters, for example, over the ownership of pilgrimage places, but all sects see themselves as Jains.
A principle or system of teachings, especially religious philosophy.
The 14 stages of spiritual development the soul passes through to gain liberation from the cycle of birth. The stages go from the state of delusion to the state of omniscience without activity, which is reached just before death of the body. When the body dies after the soul has attained the 14th stage, the soul instantly becomes liberated – a siddha.
Follower of the 24 Jinas or an adjective describing Jain teachings or practices. The term 'Jaina' is also used although 'Jain' is more common.
A 'victor' in Sanskrit, a Jina is an enlightened human being who has triumphed over karma and teaches the way to achieve liberation. A synonym for Tīrthaṃkara, which means 'ford-maker' or one who has founded a community after reaching omniscience through asceticism. The most famous 24 – Ṛṣabha to Mahāvīra – were born in the Bharata-kṣetra of the middle world, but more are found in other continents. There have been Jinas in the past and there will be some in the future.
Sanskrit for 'self', 'soul' or 'that which is sentient'. It makes up the universe along with ajīva, or non-sentient material substance. It is a material substance that changes in size according to the body it inhabits in each life. It is born in different bodies in various places in the Jain universe based on karma from earlier lives. The soul is liberated from the cycle of birth when it has achieved spiritual purity and omniscience. Also called ātma or ātman.
Action or act, thought of as physical in Jainism. Created by mental or physical action, karma enters the soul, which then needs religious restraints and practices to make it flow out. Karma can be both:
Both types of karma trap a soul in continual rebirth. A pan-Indian concept, karma has extremely complex, detailed and technical divisions and subdivisions in Jainism.
'Passion' that causes activity, which results in new karma binding to the soul. It must be eliminated by restraints or austerities so the soul can be liberated. Passion may be attraction – rāga – or aversion – dveṣa – and has degrees of intensity. There are traditionally four passions:
Also one of the 14 'gateways' or categories of investigation of mārgaṇā – 'soul-quest'.
'Absence of concern for the body'. This commonly refers to a standing or sitting posture of deep meditation. In the standing position the eyes are concentrated on the tip of the nose and the arms hang loosely by the body. The individual remains unaffected by whatever happens around him.
Omniscience, enlightenment or perfect knowledge – the highest of the five types of knowledge, where one knows everything wherever and whenever it is. It is extremely difficult to attain, equivalent to the 13th stage of spiritual purity in the guṇa-sthāna. Digambaras believe only men can achieve it whereas Śvetāmbaras believe that both men and women can become enlightened.
Digambara monk who lived in the second or third centuries CE. Little is known of his life but his mystical writings, concentrating on the soul and internal religious experience, have been enormously influential in Jain thought. Key works include Samayasāra, Niyamsāra, Pañcāstikāya and Pravacanasāra.
Believers in a religion who are ordinary worshippers, not clergy or members of religious orders. In Jainism, lay people are often called 'householders', indicating that they live in houses and have domestic responsibilities, unlike ascetics.
The 'liberation' of the soul from its body and thus from the cycle of rebirth because it has no karma and becomes omniscient. The ultimate aim of Jainism is to achieve mokṣa and become a liberated soul in siddha-śilā.
A man who has taken a public vow to withdraw from ordinary life to formally enter religious life and advance spiritually. Frequently, monks perform physical austerities or undergo physical hardships in order to progress spiritually.
The Digambara mendicants are 'sky-clad' because they believe that all the Jinas and their male ascetic followers went nude as part of their vow of renunciation. This vow entails renouncing all possessions, including clothing. Female Digambara ascetics wear white saris and are thus technically spiritually advanced celibate laywomen. Śvetāmbara mendicants of both sexes, however, wear white clothing. The difference of opinion over whether the vow of non-possession includes clothing was one reason for the Jain community's split into these two major sects early in the Common Era.
A woman who has taken a public vow to withdraw from ordinary life to enter religious life and advance spiritually. Frequently, nuns perform physical austerities or undergo physical hardships in order to progress spiritually.
'Learned one' in Sanskrit and used originally for a Hindu brahmin scholar and teacher. Nowadays a Jain pandit is a scholar who has been educated traditionally and is expert in the sacred texts of at least one of the Jain sects.
The highest soul, the liberated soul, the Absolute, often used instead of siddhi. Jains believe that a soul or ātman can achieve liberation from the cycle of birth through its own spiritual development. This concept has been called God in Western thought since the start of the Christian era.
