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The mission of LTER-Greece is to deliver to the scientific community, policy makers, and society in general, sound scientific information and predictive understanding of ecological and socio-economic processes and to inform solutions to current and future environmental problems at local, national, European and global scales.
The vision of LTER-Greece is to improve the quality of life of all citizens through the application of long-term, large-scale research to the preservation and sustainable use of ecosystems.
Identity
The Greek Long-term Ecosystem Research Network (LTER-Greece) is a collaborative network of scientists and their stakeholders engaged in long-term, site-based ecological, social and economic research in Greece.
LTER-Greece is a national network, member of the European Long Term Ecosystem Research Network (LTER-Europe) and of the International Long Term Ecological Research Network (ILTER).
Long-Term Ecosystem Research
Long-Term Ecosystem Research (LTER) is an essential component of world-wide efforts to better understand ecosystems. Through research and monitoring, LTER seeks to improve our knowledge of the structure and functions of ecosystems and their long-term response to environmental, societal and economic drivers. | https://www.lter-greece.gr/en/home/ |
In this paper, we develop a constrained robust mixture model, which, in addition, is able to nonlinearly map such data for visual exploration. Our robust visual mining approach aims to combine statistically sound density-based analysis with visual presentation of the density structure, and to provide visual support for the identification and ...
Introduction to Data Mining vs Data Visualization. Data Mining is used to find patterns, anomalies, and correlation in the large dataset to make the predictions using broad range of techniques, this extracted information is used by the organization to increase there revenue, cost-cutting reducing risk, improving customer relationship, etc. whereas data visualization is the graphical ...
Nov 11, 2019 Mining Audio, Text and Visual Information for Talking Face Generation Abstract: Providing methods to support audio-visual interaction with growing volumes of video data is an increasingly important challenge for data mining. To this end, there has been some success in speech-driven lip motion generation or talking face generation.
Apr 20, 2021 On March 18, 2021, the annual power consumption of the Bitcoin network was estimated to be 129 terawatt-hours (TWh). Here’s how this number compares to a selection of countries, companies, and more. Note: A terawatt hour (TWh) is a measure of electricity that represents 1 trillion watts sustained for one hour.
Eaagle visual text mining software, enables you to rapidly analyze large volumes of unstructured text, create reports and easily communicate your findings. Encompass, a platform to visualize commercial information from regulatory sources in banking and professional services. Grapheur 2.0, data mining and interactive visualization tool (free trial).
Text mining is an automatic process that uses natural language processing to extract valuable insights from unstructured text. By transforming data into information that machines can understand, text mining automates the process of classifying texts by sentiment, topic, and intent. Thanks to text mining, businesses are being able to analyze ...
Visual Information Theory. Posted on October 14, 2015. I love the feeling of having a new way to think about the world. I especially love when there’s some vague idea that gets formalized into a concrete concept. Information theory is a prime example of this.
Aug 20, 2006 Research Track Poster Visual Data Mining using Principled Projection Algorithms and Information Visualization Techniques Dharmesh M. Maniyar and Ian T. Nabney NCRG, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, United Kingdom [email protected], [email protected] ABSTRACT We introduce a ‚exible visual data mining framework which combines advanced projection algorithms …
This paper presents an epistemological perspective of how Web mining can be performed by human agents and a technical overview of a possible approach to achieve this. The concept of visual mining of information is based on the principle of creating a fused information space that could be navigated using visual perception, just as we do within a natural environment.
The importance of visual data mining, as a strong sub-discipline of data mining, had already been recognized in the beginning of the decade. In 2005 a panel of renowned individuals met to address the shortcomings and drawbacks of the current state of visual information processing.
Recent results on robust density-based clustering have indicated that the uncertainty associated with the actual measurements can be exploited to locate objects that are atypical for a reason unrelated to measurement errors. In this paper, we develop a constrained robust mixture model, which, in addition, is able to nonlinearly map such data for visual exploration. Our robust visual mining ...
A major challenge of current visualization and visual data mining (VDM) frameworks is to support users in the orientation in complex visual mining scenarios. An important aspect to increase user support and user orientation is to use a history mechanism that, first of all, provides un- and redoing functionality.
Jul 17, 2020 Data mining collects, stores and analyzes massive amounts of information. To be useful for businesses, the data stored and mined may be narrowed down to a zip code or even a single street. There are companies that specialize in collecting information for data mining. They gather it from public records like voting rolls or property tax files.
Jul 21, 2020 6| Rattle. Written in R language, Rattle is a popular open-source GUI for data mining that presents statistical and visual summaries of data. It transforms data so that it can be readily modelled. It builds both unsupervised and supervised machine learning models from the data, presents the performance of models graphically, and scores new datasets for deployment into production.
Data mining helps in analyzing and summarizing different elements of information. A mining process is a form wherein which all the data and information can be extracted for the purpose of future benefit. 1. It helps to identify the shopping patterns:
Jun 04, 2021 SAS Visual Data Mining and Machine Learning 2021.1. Accessibility Conformance Report. Revision Date: June 04, 2021; Contact: [email protected] VPAT version: 2.4; SAS Visual Data Mining and Machine Learning (hereafter ‘the software’) on SAS Viya combines data wrangling, data exploration, visualization, feature engineering, and modern statistical, data mining and machine …
Data mining result visualization: Visualization of data mining results is the presentation of the results or knowledge obtained from data mining in visual forms.Such forms may include scatter plots and boxplots (Chapter 2), as well as decision trees, association rules, clusters, outliers, and generalized rules.For example, scatter plots are shown in Figure 13.6 from SAS Enterprise Miner.
In our everyday life we interact with various information media, which present us with facts and opinions, supported with some evidence, based, usually, on condensed information extracted from data. It is common to communicate such condensed information in a visual form – a static or animated, preferably interactive, visualisation.
Information visualization and visual data mining can help to deal with the flood of information. The advantage of visual data exploration is that the user is directly involved in the data mining process.
Aug 07, 2002 Information visualization and visual data mining can help to deal with the flood of information. The advantage of visual data exploration is that the user is …
Whatever your requirements, you 'll find the perfect service-oriented solution to match your specific needs with our help. | https://rtvcorona.com/2020-10-17/crushing-plant/4k8g5uug.html |
Research Projects Listing and Overview
This page lists our major research projects, past and present.
Project Information:
This research examines the use of signal processing theory to improve the smoothness of interactive visualization, producing visualizations that are more beautiful and more rapidly interactive, even for big data.
Interactive visual analysis has been a key component of gaining insights in information visualization area. However, the amount of data has increased exponentially in the past few years. Existing information visualization techniques lack scalability to deal with big data, such as graphs with millions of nodes, or millions of multidimensional data records.
Along with members of the BaVA Group and statistics students, we are working with General Dynamics to create a new data analytics system.
Identifying coordinated relationships is an important task in data analytics. For example, an intelligence analyst might want to find three suspicious people who visited the same four cities. However, existing techniques that display individual relationships, such as between lists of entities, require repetitious manual selection and significant mental aggregation in cluttered visualizations to find coordinated relationships.
We present a visual analytics tool, called Spectrum, to analyze the movement and communication log data from VAST Challenge 2015. Spectrum has two views: MoveView and SpectrumView. MoveView gives an overview of the movement logs at a certain timestamp by synthesizing time, location and identity information. It replays movement logs over time and demonstrates communication logs with dynamic links. SpectrumView shows the status of all visitors' activities within a period of time. Each stay of visitors in a location is visualized as a line segment.
"Be the Data" is a physical and immersive approach to visual analytics designed for teaching abstract statistical analysis concepts to students. In particular, it addresses the problem of exploring alternative projections of high-dimensional data points using interactive dimension reduction techniques. In our system, each student literally embodies a data point in a dataset that is visualized in the room of students; coordinates in the room are coordinates in a two-dimensional plane to which the high-dimensional data are projected.
Andromeda enables users to directly manipulate the data points in 2D plots of high-dimensional data to explore alternative dimension reduction projections. Andromeda implements interactive weighted multidimensional scaling (WMDS) with semantic interaction. Andromeda allows for both parametric and observation-level interaction to provide in-depth data exploration. A machine learning approach enables WMDS to learn from user manipulated projections.
See the Andromeda demo video here: https://youtu.be/lyfUMCu-wC8
The goal of this project is to enable the creation of new human-centered computing tools that will help people effectively analyze large collections of textual documents by providing powerful statistical analysis functionality in a usable and intuitive form. To accomplish that, this project investigates “semantic interaction” in visual analytics as a method to combine the large-data computationally-intensive foraging abilities of formal statistical mining algorithms with the intuitive cognitively-intensive sensemaking abilities of human analysts.
We present an event-based approach for solving a directed sensemaking task in which we combine powerful information foraging tools with intuitive synthesis spaces to solve the VAST 2014 Mini-Challenge 1 (MC1). A combination of student-created and commericially available software are used to solve various aspects of the scenario.
Semantic interaction offers an intuitive communication mechanism between human users and complex statistical models. By shielding the users from manipulating model parameters, they focus instead on directly manipulating the spatialization, thus remaining in their cognitive zone. We present the concept of multi-model semantic interaction, where semantic interactions can be used to steer multiple models at multiple levels of data scale, enabling users to tackle big data problems. We also present an updated visualization pipeline model for generalized multi-model semantic interaction.
User reviews, like those found on Yelp and Amazon, have become an important reference for decision making in daily life, for example, in dining, shopping and entertainment. However, large amounts of available reviews make the reading process tedious. Existing word cloud visualizations attempt to provide an overview. However their randomized layouts do not reveal content relationships to users. In this paper, we present ReCloud, a word cloud visualization of user reviews that arranges semantically related words as spatially proximal.
This section describes our work on Semantic Interaction, a design space for user interaction in visual analytic tools that infer analytic reasoning of users for model steering.
Distributed cognition and embodiment provide compelling models for how humans think and interact with the environment. Our examination of the use of large, high-resolution displays from an embodied perspective has lead directly to the development of a new sensemaking environment called Analyst’s Workspace (AW). AW leverages the embodied resources made more accessible through the physical nature of the display to create a spatial workspace.
The data set for the VAST Challenge 2012 Mini Challenge 1 (MC1) requires a large scale situation awareness analysis to understand a large data set containing the network health and activity status of approximately one million online devices for three days. One of the tables in the dataset contains 158,530,955 records and the devices can be ordered by hierarchically based on business units and facilities. So the main visualization challenge was to support very large quantities of hierarchical information.
The Vehicle Terrain Measurement System (VTMS) allows highly detailed terrain modeling and vehicle simulations. Visualization of large-scale terrain datasets taken from VTMS provides insights into the characteristics of the pavement or road surface. However, the resolution of these terrain datasets greatly exceeds the capability of traditional graphics displays and computer systems.
The goal of this project is to enable end users to directly manipulate data visualizations created by mathematical models for dimension reduction. Users can explore structure in high-dimensional data by directly moving data points within the visualization, causing the models to learn from the user feedback, and viewing the effects of those movements on other points.
Also known as Object-Level Interaction (OLI) and Visual-to-Parametric Interaction (V2PI).
See also Semantic Interaction.
The multiplicity of computing and display devices currently available presents new opportunities for how visual analytics is performed. One of the significant inherent challenges that comes with the use of multiple and varied types of displays for visual analytics is sharing and subsequent integration of information among different devices. Multiple devices enable analysts to employ and extend visual space for working with visualizations, but it requires users to switch intermittently between activities and foci of interest over different workspaces.
VizCept: Supporting Synchronous Collaboration for Constructing Visualizations in Intelligence Analysis
VizCept is a new web-based visual analytics system which is designed to support fluid, collaborative analysis of large textual intelligence datasets. The main approach of the design is to combine individual workspace and shared visualization in an integrated environment. Collaborating analysts will be able to identify concepts and relationships from the dataset based on keyword searches in their own workspace and collaborate visually with other analysts using visualization tools such as a concept map view and a timeline view.
User generated reviews, like those found on Yelp and Amazon, have become important reference material in casual decision making, like dining, shopping and entertainment. However, very large amounts of reviews make the review reading process time consuming. A text visualization can speed up the review reading process. | http://infovis.cs.vt.edu/research |
Most of the data we deal with today is unstructured. And when we use this unstructured, unlabelled data to train an ML model, the model needs to work hard to correctly identify the text, image, or video. But when you train an ML model via supervised learning with labeled datasets, you give a head start to train faster, to understand and decipher the information in a better manner. So both data annotation and data labeling are necessary for drastically cutting down the time taken for ML models to reach a good level of accuracy. A lot of us use the terms text annotation and text labeling interchangeably. While the basic idea of both remains the same — to train ML models — there are subtle differences in the approach and purpose. This blog will take you through the fundamentals of text annotation and text labeling and the differences between both.
What Is Text Annotation?When building an AI/ML model, you need to train the algorithm to classify, understand and give a relevant output. The first place to start this process is data annotation. Text annotation is a type of data annotation technique used to train algorithms to understand what the text is — similar to the way humans perceive it. Most often, through text annotation, your ML models learn to understand the human emotions behind the data (text), identify and correlate patterns and make connections between multiple chunks of text. Data scientists add metadata to the input to describe what a piece of text means. So when a machine learning model receives a text input based on the metadata and the parameters assigned, it can then classify the data based on attributes and make as much of a close connection as possible with the human intention behind it.
What Is Text Labeling?Simply put, data labeling is the process of tagging what a piece of input is. There are several techniques in data labeling for audio, video, graphics, and text. Here are a few good examples of data labeling:
- Identifying the item in an image,
- The movement in a video and,
- The meaning behind a piece of text or audio. | https://traindata.us/blog/difference-between-text-annotation-and-text-labeling/ |
Surrogate models supported by neural networks can perform as well, and in some ways better, than computationally expensive simulators and could lead to new insights in complicated physics problems such as inertial confinement fusion (ICF), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists reported.
In a paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), LLNL researchers describe the development of a deep learning-driven Manifold & Cyclically Consistent (MaCC) surrogate model incorporating a multi-modal neural network capable of quickly and accurately emulating complex scientific processes, including the high-energy density physics involved in ICF.
The research team applied the model to ICF implosions performed at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), in which a computationally expensive numerical simulator is used to predict the energy yield of a target imploded by shock waves produced by the facility’s high-energy laser. Comparing the results of the neural network-backed surrogate to the existing simulator, the researchers found the surrogate could adequately replicate the simulator, and significantly outperformed the current state-of-the-art in surrogate models across a wide range of metrics.
“One major question we were dealing with was ‘how do we start using machine learning when you have a lot of different kinds of data?’ ” said LLNL computer scientist and lead author Rushil Anirudh. “What we proposed was making the problem simpler by finding a common space where all these modalities, such as high pressure or temperature, live and do the analysis within that space. We’re saying that deep learning can capture the important relationships between all these different data sources and give us a compact representation for all of them.
“The nice thing about doing all this is not only that it makes the analysis easier, because now you have a common space for all these modalities, but we also showed that doing it this way actually gives you better models, better analysis and objectively better results than with baseline approaches,” Anirudh added.
Simulations that would normally take a numerical simulator a half-hour to run could be done equally as well within a fraction of a second using neural networks, Anirudh explained. Perhaps even more valuable than saving compute time, explained computer scientist and co-author Timo Bremer, is the demonstrated ability of the deep learning surrogate model to analyze a large volume of complex, high-dimensional data in the ICF test case, which has implications for stockpile modernization efforts. The results indicate the approach could lead to new scientific discoveries and a completely novel class of techniques for performing and analyzing simulations, Bremer said.
This is particularly important at NIF, Bremer explained, where scientists do not yet fully understand why discrepancies exist between simulations and experiments. In the future, deep learning models could elicit capabilities that didn’t exist before and provide a way for scientists to analyze the massive amounts of X-ray images, sensor data and other information collected from diagnostics of each NIF shot, including data that has not been incorporated because there is too much of it to be analyzed by humans alone, Bremer said.
“This tool is providing us with a fundamentally different way of connecting simulations to experiments,” Bremer said. “By building these deep learning models, it allows us to directly predict the full complexity of the simulation data. Using this common latent space to correlate all these different modalities and different diagnostics, and using that space to connect experiments to simulations, is going to be extremely valuable, not just for this particular piece of science, but everything that tries to combine computational sciences with experimental sciences. This is something that could potentially lead to new insights in a way that’s just unfeasible right now.”
Comparing the results of predictions made by the surrogate model to the simulator typically used for ICF experiments, the researchers found the MaCC surrogate was nearly indistinguishable from the simulator in errors and expected quantities of energy yield and more accurate than other types of surrogate models. Researchers said the key to the MaCC model’s success was the coupling of forward and inverse models and training them on data together. The surrogate model used data inputs to make predictions, and those predictions were run through an inverse model to estimate, from the outputs, what the inputs might have been. During training, the surrogate’s neural networks learned to be compatible with the inverse models, meaning that errors did not accumulate as much as they would have before, Anirudh said.
“We were exploring this notion of self-consistency,” Anirudh explained. “We found that including the inverse problem into the surrogate modeling process is actually essential. It makes the problem more data-efficient and slightly more robust. When you put these two pieces together, the inverse model and the common space for all the modalities, you get this grand surrogate model that has all these other desirable properties – it is more efficient and better with less amount of data, and it’s also resilient to sampling artifacts.”
The team said the benefit of machine learning-based surrogates is that they can speed up extremely complex calculations and compare varied data sources efficiently without requiring a scientist to scan tremendous amounts of data. As simulators become increasingly complex, producing even more data, such surrogate models will become a fundamental complementary tool for scientific discovery, researchers said.
“The tools we built will be useful even as the simulation becomes more complex,” said computer scientist and co-author Jayaraman Thiagarajan. “Tomorrow we will get new computing power, bigger supercomputers and more accurate calculations, and these techniques will still hold true. We are surprisingly finding that you can produce very powerful emulators for the underlying complex simulations, and that’s where this becomes very important.
‘As long as you can approximate the underlying science using a mathematical model, the speed at which we can explore the space becomes really, really fast,” Thiagarajan continued. “That will hopefully help us in the future to make scientific discoveries even quicker and more effectively. We believe that even though we used it for this particular application, this approach is broadly applicable to the general umbrella of science.”
Researchers said the MaCC surrogate model could be adapted for any future change in modality, new types of sensors or imaging techniques. Because of its flexibility and accuracy, the model and its deep learning approach, referred to at LLNL as “cognitive simulation” or simply CogSim, is being applied to a number of other projects within the Laboratory and is transitioning over to programmatic work, including efforts in uncertainty quantification, weapons physics design, magnetic confinement fusion and other laser projects.
MaCC is a key product of the Lab’s broader Cognitive Simulation Director’s Initiative, led by principal investigator and LLNL physicist Brian Spears and funded through the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program. The initiative aims to advance a wide range of AI technologies and computational platforms specifically designed to improve scientific predictions by more effectively coupling precision simulation with experimental data. By focusing on both the needs in critical mission spaces and the opportunities presented by AI and compute advances, the initiative has helped further LLNL’s lead in using AI for science.
“MaCC’s ability to combine multiple, scientifically relevant data streams opens the door for a wide range of new analyses,” Spears said. “It will allow us to extract information from our most valuable and mission-critical experimental and simulation data sets that has been inaccessible until now. Fully exploiting this information in concert with a new suite of related CogSim tools will lead quickly and directly to improved predictive models.”
The research team has made their data publicly available on the web. | https://www.miragenews.com/deep-learning-based-surrogate-models-outperform-simulators-and-could-hasten-scientific-discoveries/?utm_campaign=rubikscode.net?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=thisweekinai22 |
Students of Zen Buddhism practice meditation in order to increase their awareness and purify their minds. They hope to undo their opinions and preferences and reach a state of satori, or illumination. With this clarity, they can live calmly and compassionately in the world.
Introduce the topic of meditation to students with the following How to Meditate passage.
How to Meditate
You have probably heard the word "meditation" many times in your life. You may have seen pictures of people sitting in meditation with crossed legs and eyes closed. You may even know someone who meditates. But what exactly is meditation? What is its purpose? In all traditions of Buddhism, followers meditate in order to still their minds, to let go of the running thoughts inside their brains and purify it of greed, hatred, and ignorance. If you stop to notice, thoughts go on from the moment of waking until sleep. They even appear in dreams. For Buddhists, meditation is a means of finding what lies beyond these thoughts. Of course, this takes practice.
There are many forms of meditation. Usually, Buddhists sit still, spine straight and eyes closed. By focusing on their breath, they become more present, more aware of themselves. Although the stream of thoughts continues, the student simply watches them go by like clouds in the sky. Thus, he or she begins to be free of the grip of thinking.
Zen Buddhists have some unusual entries to meditation practices. One such entry is called a koan, or a riddle. The master asks a puzzling question which the student must answer correctly--although it may take days to comprehend! Thus, the koan provides the means for meditation.
Tibetan Buddhists like to focus on mandalas during meditation. Mandalas are elaborate designs rich with color and detail. They are often circular, containing either portraits of various gods or intricate patterns. After meditating on the mandala, the student will close his or her eyes and try to visualize the picture. Thus, the mind is disciplined while the heart merges with the spirit of the mandala.
Distribute the Mandalas activity sheet to students . Have them color the mandalas provided and then create their own.
Extension
Have students try sitting quietly five minutes a day. Suggest that they just sit and listen to the sounds around them, even the sound of their breathing. After a few days, try ten minutes. Have them keep journals of their quiet time experiences. | https://www.teachercreated.com/lessons/390 |
Mandala is a spiritual and ritual symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism, representing the universe. The circular designs symbolizes the idea that life is never ending and everything is connected. The mandala also represents spiritual journey within the individual viewer.
The word mandala itself simply means circle in Sanskrit. They are painting like patterns within the boundary of a circle.
Mandalas bring along a feeling of relaxation. Designing and coloring mandalas can help you focus your attention. That’s why they’re a great exercise for calming down when you’re stressed and waking up your mind. Here are some benefits of mandalas:
They help with balance.
They bring peace and tranquility.
Looking at them will give you a feeling of calmness.
They help with concentration.
They make it easier to be mindful.
The way all the shapes and designs are laid out brings a feeling of balance.
Mandalas are also a kind of meditation that can help you focus your attention. They bring harmony, because energies flow through all their shapes and colors. These energies can transform negative things into positive ones, and bring balance to your life.
What Material you will need? | https://studybullet.com/udemy/relaxing-mandalas-basic-mandala-course-for-free/ |
Hello,
When I was looking for a direction, and purpose, I began to explore different ways and approaches that could support me to find balance, and clarify my vision.
When I studied the Grinberg Method in 1991, I learned specific disciplines to center myself daily, this has been a strong foundation that was supporting me to center myself and stay on my path. I noticed that discipline, reflection and a regular spiritual practice is as important as food, water, exercise, breath; if we like to stay healthy, find balance, be energized and clear minded.
Through daily activities, encounters, and experiences, our energy begins to be scattered. We become reactive, we may over extend ourselves, we may loose ourselves or experience stress. We continue to accumulate pressure and attachments day by day.
My experiences of QiGong in China, and other countries, brought me strength and clarity, empowering my vital energy. Tai Chi was similar in some of the benefits, yet the movement was like a dance inviting me to awaken new sensations, access inner potentials, and open to a harmonious flow.
Studies of Buddhism and Hinduism during my travels in India, China, Thailandia e Indonesia, brought insightful and enlightening knowledge into my life.
I learned about the kalachakra (Tibetan mandala), the Medicine wheel and cross of the Andes (shamanic mandalas), as well as other forms of mandalas, including the practice that has developed the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung.
In Asia and South America I practiced sacred dances healing and balancing my feminine energy. The journey through those practices has been beautiful and inspiring, healing traumas and unveiling my creative energy.
The practice of Yoga is giving me a sense of oneness, integrity. Dharmi-Yoga supports the integration and alignment in the five bodies, considering the physical, emotional, energetic, breath/mind and spiritual aspect through the flow of the practice.
When I lived in Americas (south, central, and north), I had the opportunity to share experiences and learn different approach to shamanism. I explored diverse path in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, Chile, .. experiencing lineage such as quechua, aumatas, lakotas, condor blanco, .. During some rituals, we invoke the 7 directions, which includes the five bodies that I have mentioned above. These practices, together with other visualizations and chants have been key in my quest to clarify the Portal that leads us through the Dharmi Map of Transcendence.
It is during a time of research on sacred geometry and learning from the teaching of Drunvalo Melchizedech that I traveled to Egypt, exploring the pyramids, as well as the valley of the king and the queens in Luxor.
The power of intention and their reflection on the water, how Dr Masaru Emoto shows it clearly through his research, is a fundamental aspect to take in consideration through our day. Yet, we can be taken away from our beautiful intention, when the children are screaming, the boss is in a bad mood, traffic is intense, bills are coming, .. When we come back to our space of reflection, and meditation, we can clarify our intention of the moment and align ourselves with this vibration. All in life is about vibration.
There are many inspiring forms, teachings and ways, all of them bringing great benefits into my life. I did participate to some training to have a deeper understanding, and to be able to teach many of them. Yet, it was no time to fit them all in my schedule. We still need to have time for our lives, for sharing quality time with our loved ones, for work, for evolution, ..
Many people choose to do an intensive weekend or retreat, and then come back to their daily lives, with no time and space for the continuation of their practice/discipline. This cause a gap and stress between them and themselves.
I noticed that all those approaches, philosophies and disciplines are related. How could I include: meditation, qigong, shamanism, considering the five bodies, seven dimensions, the chakras, dantien, sacred geometry, … in one practice that I can practice regularly, and include in my routine.
The Vortex of Energy Meditation, is an active meditation that supports your wellbeing, balance, uplifts your vibrations and brings you to a state of Bliss.
This practice can last from 20min upto 1 hour, depending of how much time you have, and the form you choose to practice that day.
There are four forms to support the completion of cycles and empowerment of a new intention, vision.
- The clearing form that you will do when you need to release stress and to center yourself.
- The centering form that you can practice when you like to align yourself with a clear intention.
- The form of empowerment, which you will practice when you need more confidence, and energy.
- Another centering form, which supports you to be; to welcome this new frequency with integrity.
Peace & Vision, | http://dharmi.com/many_ways_being_one/ |
# Paul Heussenstamm
Paul Heussenstamm is a painter and lecturer from the United States. He began painting full-time at the age of 26. He conducts "Art as a Spiritual Path" workshops. Heussenstamm's work has been featured in Unity in Chicago, Illinois; Agape in Santa Monica; and Church of Religious Science, Santa Barbara; His art is also featured at Deepak Chopra’s in La Jolla, California; Esalen, in Big Sur, California; and Oglethorpe University Museum in Atlanta, Georgia. Both spiritual and multicultural, he is considered the premier artist representing the mandala painting.
## Bio
Paul Heussenstamm is the son of the artist and writer, Karl Heussenstamm, and artist and psychologist, Frances Heussenstamm. The household consistently engaged in spiritual discussion with notable guests such as Sufi Master Pir Inayat Khan, actor Gig Young, transcendental painter Emil Bisttram, and health guru Gypsy Boots.
Heussenstamm's brothers, Mark and John Heussenstamm all lead lives as artists.
Though originally aspiring to be a plein air painter, Heussenstamm's spiritual and artistic journey led him from landscape paintings, to flower paintings, and on to discovering his passion for mandala paintings. His first mandala was painted at a spiritual workshop conducted by Brugh Joy with notable participants such as Barbra Streisand and Carrie Fisher. He was introduced to the healing potential of mandalas through the work and mentorship of Beverly Sheiffer. With permission, he adopted her method of painting mandalas for spiritual revitalization. Heussenstamm has continued to receive patronage for his mandala paintings throughout his journey.
## Books
Heussenstamm authored the book, Divine Forces: Art that Awakens the Soul. He also coauthored several books: Color Yourself Calm: A Mindfulness Coloring Book; The Art of Mandala Meditation: Mandala Designs to Heal Your Mind; and Body and Spirit Mandala Masterworks: Beauty. Stillness. Presence. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Heussenstamm |
The word “mandala” comes from the ancient Indian language, Sanskrit and means “circle”. First appearing in Buddhist art, mandala designs have since been created by various cultures and religions since ancient times. Many consider the creation of a mandala to be a representation of a spiritual journey, beginning from the outer circle to the inner core. Renowned psychologist Carl Jung believed this manner of drawing encourages a “profound re-balancing process.” In this 3-hour drawing workshop, we will be joined by one of my oldest friends, Jacqui, who is a qualified yoga instructor, meditation guru and all-round amazing person (get it, mandalas are round!) As mandalas have a deep history connected to meditation practices, Jacqui will provide us with some sound healing music throughout, and will set us on the right track with a short, guided meditation at the commencement of the workshop. You will then learn a brief history of the mandala with me (Anne) before being guided to create your own highly personal, striking mandala design. I will discuss design concepts such as radial symmetry and colour theory to help you enhance your drawing. The patterns you create promote a sense of harmony and the work will unfold on its own. Tea, coffee and light refreshments will be served and you will leave this session with your mandala art framed and ready to display! | https://www.thepencilcaseartstudio.com/service-page/mandalas-meditation-drawing-workshop |
Dr Jess Taubert, National Institute of Mental Health, USA : "The neural basis of social intelligence in primates"
Speaker:
Dr Jess Taubert
Laboratory of Brain & Cognition
National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, USA
Title: "The neural basis of social intelligence in primates"
Abstract:
The overarching goal of my research is to understand the neural mechanisms that give particular visual stimuli social value, allowing us to infer the internal state of the people around us. Our remarkable ability to “read the room” is a form of social intelligence that emerges in infancy and contributes to our social wellbeing. Yet its biological basis is only partially understood. How do we find social agents in the visual environment and attend to them? How do we track changes in someone’s mood during a conversation? How do we know the difference between an angry face and a happy face, and how plastic are those representations? To begin to address these questions, and others, I have been combining psychophysics with state-of-the-art neuroscientific methods (including whole brain functional imaging, single-cell recordings and inactivation techniques) in a highly translatable animal model, the rhesus macaque.
In this talk I will describe some of my recent discoveries including (1) that the primate amygdala builds unique representations of socially-relevant stimuli, (2) that macaque inferior temporal cortex contains regions that track changes in a face’s expression during a social exchange and (3) that the cortical face processing system is not necessary for the prioritization of faces during free-viewing. These experiments set the stage for future studies that will characterize and chart the neural circuits responsible for interpreting visual signals and guiding social behavior in both human and nonhuman primates.
About Neuroscience Seminars
Neuroscience seminars at the QBI play a major role in the advancement of neuroscience in the Asia-Pacific region. The primary goal of these seminars is to promote excellence in neuroscience through the exchange of ideas, establishing new collaborations and augmenting partnerships already in place.
While seminars in the QBI Auditorium have been suspended due to COVID-19, we will still be holding seminars via Zoom. The days and times of these seminars will vary depending on the time zone of the speaker. Please see each seminar listed below for details. | https://qbi.uq.edu.au/event/session/10002 |
Thomas Lauritzen, Alex Wade; Different cortical areas are modulated in different ways by spatial attention in human visual cortex . Journal of Vision 2009;9(14):44. doi: 10.1167/9.14.44.
Introduction: In primates, sustained spatial attention causes significant increases in single-unit firing rates in areas such as V4 but similar increases are hard to measure in V1. Paradoxically, fMRI measurements of spatial attentional modulation show strong responses in all visual areas, including V1. These fMRI changes are either purely additive or a mixture of additive and multiplicative mechanisms . It is suggested that attention increases the baseline firing rates or presynaptic activity of all neurons in the attended region irrespective of their tuning . Such a change might be undetectable at the single unit level, but generate a large DC increase in metabolic demand, affecting the fMRI signal. To test this hypothesis, we measured the effect of spatial attention on steady state visually-evoked potentials (SSVEPs) in five retinotopically-defined visual areas using source-imaged EEG.
Methods: SSVEP stimuli consisted of two gratings at 0, 5, 20 or 50% contrast located to the left and right of fixation. Subjects were cued to covertly attend one of the two gratings, detecting small contrast modulations in the grating. Performance was ˜50% correct on all conditions. EEG data were collected with a whole-head, 128-channel EGI Netstation system, and the locations of all electrodes were recorded using a 3D digitizer. Minimum-norm inverses were computed using anatomically-correct headmodels . The time course of the cortical current density was extracted from fMRI-defined visual areas V1, V3A, V4, hMT+ and intraparietal sulcus (IPS). Spectral analysis was used to separate the responses to the two stimulus gratings in all visual areas.
Results: Attention increases the response gain in V1, V3A, hMT+ and IPS, and the contrast gain for V4. Signal-detection analysis reveals a higher response for detected, than for missed targets in areas displaying response gain only.
Conclusion: Attention modulates SSVEPs by a multiplicative, rather than an additive gain function, in all areas. The discrepancies between primate and Human could be due to neural differences in the different spieces, and that attention does not modulate neural signals in primates in as early levels of visual processing as in Humans. A more likely explanation is that EEG/fMRI measures averages over the entire cell population and electrode recordings target specific subgroups of neurons or laminar structures. Other neuronal populations will then respond more similar to the Human results.
BuracasG.T.BoyntonG.M.(2007). The effect of spatial attention on contrast response functions in human visual cortex. J. Neurosci. 27:93–97.
LiX.LuZ.TjanB.S.DosherB.A.ChuW.(2008). Blood oxygenation level-dependent contrast response functions identify mechanisms of covert attention in early visual areas. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 105:6202–6207.
HämäläinenM.S.IlmoniemiR.J.(1994). Interpreting magnetic fields of the brain: minimum norm estimates. Med. Biol. Eng. Comput. 32:35–42. | https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2136520 |
Final Report Summary - PAIN MODULATION (Neurobiological mechanisms of endogenous pain modulation)
Executive Summary:
Chronic pain is not only a serious burden for the individual suffering from it, but also one of the largest medical health problems worldwide – in Europe for example, it affects around 20% of adults and imposes costs of more than 200 billion Euros per year. One of the factors that have been suggested to play a role in chronic forms of pain is a dysfunction of the individual’s capability to modulate pain. Such endogenous control of painful sensations is realized by a brain system that originates in cortical areas and – via relays in the brainstem – targets neurons in the spinal cord. The spinal cord is the first station in the central nervous system where painful signals are processed and a modulation of these signals at such an early stage will produce a powerful effect on the signals travelling upwards to the brain and thus on the subsequent experience of pain.
I first made use of recent innovations in data acquisition and analysis techniques to non-invasively investigate responses in the human spinal cord with the technique of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Although it is highly difficult to investigate the spinal cord with fMRI (e.g. due to its small diameter and its proximity to the lungs), I was able to accurately pinpoint the location of responses to painful stimuli and their specificity in a first set of studies: 1) responses to painful stimulation are localized in the back of the spinal cord, in contrast to motor responses which are localized in the front of the spinal cord, 2) responses to painful stimulation of one side of the body are localized in the same side of the spinal cord, and 3) responses progress from higher up to lower down in the spinal cord when applying painful stimuli to the fingers from the thumb to the little finger. All of this is in accordance with what it known from invasive animal studies and human neurosurgery studies by other groups, but – crucially – I was able to non-invasively demonstrate these fundamental aspects of the neuroanatomy of the human spinal cord.
Having established these basic neuroanatomical features, I next turned to investigate the influence of pain-modulatory systems on spinal cord responses. Here, I made use of the fact that somatosensory nerve-fibres from the peripheral nervous system are the only direct sensory input into the dorsal horn of the spinal cord, meaning that spinal cord neurons should for example not respond to visual stimuli. If however, the spinal cord responded to visual stimuli, this would mean that there is some descending modulatory input from the brain that relays visual signals to the spine. I hypothesized that such responses would only occur if the visual stimuli had some relation to pain, i.e. if a volunteer saw a certain visual signal that predicted pain. To this end, I used fMRI of the human spinal cord in combination with an associative learning task, in which visual stimuli were either predictive or non-predictive of painful stimulation and volunteers would thus form an expectation of impending pain or not. In several behavioural measures I observed that our volunteers learned the relationship between visual and painful stimuli and thus expected pain to follow one of these stimuli. Interestingly, I saw that the stronger a participant expected to receive pain, the weaker were the responses to pain in the spinal cord. Most importantly, I observed that the spinal cord also responded to visual signals if these were predictive of the upcoming pain. This relationship was furthermore dynamic, in that when volunteers were not expecting to receive pain anymore (i.e. when visual stimuli were no longer followed by pain), the spinal cord response to the visual stimulus decayed. These results demonstrate that there is a top-down pathway from the brain to the spinal cord that modulates the activity of spinal cord neurons in accordance with the expectations one holds with regard to upcoming pain.
In another study aiming at supraspinal structures, I used a pharmacological manipulation of the opioidergic system (which is a crucial player in pain modulation) and could show that blocking opioidergic function with the receptor antagonist naloxone actually hinders the decay of neural responses to the visual stimulus – i.e. volunteers’ brains behave as if they still expect the pain to occur. Currently, I am investigating cortical responses underlying pain modulation with similar experiments using the tool of magnetoencephalography (MEG). This allows us to gain more detailed insights into the temporal profile of modulatory processes, as MEG possesses a time-resolution in the order of milliseconds as opposed to several seconds in fMRI. Here, I am especially interested in very fast responses in the gamma-frequency range, which have been suggested to be especially relevant for the subjective aspects of pain.
Overall, our results delineate some of the pain modulatory capabilities our central nervous system possesses in a healthy state. The obtained results will provide guidance for future studies that seek to investigate these mechanisms in patients with chronic pain where they are assumed to be dysfunctional. | https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/273805/reporting |
According to a new study from Yale University, judging by the activity of the brain, baby mammals can already see themselves in the world they are about to be born into, even before their eyes open.
When a newborn mammal first opens its eyes, it can already visually perceive the world around it. But how does this happen before they have vision?
A new study from Yale University suggests that in some sense mammals dream of the world they are about to enter even before they are born.
In a recent issue of the journal Science, a team led by Michael Crair, professor of neuroscience William Ziegler III and professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, describes waves of activity that emanate from the retinas of newborn mice even before their eyes open.
This activity disappears shortly after birth and is replaced by a more mature neural network that transmits visual stimuli to the brain, where further information is encoded and stored.
"When you open their eyes, mammals are capable of rather complex behavior."says Crair, senior author of the study, who is also Yale University's assistant vice rector for research." But how are the patterns that allow us to perceive movement and navigate the world are formed? It turns out we are born capable of many of these behaviors, at least in its infancy.".
In their study, Crair's group, led by Yale graduate students Xinxin Ge and Katie Zhang, examined the origins of these waves of activity. By taking brain scans of mice shortly after birth but before their eyes opened, the Yale University team found that these waves in the retina of the eye flow in a pattern that mimics the activity that would occur if an animal moved forward through its environment.
"This early sleep-like activity allows the mouse to anticipate what it will experience after opening its eyes and be ready to respond immediately to environmental threats."- said Crair.
Going further, the Yale University team also investigated the cells and circuits responsible for propagating waves in the retina that mimic the forward movement of newborn mice. They found that blocking the function of the stellate amacrine cells, which are cells in the retina that secrete neurotransmitters, prevents waves from propagating in a direction that mimics forward motion. This, in turn, interferes with the development of the mouse's ability to respond to visual movement after birth.
Interestingly, in the adult mouse retina, these same cells play a crucial role in a more sophisticated motion detection circuitry that allows them to respond to environmental cues.
Mice, of course, differ from humans in their ability to quickly navigate their environment shortly after birth. but human babies are also capable of immediately detecting objects and detecting movement, such as a finger moving across the field of view, suggesting that their visual system was also prepared before birth.
"These brain circuits self-organize at birth, and some of the early learning has already been done," Crair said. "It's like a dream about what you are about to see, even before you open your eyes.". | https://chronicles-life.com/12983547-baby-mammals-dream-about-the-world-they-will-enter-after-birth |
When a human looks at a number, letter or other shape, neurons in various areas of the brain's visual center respond to different components of that shape, almost instantaneously fitting them together like a puzzle to create an image that the individual then "sees" and understands, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University report.
A team from the university's Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute describes the complex but speedy process in detail in a recent issue of the journal Neuron.
The question of how the brain sees, recognizes and understands objects is one of the most intriguing in neuroscience, associate professor and paper co-author Charles E. Connor said.
"This may not even seem like a scientific question to some people, because seeing is so automatic and we are so good at it — far better than the best computer vision systems yet devised," Connor said. "That is because a large part of the human brain is devoted to interpreting objects in our world, so that we have the necessary information for interacting with our environment.
"Vision doesn't happen in the eye," Connor said. "It happens at multiple processing stages in the brain. We study how objects are signaled or encoded by large populations of neurons at higher-level stages in the object-processing part of the brain."
The report, based on recordings of nerve cells in the visual cortex of macaque monkeys, reveals that neurons in the higher-level visual cortex at first respond to a visual stimulus "somewhat indiscriminately," signaling all the individual features within a shape to which they are sensitive. For instance, a particular neuron may respond to objects with either a concave fragment at the top or a convex fragment at the bottom. At this point, the neural signals are ambiguous; the brain doesn't know whether the concavity, the convexity or both are present.