Matter. One of the five insentient material substances of dravya that make up the universe along with the sentient substance, jivastikaya.
The ‘three jewels’ that form the fundamentals of Jainism, without which spiritual progress is impossible. They are:
Giving up something. A lay person who becomes an ascetic renounces the life of a householder within society, instead choosing the physical hardships of being a monk or nun. The formal renunciation ceremony in Jainism is dīkṣā.
Sanskrit term meaning 'with a home’ – that is, a ‘householder’ or lay Jain. A synonym for a lay person, emphasising that he or she is a member of a household, with responsibilities to the family, community and society that a Jain mendicant does not have.
'Right conduct'. A person who has faith in the principles of Jainism and knows them should put them into practice. This is the third of the Three Jewels vital for spiritual progress.
'Right insight' or the proper view of reality, which means faith in the principles of Jainism taught by the Jinas. The first of the Three Jewels of Jainism and a necessary first step in spiritual progress.
'Right knowledge'. Once one believes the principles of Jainism, one has to learn them and know them properly. The second of the Three Jewels.
Sanskrit for 'community'. The Jain ‘fourfold community’ is composed of monks, nuns, lay men and lay women.
A classical language of India, originally used by priests and nobility. Sanskrit has a rich literary and religious tradition. With only a few thousand native speakers nowadays, it is predominantly used in Hindu religious ceremonies and by scholars.
Reality or truth. This is very important to Jains and the satya-vrata is the second of the mendicant's Five Great Vows and the lay person's Five Lesser Vows.
Set of sacred texts that believers accept as authoritative within a religion. Synonymous with canon.
Term for either everyday or material life, not the spiritual, or for a social or political system that concentrates on the material world, rejecting spiritual or religious influence. A secularist believes that religion has no place in fields such as education and politics.
The realm of liberated souls, at the apex of the universe. All the liberated souls – siddha – dwell there in eternal bliss.
'Hearer’ of the teaching. This commonly refers to the Jain lay woman, who follows the teachings of the 24 Jinas and is not a member of the clergy or a religious order. The masculine form is śrāvakā.
A Jain lay man, similar to the term śrāvaka. The feminine form is upāsikā.
Vows are extremely important in Jain religious life. Mendicants take the compulsory Five Great Vows – mahā-vratas – as part of their initiation – dīkṣā.
Lay people can choose to take 12 vows, which are divided into:
All of these vows are lifelong and cannot be taken back. The sallekhana-vrata is a supplementary vow to fast to death, open to both ascetics and householders. | http://www.jainpedia.org/themes/principles/jain-beliefs/karma/scales-of-perfection/contentpage/2.html |
Contributed by M. Whitney Kelting
Jain ascetics often give the example of Śrīpāḷ and Mayṇāsundarī when they deliver a sermon on the siddhacakra. They concentrate on Mayṇāsundarī’s performance of the Navpad Oḷī Fast, which leads to the miraculous healing of Śrīpāḷ’s leprosy.
This narration echoes the preoccupation of the festival, which is marital happiness. It does not reproduce the structure of the epic – Śrīpāḷ Rājāno Rās – from which it is drawn, which includes many episodes tracing Śrīpāḷ’s adventures after he is healed.
A major element of the twice-yearly Āyambil Oḷī festival is the fast, of which there are three types. Fasting is accompanied by a structured series of additional devotional and ascetic practices, including twice-daily confession, extensive temple worship focused on the siddhacakra yantra, recitation of the Navkar-mantra and study of the Śrīpāḷ and Mayṇāsundarī narrative.
Each day the participants gather for the better part of the afternoon to eat their single meal together, to study the story of Śrīpāḷ and Mayṇāsundarī and to perform the evening confession as a group. This sociability contrasts with the ascetic nature of these practices and, in this case, the tasteless food.
Generally, this fast is seen as a married women’s fast. While there are men who perform occasional, single-day āyambil fasts they virtually always do so at the behest of their wives. This almost imitates Śrīpāḷ’s performance of siddhacakra worship after his wife Mayṇāsundarī convinces him.
Within the Āyambil Oḷī fast complex, there are three related fasts. Each suggests varying degrees of commitment, but all are understood to aim at the shared goal of well-being of the family. The fasts differ primarily in terms of their length:
An āyambil fast is a one-sitting fast involving the eating of only tasteless foods. It is therefore more of a restriction on diet than a fast as it is generally understood. The fact of the lack of taste, of course, makes the austerity of an āyambil fast substantially greater than a one-sitting fast of regular food.