Milliseconds later, however, neurons begin to react exclusively to combinations of shape fragments, rather than to individual fragments. In other words, the brain begins to put the pieces together to form larger sections, in the same way that an artisan might fasten discrete shards of stained glass to create a design.
"Humans do a rough categorization of objects very quickly," Connor said. "For instance, in just a tenth of a second, we can recognize whether something we see is an animal or not. Our results show that this immediate, rough impression probably depends on recognizing just one or more individual parts of what we see. Fine discriminations — such as recognizing individual faces — take longer to happen, and our study suggests that this delay depends upon emerging signals for combinations of shape fragments. In a sense, the brain has to construct an internal representation of an object from disparate pieces."
In the long term, understanding exactly how the brain processes information may lead to neural prostheses — artificial replacements for lost sensory, motor and perhaps even memory and cognitive functions. In the short term, such work is driven by curiosity about one of the fundamental mysteries: how the brain works.
"Our ability to see is one of the great evolutionary accomplishments of the human brain," Connor said. "We still don't know how the visual system accomplishes this marvel of information processing. Such experiments are beginning to reveal how large networks of neurons in the brain extract meaning from the eye image."
Funding for this research was provided by the National Institutes of Health. The article appeared in the January 5 issue of Neuron.
Photos of Connor are available. Contact Lisa De Nike at [email protected] or 443-287-9960. | http://pages.jh.edu/~news_info/news/home06/jan06/connor.html |
A team of researchers has discovered a new type of neuron is responsible for selective motion vision in fruit flies.
Motion despite immobility. The illusion of self-motion is created, for example, in an IMAX cinema with the help of large-format movies. This is possible, because the brain calculates self-motion from the visual surround moving past the eyes. Deciphering how this is accomplished is the aim of Alexander Borst and his team at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried. Together with colleagues from the Janelia Research Campus in Virginia (USA), the researchers have now discovered a new neuron type in the brain of fruit flies. Detailed analysis has shown that these cells form the basis of a phenomenon known as motion opponency, meaning that – in humans and other species – specific nerve cells are activated by motion in one direction and inhibited by motion in the opposite direction. By studying the newly discovered cells, the researchers have been able to investigate this phenomenon in detail and elucidate its function for the first time.
Motion is a change in position over time. That seems simple enough, but the detection of motion is an impossible task for individual light-sensitive cells in the retina, as they only “see” a small part of the overall image. If the image changes, a single cell cannot tell whether something has moved or simply disappeared. And if movement has occurred, where to? To determine motion and its direction, the brain therefore must compare the image information of multiple light-sensitive cells − and it must do so with a certain time lag between neighboring cells.
Alexander Borst and his team at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology are deciphering exactly what happens in the brain. The researchers are teasing the system apart, cell by cell, analyzing the structure, connections and functions of the individual parts. This is, of course, not possible in the human brain. Instead, they are using the fruit fly as a model organism to investigate motion vision. “Despite their obvious differences, flies and humans process optical information in a similar way,” says Alexander Borst.
The scientists were able to show, for example, that visual perception in flies – as in humans − is initially split into two separate processing pathways: one pathway for bright edges and one for dark edges. Within each of these pathways, the information is then sorted according to direction, each direction being processed separately. The researchers not only revealed the existence of the two pathways in the fly brain, but also identified which cells are activated and how they are connected. “Discovering the different direction pathways in the brain was a great finding,” Alexander Borst recalls. However, if directions of motion are processed separately, why does the phenomenon known as motion opponency exist? In flies, humans and many other animals, large wide-field neurons located deeper in the brain are excited by motion in their preferred direction, whereas these same cells are inhibited by motion in the opposite direction. Given that directional information is processed separately, there should be no need for inhibition by motion in the opposite direction. “This little inconsistency kept us awake at night,” says Borst. Sometimes researchers want to get to the bottom of it.
The scientists applied all their skill to clarify this “small detail”. Ultimately, they discovered a crucial missing circuit component called LPi cells. This hitherto unknown type of neuron breaks the strict order of separate directional pathways. The cells send inhibitory signals from their assigned pathway to the neighbouring pathway, which is responsible for detecting motion in the opposite direction. The results show that LPi cells in the fly brain are directly responsible for inhibiting wide-field cells by motion opposite to their preferred direction. The newly discovered cells therefore form the cellular basis of motion opponency. For the first time, it was now possible to elucidate the functional significance of this phenomenon.
The subsequent investigations revealed that LPi cells prevent the downstream wide-field cells from being stimulated by non-specific signals within their field of vision. “Flies are masters of motion vision. But without LPi cells, they would be unable to distinguish between different motion patterns due to inappropriate activation,” says Alex Mauss, summarizing the findings of his recently published study. When the scientists blocked the function of LPi cells, the wide-field cells were stimulated by motion patterns produced during forward flight as strongly as by motion patterns associated with rotational or lift movements. The researchers therefore succeeded in elucidating the circuit diagram of motion vision in this part of the fly brain and were also able to show how the system uses a simple mechanism to filter out unspecific signals.
Be the first to comment on "Researchers Discover a Group of Local, Inhibitory Interneurons in the Fruit Fly" | https://scitechdaily.com/researchers-discover-a-group-of-local-inhibitory-interneurons-in-the-fruit-fly/ |
Self-care isn’t just an adult thing—your kids can benefit from it too. It plays an important role in helping kids manage their emotions and behaviors, and it gives them the mental resources they need to face the challenges of the day with confidence and optimism. With this in mind, here are eight self-care tips for your kids.
1. Encourage and Role Model Self-Care
Kids of all ages can benefit from some basic self-care strategies. Take a cue from your own self-care routines, and be sure to show your kids how they can find ways to refresh and prepare for what life has in store.
2. Exercise
Exercise is a powerful tool that helps kids take care of their bodies, minds, and spirits. Encourage them to try a variety of activities that interest them—whether it’s swimming, hiking, or biking—and they’ll grow into confident, active people. As an adult, you can set an example by keeping good habits and exercising.
3. Learn Judo
The art of judo can teach you to use your opponent’s momentum and energy against them. Judo helps develop speed, power, balance, and strength. It also helps improve posture, increases flexibility, and provides techniques effective in a fight or self-defense scenario. Try a class at Pedro’s Judo Center in Wakefield.
4. Meditation
At first, you might struggle to get your kids to sit still long enough to meditate but with practice, they can learn how to meditate and find it enjoyable in its own right. For example, they can focus on breathing in the fresh air and visualize green leaves floating upwards. This is a great way to help them relax and wind down before bedtime.
5. Gratitude
Gratitude is the ability to recognize and appreciate what you have in your life. Writing down things you’re grateful for each day helps improve your mental health, self-esteem, and overall happiness. Thanking someone with a handwritten note shows them how much they mean to you.
6. Breathing
Deep breathing can help your child slow down, calm their nervous system, and prepare to be present. Try having your child breathe in through their nose, counting to five as they inhale, and then exhale fully through their mouth, again counting to five.
7. Art and Music
Art is a great form of healthy expression. Create time every day to help your child explore their creative side by doing arts and crafts or playing music. Expose them to new genres, artists, and styles they may not normally get to experience at school or with their friends. Listening to music is a healthy and enjoyable way to practice self-care. It helps us relax, unwind, and de-stress.
8. Practicing Self-Care Together
Self-care is crucial for adults, and kids must pick up on these habits early. When you’re practicing self-care together, you’re helping your family feel more grounded and happy. If you work from home, help reduce stress on your family by setting ground rules and a schedule that everyone can get behind. Here are more recommendations.
The Key To Self-Care For Kids
Making time for yourself is vital for your health and when your child practices a consistent self-care routine, they’ll become well-adjusted and mentally strong. Visit Pedro’s Judo Center in Wakefield to help your child learn a new self-care routine. | https://pedrosjudo.com/2022/01/05/8-self-care-tips-for-your-kids/ |
Boston Moms is thrilled to share this guest post written by Sarah Harmon, a licensed mental health therapist, a certified yoga and mindfulness instructor, and the founder of The School of MOM.
There is a strong need for education, support, and tools for women to learn how to take better care of themselves and, more importantly, to actually do it. As a mom to two girls, a therapist who works with moms, and the founder of a company called The School of MOM (mothering oneself mindfully), I’ve seen burnout — I know this on a personal and a professional level.
COVID-19 hit our routines and families like a freight train. Stress and unknowns are at an all-time high, and access to traditional self-care practices and stress-management outlets are limited. This new reality is not short term, so it’s CRUCIAL for moms to focus on self-care strategies to stay grounded and prioritize our mental, emotional, and physical health.
Let’s get clear on self-care so you don’t roll your eyes and say to yourself, “Great… another article about self-care that I can’t actually do.” Self-care doesn’t need to be “big” events or practices. Think snacks vs. meals. We all know how important snacks are! I define self-care as an umbrella term that encompasses everything from the smaller practices (three deep breaths) to the bigger events (spa weekend getaway with girlfriends).
Here are three accessible self-care practices under my umbrella that I teach to my therapy clients and students in The School of MOM to help women avoid burnout and stay grounded.
1. Change your story.
Start with discerning between facts and thoughts. Our minds are very good at making up stories based on one initial fact. For example:
Fact: My kids’ school is going to be remote.
Thought: This is going to be the worst year ever.
Most of the time, we’re caught up in an unconscious STORY that leads us to feel overwhelmed, stressed, and hopeless. When you notice you’re feeling a challenging emotion, pause and write down your thoughts. Try to get back to the initial fact and then try choosing a different story.
Continuing the example above:
New story: While this is not ideal, we are going to take it one day at a time.
Notice how the new story may make you feel more at peace. Try coming up with alternative narratives with your mom friends.
2. Have a tantrum.
If you have a toddler, you know about big feelings. Remember that we all have a toddler in us, and we can experience big feelings too. My recommendation here may seem silly, but it is this: Give yourself permission to have a full-blown tantrum. If possible, you could try to tantrum at a time/place where you can fully unleash and be unencumbered. If you need to have it in front of your kids, it’s a great lesson in showing our kids that we have big feelings too.
Jill Bolte Taylor, author of “My Stroke Of Insight,” says we have a neurological process that she calls the 90-second rule. In a nutshell, this rule states that emotions have a 90-second shelf life if we allow them to move through us. It’s our thoughts/stories/judgments (see mind tip above) that block this natural flow and result in emotions getting backed up and stuck.
So if you are too deep in the thoughts and past a point of discerning fact from thought, let your big feelings flow. Have the tantrum. Hit a pillow. Yell at the top of your lungs in your car by yourself. Ride the 90-second wave of whatever it is you’re feeling. Feel free to set the timer for yourself and observe how you feel after 90 seconds of truly feeling your big feelings.
Bonus tip to help you ride the wave: Try narrating your experience — I’m feeling SO ______ (angry, sad, frustrated) right now!
3. Ask your body what it needs.
While we can practice self-compassion in many ways, I encourage you to start with your body. When you are in the midst of a struggle, what would being kind to your body look like? Going to bed early? Getting outside? Saying yes to a glass of wine? Saying no to a glass of wine? Taking three deep breaths with your hand on your heart? Choosing rest? Choosing movement/exercise? Think of your body as your number one resource to get you through this time. Continually check in with your body and ask what it needs.
Try out these accessible self-care practices for a week and see if you feel more grounded and at peace during these challenging times.
If you’re interested in learning more about The School of MOM and/or would like a free meditation to help you take care of YOU, check out www.theschoolofmom.com. For ongoing tips, follow @the.schoolofmom on Instagram, and feel free to reach out at [email protected].
Sarah is a mom to two girls, a licensed mental health therapist, a certified yoga and mindfulness instructor, and the founder of The School of MOM. She is passionate about providing women with the education, support, and tools they need to become the mindful, resilient, patient, and compassionate humans they want to raise. | https://boston.momcollective.com/motherhood/3-easy-self-care-practices-for-moms-on-the-edge-of-burnout/ |
“Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS” - after a noisy reception, much volatile debate and considerable revision the Bill quietly attained Royal Assent in March '12. The organisational changes in the NHS will require radical new approaches for all NHS suppliers, care providers, commissioning bodies, local Government and patient support groups. The introduction of Value Based Pricing, for pharmaceuticals and changes in NICE to include social care and wider social costs will also create new challenges with market access and launches.
The new Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, has set new priorities for the NHS – Improving Survival Rates and Outcomes; Improving Chronic Disease Care – Dementia, Diabetes etc; Improving the quality of clinical and customer Care; Better use of IT
The NHS Commissioning Board has published ‘Everyone Counts: Planning for Patients’ with Higher Standards and Safer Care as the goal through – More [ patient] Choice and Improved Patient Outcomes. Health Providers will become more accountable, outcomes more transparent down to consultant level and patient will be asked if they would recommend the care they received to their family and friends.
- Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) will take over responsibility from PCTs in April '13.
- Monitor has enhanced powers as the economic and competition regulator of the NHS.
- NICE sees its powers extended to social care and will include wider social costs in its appraisals and reviews.
- The NHS Commissioning Board will manage the NHS and specialist commissioning. CCGs will commission services locally and l be held financially accountable and responsible for delivering outcomes for patents.
- Health and Wellbeing Boards in local Government will be responsible for public health and will work with CCGs and Healthwatch (representing patients and the public) to develop seamless health and social care for their local populations. There will be more local democratic accountability for healthcare.
- There are new opportunities for the independent and private sectors in commissioning, managing NHS organisations and as healthcare providers.
- All NHS Trusts will need to become FTs and will seek to expand their services.
Do you understand the details and implications of these changes to your organisation?
Have you identified your new stakeholders, customers and decision makers and began to develop new relationships?
Have you reviewed your structure, strategies and approaches to optimise success in the new NHS landscape?
Are your employees aware of what is happening and how this will affect their roles?
How will you gain successful market access for your new medicine or technology?
Will the new structure and processes mean new hurdles?
How will commissioning be changed and affected?
As the NHS changes suppliers will need to understand the implications and the changes they need to make to be successful. How we can help?
Value-Based Pricing, NICE and Market Access
The Health Select Committee has criticised “the delay in setting out precisely what a value-based pricing system for drugs entails” and has urged DH and the Government to make decisions by the end of March 2013.
Value-based pricing is likely to be introduced on new medicines from 2014, but some already on the market may also be reviewed. Understanding and communicating value will be key to successfully marketing products, growing the business and managing pipeline in the new environment. How are you preparing for this change?
What changes will be needed pre-launch to generate 'value' and social costs?
Do you know what value your products are to patients, the NHS and health economists?
What are the social costs of a treatment? How should these be assessed?
Can you demonstrate value for populations rather than just at individual patient level?
Market Access
The reorganisation to CCGs has changed personnel, responsibility and accountability, networks and commissioners. Although commissioners are made aware of new medicines there is no mechanism for new devices, technologies, consumable or capital equipment.
Have you identified the new stakeholders and decision-makers you need influence to have your new product, service or treatment commissioned?
What new mechanisms and evidence will you need to influence and inform them?
Are you ready to look at new ways to manage more rigid formularies and trading agreements?
Do you understand how CQUIN (Commissioning for Quality and Innovation), Service Line Reporting and Best Practice Tariffs can help you communicate value?
Do you understand how Personalised Budgets and the quality agenda can help you deliver quality medicines to patients? How we can help?
“No decision about me without me”-
- Patients will have choice of their hospital, their consultant team and their GP
- Patients will be fully informed about their treatment options and be able to make choices about the treatment most appropriate to them
- Patients will have access to mortality, morbidity and outcomes data to inform their choices
- NHS providers will be rated by patients on if they would recommend the care they received to their family and friends.
Why should patients choose your hospital or GP practice? How can you influence their choice?
Do patients know what services and treatments your organisation provides?
Are you providing the level of customer care your patients want?
How will you be rated by patients? What can you do about it?
How will you involve patients in service redesign and setting care standards?
Are you staff ready for the changes your organisation needs?
How can we help?
Working with you we interpret the impact of the NHS changes on your organisation, marketing, sales and market access strategies and functions.
We offer an insight for all the levels within your organisation -
Board and Executive Level -
- Strategic Updates - Executive workshops
- Organisation and strategy review
- Strategic business planning
- Stakeholder mapping
- Brand value evidence for pricing
Senior Marketing and Market Access
- Strategic Updates - senior management workshops
- Brand portfolio review
- Brand stakeholder mapping
- Market access stakeholder mapping
- In-depth stakeholder insight research/surveys
- Brand strategy reviews
- Market access strategy reviews
- Brand value evidence for pricing
Sales and Market Access Teams
- NHS update - training workshop
- Tactical sales and market access reviews
Delivered by an experienced team of senior industry and NHS consultants Strategic Health Insights can help you address the strategic and operational challenges ahead. If you would like to know more contact
Ginette Camps-Walsh
07768 794061
How can we help NHS organisations?
Working with you we interpret the impact of the NHS changes on your organisational from board through to grassroots. | http://www.medicalmarketingconsultants.co.uk/index.php/strategic-health-insights |
Factors Affecting The Pricing Decision Of The Price Of Goods And Services
The setting of prices in marketing is influenced by a variety of factors. These factors could be internal to the organization or external to the organization. One major determinant of the price of goods or services is how the customer will react to the prices. This is mainly because though customers usually purchase goods and services based on their perception of value and not solely on the price of the product alone, the price of the product influences their perception of the product.
FACTORS AFFECTING PRICING DECISIONS
Several factors influence the pricing decision of firms. Some of the major factors include – pricing objectives, strategy, cost, competition, customer expectations, government regulations and demand. These factors could be divided into two set of factors – internal and external factors.
The internal factors are usually under the control of the firm and are a result of the company’s actions and decisions. The organization may be able to alter some of these factors to impact on their pricing decision. The external factors on the other hand are factors which impact on the setting of price by the firm but are beyond the control of the firm. The organization has to constantly monitor its market to mitigate the effects of these factors on its pricing decisions. | https://www.cram.com/essay/Factors-Affecting-The-Pricing-Decision-Of-The/P3Z65SLU64E5 |
The original amendment bill provided for very cosmetic changes to s 46: essentially it provided for some further clarification about matters the Court may consider in determining whether a company has market power and made clear that market power does not require ‘substantial control’ or ‘absolute freedom from competitive restraint’; it also provided that the Court may have regard to sustained low cost pricing, but this was the only concession given to predatory pricing in the original bill. In addition to expanding on the definition of market power the bill provided expressly for the possibility of leveraging market power – making clear the power did not have to be in the market to which the conduct was targeted.
At the last minute the bill was amended to provide for a drastic new provision relating to predatory pricing (referred to as the 'Birdsville amendment' after the pub in which it was supposedly conceived by Senator Barnaby Joyce). In introducing the amendment Senator Brandis was quick to point out that, while many held the view that the existing provisions of s 46 were ‘sufficiently broad to deal with the problem’ of predatory pricing, these amendments were proposed ‘out of a sense of abundant caution’ (Senate Hansard p 10, 17 Sept). Labor and the Democrats indicated they would support the amendment (Senator Sherry and Senator Murray respectively, p 11 Senate Hansard 17 Sept), although Senator Sherry considered it would have been better to strengthen section 46, not introduce new sections, and expressed concern that the ‘amendment was hastily cobbled together at the last minute’.
Predatory pricing amendment (s 46(1AA))
The new provision provides, essentially, that:
(1) a corporation with a substantial share of the market (different from substantial market power – the reason for the difference remains a mystery - a new s 46(1AB) provides that the number and size of competitors will be a relevant factor)
(2) must not supply, or offer to supply, goods or services
(3) for a sustained period
(4) at less than the relevant cost (whatever that means)
(5) for the purpose of:
(6) - the same prohibited purposes as apply to s 46(1)
The 'taking advantage' requirement is eliminated altogether. There is no specified need for recoupment and the ‘Supplementary Explanatory memorandum’ made clear that the new provision does not require recoupment, although it may provide some evidence that the provision has been breached. This is the only guidance the Supp EM provides to this new provision.
On the goals of s 46(1AA)
It is generally believed that the goals of section 46 is to promote competition and not small business or any other interest group. This view was expressed by the High Court in Melway Publishing Pty Ltd v Robert Hicks Pty Ltd (2001) 205 CLR 1, stated ‘[s]ection 46 aims to promote competition, not the private interest of particular persons or corporations.’ (para 17)
However, in his second reading speech, Barnaby Joyce, responsible for the bill's introduction, made various statements highlighting his view that the provision was intended to protect small business:
"I would like to thank my colleague Senator Boswell who, for as long as he has been in this place, has been a fighter for small business. I hope that Senator Boswell sees this legislation as yet another endorsement of his career in working for small business. Senator Boswell and I—being National Party senators from Queensland—have been working with small business to try to get a better deal. ... We have to look after small business. Small businesses encapsulate the freedom of living in this nation—the freedom to go into business, to be master of your own ship, to determine your own destiny, to profit by the sweat of your brow and by so doing to espouse that freedom in the way you think and the way you act in society. Small business is the absolute seedbed from which the freedom of democracy is built. ...
Some people say that it is going to be the end of discounting. What a load of rubbish! When you do it with the motive of destroying small businesses—those mum-and-dad businesses which are the cornerstone of our economy and which encapsulate the aspiration of freedom to advance within Australia—then you are breaking the law. ...
I hope that everybody acknowledges just how seminal this legislation, especially the government amendment, is in changing the anticipation and assessment of the corruption of big business in pushing small business out of business. ... We believe in the aspirations of the small business person above all others, because we know that once that aspiration is taken out of the economy, once the prospect of being your own master is squeezed out of our society, the tenets of a range of freedoms are lost. It might be a joke, but I use the example that even Jesus Christ, when he was looking for disciples, went and found small business people. He went out and found fishermen. Even just looking at that as an example, he found people who had the freedom to make their own decisions on whether to stay or go; they did what they wished. It is a very important point. I do not know how he would go if he turned up today and he had to stand at the back of a queue at a major bank and scream to people to listen to a message. That is also part of why I have such an entrenched fervour for the protection of small business. It is a key thing that we need to look to. Within the National Party there is one thing that is unique about all of us, every senator who sits in here. We are all small business people ...
As we go forward, I hope that this ‘Birdsville amendment’ is something that people will reflect on and think that there was a change that came about, and that when people go to Birdsville, amongst other things like going to the races, they will say that this is where a new stage—not the complete stage, not the panacea, not the be-all and end-all—of looking after small business started. ... I look forward in the future to progressing other issues pertaining to small business."
In his second reading speech promoting the Bill, Senator Brandis, Senator Brandis, also acknowledged that the 'bill delivers for small business in a number of important ways', and stated that he believed the bill had achieved the right balance between competing interests: 'the balance of promoting competition, consumers and small business.' Most commentators on the bill made some reference to the benefits of the bill in protecting small business.
Other amendments to s 46
Section 46(1) was amended to include the following passage (in italics): 'A corporation that has a substantial degree of power in a market shall not take advantage of that power in that or any other market for the purpose of ...' This was designed to ensure that 'leveraging' of market power into another market was captured (although this does not seem to have presented much of a problem in the past)
The following new provisions were also added:
(3A) In determining for the purposes of this section the degree of power that a body corporate or bodies corporate has or have in a market, the Court may have regard to the power the body corporate or bodies corporate has or have in that market that results from:
(a) any contracts, arrangements or understandings, or proposed contracts, arrangements or understandings, that the body corporate or bodies corporate has or have, or may have, with another party or other parties; and
(b) any covenants, or proposed covenants, that the body corporate or bodies corporate is or are, or would be, bound by or entitled to the benefit of.
(3B) Subsections (3) and (3A) do not, by implication, limit the matters to which regard may be had in determining, for the purposes of this section, the degree of power that a body corporate or bodies corporate has or have in a market.
(3C) For the purposes of this section, without limiting the matters to which the Court may have regard for the purpose of determining whether a body corporate has a substantial degree of power in a market, a body corporate may have a substantial degree of power in a market even though:
(a) the body corporate does not substantially control the market; or
(b) the body corporate does not have absolute freedom from constraint by the conduct of:
(i) competitors, or potential competitors, of the body corporate in that market; or
(ii) persons to whom or from whom the body corporate supplies or acquires goods or services in that market.
(3D) To avoid doubt, for the purposes of this section, more than 1 corporation may have a substantial degree of power in a market.
...
(4A) Without limiting the matters to which the Court may have regard for the purpose of determining whether a corporation has contravened subsection (1), the Court may have regard to:
(a) any conduct of the corporation that consisted of supplying goods or services for a sustained period at a price that was less than the relevant cost to the corporation of supplying such goods or services; and
(b) the reasons for that conduct.
Commentary
The OECD Review of Regulatory Reform - Australia (2009) stated (at p 61):
It is questionable whether there is sufficient evidence to support a view that the general prohibition under Section 46 does not cater adequately for predatory pricing cases. In its current form, the new dedicated prohibition risks causing undue and unproductive uncertainty in the business sector about pricing decisions and may even have a 'chilling' effect on competitive behaviour; in particular in light of the replacement of the 'power' element with a 'share' element in the predatory pricing prohibition. The current government has been thwarted in the Parliament in its attempts to address these concerns. In light of this, the government should monitor this area and take advantage of future opportunities to remove at least the market share aspect of the Birdsville amendment when they arise. | http://australiancompetitionlaw.org/legislation/2007tpla.html |
Our client, located in NW Atlanta is searching for a Purchasing Agent.
This position will be responsible for:
- Prepare purchase orders, solicit bid proposals, and review requisitions for goods and services.
- Negotiate, renegotiate, and administer contracts with suppliers, vendors, and other representatives.
- Analyze price proposals, financial reports, and other data and information to determine reasonable prices.
- Formulate policies and procedures for bid proposals and procurement of goods and services.
- Maintain and review computerized or manual records of purchased items, costs, deliveries, product performance, and inventories.
- Research, monitor, and evaluate suppliers, based on price, quality, selection, service, support, availability, reliability, production and distribution capabilities, and the supplier's reputation and history.
- Confer with staff and research and source materials, parts and equipment.
- Monitor shipments to ensure that goods come in on time, and resolve problems related to undelivered goods.
- Study sales records and inventory levels of current stock to develop strategic purchasing programs that facilitate employee access to materials and parts.
- Review product specifications and maintain a working technical knowledge of the goods or services to be purchased.
- Monitor changes affecting supply and demand, tracking market conditions, price trends, or futures markets.
- Management of purchasing documents/purchase orders within software and update any changes in pricing and due dates electronically to ensure accurate MRP projections
- Manage weekly confirmations of deliveries and ensure that the team is updated with delays or other vital information.
- Match receiving records, purchase orders and invoices upon receipt and confirm accuracy of counts and pricing across all documents.
- Identify and resolve any discrepancies between vendor invoiced pricing and purchase order pricing.
- Input invoices (will include non-po driven costs) into accounting system on a timely basis.
This position is a Temp-To-Hire position. For immediate consideration, please submit your resume to Joanmarie Bolding, Managing Director of Recruiting. | https://host.pcrecruiter.net/pcrbin/jobboard/job/Purchasing-Agent/b/SFJAJMXENJ5AIOWDCWSE2SXOQIDWPN6EIOFKPARCYM7DZHZMPIEQQXRFFTJETM3BYI |
by Michael Tretheway and Ian Kincaid, InterVISTAS; Rising infrastructure charges are another current challenge and this essay looks at airport benchmarking, an important tool to spur efficiency and pricing improvements where the market or regulator is ineffective. Michael Tretheway and Ian Kincaid take the reader through some of the pitfalls.
- Public Policy Issues
- Infrastructure
Airlines Financial Monitor - March 2010
Monthly review of the industry financial performance.
- Market Developments
- Airlines Financial Monitor
Airline Fuel & Labour Costs
Analysis of airline financial data to 2008 shows the trends in fuel and labour costs. Fuel remains the largest cost category, with regional variation.
- Market & Industry Issues
- Cost
Airline Profitability - Size and Business Model
Analysis of the 2008 results for 233 major airlines shows that record fuel prices and the impact of the great recession hit profitability across scale and business model.
- Market & Industry Issues
- Profitability
Preparing for a more competitive airports sector
by Nick Fincham and Alina Jardine-Goad, UK CAA; Any mechanism to inject competitive pressures into the airports sector would produce better outcomes for airline and their customers. The breakup of BAA's ownership of the London and lowland Scotland airports is a welcome first step. However, the nature of the market power remaining in the airports market is still likely to require economic regulation rather than reliance on Competition Law. | https://www.iata.org/en/publications/economics/?page=70 |
Initiatives by G-20, OECD and the EU have resulted in a 'change of climate' in the international corporate tax world.
Closely monitoring developments
- Fundamental changes to transfer pricing rules
- Limitation of base erosion via interest deductions and other financial payments
- The EU’s Anti Tax Avoidance Package / Directive
- Transparency measures (country-by-country reporting, exchange of tax rulings between EU Member States)
- Changes to tax treaties
- Proposals for an EU Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB)
Developing a future strategy
Do you need assistance in developing a strategy on how to deal with these developments? Or do you have questions about what alternatives exist? We aim to provide you with customised, pragmatic advice to help you navigate the myriad of new regulations.
Tax-related state aid matters
To address your tax-related state aid matters, we monitor all developments regarding state aid and cooperate closely with our competition lawyers, state aid/EU tax law experts and transfer pricing experts. | https://www.loyensloeff.com/en/en/expertise/topics/base-erosion-and-profit-shifting-beps/ |
I spent a few days travelling around Edinburgh recently to try and get an overall picture of the status of the city's coffee shops. Lockdown restrictions were lifted last week, allowing cafes and restaurants to serve customers inside as long as suitable safety measures were in place.
However I was interested to see how owners would approach this with some very obvious major operational challenges. For example, they would need to consider the likely low level of custom available at this time, as "non-essential" businesses - especially the large offices - were still on lockdown. Travel is only just opening up again so the crowds of tourists normally seen at this time of year are also absent. I was also craving a professionally made flat white - I have been brewing coffee at home during the lockdown but could never achieve the great standard of coffees available in Edinburgh's coffee shops.
I visited the City Centre areas and some of the surrounding communities such as Bruntsfield and Stockbridge. Many of the coffee shops are either remain closed or operate a takeaway service only; and only open on certain days of the week. Those which are open and provide a sit-in service obviously have a reduced capacity due to the required safety measures; and only offer a restricted menu.
In general, the streets in the city are still eerily quiet. The impact of the large number of offices which were still closed was obvious to see - where is the footfall which would provide the necessary sales? A few of those who are trading have raised prices but this may also have an adverse impact on customer perception. It appears that the majority of coffee shops have decided not to offer a sit-in service but to continue with a takeaway service only for now, partly due to an anxiety over the various safety measures to be taken but also due to staffing issues. Some staff would still be furloughed - and why would you request staff to return to work without having confidence in achieving an adequate level of sales?
It's obvious also that the location and layout of the premises can affect the ability to open up safely. Some may be lucky to have patios or pavement areas for tables externally, while some may find it difficult to operate at all with the necessary social distancing requirements inside.
A brief summary of the current status of some of the city centre coffee shops follows (as at Wednesday 22nd July).
Burr & Co, George Street (within footprint of The George Hotel)
CLOSED
Lowdown Coffee, George Street
OPEN. Closed at the time of my visit for refurbishment but has since opened and provides a sit-in service. Mon to Sat 9.00am - 5.00pm, Sun 10.00an - 5.00pm.
Wellington Coffee, George Street
OPEN. Fully open but with minimal seats inside, however good seating is available outside on the basement patio or on the main street (weather permitting!)
Castello Coffee Co, Castle Street
CLOSED
Their second shop in Bruntsfield is open for takeaway service only.
Cairngorm Coffee, Frederick Street
CLOSED
Their second shop in Melville Street is open for takeaway service only.
Gordon Street Coffee Co, Market Street
OPEN
offers a sit-in service, Sun to Fri10.00am - 5.00pm, Sat 10.00am - 6.00pm
The Milkman, Cockburn Street
OPEN, takeaway service only
The Milkman is a small but fabulous coffee shop and I have written about a previous visit in my post "coffee shops near Edinburgh Waverley Station". I had a flat white here, which was nice. The owner is currently using beans from Obadiah Coffee Roasters in Edinburgh.
Machina Espresso, Tollcross
OPEN, takeaway service only
Cult Coffee, Newington
OPEN, takeaway service only
OPEN, takeaway service only
I stopped at this small Bakery and Coffee Shop just opposite The Commonwealth Swimming Pool on Old Dalkeith Road, as I had read some very good reports on social media about the coffee. They are currently serving a Peruvian coffee on espresso from Edinburgh roasters Williams & Johnson. I had a flat white and it was lovely, one of the best coffees I've had in a while. It would have been madness not to try one of their cakes so I had a slice of lemon and poppy seed cake, which was also lovely. This is the sort of small independent shops I love going to - I'll be back!
Fortitude, Stockbridge
OPEN, takeaway service only
I've been meaning to visit Fortitude's new coffee shop in Stockbridge since it opened but the lockdown period stopped that. I stopped for a flat white, although I had a decaf on this occasion, which was nice.
Although they are open for takeaway orders only I was able to get a glimpse of their impressive Modbar Espresso system, one of only two in Scotland I believe. This system allows the business end of the espresso machine to be hidden below the counter, with only the sleek taps/group heads on show. Really impressive! | https://www.edinburghcoffeeshops.com/2020/07/ |
Steveston Bakery on No. 1 Road, Richmond
Steveston Bakery is a old timer in Steveston Village. It has been around since 1989.
The sandwich board in front says that coffee is free from 5 to 6pm.
A mural covers one of the wall in the bakery.
There are baked goods from cake, muffin, pastries, cookies, bread and soup. Coffee is self service. We ordered large coffees since it’s just 20 cents extra from the regular size. But the server told us that she will charge us the regular size price since refill is free when we dine in. | https://chowtimes.com/2013/06/10/ |
Though we generally perceive the Lowell Mills to be the home of outdated machinery, used only for fifth grade field trips, my trip to Mill No. 5 shows me it is the hidden gem of Lowell.
On the fourth floor of Mill No. 5 on Jackson Street, one of the historic Lowell Mills which were the heart of women’s labor in the early 1800s. Though the mills were dark, loud places of harsh labor back then, Mill No. 5 is now a beautifully quaint and rustic brick building, home to a coffee shop, Luna Theater, and several unique shops.
The shops in the mill are open Thursday through Sunday, but Sunday afternoons are the best time to visit. The mill is filled with live music, a fresh farmer’s market, and lots of food. Though the mill is rather crowded at this hour, it only brings character and liveliness to the scene.
Stands with local farmers and craftsmen line the narrow halls of the mill, selling everything from fresh mushrooms and tomatoes to jams and granola. Visitors will be pleasantly surprised to see an old-fashioned apothecary shop, filled with herbs, spices and soaps, as well as other vintage stores for vinyls, clothing, and photography.
The Luna Theater is one of the highlights of the mill, featuring intense, one-of-a-kind films that you wouldn’t typically see at your average AMC or Showcase theater. Regular events at Luna include Magical Mystery Movie Club, a surprise Sunday morning film for families, and Weirdo Wednesdays, a night of Cult Cinema. Each production gives the audience a quality film in a fun, vintage setting.
If you’ve seen a lot of photos on Instagram of brick walls, coffee, and pretty hanging lights, chance are, they were taken at Coffee and Cotton, a main attraction at Mill No. 5. The sunny air and the warm smell of baked goods and rich coffee invites visitors inside from down the hall.
Inside, the setting is warm, wood-paneled, and homey. Little nooks offer more private, dimly-lit eating tables, while the seating areas out in the open are full of light. The baristas are particularly friendly, and ordering (at the counter) is a stress-free experience.
The food options are, however, rather limited. Several kinds of sandwiches are made to order, along with a few fresh-baked goods, but the extensive beverage menu is typically what draws visitors who prefer to study or read in a nook with a cup of hot coffee.
Along with a wide variety of coffees, the cafe also offers tea, juices, and Kombucha, fresh from the tap. The coffee is definitely the best item on the menu, rich and creamy. I found the sandwiches to be decent at best, definitely not living up to the expectations set by the wonderful location. The baked goods looked appetizing from the display case, but the caramel brownie was too large, cold, dense, and nearly rock hard — not even close to worth the $3.50 charged for it.
The food can be on the pricier side in terms of cafe food but is still very affordable, and the experience of enjoying a meal in such a comforting environment is worth it.
I would give Mill No. 5 8/10 for the refreshingly uncommon style of the shops and the merry crowd full of some of the most intriguing people around, rather than the food at Coffee and Cotton. | https://waghostwriter.com/55848/reviews-2/food-reviews/a-sunday-at-mill-no-5/ |
Updated on July 18, 2022
The Value-Added Tax (VAT) Calculator can determine a price before VAT, a VAT rate, or a price that is VAT inclusive.
Enter values for two out of the three available inputs to compute the third value.
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What is VAT tax?
For example, the value added to goods or services during various supply chain phases, such as manufacture, wholesale, distribution, and delivery (or any other processes that add value to a product) is subject to VAT (value-added taxes).
VAT is a major source of money for governments around the world, accounting for about 20% of global tax revenue.
More than 160 countries impose this consumption tax, making it the most widespread in the world. Currently, all EU countries are legally compelled to implement a minimum VAT rate, and since its adoption in the early 20th century, European VAT rates have steadily risen across the continent. The United States is the only industrialized nation without a value-added tax (VAT).
Differences in VAT rates between countries
Even while all countries adhere to a fundamental VAT plan, the particular details of its execution varied greatly.
A country’s VAT is not the same as another country’s VAT. Import and export taxes, as well as laws for filing, paying, and penalizing tax evasion are all examples of country-to-country variations.
When it comes to products and services purchased for personal use, senior citizens in the Philippines are excused from paying VAT.
If you buy books or oils in China, you may be eligible for a lower VAT rate than the regular rate.
For a variety of goods and services, several countries do not impose a VAT. These include education, food, healthcare, and government taxes.
GST
In nations like Australia and Canada, the VAT is known as a GST, or goods and services tax.
As a result, the phrases are frequently used interchangeably (sometimes even with the term “sales tax”), despite the fact that GST and VAT in their respective countries might vary greatly. Neither a VAT nor a GST exists in any country.
The following is a simplified example of how VAT works.
When a coffee shop owner sells his or her own roasted coffee beans to customers, he or she is subject to VAT, which is explained in the following paragraphs. Consider a 10% VAT rate. Each individual or company in the supply chain must submit VAT paperwork to the government.
First, the coffee beans are grown by a local farmer in the area.
The farmer obtains $5.50 from the roaster for each pound of fresh coffee beans if the roaster pays $5.00 for the beans and the VAT of $0.50 ($5.00 x 10%) is applied.
As part of the service, the roaster charges $10.00 per pound of freshly roasted coffee beans for their services.
To put it another way, the shop owner must pay $11.00 per pound for the roasted coffee beans, $10.00 for the coffee itself, and 10% VAT, which is $1.00 per pound. As a result, because the farmer has already paid $0.50 in taxes, the roaster owes the government only $0.50 in VAT.
Each pound of roasted coffee beans can be used to sell five cups of coffee at a price of $4.00 each, bringing in a total of $20.00 for the coffee shop owner.
The business owner obtains a total of $22.00 from consumers who purchase his coffee, $20.00, and $2.00 VAT for every five cups of coffee sold. The farmer and roaster have already paid the government $1.00 in VAT, thus the shop owner only has to give the government $1.00.
Taxes: VAT vs. Sales Tax
When a consumer buys a product or service, they pay a tax to the government.
At each stage of distribution, the sales tax is typically not collected. Vendors only collect sales tax from customers at the final stage of the purchasing process.
It’s clear from the above example that VAT works differently and is more complicated than sales tax.
When a customer pays the vendor for a product, the vendor collects sales tax.
In terms of avoiding tax fraud or malpractice, VAT is superior to sales tax because taxes are imposed continuously throughout the production and distribution process rather than just once. But VAT is more expensive to administer than sales tax because of the complicated paper trail it necessitates.
Despite the fact that VAT is levied numerous times on a single product or service, there is no double taxation.
A cascading impact is avoided since VAT is only levied on goods and services that have had value added to them (as shown in the example). With sales tax, however, double taxation is possible.
Both sales tax and VAT are calculated as a percentage of the purchase price. When it comes to VAT vs. sales tax, the typical rule is that retail sales tax rates fall somewhere between 4% and 10%.
It’s a common misconception that increasing VAT on businesses lowers taxes for consumers. In reality, businesses would simply raise their prices to make up for the lost revenue. Even though there are significant variances in the frequency and timing of taxes, the overall amount of tax money collected stays the same.
Because of VAT’s regressive character, lower-income earners are disproportionately affected by the tax. With effective application of progressive rules such as European VAT models, however, this can be countered.