Āyambil fasts are predominantly performed during the biannual nine-day Oḷī festival, but are also performed on those days where fasting is a requirement for Jains. Many mendicants take nearly constant āyambil vows. Lay Jains will sometimes take an āyambil vow so that mendicants can receive alms at their house.
Oḷī means ‘a line’ and the Āyambil Oḷī fast is a line of nine days of āyambil fasts performed back to back during the Āyambil Oḷī festival.
The Navpad Oḷī is a series of nine consecutive nine-day Āyambil Oḷīs performed during the spring and autumn Āyambil Olī festivals. This results in 81 days of āyambil fasting over four and a half years.
Sanskrit term meaning 'destroyer of enemies'. The enemies are the inner desires and passions. It is also a synonym for Jina. An Arhat is a liberated soul who has not yet left his fleshly body, but, as an omniscient being, is 'worthy of worship'.
Someone who withdraws from ordinary life to meditate and practise physical hardships in order to advance spiritually. Jain ascetics or mendicants beg for food from devout lay followers and wander the land.
Also used as an adjective to describe the practice of rigorous, even extreme, physical hardships in the belief that it leads to a higher spiritual condition.
Grain or pulses cooked in water with salt, eaten once a day as part of dietary restrictions, especially among Śvetāmbaras.
Acknowledgement or declaration of the truth of a statement. In religious terms, it usually refers to admitting sin or wrongdoing to at least one other person in a ritual. It is normally a necessary step before absolution, which is formal release from guilt or consequences of wrongdoing.
Giving up or limiting food or specified foods for a period of time, usually as part of a religious practice. Fasting is a key part of Jainism, chiefly because it is believed to:
A public commemoration of a religious ritual. Often a celebration that involves holding a religious ceremony to mark an important event in a religion's history.
Action or act, thought of as physical in Jainism. Created by mental or physical action, karma enters the soul, which then needs religious restraints and practices to make it flow out. Karma can be both:
Both types of karma trap a soul in continual rebirth. A pan-Indian concept, karma has extremely complex, detailed and technical divisions and subdivisions in Jainism.
Omniscience, enlightenment or perfect knowledge – the highest of the five types of knowledge, where one knows everything wherever and whenever it is. It is extremely difficult to attain, equivalent to the 13th stage of spiritual purity in the guṇa-sthāna. Digambaras believe only men can achieve it whereas Śvetāmbaras believe that both men and women can become enlightened.
A sacred sound, syllable, word or phrase that is believed to produce spiritual change if recited correctly. A mantra can be recited aloud or silently, and is often repeated. Mantras are closely associated with religions that originated in India, such as Hinduism and Buddhism as well as Jainism. The chief Jain mantra is the Namaskāra-mantra, which is recited daily, while another mantra very popular in Indian culture generally is Auṃ.
An extraordinary event that cannot be explained by natural causes or human effort and therefore is believed to be caused by divine or supernatural powers.
Sanskrit for 'homage formula', the Namaskāra-mantra is the fundamental religious formula of the Jains. A daily prayer always recited in the original Prākrit, it pays homage to the supreme beings or five types of holy being:
Note that chanting the mantra is not praying for something, material or otherwise. Also known as the Pañca-namaskāra-mantra or 'Fivefold Homage mantra', it is also called the Navakāra-mantra or Navkār-mantra in modern Indian languages.
Sanskrit for 'worship' or 'homage'. All Jains perform rites of honour to the 24 Jinas. Rites of worship take place daily, with more elaborate ceremonies performed on holy days. Mendicant and lay Jains perform different rituals. Some sects worship images – mūrti-pūjaka – and others do not, and different sects have various practices. Focused on images or not, worship can be:
Sanskrit for a 'right or good action'. Similar to a merit in Buddhism, it helps to reduce karma.
The annual four-month rainy period in India, lasting roughly from June / July to October / November. Heavy rain, strong storms and gale-force winds are very common during this period. Mendicants cannot travel around and must stay in one place to avoid breaking their vow of non-violence and because the monsoon makes travelling on foot difficult and dangerous. It is known as cāturmāsa in Sanskrit, comāsa in Hindi and comāsu in Gujarati.
A sequence of actions that must be followed to perform a religious ceremony. The set of actions is largely symbolic, for example offering food to statues symbolises sacrificing to a deity. The ritual actions are often accompanied by set phrases.
Sanskrit term meaning 'with a home’ – that is, a ‘householder’ or lay Jain. A synonym for a lay person, emphasising that he or she is a member of a household, with responsibilities to the family, community and society that a Jain mendicant does not have.
A speech on a religious topic, usually delivered by a member of the clergy. Frequently a sermon has a moral lesson or is based on a sacred text.
The most common mystical diagram – yantra – in Jainism, which is believed to destroy karma and bring prosperity and good luck. There are nine parts, usually arranged in the shape of a lotus flower. The Five Highest Beings are depicted on five parts of the yantra. On the four other parts, there are sectarian differences.
Digambaras call it the navadevatā or navdevata or navpad. The other four elements for them are:
For Śvetāmbaras it is the siddhacakra or navapada or navpad, which has representations of:
Jain Tantric worship aims to control other people or counter evil influences. Tantric rituals try to placate the aggressive side of a deity's nature, encouraging the divinity to behave benevolently. If not worshipped correctly, the vengeful deity may cause harm. The devotee invokes the deity under his or her various names, places images of the deity on yantras – mystical diagrams – and meditates, repeating mantras.
Austerity or asceticism in general. A tapas is an act of austerity or self-discipline that produces bodily heat – tapas – that burns up karma. Austerities may be internal – mental – or external – physical. Both lay and mendicant Jains practise austerities. Fasting is the most common external austerity for lay people these days.
Vows are extremely important in Jain religious life. Mendicants take the compulsory Five Great Vows – mahā-vratas – as part of their initiation – dīkṣā.
Lay people can choose to take 12 vows, which are divided into:
All of these vows are lifelong and cannot be taken back. The sallekhana-vrata is a supplementary vow to fast to death, open to both ascetics and householders.
Sanskrit for 'instrument' or 'machine', a yantra is a mystical diagram used in religious rituals. Yantras are typically formed of symmetrical, concentric circles and may also have the diagram of a lotus in the middle of numerous squares. Containing the names of the Jinas and sacred mantras, such as oṃ, yantras are meditation aids. | http://www.jainpedia.org/themes/practices/festivals/ayambil-oli/contentpage/1/index.html |
Garlands of flowers and floating candles are often seen on the river Ganges. They are given as offerings to Ganga,
Chandni Chowk is the old marketplace in Delhi. It's a maze of alleyways filled with shops selling everything under the sun. The best way to see it is on a bicycle rickshaw which can be like a D ticket ride at Disneyland (if you're old enough to remember the tickets). It's populated with many great faces. This man is one. I'm not sure what he was selling, but I really liked his face
Sadhus are religious ascetics who have chosen to achieve liberation through meditation and contemplation. This one, on one of the stairways by the banks of the Ganges in Varanasi, finds time to read a pamphlet - perhaps a religious tract.
This picture of a man taking an afternoon nap was taken in Varanasi
Tinker is the obsolete term for a man who repairs pots. In America, we just toss out items once they've passed their point of usefulness. In Udaipur, and much of Rajasthan, where what we would call poverty exists, throwing things out is not an option. This means opportunity for those whose work is to repair things. This man heats up pots over an open fire and applies new metal (probably tin) to them.
This was taken at a Jain temple en route from Udiapur to Jodhpur in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Jainism is one of the oldest religions in the world. It emphasizes respect for all life and non-violence towards all living things. These two women were huddled together leaning
This is an old man in a Bishnoi tribal village holding his grandchild. The village is in the Jodhpur vicinity.
Udiapur is a city with many lakes surrounding it. It achieved some notoriety when the Bond movie "Octopussy" was filmed here.
Varanasi is one of the most holy cities in India. On the bank of the mother river, the Ganges, Varanasi is where
About the Artist
David has been taking pictures, off and on, for over 50 years, taking it up as a serious art form shortly before retiring. He considers himself an amateur in the truest sense of the word - doing it for the love of the craft and for his personal enjoyment.
He is a member of a photography group in the SF Bay Area called the Camera Cabal which is a small group of fine art photographers that meets monthly to indulge in good food, good wine, and good photography. Along with several members of his club, he recently toured in the Indian states of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Our group recently had an exhibition at the Lindsay Dirkx Brown Gallery in San Ramon where several displayed photographs from this trip.
Why not bookmark this site - and when you finish your tour, please sign the Guestbook and let me know what you think. If you like my site, I would also appreciate it if you would share it with your friends who also like travel and/or photography by clicking on the link below. | http://samsays.com/David%20Lipton.htm |
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