The terms “sales tax” and “VAT” are frequently used synonymously. Please visit the Sales Tax Calculator for more information or to perform sales tax calculations. | https://vatcalculatorlive.co.uk/what-is-vat-formula/ |
Keeping in the tradition of community and fellowship Shelton Hall is beginning to take on a whole new look with a nod to the past. Shelton, which once housed the student refectory, will now house a yet-to-be-named coffee shop. Included in the new redesign of the former bookstore are tables and chairs that have belonged to past professors. One notable item is a large wooden table that is prominent near the center of the room. If this table could speak, the memories it could possibly tell? In the 19th century one seminarian wrote a letter home saying he and his fellow students had requested chairs to sit at table. Currently, he explained they were sitting on benches, the custom in English dining areas especially in schools. The dean at the time was quite fond of benches; however, as the student noticed, the seminarians apparently were not. The dean insisted that benches were best; several of the seminarians insisted the opposite – going so far as to take the benches and throw them out the windows of Shelton Hall. Blackburn writes that the students eventually received their refectory chairs.
“We found what we believe to be the old refectory pictures of James Lloyd Breck, William Adams, and John Henry Hobart, the classic Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ (1941), and a good bit of old frames in disrepair,” says Joel A. Christian, ’16. Joel has served as the Bar-back at the House’s pub since the Fall of 2013, and will be taking the position of Master Barkeep at the end of this Spring Term. “The most unique thing found was a Waukesha County License to Manufacture and Sell Cigarette’s from the year 1974-1975 issued to Nashotah Mission.”
Why a coffee shop? As more people discover Christianity through the Anglican tradition, people are also looking for a new way of life – a return to simple things. Perhaps that which their grandparents and great-grandparents enjoyed. Coffee shops, knowing our neighbors, loving them and taking care of them, helping them if they call in middle of the night because somebody was sick there – a return to a different kind of life. Not so much a longing for the past, though. The Psalmist tells us not to long for the things of the past as that is wrong in the eyes of God. The writer of Proverbs also tells us to instead learn from those who have gone before, remembering that what we believe as Christians often must be explained to others – that the mission field is in the coffee shops, the markets, or in waiting for the kids to hop off the school bus.
That’s okay, that’s part of mission, when we join together for something fun like coffee. And although it is fun, there is something deeper going on – a cultivation of relationship and cultivation of knowing our neighbor and loving our neighbor as ourselves in Jesus Christ our Lord.
“I have always been passionate about great coffee,” Joel says. “I have home roasted fresh coffee beans on and off for the past 10 years. Before studying at Nashotah House, I worked with a coffee company out of Atlanta called Land of a Thousand Hills, working in sales and consulting, hosting coffee at conferences, conventions and music venues. I worked as an Independent Coffee Consultant, helping to open coffee shops and train staff in proper coffee techniques. I also worked for a bit of time in beer and wine sales at a high end shop in North Carolina.”
As far as coffee specialties, Joel loves manually-brewed coffee. There is nothing like experiencing a single origin coffee bean brewed through a Hario V60.
“It will ruin the palate of those who drink canned coffee through a standard countertop coffee machine,” he says. “For all manual brewing you follow three major rules for brewing coffee, the weight of the fresh ground coffee, the temperature of your water, and the amount of time you allow for the water to saturate the grounds. One of the last coffees I roasted was a Bourbon bean from Burundi, which had a lot of similar characteristics to beans from its neighbor Rwanda. I roasted it to a Full City (that’s a medium/dark roast). Brewed through the Hario V60 the coffee had notes of molasses and caramel, slight notes of clove and an incredibly bright clean finish. Needless to say the coffee was a hit with all of those who tasted it.”
The coffee shop has been something talked about for years at Nashotah House, a place for students, staff and faculty to meet, study and socialize in a comfortable environment. Coffeehouses have always been at the center of social activity and cultural changes, they have stimulated writers and fueled revolutions.
“Coffeehouses bring people from all backgrounds to think, discuss and share as they sip on warm invigorating beverages,” Joel says. “I think that fits well with the work we do here at Nashotah House. In the middle of a divided church and a divided culture we work, worship and share together with brothers and sisters of all backgrounds. The coffee shop, like the Pub, is another place we can live out this beautiful Pax Nashotah that we welcome people to come and share in.”
The campus coffee shop is the House’s student union for the use of the community. The equipment for the coffee shop has come miraculously from quite a few places. Some of the equipment Joel has had previously, and some was purchased by donations or by Nashotah House. All of the furniture and serving areas were either donated or found unused around the House, which is amazing when you see how well it all comes together.
The coffee shop opens May 5, 2014, the third week of Eastertide. Notable partakers have included our own President and Dean Edward Salmon, as well as the Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, both enjoying the brew quite a bit. For the time being, coffee purchased is cash only between $1 and $1.50. Personal travel mugs are encouraged.
Coffee on campus certainly has its perks – The Coffee Shop hours are Monday through Friday from 6am-7:45am (closing promptly for Morning Prayer) and from 1:30pm-4pm (closing for Evening Prayer).
“Much of the coffee I have served so far was consumed in hosting the Nashotah House staff and various visitors to the House. But the first ‘actual’ paid cups of coffee were to Rico and Rich the electrician, who have been doing amazing work around the school. I wanted just to give them coffee for all the hard work they did but they insisted on paying,” laughs Joel.
When you’re next on campus, stop by, enjoy our on-site roasted beans. We will all be glad you did. | http://blog.nashotah.edu/blog/2014/05/10/campus-coffee-shop-opens-nashotah-house/ |
Each cup of coffee I purchase has random 60% probability of having my name spelled correctly on the cup. If I want to have an 80% chance of having at least $x$ correctly spelled coffee cups for my collection, how many coffees do I need to purchase?
I can afford an infinite number of coffees from my local coffee shop, but I can only make one order (all the cups will arrive at the same time).
I've seen this question which feels related but I'm not sure how to extend that to desiring a certain number of successes. | https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/4032287/how-many-simultaneous-independent-events-needed-to-have-a-certain-probability-of |
33 Coffees is a coffee journal that provides an easy way to quickly record coffee tasting notes in a small, convenient notebook format.
This coffee journal is designed for ease of use. It’s tough to hold a notepad in one hand, a pencil in the other, and have another hand left for your cup. Taking notes with 33 Coffees is as simple as checking a few boxes and entering a few basic facts.
Made with 100% recycled papers sourced in the Pacific Northwest. Booklets are printed using US-grown soy-based inks in Portland, Oregon
Journals are 3.5" x 5" | https://www.giveoregon.com/product-page/coffee |
Connemara is world renowned for its rugged beauty and mighty mountains and this property, nestled in the foothills of the Twelve Bens in the beautiful Inagh Valley, epitomizes the character of this area. The property is near the Kylemore river and adjacent to the entrance of Glen Corbet, a prime walking route to the highest peak Ben Baun. One is whisked away with this charming stone clad property upon setting foot inside the door with its lovely style features and rural setting. The property enjoys a large sitting room with a beautiful feature stone cut fireplace and double height vaulted ceilings-a wonderful room to sit by the open fire and while away the hours. There is a large kitchen complete with a Belfast sink. Further accommodation comprises of dining/reception room, 3 bedrooms (one ensuite), bathroom, front porch and a large, light filled attic space Accommodation Front Porch: 7’0” x 5’11” (2.14 x 1.82) Reception: 14’0” x 12’4” (4.28 x 3.77) Living Room: 11’11’’ x 22’9’’ (3.64 x 6.93) with a feature stone fireplace and double height vaulted ceiling Kitchen: 11’0 x 10’4’’ (3.34 x 3.17) with Belfast sink & solid fuel stove Bathroom: 5’11’’ x 10’0’’ (1.80 x 3.05) Bedroom 1 (to rear) : 12’5’’ x 9’3’’ (3.80 x 2.83) with en-suite shower room and wc 6’8’’ x 5’11’’ (2.03 x 1.82) Bedroom 2 (to front) 12’5’’ x 9’11’’ (3.08 x 2.83) with walk in wardrobe Bedroom 3 (to front) 9’3’’ x 8’12’’ (2.82 x 2.71) Attic Space: 30’9’’ x 9’2’’ (9.37 x 2.82) This property is located on a substantial site with a garage/workshop and an old stone built garden shed. LOCAL AMENITIES The property is situated in the wonderful Inagh Valley, surrounded by the peaks of the Twelve Bens and the Maumturks and close to the beautiful Lough Inagh and The Inagh Lodge Hotel (providing lovely food in a stunning setting and also lake fishing for the enthusiast. Kylemore service station and shop, The Kylemore Pass Hotel and Mechanics Garage are all located just 3 km from this property. Letterfrack at 11km, is a 10-minute drive, and a very busy little village with three pubs, a lovely restaurant, and a very well stocked supermarket. Letterfrack hosts a number of small festivals during the year – the most notable being Sea Week in October which is a celebration of all things maritime and includes walks, talks, exhibitions, and some very fine traditional music, and Bog Week in May which celebrates the local flora and fauna and again attracts many fine musicians, lecturers and poets. The furniture college in Letterfrack turns out some fine woodworkers and every year puts on an exhibition of the best work of the graduating class. The village of Tullycross is an easy drive from the house and boasts two pubs and the Maol Rae hotel which serves lunches and dinners. The Connemara National Park is just across the road from Letterfrack and provides a selection of lovely walks from wooded to mountainside, including one to the top of Diamond Hill. Staff at the park run activities for children during the summer months and the information centre gives a good history of the area. Kylemore Abbey and Gardens is also just a 5-minute drive from the house. The Abbey is currently host to students from the famous Notre Dame University, but the spectacular and historic building on the edge of Kylemore Lake is open to the public and the grounds provide lovely lakeside walks. There is an extensive shop and coffee shop catering to tourists. The old walled Victorian gardens, which have been restored and refurbished, display a great variety of plants and trees and bring one back to another era. Other things to do and see in the area: • Renvyle Hotel for fine food and an 18 hole golf course on the Renvyle peninsula (20 minutes drive) • Rosleague Manor Hotel for superb food in Moyard (15 minute drive). • Many lovely beaches within a 5 to 15 minute drive- The White Strand, Lettergesh, Glassilaun. Killary Harbour and marvelous Leenane with its bars, restaurants and shops is 15 minutes away Little Killary adventure centre – (10 minutes drive) – providing a huge range of outdoor activities for children and adults. It is the site of The Misunderstood Herron-a world famous coffee stop • Scuba dive west – (15 minutes drive) – for experienced divers or beginners they provide courses and trips for every level. • Hill walking in the Twelve Bens and Maumturks • Salmon and trout fishing at various locations with local guides • Horse riding in Tully village Perfect cycling country Clifden, with it’s wonderful array of hotels, shops, bars and restaurants and the renowned Arts Festival, is only a 25 minute drive away The picturesque town of Westport is a 35 minute drive away. Services Sewage: Septic tank and Bord na Mona Puraflo system Water: Local Supply Heating: Oil Fired central heating Electricity: ESB Directions: Eircode: H91 F72C From Clifden take the Galway Rd, at the Lough Inagh Rd travel this road almost to the end, near the end you will take a left-hand turn, follow this road for approximately half a mile. The subject property is the third house on the right. This house is filled with charm in an idyllic setting and would make a delightful home or holiday escape. The house has wooden floors throughout and is decorated to a high standard.
Features
Garden Shed Oil Fired Central Heating Open Fire Scenic Location Superb condition Well Maintained Garden
BER Details
BER: C2
Directions
Directions: Eircode: H91 F72C From Clifden take the Galway Rd, at the Lough Inagh Rd travel this road almost to the end, near the end you will take a left-hand turn, follow this road for approximately half a mile. The subject property is the third house on the right. | https://www.myhome.ie/residential/brochure/kylemore-village-kylemore-letterfrack-galway/4514955 |
Costa Rica is bordered by Nicaragua to the North and Panama to the South. The Caribbean Sea lies to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. The Sierra Madre mountains are comprised of four cordilleras that cross the country from the northwest to the southeast. The northeastern part of the country is costal lowlands more suited for cultivation of fruits like banana and pineapple. The Guanacast cordillera is the most northern with its highest elevation of 2,000m at the Miravelles Volcano. To the southeast is the lower Tilaran cordillera. The Central Cordillera forms the northern border of the Central Valley, and the Talamanca Cordillera forms its southern border. Costa Rica’s highest point is Mount Chirripu at 3,800m in the Talamanca Cordillera. The Irazu Volcano (3,400M) and the Poas Volcano (2,700m) are found in the central cordillera. These active volcanoes are responsible for the nutrient rich soils across the country.
Climate
Costa Rica is located in the tropics and temperatures remain relatively warm year round. The country has only two seasons: a wet season and a dry season. The wet season runs from May to December and the dry season from January to April. Trade winds from the Caribbean carry moisture over the mountains resulting in the eastern coast receiving higher amounts of precipitation. The Primary cause of temperature variation is elevation and the highest range of temperatures will occur during the dry season. The coffee plants will flower generally in April and May.
Growing regions
The Central Valley is where coffee production began in Costa Rica. It is highly populated and contains the capital city, San Jose. It produces 15% of the countries total crop, and 80% of it is grown between 1,000 and 1,400m. These cups tend to be more mild and sweet.
Tarrazu is southeast of the central valley and is probably the most well known growing region of Costa Rica. It produces 40% of the countries total volume and 95% of it is sold as Strictly Hard Bean (SHB). SHB coffees are grown above ~1,200m which creates more acidity and sweetness in the cup. 7 of the top 10 coffees in the 2019 Cup of Excellence were from Tarrazu.
The West Valley contains a multitude of microclimates. The region is the largest in terms of area of coffee cultivation and the average farm size is approximately 3 hectares. It produces 21% of the countries coffee. The coffee is primarily strictly hard bean and high quality microlots.
Tres Rios is the smallest of the coffee growing regions, but produces exceptional quality. Almost all of its coffee is designated SHB. The Irazu volcano adds minerality to the soil creating a rich terroir. It’s last eruption was as recent as 1963.
Brunca produces another 20% of Costa Rica’s crop, most of it at lower elevations. It is mild and sweet.
The other three growing regions within Costa Rica produce a small fraction of the countries total export. Much of it is similar in cup profile to Brunca. It tends to be lower elevation producing a sweet and simple coffee.
History
Coffee production in Costa Rica started in the Central Valley around 1780. After Independence from Spain, San Jose began to distribute seeds and grant lands to individuals willing to start a coffee farm. This process was emulated in Cartago and Tres Rios. By 1830 it had surpassed cacao, sugarcane, and tobacco to become the country’s largest agricultural product, primarily being traded with other central and south American countries. In 1832, coffee was shipped to Chile, rebagged, and sold to England for the first time. It took roughly 10 years before William Le Lacheur was the first to facilitate trade directly between Costa Rica and England. He was able to facilitate the trade of coffee from Don Santiago Fernandez Hidalgo’s farm the Labyrinth. By 1840 a transnational road connecting San Jose to the Caribbean Sea was completed. This along with increased relationships with England allowed the Costa Rican coffee industry to boom. The English heavily favored the clean and consistent profile that resulted from the washed processing style that was introduced by Don Buenaventura Espinach Gaul. The quality helped to stabilize the price of Costa Rican coffee through the price crash at the end of the century. Before Don Buenaventura, coffee was produced by drying the whole fruit and removing the seed after. This created coffee that was often defective and inconsistent.
Costa Rica was beginning to draw interest from increasing numbers of Europeans as coffee became more popular and the possibility of constructing a canal connecting the Pacific and Atlantic began to be explored. Naturalists and scientists came to investigate possible locations for the canal and their writings enticed increasingly more Europeans to make the voyage to the new world. Those who came, usually stayed. One Exporer, Henri Pittier, built the most extensive herbarium in Latin America. He organized the National Agriculture Society and the National Observatory. These were later unified as the The Physical Geography Institute and gained government sponsorship. The Institute began to oversee collection of biological data, classification of specimens and management of the herbarium. The Institute researched agricultural problems and created more accurate maps. It was paramount in creating the culture of environmentalism seen in Costa Rica today.
The Great Depression caused global coffee prices to fall sharply and many processing centers were forced to close. By the end of WWII, the four largest processing centers controlled 80% of the country’s coffee. The coffee elite at this time contained a monopoly on the country’s banking and exporting as well, limiting options for the small producers. This set the stage for a revolution in 1948 triggered by elites refusal to recognize the legitimacy of a fairly elected populist President. After a bloody conflict, the revolutionaries were victorious.
The New President, Jose Figueres, enacted reforms meant to redistribute power to the people. He created a National Bank which gave access to capital to small farmers and offered subsidies to individuals interested in entering the export market. The new president negotiated better agreements with the ICO to for better trade agreements between Costa Rica, Europe, and The United States.
ICAFE and CATIE
ICAFE, the Costa Rican Coffee Institute, was created in 1933 to help farmers deal with the price crash a result of the great depression. ICAFE focuses on agronomy, marketing, and legislation protecting Costa Rica’s coffee farmers. President Figueres increased the role of ICAFE during his administration. New regulations required that all transactions between processing centers and producers be recorded with the institute. There were new requirements for prices based on quality, incentivizing better farm management, picking, and processing standards. It educated farmers about the importance of pruning and planting of shade trees which helped decreased soil degradation. After extensive research, ICAFE began to encourage the planting of more compact, higher yield varieties. By the 1970s, Costa Rica was the most productive in terms of volume per hectare.
ICAFE strictly enforces collection based on volume instead of weight. When coffee is delivered, it is measured into metal boxes known as Fanegas. Each Fanega will hold approximately 100lbs of ripe cherry. Under or over-ripe cherries are smaller which would require more cherries to fill each fanega. Pickers are paid based on how many Cajuelas they are able to pick. Twenty four Cajuelas equal one fanega.
CATIE is the Centro Agronomico de Investigacion y Ensenanza or Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center. CATIE as an independent institution was founded in 1973, but was formed from institutions that date back to the 1940s. In 1991 a board of directors was elected with no vested interests outside of the institution, eliminating political or economic bias. The school conducts experimentation on its 8 hectare farm that contains over 9,000 coffee plants. It currently contains the largest collection of coffee species and varieties in the Western Hemisphere. There are 581 specimens from Ethiopia and 11 from Yemen. 1,905 other specimens are Typica and Bourbon varieties, hybrids, and 11 new diploid species. CATIE was the source for the Gesha variety planted at Hacienda la Esmeralda in Panama that won the Cup of Excellence competition in 2004.
Varieties
The primary coffee variety grown in Costa Rica are Caturra and Catuai. Caturra is a natural mutation of Bourbon that has good cup quality potential and good yields but is susceptible to leaf rust. Catuai was created from the cross of Mundo Novo and Caturra varieties. Villa Sarchi and Villa Lobos are not as prevalent, but are indigenous to Costa Rica. Villa Sarchi is descendent of the Bourbon variety and Villa Lobos is a descendent of the Typica Variety.
ICAFE, CATIE, and Starbucks’ new research center are working extensively on new cultivars focusing on developing rust resistant plants with good cup quality. Most work is being focused on the Catimor and Sarchimor hybrid families. These are Caturra and Villa Sarchi varieties that have been crossed with the Timor Hybrid. Experimentation with these cultivars and others is focused on creating complex coffee that is more resistant to rust and has a good yield. The Costa Rica 95 cultivar was promising and rust resistant for a short time, but eventually was infected.
Gesha or Kenya SL varieties are becoming increasingly popular, especially on farms looking to produce high end micro-lots. ICAFE, CATIE, and Starbucks are largely responsible for the proliferation of these varieties by providing farmers with the information to grow them properly. 6 of the top 10 coffees in the 2019 Cup of Excellence competition were Gesha.
Environmentalism and Legislation
Between 1950 and 2000, Costa Rica’s forest cover had decreased by more than half, primarily because of clear cutting for agricultural and pasture land. As a result, soil erosion and quality degradation became prevalent. Concurrently, coffee plantations were heavily reliant on fertilizers and releasing their wastewater into the countries water ways. The county’s ecosystems were heavily damaged, and the government responded by passing two landmark environmental regulations: The General Environmental Law and The Biodiversity Act. These laws created the Ministry of Environment and Energy, National Environmental Council, and a specialized environmental court. The Biodiversity Law also created the National System of Conservation Area and approximately 30% of Costa Rica’s land is protected as parks, reserves, or refuges. Costa Rica depends heavily on these protected lands for Eco-tourism, which accounts for more than double the GDP of coffee production.
The environmental laws created strict standards for water treatment to protect the countries water ways. The waste-water from coffee mills must be filtered which can be expensive when large amounts of water are consumed. This encouraged producers to stray from the traditional washed processing style which would consume 3,000 liters of water to produce 1 Fanega of coffee. Mills switched to eco-pulpers and mechanical demucilagers that require considerably less water. These machines can use as little as 200l of water per fanega of cherry.
Cooperatives and Micromills
Cooperatives became officially recognized by the constitution in 1949 and initially expanded, but fluctuating prices and organizational problems caused many to close by the 1980s. Today, Coop Dota, Coop Tarrazu, and Coop Naranjo are among the largest producers in Costa Rica collectively representing over 8,000 members. Over 700 cooperatives across all agricultural sectors exist in Costa Rica, and 1 in 5 Costa Ricans belong to a cooperative of some kind. Approximately 40% of Costa Rican coffee is produced through a cooperative.
Beginning with La Candelilla in 2000, there has been a growing number of farmers or small collectives opening their own micro-mills. Since then, over 150 have opened. By processing coffee themselves, they attempt to retain more of the value that the coffee is sold for. Increased demand for “direct trade” and traceability has drawn specialty coffee consumers to buy from these mills across the country. The mills are pioneering new and experimental processing styles which elevate the quality of traditionally mild coffee.
Coupled with the water restrictions, micro-mills are heavily investing in natural, honey, and anaerobic processing styles. Naturally dried coffees are those that are dried with the entire cherry intact. Honey processed coffees are pulped and dried over varying periods of time with varying degrees of mucilage remaining. Anaerobic coffees are fermented in sealed tanks for several days before being dried in the sun. This may be whole cherry or pulped cherry. These tend to produce more fruit forward coffees that are desired in North America and Europe. Costa Rican micro-mills are creating successful brands based on the consistency and clarity of their unwashed coffees, and that allows them to have sustainable long term partnerships with buyers around the world.
Royal NY sources coffee from across Costa Rica. We partner with several micro lots and large cooperatives to offer a wide selection of coffees from washed to anaerobic. | https://www.royalny.com/origin-profile-costa-rica/ |
The Before and After Cafe, is a quaint little coffee shop near the school. They sell flavored coffees and good wine. The pasties are pretty good too. I really like sitting outside on the patio on a summer evening drinking a glass of wine.
Walk from Rodney Thompson to this local cafe. It's great for meeting friends either for coffee or better yet a drink after work. Many choices to choose from and things to eat. Wonderful staff and can cater to special events. If looking for a fun Friday they often have life music with a large turn out and fun evening. | http://www.c21redwood.com/stafford-va-rodney-e-thompson-middle-school |
Not everybody had a Memorial Day spent reveling in work-free, care-free bliss; for many of us the holiday was pretty close to the same ol' daily grind. And, not naming names, but a handful of us showed up at Observer HQ on Monday.
By noon, Roasted had already finished off the lion's share of a carafe of our office-supplied coffee, which we brew up from less-than stellar, pre-portioned pouches of ground coffee.
Roasted likes to think of the stuff more as coffee-flavored caffeine water, and, honestly, if you drink enough then the brew will keep you going through the day. But, after the pot ran out and it came time for a mid-afternoon coffee break and sugar fix, Roasted was craving a stiffer, more palatable brew.
So, with thoughts of sugar and caffeine on the brain, the first place Roasted thought of was Buli -- a nearby Oak Lawn-area coffee shop and café that, in addition to offering a wide selection of coffee and espresso-based drinks, serves everything from muffins, Danishes, scones, sandwiches and omelets for breakfast to deli sandwiches, salads and grilled paninis for lunch or dinner.
But, on Monday afternoon, Roasted was dead set on something from Buli's amazing array of sweet-tooth sating cookies, cakes, brownies and pies to complement our serious coffee, and, yeah, caffeine addiction. An addiction which it's worth noting may be a little deeper today, because following the recommendation of one of Buli's friendly baristas, Roasted tried his first Naughty Toddy.
See, by the time we left the air-conditioned comfort of the office, drove to Buli (located at 3908 Cedar Springs just a block north of Oak Lawn), parked the car and walked to the coffee shop in the 90-plus degree afternoon heat, well, the last thing we wanted to sip on while devouring a giant slice of pie or hunk of cake was another steaming hot cup of joe -- even if Buli had a better brew than the beans back at the office.
On a daily basis, the shop brews up Buli Bold and a medium-roast called Bliss (both worth the trip), as well as two rotating flavored coffees like the recent choices of vanilla nut or raspberry white chocolate. On Monday, one of the two baristas working the counter suggested the shop's iced coffee as a whew-it's-hot-out-there alternative.
Not every coffee shop's iced coffee is created equally, and, when the brew's off, the result is an iced coffee that's both weak and tasteless (it'll look a bit like iced tea) or it'll be so strong that it ends up tasting acidic, sour or burnt.
But, the barista insisted that Buli's iced coffee was "good," and that the shop brews it using the Toddy or cold brew method, as opposed to simply brewing up a batch of extra strong coffee and then pouring it over ice like many coffee shops do.
Most folks tend to call cold brewed coffee simply Toddy, or Toddy coffee, despite the term and method being trademarked by some guy named Todd (think the Kleenex or Coke status of name/product adoption). And, if you follow that last link, you'll learn that Toss Simpson's cold brewing method results in a coffee that's been found to be smoother on the stomach than traditional brewing methods.
So, instead of ordering a "large iced coffee" like we would have ordered at most other coffee shops not located smack dab in the heart of the gayborhood, Roasted ended up leaving with a huge slice of carrot cake and a "Big Girl Naughty Toddy."
A Big Girl is the shop's large 20-ounce size, with the Butch being the smaller 16-ounce size. And, from the drink sizes down, the LGBTQ entendres are scattered across Buli's menu.
For example, of you want a hot cup of brewed coffee with a shot of espresso, normally known by coffee-shop lingo as simply as a "red eye," at Buli you'll have to ask for a Scream'n Queen. Want a shot of espresso? Order a Twink. Add whipped cream to that and you'll be sipping on a Creamy Twink.
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But, aside from the tongue-in-cheek terminology and the metal lunch boxes that the sandwiches are served in, Buli stands as a serious coffee shop that provides the coffee or espresso hound in need of a bite to eat covered from 7 a.m to 10 p.m. weekdays, with later hours on Friday and Saturday nights.
The shop also offers "free-with-purchase" WiFi, though, at peak hours and on weekends the place can be too hoppin' with people to find a spot to work.
Buli (pronounced BYOO-lee) is an acronym for "Because U Love It" (according to this very insightful Dallas Voice piece preserved on Buli's website from back when the shop opened its doors), and, since opening in 2004, the shop has become quite the well-loved, bustling neighborhood hang out.
And Roasted highly recommends the Naughty Toddy, which provided the kick we needed to make it through the rest of the afternoon. The cold-brewed stuff was strong, yet smooth and literally good to the last sip without cream, sugar or any other hanky panky at the condiment bar. | https://www.dallasobserver.com/restaurants/when-its-too-hot-out-for-coffee-just-grab-bulis-naughty-toddy-7044422 |
Our Process - Bean there and Co.
The final steps in coffee processing involve removing the last layers of dry skin and remaining fruit residue from the now-dry coffee, and cleaning and sorting it. These steps are often called dry milling to distinguish them from the steps that take place before drying, which collectively are called wet milling.
The first step in dry milling is the removal of what is left of the fruit from the bean, whether it is the crumbly parchment skin of wet-processed coffee, the parchment skin and dried mucilage of semi-dry-processed coffee, or the entire dry, leathery fruit covering of the dry-processed coffee. Hulling is done with the help of machines, which can range from simple millstones to sophisticated machines that gently whack at the coffee.
This is an optional process in which any silver skin that remains on the beans after hulling is removed in a polishing machine. This is done to improve the appearance of green coffee beans and eliminate a by-product of roasting called chaff. It is described by some to be detrimental to the taste by raising the temperature of the bean through friction which changes the chemical makeup of the bean.
Most fine coffee goes through a battery of machines that sort the coffee by density of bean and by bean size, all the while removing sticks, rocks, nails, and miscellaneous debris that may have become mixed with the coffee during drying. First machines blow the beans into the air; those that fall into bins closest to the air source are heaviest and biggest; the lightest (and likely defective) beans plus chaff are blown in the farthest bin. Other machines shake the beans through a series of sieves, sorting them by size. Finally, a machine called a gravity separator shakes the sized beans on a tilted table, so that the heaviest, densest and best vibrate to one side of the pulsating table, and the lightest to the other.
Ethiopian women sort coffee beans at a long table.
The final step in the cleaning and sorting procedure is called colour sorting, or separating defective beans from sound beans on the basis of colour rather than density or size. Colour sorting is the trickiest and perhaps most important of all the steps in sorting and cleaning. With most high-quality coffees colour sorting is done in the simplest possible way: by hand. Teams of workers pick discoloured and other defective beans from the sound beans. The very best coffees may be hand-cleaned twice (double picked) or even three times (triple picked). Coffee that has been cleaned by hand is usually called European preparation; most specialty coffees have been cleaned and sorted in this way.
Colour sorting can also be done by machines. Streams of beans fall rapidly, one at a time, past sensors that are set according to parameters that identify defective beans by value (dark to light) or by colour. A tiny, decisive puff of compressed air pops each defective bean out of the stream of sound beans the instant the machine detects an anomaly. However, these machines are currently not used widely in the coffee industry for two reasons. First, the capital investment to install these delicate machines and the technical support to maintain them is daunting. Second, sorting coffee by hand supplies much-needed work for the small rural communities that often cluster around coffee mills. Nevertheless, computerized colour sorters are essential to coffee industries in regions with relatively high standards of living and high wage demands.
Grading is the process of categorizing coffee beans on the basis of various criteria such as size of the bean, where and at what altitude it was grown, how it was prepared and picked, and how good it tastes, or its cup quality. Coffees also may be graded by the number of imperfections (defective and broken beans, pebbles, sticks, etc.) per sample. For the finest coffees, origin of the beans (farm or estate, region, cooperative) is especially important. Growers of premium estate or cooperative coffees may impose a level of quality control that goes well beyond conventionally defined grading criteria, because they want their coffee to command the higher price that goes with recognition and consistent quality.
Business Name: Coffee Grind, Bean Heaven, Black Bean Pod.
Coffee name: Serenity, coffee stirrer, awakener, nutty.
The coffee cherries are sorted by immersion in water. Bad or unripe fruit will float and the good ripe fruit will sink. The skin of the cherry and some of the pulp is removed by pressing the fruit by machine in water through a screen. The bean will still have a significant amount of the pulp clinging to it that needs to be removed. This is done either by the classic ferment-and-wash method or a newer procedure variously called machine-assisted wet processing, aqua pulping or mechanical demucilaging.
In the ferment-and-wash method of wet processing, the remainder of the pulp is removed by breaking down the cellulose by fermenting the beans with microbes and then washing them with large amounts of water. Fermentation can be done with extra water or, in “Dry Fermentation”, in the fruit’s own juices only.
The fermentation process has to be carefully monitored to ensure that the coffee doesn’t acquire undesirable, sour flavours. For most coffees, mucilage removal through fermentation takes between 24 and 36 hours, depending on the temperature, thickness of the mucilage layer, and concentration of the enzymes. The end of the fermentation is assessed by feel, as the parchment surrounding the beans loses its slimy texture and acquires a rougher “pebbly” feel. When the fermentation is complete, the coffee is thoroughly washed with clean water in tanks or in special washing machines.
In machine-assisted wet processing, fermentation is not used to separate the bean from the remainder of the pulp; rather, this is done through mechanical scrubbing. This process can cut down on water use and pollution since ferment and wash water stinks. In addition, removing mucilage by machine is easier and more predictable than removing it by fermenting and washing. However, by eliminating the fermentation step and prematurely separating fruit and bean, mechanical demucilaging can remove an important tool that mill operators have of influencing coffee flavour. Furthermore, the ecological criticism of the ferment-and-wash method increasingly has become moot, since a combination of low-water equipment plus settling tanks allows conscientious mill operators to carry out fermentation with limited pollution.
Any wet processing of coffee produces coffee wastewater which can be a pollutant. Ecologically sensitive farms reprocess the wastewater along with the shell and mucilage as compost to be used in soil fertilization programs. The amount of water used in processing can vary, but most often is used in a 1 to 1 ratio.
After the pulp has been removed what is left is the bean surrounded by two additional layers, the silver skin and the parchment. The beans must be dried to a water content of about 10% before they are stable. Coffee beans can be dried in the sun or by machine but in most cases it is dried in the sun to 12-13% moisture and brought down to 10% by machine. Drying entirely by machine is normally only done where space is at a premium or the humidity is too high for the beans to dry before mildewing.
When dried in the sun coffee is most often spread out in rows on large patios where it needs to be raked every six hours to promote even drying and prevent the growth of mildew. Some coffee is dried on large raised tables where the coffee is turned by hand. Drying coffee this way has the advantage of allowing air to circulate better around the beans promoting more even drying but increases cost and labour significantly.
After the drying process (in the sun or through machines), the parchment skin or pergamino is thoroughly dry and crumbly, and easily removed in the hulling process. Coffee occasionally is sold and shipped in parchment or en pergamino, but most often a machine called a huller is used to crunch off the parchment skin before the beans are shipped.
The dry method is used for about 90% of the Arabica coffee produced in Brazil, most of the coffees produced in Ethiopia, Haiti and Paraguay, as well as for some Arabicas produced in India and Ecuador. Almost all Robusta’s are processed by this method. It is not practical in very rainy regions, where the humidity of the atmosphere is too high or where it rains frequently during harvesting.
Semi-dry is a hybrid process used in Indonesia and Brazil. The process is also called “wet-hulled”, “semi-washed”, “pulped natural” or, in Indonesia, “Gilling”. Literally translated from Indonesian, Gilling Basah means “wet grinding”. This process is said to reduce acidity and increase body.
Most small-scale farmers in Sumatra, Sulawesi, Flores and Papua use the gilling basah process. In this process, farmers remove the outer skin from the cherries mechanically, using locally built pulping machines. The coffee beans, still coated with mucilage, are then stored for up to a day. Following this waiting period, the mucilage is washed off and the parchment coffee is partially dried in the sun before sale at 10% to 12% moisture content.
The tricky part during the semi-washed process method are bacteria which are always around. Fermentation can start immediately as honey dried coffee beans have a remaining “sugar” layer which is vulnerable to any sort of mould and offers feeding ground for bacteria. Drying carefully and under supervision is crucial to the success of this processing methods. The beans need to constantly move during the drying process to prevent molt and fungal infections. The processor need to rack the green coffee beans 2-3 times per hour to ensure a safe drying process. Once the beans reached a sufficient moist level, again, the beans are dry milled to remove the “parchment” layers and are sent off the roasters and wholesalers globally.
Green coffee is usually transported in jute bags or woven poly bags. While green coffee may be usable for several years, it is vulnerable to quality degradation based on how it is stored. Jute bags are extremely porous, exposing the coffee to whatever elements it is surrounded by. Coffee that is poorly stored may develop a burlap-like taste known as “bagginess”, and its positive qualities may fade.
In recent years, the specialty coffee market has begun to utilize enhanced storage method. A gas barrier liner to jute bags, is sometimes used to preserve the quality of green coffee. Less frequently, green coffee is stored in vacuum packaging; while vacuum packs further reduce the ability of green coffee to interact with oxygen at atmospheric moisture, it is a significantly more expensive storage option.
Although not considered part of the processing pipeline proper, nearly all coffee sold to consumers throughout the world is sold as roasted coffee in general one of four degrees of roasting: light, medium, medium-dark, and dark. Consumers can also elect to buy unroasted coffee to be roasted at home.
[read more=”Read more” less=”Read less”] Coffee consumers are highly interested in the origins and tastes of the products. Consumers are eager to know the coffee origin and this curiosity is reflected in the strategic plans of major companies. For instance, 30% of Jacobs Douwe Egberts Export NL’s bought UTZ certified green coffee beans, ensuring that they are sustainably farmed, in June 2016. In Australia, 95% of all cafes are independent and only a few chains in the cities, hold up to 5% of the total market. For instance, Starbucks has around 20 outlets across the country. Eight years after Starbucks launched in Australia, it had to close over two-thirds of its outlets, due to the already-established Australian coffee culture.
• The demand for Cold-drip coffee is growing in Australia. Cold-drip coffee is prepared one drop at a time, to have a subtle taste with low acidity and bitterness. Housed in a converted warehouse in South Melbourne, it is one of the best places to try this brew. Further, the Central Melbourne, Krimper and Manchester Press are the few top spots to taste this cold-drip coffee.
• Nitro Coffee is another key product that interests consumers. Nitro coffee is poured from a tap and provides a similar mouth feel as a beer. The foamy and creamy texture of Nitro coffee allows brewers to add less milk and sugar, to cut off the bitter taste, however, it is appealing to the health-conscious coffee drinker. Moreover, the texture is difficult to replicate in an RTD coffee, giving cafes something extra to offer the millennial, looking for unique drinking experiences. | http://beanthereandco.com.au/our-process/ |
This central B&B is within 150 metres of Præstø Square and Præstø Fjord. It features free Wi-Fi, bright and airy rooms, as well as an on-site ice cream shop and café.
Simple yet tasteful décor is provided in each room at Sleep & Coffee, along with a work desk. Bathroom facilities are shared.
Guests can enjoy access to a communal TV lounge, a fully equipped kitchen and a large balcony. A washing machine, bicycle rental and free private parking are also available on site. Sleep & Coffee’s shop s...ells specialities, such as chocolates, coffees and teas.
Guided tours of Præstø’s preserved buildings and fishing from the small river in the property’s backyard are common area activities. Præstø’s harbour is 3 minutes’ walk from the B&B, while the Thorvaldsen Collection at Nysø Museum is 1.5 km away. | https://www.bedandbreakfast.eu/bed-and-breakfast/praesto/sleep-coffee/151390/ |
Gite "Abeille-Soleil"
Description
Apartment facing south with terrace, without vis-à-vis, quiet, between orchards and rivers.
Very close to the leisure center and its vast outdoor pool, discover 1000 m2 and its lake (water activities, fishing), the Cloister of Moissac 5 kms away. Especially designed for nature lovers!
We propose to receive you in our farm that we have completely renovated. Non-smoking accommodation. Pets are not accepted.
Maximum capacity: 4 adults + 2 children.
Total surface: 85 m².
Equipment :
* Kitchen, Dining room (25 m²): Extractor hood, Gas stove with oven, Fridge-freezer, Microwave, Toaster, Coffee maker, Kettle, Tableware, Large Table, 4 Chairs, Storage buffets
* Living Room (15 m²): Sofa, Coffee Table, Commode, TV Stand, TV
* Bedroom 1 (12 m²) - Double bed (160 x 200), Bedside table, Closet, Small coffee table
* Bedroom 2 (25 m²) - Double bed (140 x 200), Sofa bed (140 x 200), Wardrobe, Storage shelf, Small desk, Chair
* Private bathroom (6 m²):Bath, Shower, Washbasin with vanity unit, Washing machine, VMC, Console, Iron, Ironing board
* Separate WC (2m²) with cupboard
Leisure activities :
* Saint-Nicolas-de-la-Grave: Fishing (possibility fishing course), Swimming pool, Petanque, Tennis, Hiking, Windsurfing, Canoeing, Mountain biking, Cadillac Museum
* Moissac at 5 km: Cinema, Cloister
* Espalais at 16 km: Golf
Spoken languages : French, Polish
Opening
All year round. | https://tourisme-moissac-terresdesconfluences.fr/en/diffusio/hebergement-locatif/gite-abeille-soleil-saint-nicolas-de-la-grave_TFO5820775 |
Increasingly, as a recent NYT article reports, a new type of coffeehouse is emerging. It doesn’t have the comfy chairs and large tables we’re accustomed to. It resembles a bar, featuring long skinny tables and futuristic stools. You grab your coffee, you drink your coffee and hang for a few minutes, and then you leave. You don’t settle in to work. And the reduced seating forces more mixing, even if it’s to say “excuse me” while you shift a stool for access. Could this bring back the convivial atmosphere of these spaces?
I was intrigued, so I decided to investigate. I didn't even have to travel very far—I just needed to play closer attention to my surroundings. When the Starbucks across the street from my job reopened earlier this year, it had been transformed into one of these “coffee bars.” Not a café, not a coffeehouse, or a coffee shop. A coffee bar. You went in, you had a drink, and you headed out. If people lingered, it looked like an overcrowded nightclub with the endless line adding a false sense of importance to the space. But it was livelier. People talked more on line—with companions and with strangers as they shared door space. Small civilities—“Excuse me, I need the sugar.” “I’m sorry. I just need to grad a napkin.”—changed the formerly quiet, but clogged store into a buzzing, bustling den.
Regulars seemed to have mixed responses though. Cary Maines who has been drinking coffee and visiting Starbucks for 14 years, is having a hard time adjusting. “I don’t feel like I can stay. It’s always crowded. You can’t really move or have much space to yourself,” she said. Cary first used Starbucks as a place to study in college. For her, coffee and work have always gone together—and to work, you need your space and your tools, things that Cary feels are missing from the new design. She often takes breaks from her desk there with her laptop in tow.
Mike Donnelly’s laptop sat in its bag under his stool. Sure, he used Starbucks to check emails and work on some writing, but he doesn’t feel pressured to do so anymore. His description of the new atmosphere echoed Cary’s: “It’s busy. It’ sweeps you along. It doesn’t have much room to work, but there are lots of other things going on.” Mike’s comments imply that he can enjoy other activities at the coffee bar other than focusing on work even if those other activities are brief.
Of course, there are financial benefits for owners as well. Smaller set-ups require smaller venues, which translates into lower rents. And they cut out a lot of the overhead—someone has to pay for that free WIFI, right?—while hopefully serving more customers. But maybe coffee drinkers can get something out of it too. And the experience of coffee can be a largely social one again.
I didn't know about the new trend, but I feel like financial considerations must be a primary driver for this.
I just (very) recently moved from Chicago to Madison, Wisconsin. I went to Chicago to be a student after leaving a small college town with lots and lots of study space all over the place. But when I got to Chicago, I had trouble finding comfortable study space and so I looked to the coffee shops but never really found one that was big enough to be comfortable for studying. Now I've moved to Madison to be a student again and have explored the coffee shops here; many of them are large and comfortable with plenty of space to study.
Property is expensive and often in short supply in Chicago and I think most coffee shops just couldn't afford to be big enough to encourage their clients to stick around for a while. With the kind of business Starbucks does in many of its locations, I imagine they feel even more pressure to keep people moving through. In areas with less expensive rent, you can afford more space for people to hang out in.
Independent versus chain shops might also be different. I think all of the larger coffee shops I found in Chicago, the ones with more space to stay, were independent. Madison seems to have a large selection of independent shops, which could have something to do with their larger average size and greater average comfort. Perhaps independent owners are more concerned about connecting to their clients?
Definitely agree that financial considerations have a large role in the shift. Many businesses in NYC are finding that they can't afford to renew their leases. (It happened to one of my favorite lunch spots—luckily, they have another location within walking distance!) And honestly, I think the change at the nearby Starbucks was really an attempt to curb the lingering that would happen there.
There is something to be said for demand though. And Madison as I understand is a fabulous town in close proximity to Beloit, which may mean that they are catering to a demand for these types of spaces. And they may frankly have the space to do so without exorbitant NYC taxes and rents to deal with. Because there are so many independents, it probably also raises the competition factor so that there is some pressure to meet demand.
In any case, enjoy your coffee shop while you can, Joe!
First of all, very nice blog! I've thought about this before and it’s so neat to see someone else seeing these things too!
Now, I have my Anthropology degree and work at Tim Hortons (A Canadian based coffee shop) but I work in Buffalo, NY. So, when I'm working I'm being the Anthropologist and definitely analyzing everything I see. Now, I work in a suburb of Buffalo. During the winter it's mainly working class people who live and work there. During the summer and parts of fall and spring is when you have the vacation people come out since the town is on Lake Erie and famous for the beaches that aren't contaminated. The town consists of around 18,000 people. It’s on the corner of a major route where the local high school resides and the high school students can come to the shop during their breaks.
The store is medium in size. If you've ever been into a Tim Hortons they're really all the same size. There's 11 tables total with 8 of them being only 2 persons table and no wireless available (the owner is too cheap).
First, the teachers/students. They come in and mostly just order their coffee/capps/teas and a quick breakfast sandwich or doughnut. A few them mingle around waiting for the first bell to ring at the school. In the afternoon (school lets out at 2:21PM) you have them ordering mostly soft drinks, subs, and frozen drinks.
Second, my "regulars". I see them everyday. I know their orders by heart. They're very friendly towards us as we are to them. These regulars always sit and chat for hours and they are all retirees. They all sit at the three of the 5 person tables closer to the front of the store and basically keep to themselves. Enjoying their morning coffees and talking about gossip around town.
Third, 9 to 5er's. These are the people hurrying through drive thru to get to their jobs in the city. They're always in a rush to get their coffee and get out.
Fourth, others. You got the guys coming in quickly to get something on their breaks from their jobs. Some of them I know their orders easily too! Or you got just passerby's who aren't in enough for me to know their orders.
What I've noticed the most about this specific Tim Hortons is that it’s a social hub with a touch of fast food feel to it. You have other coffee shops (the more main stream) with wireless and books and magazines. When I went to college I went to school in a small town but a college town nonetheless with 4 colleges in a 10 mile radius of each other. The coffee shops there were locally owned. They had couches and wireless and books. Even had local bands come play sometimes. They even had games to play. There's a locally owned coffee shop like that called SPOT but it’s only in the city limits. Its very big, tons of space and the atmosphere is fantastic. It has a very bohemian style to it. Now I’m a 20 something and from what I can see SPOT caters more towards the 20 something generation while Tim Hortons would cater more towards the original coffee drinker generation, high school/middle school kids, and the 9 to 5er’s.
The whole thing is so fascinating! I also have notes about the local gym I go too! But this ended up being longer than I intended. I apologize! | http://www.anthropologyinpractice.com/2010/08/making-coffee-conversational-again.html |
You need a JAVA enabled browser to view this simulation.
DESCRIPTION:
Stellar distance estimates are crucial to understanding stellar properties and underpin the whole distance network for galactic and extragalactic astronomy. The simulation above shows the orbit of the earth around the sun, a "nearby" star, and background stars. The view is from the north galactic pole. The foreground star is shown as a filled orange circle and the background star field on the right-hand image. As the earth moves around the sun the foreground star will change position relative to the background (more distant) stars. This is illustrated in the lower image.
Astronomers measure this movement by taking a picture of the star field at different times of the year. The greatest parallax occurs when the earth is at the ends of its orbit. Proper motion (space motion) of the star relative to the sun could contaminate the parallax measurement. However, picture can be taken again after one year (so that the earth is the same position) to remove proper motion effects.
This simulation greatly exaggerates the amount of parallax. A typical motion is much less than the size of the star in the image.
INSTRUCTIONS:
EXAMPLE TO TRY:
Start the animation and turn on the Show Bounds feature. This will produce an arrow which tracks the star against the background stars. Now drag the star to different distances from the earth-sun system. Note how the parallax decreases as the star moves further away and increases as the star move closer to the earth. | http://hosting.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro1101/java/parallax/parallax.htm |
Giuseppe Calandrelli (1749-1827) was an Italian self-educated astronomer and mathematician. He reported in 1806, by means of observational data, the stellar parallax of Vega / Alpha Lyrae. This discovery was nothing but the observational proof of heliocentric model.
Stellar parallax, or ''the apparent shift of the position of any other star against the background of distant objects'', is very hard to detect. The most recent small and medium-sized positions of the Earth, the very small observing is largest at the intervals of about six months, when Earth arrives at the exact opposite sides of the Sun in its orbit, giving a baseline of two astronomical units between observations. Its apparent absence was used as a scientific argument against heliocentrism for thousands years..
Calandrelli's paper appeared in ''Opuscoli astronomici'' published by Salomoni, Rome, 1806. The book, printed during the Napoleonic Wars, is very rare. Except our copy, we found only three copies located in: Rome - Sapienza University, Zurich - ETH Library, and Paris - Bibliotheque Nationale de France.
Due to the scarcity of this book, two remarkable historical studies on stellar parallax, namely: ''Attempts to Measure Annual Stellar Parallax’’ by Mari Elen Why Williams (1981), and ‘’Parallax’’ by Alan W. Hirshfeld (2013), superficially related about the work of Calandrelli. Mari Williams indirectly mentioned him after the French astronomer Jean Delambre; and according to Hirshfeld, Calandrelli was a ‘’parallax hunter’', an absolutely ungrounded epithet, and nothing more, for the simple reason that the Italian does not even mentioned in the general bibliography. As a proof of the rarity of Calandrelli's paper is the fact that his title is wrongly noted everywhere, online environment included. M. E. W. Williams even wrote twice Guyseppe [sic] C.
In his study, Calandrelli deals with the issue both quantitatively and qualitatively. Its approach is meticulous, and it is worth to note that he quotes Roger / Rogerius Boscovich seventeen times. As a result of the technical limits of his achromatic telescope (the Fraunhofer-type heliometer was not yet built), Calandrelli reported the distance between Earth and Vega of 264 light-days, 9 hours, 53’, 1/2’’, corresponding to a parallax of 3’’,9 and not 25 light-years, a correct value.
We can, however, wonder: who was more accurate in measurements - Calandrelli in 1806, or today’s astronomers who place quasars, like Markarian 205 and 3C 48 - by means of redshift data - at billions (yes, billions!) of light-years further away from their companion galaxies?
''Osservazioni e riflessioni sulla parallasse annua dell’alfa della Lira'', 1806 [The First Discovery of Stellar Parallax] in ''Opuscoli astronomici'', Salomoni, Roma, 1806; first edition, pp. 1-88 [11 tabs.], [one fold. plt. with figs.]; in 4to (30 cm). The book is printed on very thick paper; it is immaculate and bound in a very good vintage half lether binding; the covers in nice marbled paper; red edges. Not ex libr. Fine condition. Extremely rare. | https://www.anticariataleph.ro/landmarks-in-the-history-of-science/physics-astronomy/the-first-discovery-of-stellar-parallax-osservazioni-e-riflessioni-sulla-parallasse-annua-dell-alfa-della-lira-1806 |
NASA’s New Horizons is now so far out that it has a truly alien view of the stars. Scientists are taking this distant view to use parallax effect to to measure the distances between stars. More from Phys.Org:
On April 22-23, the spacecraft turned its long-range telescopic camera to a pair of the “closest” stars, Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359, showing just how they appear in different places than we see from Earth. Scientists have long used this “parallax effect”—how a star appears to shift against its background when seen from different locations—to measure distances to stars.
An easy way to see parallax is to place one finger at arm’s length and watch it jump back and forth when you view it successively with each eye. Similarly, as Earth makes it way around the Sun, the stars shift their positions. But because even the nearest stars are hundreds of thousands of times farther away than the diameter of Earth’s orbit, the parallax shifts are tiny, and can only be measured with precise instrumentation. | https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/06/15/spacecraft-snaps-pictures-space-from-so-far-away-stars-appear-to-be-in-different-positions/ |
Observation suggests that the objects in the sky revolve daily about the earth, with the Sun and stars slowly falling behind over a year, and the Moon and other planets doing so each at their own rate. But Aristarchos suggested that most of the appearances could alternatively be due to motions of the Earth. The Earth could rotate daily to the East making everything in the sky appear to rotate Westward. And if the Earth revolved around the Sun annually, part of the slower motions would be explained. This was an early recognition of relativity: Motions can be viewed from different perspectives, but the observations differ relative to the position of the observer.
Humans had always assumed that they were in the center of the universe. But Aristarchos suggested that since the Sun was larger than the Earth, perhaps the Sun was in the center of heavenly motions rather than the Earth. This is different from relativity so would cause observable differences. The most fundamental would be parallax. The lack of any observable parallax led to the Greek's rejecting Aristarchos' proposal that the heavenly objects orbit the sun.
If parallax is observed, careful measurements of it can be used to measure the distance to the to the observed object. In this experiment we shall measure the distance to the Moon, but the procedure could be used in a great many situations. When the location of the Moon simultaneously viewed from two different locations, the Moon seems to be in a different position compared to the much more distant stars, That angle is then used with the law of sines: The lengths of sides of a triangle are proportional to the sines of the opposite angles.
Below are two photographs taken about 1200 miles apart by amateur astronomers when Jupiter, Venus, and the Moon were unusually close together in the sky. Because of this conjunction the photographs were
accidentally taken at the same time. The crescent lit by the Sun was over exposed by both photographers resulting in the swollen blur. The remainder of the Moon was illuminated by
earthshine. At first glance the photographs appear to be identical but just rotated a few degrees. But if one photograph is superimposed on the other, the stars (indicated by purple markers) and planets are aligned, but the Moon appears to be in a different position.
Photograph by Kenneth R. Polley, 4 seconds at f5.6, 135mm, 6:00 P.M. CST, 27 December 1973 at Finley Air Force Base, North Dakota [Latitude 47.5°N, Longitude 97.9°W].
Photograph by David Farley, 4 seconds at f5.6, 105mm, 6:00 P.M. CST, 27 December 1973 at Starkville Mississippi [Latitude 33.5°N, Longitude 88.7°W]. | http://d1068036.site.myhosting.com/ePhysics.f/labII_4.html |
10 Canum Venaticorum is the Flamsteed designation for an ordinary star in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 5.95, which, according to the Bortle scale, can be seen with the naked eye from suburban locations. Based upon an annual parallax shift of 0.05755 arc seconds as measured by the Hipparcos satellite, this system is 56.7 light-years (17.38 parsecs) from Earth.
The stellar classification of 10 Canum Venaticorum is G0 V, indicating that it is a main sequence star that is fusing hydrogen into helium at its core to generate energy. It is older than the Sun, with an estimated age of six billion years. The star has around 96% of the Sun's radius and 87% of the solar mass. It rotates about the axis an average of once every 13 days, with a projected rotational velocity along the equator of 8 km/s. The abundance of elements other than hydrogen and helium is lower than in the Sun. The effective temperature of the stellar atmosphere is 5,789 K, giving it the yellow hue of a G-type star.
An excess of infrared emission at a wavelength of 70 μm suggests the presence of a debris disk. The best fit disk model suggest a broad dust annulus with a peak brightness at a radius of 53.7 AU, that is inclined by an angle of 56° to the line of sight from the Earth along a position angle of 111.2°. | https://alchetron.com/10-Canum-Venaticorum |
# Rho2 Cancri
Rho2 Cancri (ρ2 Cancri) is a solitary, yellow-hued star in the constellation Cancer. With an apparent visual magnitude of 5.22, it is visible to the naked eye on a dark night. Based upon an annual parallax shift of 6.70 mas as seen from Earth, this star is located around 490 light-years from the Sun. At that distance, the visual magnitude is diminished by an extinction factor of 0.06 due to interstellar dust.
At the age of about 234 million years, is an evolved, G-type giant star with a stellar classification of G8 III. It has an estimated 3.6 times the mass of the Sun and has expanded to 24 times the Sun's radius. It is radiating 310 times the Sun's luminosity from its photosphere at an effective temperature of 4,994 K. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/58_Cancri |
Category:
Part of speech:
nominally
Appearing to be the most probable, often with some preparations starting to be made for it.
reputedly
verisimilar
Seeming to be true or real; plausible; likely
The definition of virtual is something that exists in the mind, exists in essence but not in fact or created by a computer.
The definition of a guise is an outward appearance presented to the world that may not be true or accurate.
parallax
(--- Astron.) The apparent difference in the position of a celestial object with reference to a fixed background when viewed from two distant locations having a triangulated base line equal to the radius of the earth (diurnal parallax or geocentric parallax) or equal to the radius of the earth's orbit (annual parallax or heliocentric parallax)
true (antonym)
The definition of true is being loyal, something that is real, factually correct, accurate or provable.
(Figuratively, by extension) To ingratiate; to obtain access to or introduce something by subtle, cunning or artful means.
Imply is defined as to suggest or express something indirectly or to involve something naturally.
Find another word for seeming. In this page you can discover 39 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for seeming, like: apparent, evident, illusory, nominally, ostensible, ostensive, presumed, professed, purported, quasi and reputedly. | https://thesaurus.yourdictionary.com/seeming |
Courtesy of NOAO/AURA/NSF
Good news for fans of that stargazer’s favorite, the Pleiades. Such star clusters are closer than astronomers supposed, most particularly when it comes to the iconic one known to many sky-watchers as the Seven Sisters.
Not only does a new study, published in Science magazine by a team led by Carl Melis of the University of California, San Diego, put to rest a heated cosmic controversy over the distance to the Pleiades, but it may recast how we peg stellar distances.
More than 1,000 star clusters, groupings of thousands of similarly aged stars, litter the galaxy. The suggestion that the Pleiades was 10 percent farther away from us than long calculated had clouded study of these clusters. The discrepancies in distance left researchers scratching their heads for years, challenging their basic understanding of how stars form and evolve.
Now though, Melis and colleagues report that a global network of radio telescopes has triangulated the distance to the star cluster. The newly attained distance to the famous wintertime star cluster, located in the constellation Taurus, has been pinned down to 443 light-years.
Made up of scores of hot blue stars all around 100 million years old, the Pleiades is considered one of the closest star clusters to Earth and is therefore considered a great “cosmic laboratory” for helping us understand how they form and evolve. Our own sun is believed to have been born in just such a cluster some 4.6 billion years ago.
Up until the 1990s, the distance to the Pleiades was estimated at 430 light-years, but the European stellar mapping satellite Hipparcos, launched in 1989, had made measurements of only about 390 light-years.
“That may not seem like a huge difference, but, in order to fit the physical characteristics of the Pleiades stars, it challenged our general understanding of how stars form and evolve,” said Melis, in a statement. “To fit the Hipparcos distance measurement, some astronomers even suggested that some type of new and unknown physics had to be at work in such young stars,” he added.
The astronomers used their global radio astronomy system to observe several Pleiades stars over the course of about a year and a half. That allowed them to precisely measure the apparent shift in each star’s position caused by the Earth’s rotation around the Sun. Seen at opposite ends of the Earth’s orbit, a star appears to move slightly against the backdrop of more-distant cosmic objects. Called parallax, the technique is the most accurate distance-measuring method astronomers have, and it relies on simple trigonometry.
“Using these telescopes working together, we had the equivalent of a telescope the size of the Earth,” said Amy Mioduszewski, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).
“That gave us the ability to make extremely accurate position measurements—the equivalent of measuring the thickness of a quarter in Los Angeles as seen from New York,” she added.
See for Yourself
While the Pleiades is traditionally considered a wintertime treat for sky-watchers, it is visible this time of the year too. You just have to be a night owl to see it.
After local midnight, face the eastern sky and you’ll find the constellation Taurus, the Bull, charging up the horizon. Aldebaran, its lead orange star, marks the red eye of the bull and pins down the face of the beast, which is made up of a V-shaped cluster of stars. Scan up from its face, and you will find a faint fuzzy patch of light, visible even from city suburbs—that is the Pleiades.
And mark September 14 on your calendar, because that’s when the moon will pose with the famed star cluster, making it even easier to track it down.
Happy hunting, sky gazers.
Follow Andrew Fazekas, the Night Sky Guy, on Twitter and Facebook. | https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2014/08/28/seven-sisters-star-cluster-controversy-solved/ |
My parents love to talk about the “good old days.” Whenever they recount their glorious college experiences, I think about how the way they interacted with the world around them differs from how I do now; though their stories may be altered from overuse or selective memory, they are useful as a point of comparison. A main difference between our experiences is my access to technology that allows me to be particularly tuned in to connections both here at school and elsewhere, but that doesn’t allow me to fully be away—our online sharing keeps us close and informed.
My parents’ generation grew up without smartphones and laptops, and those who went to college did not have an extensive electronic connection to the rest of the world. Instead of toiling through a dramatic search process, my dad said that he never visited or even really researched his college before attending. It seems as though he just slipped away from home and into the unknown. In college, my parents called home on payphones in the lobbies of their dorms and would often go weeks without checking in with their families. They talk about making plans to meet someone in the dining hall and then actually meeting them there at the appointed time. Even more astonishing, they have regaled me with legends of arriving at the dining hall alone for dinner and then finding people to sit with. I get the impression from my parents that college was a rich landscape full of students looking up and seeing who was around and what was going on without phones to connect them elsewhere.
When my parents left home for school, it was more of a total departure from their old lives. It was their time to move away to foster new relationships and interests separate from the life they left behind. This conjures up a romantic idea of going away to find oneself, on one’s own without constant influences from back home or anywhere else. Conversely, I am never truly disconnected. Yes, there is physical separation from my hometown and family members, but I know that there are open avenues of communication through which photos and life updates flow constantly. The way I share my life allows me to be loosely connected to a number of people through social media, but it makes me disconnected from the opportunity to be fully away.
Social media has infiltrated relationship dynamics in both college and non-college settings. Conversations at social events become recaps of information that has already been shared remotely through social media platforms. We facilitate connections, but in a less spontaneous way than meeting people in the “good old days” that I have heard so much about—days when dinner plans didn’t have to be premeditated and personal accomplishments were not touted on Facebook.
I know that my family members keep up with me on social media, and I am glad that they do so that they can get a glimpse into my life and I into theirs. There is a feeling of community from afar because I know that my parents and aunts and uncles and cousins are interested in my life and I can be interested in theirs too without hours of phone calls and writing letters. Our ability to maintain these familial connections even after we leave home seems to be normal, and often expected. Even though my family is not especially tech-savvy, we have managed to maintain a group text thread, and even a larger Facebook chat—including second cousins—that gets sporadic use throughout the year.
What connections and experiences have we missed because of our power to access the world and what have we gained? I know that my web of family and friends and acquaintances is ever-present through their online postings, which are sometimes more than I can handle. As I scroll through photos of people who seem to be some brand of Internet celebrity or cynical comedian, I am pulled away from my own life at school, from studies, and from relationships with friends and professors. It is easy to be scattered, spreading my attention between immediate sights and textures and the possibility of the entire world in my hands for the looking.
I believe that the experiences that I have missed out on have been those of “getting lost.” I am thankful for my access to technology that allows me to be in constant contact with people that I care about, but often these avenues of communication are over-saturated. There is a sense of watchfulness among peers and family that is fun and helpful to a certain extent, but also stifling. The constant updates on what other people are doing that social media provides leaves less space for exploration and mistakes while away at college. A lot has changed since my parents attended college, but perhaps the need of college students to be fully away from home has not. I find myself away from home, wading through swaths of information about people on campus, loved ones elsewhere, and news from every continent, but never fully here either. Many people talk of the “Tufts Bubble,” but I feel as though my Tufts bubble has been punctured by ever-flowing streams of information to the outside world. While I will not resist technology that helps me connect, I believe it is important to realize when our use of social media pulls us away from an experience or a place. I don’t want to be so distracted by virtual sharing that I am neither here at school nor away, but somewhere in an unfulfilling middle ground.
We partake in our modern ritual of sharing and viewing information about each other because it helps us stay connected to the people we care about and to important information, and as college students this means we can be globally minded and aware without ever leaving campus. This means that our ties to others far away will be maintained at least virtually, that we can see what they are doing on their summer vacation even if we have not spoken to them on the phone in years, and that we will never have to look up in Dewick because we know exactly where our friends are sitting. This also means that we do not have the space to grow and explore without others watching our moves. Our generation is one that has access to the whole world and all of our people in it, but not one that has access to a complete departure. | http://tuftsobserver.org/remotely-present/ |
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Representation Office in Brussels, Belgium has a position for a qualified intern with the AGORA Portal for Parliamentary Development for a period of six months, starting no later than 15 February 2016.
The application deadline for this position is Wednesday February 3rd.
UNDP focuses on enhancing the capacity of the state to make it more responsive, capable, and inclusive. The genuine participation of all citizens in political processes is a cornerstone of democratic governance. UNDP fosters inclusive participation and civic engagement, placing high priority on under-represented segments of society such as the poor, women, indigenous peoples and minorities. Vibrant and vigorous democracies are developed and sustained through inclusive participation, which also advances achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The presence of an effective parliamentary institution is strongly correlated with the existence of a viable democracy and an open society.
Parliaments are fundamental to representing the people’s will, establishing the rule of law, protecting human rights, overseeing transparent governance processes, and ensuring compliance with international obligations. UNDP provides technical assistance to more than 70 parliaments around the world in their efforts to build the capacity of legislators and technical staff; promote institutional reform, political dialogue and conflict prevention; strengthen parliaments' relationships with the executive and judiciary branches of government and with civil society; improve access to parliamentary information for the population and the media, and enhance the effectiveness of women’s role and participation among parliaments through internal reforms and exchanges.
Globally, web-based social networks invite the exchange of information and ideas. The AGORA online platform (www.agora-parl.org) was created to take up the crucial task of facilitating cooperation, increasing access to knowledge and providing a platform for the exchange of practices and experiences in parliamentary development. The AGORA Portal aims to centralize knowledge and unite parliamentary development actors and stakeholders in an interactive community of practice that allows for more efficient planning, reduces the risk of duplication, and reinforces the sharing of expertise and experience. After five years online, AGORA has established a strong presence and continues to experience a steady growth in knowledge content creation, visitor numbers and interactions.
• Assisting the team in undertaking research and drafting blogs and policy briefs.
• Enrolled in a degree programme in a relevant discipline (social sciences, law, international relations…) with a demonstrated interest in political processes. Current focus areas for AGORA include energy and environment, extractive industries, gender and LGBT, youth and civic engagement.
• Strong communication skills. Previous experience managing social media networks, blogging and supporting digital outreach is an asset.
• Excellent computer skills, including working knowledge of MS Office products. Experience managing web portals is an asset.
Fluency in written and spoken English required. Fluency in French, Arabic or Portuguese desirable. Additional official UN language an asset (Chinese, Russian, Spanish).
To apply, please send your CV and motivation letter to Ms Mai Tahboob. | https://agora-parl.org/news/vacancy-internship-agora-portal-parliamentary-development |
DescriptionThe Cincinnati Regional Coalition Against Hate (CRCAH) is a nonpartisan alliance of organizations committed to being vigilant against hate activity by supporting impacted communities and fostering acceptance, compassion, and justice for all in the Cincinnati region. The CRCAH is in an exciting new phase of growth and is seeking a part-time program manager to lead direct victim/incident support services as well as fundraising efforts, program development and community engagement activities to fulfill its mission. The CRCAH is convened by the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center (HHC). The program manager will work closely with the executive committee of the CRCAH and will be supervised by the CEO of HHC.
This position will require 20-25 hours/week and may grow into a full-time position. The hours can be flexible, but the candidate will need to be available at anytime should incidents arise.
Core responsibilities include:
- Providing support to victims of hate incidents, including supporting victims who choose to report to CRCAH and ensuring they are connected to proper resources in the wake of the incident
- Develop mechanism for tracking incidents of hate to begin serving as a community monitor for the Greater Cincinnati region
- Coordinate with stakeholders, across Coalition member organizations and the community at large (i.e. individuals, government entities, aligned nonprofits, business leaders)
- Develop strong relationship with CRCAH Executive Committee through coordination of regular meetings along with supporting their vision and initiatives
- Manage day to day functions of CRCAH including management of social media, website, general inquiries, etc.
- Identify gaps in support services for individuals with certain identity affiliations and work with community members to fill those gaps
- Act as proactive steward of Coalition resources, including budget oversight and fundraising
- Develop outreach effort to ensure that CRCAH is a visible and trusted resource in the community
- Strengthen CRCAH’s presence in the community by attending events, building relationships and facilitating collaboration across issue areas and organizations, where relevant
- Other duties as necessary
RequirementsYou are a strong fit for this role if you have:
- Passion for our mission – a belief in denouncing hate and promoting tolerance by working collaboratively with people of all identities
- Experience in leadership roles in nonprofit settings and comfort with ambiguity
- Proven ability to fundraise and manage budgets
- Ability to take initiative and can take projects from vision to realization
- Excitement about being part of a start-up
- A big picture perspective that allows you to identify and manage multiple projects simultaneously while also managing the day-to-day issues that arise.
- A friendly, organized multi-tasker who is self-motivated and adaptable.
- Ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills. | https://www.jvscareers.org/jobs/program-manager/ |
Objective: Better understand the necessity of being able to fully communicate.
Frequently in special education the focus of communication is wants and needs. I believe the reason for this stems from Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs:
The bottom of this (physiological) is all about basic needs we need to live and survive. As we move up the hierarchy wants are added in, but then look at it and really all of them are needs and wants. To obtain anything beyond the bottom slot (physiological) one needs complex communication beyond “I want_______” or “I need___________.”
Right now I am writing to you. The satisfaction of being able to convey my knowledge and opinions is a big deal even if no one reads this (we take this ability for granted). In these few sentences, so far, I have conveyed more with words than many individuals with disabilities are able to do in their entire life-as I see it, largely because they are never given the opportunity to for one reason or another.
We build relationships, meaning, and achievement in life by expressing our thoughts, knowledge, reasoning, opinions, experiences, and ability to start and end a conversation. I believe this ability is crucial for an individual to develop in a health way mentally, socially, emotionally and even physically (since all are connected). Let’s take a look at this:
The point of a communication system is to allow an individual to have (1) conversations, (2) participate at home, school, or work in recreational activities, (3) establish and maintain social roles (friend, son/daughter, brother/sister, student), and (4) meet personal needs (Beukelman & Mirenda, p. 15).
(1)Conversation: Conversation is important for a number of reasons. We need it for greetings, small talk, storytelling, information transfer/ procedural descriptions, and ending a conversation (Beukelman & Mirenda, p. 18-21)
Greetings: Greetings allow us to associate with many people. This is the beginning of a friendship and the beginning of a conversation. We need greetings to develop relationships as well as to connect with others to get things accomplished. Without greetings a lot of our progress would be stopped and some friendships or associations would never take shape.
Small talk: As trivial as we may find this, small talk leads to deeper relationships and allows us to have associations. We come to know people better through small talk. Small talk is often a good social skill that can lead to sharing interest. This can lead to a friendship or collaborating to reach a common goal in life.
Storytelling: Imagine a good friendship without telling stories. Stories lead to laughter. They strengthen bonds and bring deeper meaning to a relationship. Stories lead to other stories. Good friends tell stories (We, of course, are not just talking about fiction. We are talking about conveying an experience or joke, etc.).
Information transfer/procedural descriptions: Conveying knowledge or teaching someone can lead to improved self-esteem. This is used to help us serve others (or annoy them with our know it all knowledge J ). We need this to work and to accomplish goals or task.
End Conversation: Our ability to end a conversation sometimes sets up the next conversation. It is also important because in our culture we feel weird if we don’t. If someone can’t close a conversation, but keeps going and going, this can also strain relationships.
Conversation is important for healthy relationships and self-esteem. It is important for us to progress and reach our goals in life. It is important for us in receiving an education and becoming something. A life is not complete unless conversations can be held and each of these components reached. The more of these components an individual is able to use the better the quality of life. It is clear we need the ability to communicate beyond wants and needs. We need the ability to communicate in all locations we are in with a variety of people.
(2) Participate: Needless to say, if we don’t participate in activities, many of lives pleasures and happiness are missed. The vocabulary we use at home, school or work may be different. Our interactions may be different in a variety of locations. This is one reason why working on communication and education has to take place at home and at school.
(3) Establish and Maintain Social Roles: Our social roles are important to our identity and purpose in life. Communication aides in this aspect of our life. Self-esteem is connected to this.
(4) Needs: We all have needs and struggle to learn when our needs are not met. Being able to ask for things we need is very helpful for use to feel comfortable and happy in life.
It is true that the words we use are only a part of communication. Many, if not all, of the areas mentioned above require more than just words, but words are essential for our progress and success in life. Suppose you only had 5 pictures of things you needed or wanted. What would life be like? Think of the friendships and associations you have. If you only had those 5 pictures would you be able to have them? How would you compensate? How would you feel about yourself? Would you feel hopeless? What would you desire most? Many individuals with disabilities have grown up with these things lacking. They have impressively learned to manage life in some degree without them. I believe, it is their right to have them. I believe it is our responsibility to do all within our power to allow individuals who do not have the ability to talk and interact as we can, to be able to do what we can. Once an individual can communicate his/her thoughts, reasoning, opinions, knowledge, desires, goals, stories, etc. then other things began to take shape and fall into place. Suddenly all those hard and boring skills can have meaning. Suddenly there is a reason to work, a reason to behave, a reason to dream and hope. Suddenly there is light in life.
There is no reasonable excuse to deprive a population of individuals, regardless of believed cognitive functioning, the right and ability to communicate. A top priority should be for an individual to be a competent communicator.
Reference
Beukelman, D.R., & Mirenda, P. (2005), Augmentative and alternative communication, Paul Brookes Publishing
Lenae Crandall 2013
Comments are closed. | http://www.heedrpm.com/blog1/some-whys-and-whats-of-communication |
Autistic Adults Online
An ESRC-funded project investigating how autistic adults use social media to build and maintain relationships.
The aim of the study is to examine how autistic adults use social networking sites to maintain existing social relationships or create new ones. Understanding how autistic individuals use language, images, as well as different technological tools to communicate in social media is important for the design of environments that are inclusive of autistic user abilities and preferences. The study will help inform initiatives that use digital networking technologies to improve the quality of life of autistic adults.
The project runs from December 2020 to December 2022.
To learn more about how autistic adults use and experience social media, you can read personal experiences on our blog page. | https://autisticadultsonline.com/ |
The policy-knowledge communities projectis a one year project supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands to strengthen evidence based policy advocacy on women entrepreneurship and social protection in Uganda. It is implemented by the Economic Policy Research Centre in collaboration with a consortium of the INCLUDE Platform Uganda Partners and the INCLUDE Knowledge Platform on Inclusive Development Policies.
The project seeks to create and strengthen the capacities of knowledge communities in Uganda towards more evidence-based policy making in the areas of women entrepreneurship and social protection.
To bridge the gap between knowledge, policy and practice by raising awareness on the include platform activities, policies, legislation, programmes and other interventions in the areas of women entrepreneurship and social protection.
Beneficiaries: Policy Makers in Government organs--Parliament, President’s Office, Office of the Prime Minister, National Planning Authority, Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development; and other key government departments and agencies.
Development Partners: Multilateral and Bi-lateral partners and International Agencies.
Civil Society Organizations and Advocacy Groups: Women Associations and organisations; Social Protection Networks and Associations, Private Sector Associations and Media.
Research and Academia: Institutions, individuals and professional bodies.
Network engagement: Existing networks (personal, formal, electronic) provide useful pathways for developing relationships, information exchange or improving involvement in women entrepreneurship and social protection. For example, at a national level, the Parliamentary Committees on Gender and social protection, and Trade; and relevant sector working committees. In addition, knowledge products (such as policy briefs, Fact sheets etc) are posted on the INCLUDE and EPRC websites, which offer links to relevant knowledge products and institutions.
Strategic alliances: The project team has established strategic alliances with relevant organizations to ensure cost-effective communication. The team has so far engaged with the local research teams and institutions involved in the studies under the productive employment theme and the social protection theme. The meetings helped all project partners to conceptualise the specific objectives, terms of references of individual projects and how they fit into the INCLUDE Knowledge Communities Component. EPRC has been able to use the Uganda Economics Association Platform to show case include activities in Uganda and encourage the UEA members to contribute to policy debates on how social protection programmes can promote entrepreneurship and how can they best benefit informal sector workers.
Dialogue and outreach: Various approaches are being used tobuild and stimulate debates among various policy actors (e.g. through workshops, technical capacity building engagements and targeted meetings with relevant national policy actors, technocrats and women and social protection advocacy networks. We have been able to contribute towards conceptualization of methodologies and review of preliminary study results. Further assistance will be provided to the research teams to develop policy messages from their results for communication with the various policy actors, lobbyists and beneficiary groups at national, regional and international level.
Effective engagement with the media: The media has been identified as a critical partner in widely sharing research results and influencing policy processes. EPRC has thus, developed liaisons with various media houses to enable the INCLUDE partners and the EPRC team to get across key research and policy messages. Partners have been encouraged to write commentaries and blogs for sharing with the media and on other online INCLUDE information platforms. | https://eprcug.org/research/include-platform-uganda |
Life story is an account of the series and events that make up your life and define who you are. The story of your life is important because it helps explain where you’ve been, how you got there, where you are now, and even where and what you will be doing in the future.
Despite the fact that most individuals will serve in some care role, there are almost no programs preparing individuals to serve as caregivers for older adults or to be care receivers in old age. This lack of preparation can lead to increased distress and anticipatory grief about the caregiving process. To reduce caregiving distress, Memory Banking is a program that focuses on caregiving/care-receiving preparation and social support by improving partner communication through collective life story recording.
Program Objectives:
After this program, participants will be able to:
•Describe the importance of documenting and sharing life story.
•Explain how life stories and health histories provide meaning to the human experience and enhance personal understanding.
•Explain how life stories can strengthen communication, relationships and quality of care.
•Describe how one’s life story can contribute to legacy.
•Discuss how life story contributes to mental healthiness.
•Discuss how life story can promote conversations about future planning and decision making.
•Discuss how life story can help you maintain an active brain. | https://learn.extension.org/events/757 |
- The glue of a group lies particularly in shared practices, such as eating together, working together, sharing daily practices; thereby creating “rhythms” or “patterns” in community activities.
Overview
When designing a community project, it is important to pay attention to the details of everyday life. In fact, small daily practises connected with food, work, personal hygiene and resource use, for example, are often psychic and materialistic expressions of the worldviews, intentions and visions of the group. They can be designed consciously to support and strengthen them – or work the other way around, informing and giving clarity to the intention a community stands for.
At times, the worldview expressed in a practice might not correspond exactly to that of an individual group member, or even of the group as a whole. A group may have agreed to a common vision and intention, but still consciously or unconsciously operates according to a worldview more in line with what they want to change rather than where they want to go.
This can create conflicts and personal struggles, but can also be an invitation to support each other and help the project realise its goals. Consciously designing elements of everyday life to express the intentions of the project can thus support group members to take the actions and maintain the attitudes and types of relationships that help make their common visions a reality.
In projects that aim to change or improve something in the world, there are often blind spots that might go unseen before we encounter practices that disturb or challenge us, or which make us relate to life in a different way. How would we change or re-design our everyday life and practices if we consider them as expressions of either intentions or unexamined assumptions about life? What would we add or take away to better express what we want to create in the world? How does this influence, enrich or challenge us as individuals and communities?
When individuals group together and form a community, some daily practices that were previously individual and ‘domestic’ are transformed and become shared as community practices. In this section, examples are chosen to illustrate how we can build coherence between the individual, the community, the intentions and the structure, through practices woven into everyday life.
Examples are meant to show the interconnectedness between the levels in the model.
In accordance with GAIA Education’s wheel of sustainability, four examples have been chosen, one for each respective dimension:
· Social – the case of shared dinners
· Ecological – the case of compost toilets
· Economic – the case of car sharing
· Culture – the case of moments of awareness
The magnitude of experiences from existing ecovillages on these topics will be found on the CLIPS ICT platform. This section simply explores how practice in our model is influenced and is influencing all layers of community, from the individual to intention and structure. | https://clips.gen-europe.org/implementation/ |
The goal of the project is to build the capacity of the community to reduce salinity, tidal inundation and cyclone relate vulnerability, as well as to facilitate poverty reduction. The specific objectives of the project are:
To improve understanding of vulnerability related to salinity, tidal inundation and cyclones and related challenges
To identify community needs to address vulnerability in the selected area and communities
To build awareness about current and future impacts of climate change in general and salinity, sea level rise and cyclone in particular
To improve coping mechanisms to address salinity and associated problems
To capture and strengthen existing local knowledge and practices for decreasing vulnerability to climate variability
To facilitate integration of suitable technological and external knowledge to improve coping and adaptation for the future.
Specific project activities therefore include:
1) Building awareness about climate change related impacts and vulnerability through communication via various media and collective action
2) Initiate actions at the community levels to enhance resilience, adaptive capacity and livelihoods through:
Promotion of coastal afforestation and mangrove plantation
Homestead based forestry, horticulture and integrated farming practices
Promotion of salt-tolerant crops and cropping systems
Diversification of agriculture through introducing new cropping systems and integration of rice, shrimp, crab and fish farming
Promotion of market opportunities in relation to existing and emerging livelihood options and products
Promotion of safe drinking water
Disaster preparedness in relation to cyclone, tidal surges and sea level rise
Capacity building of local communities as well as extended partners and concerned agencies through facilitating the sharing of information and experiences, orientation, training, networking, lobbying and advocacy at local and regional scales. | http://www.ctc-n.org/resources/building-community-capacity-reduce-salinity-tidal-inundation-and-cyclone-relate |
When this is all over and we find out what our new normal looks like, what rituals from this time will you keep? Will you keep making sourdough bread? Will you keep up with that fitness routine that helped break up the day? Will you prioritise finding more time and making more time to do the quieter, slower things, discoveries from the time when going out wasn’t an option?
Will you hold dear the feeling of home, and take it with you into the new?
This year has been a year of many things – lots of them glum and very, very real; but some of what we have taken from these experiences has been inspiring… we have learnt how resilient we are and that we can unite for the sake of the greater good, and for each other. We have learnt that we are capable, maybe more so than we thought. We are eager to give things a go; and we want to laugh and make each other laugh. We want to share what we know and learn new things. We want to find happiness with what we have, when happiness in the outside world feels scarce.
We have learnt how to make our own luxuries out of every day things and every day moments. We’ve found satisfaction from doing funny dances and baking bread. We have found joy in our everyday.
What will you take on with you, and make your new normal?
I’ve always wanted to bake sourdough, amongst other things. When I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, one of my answers was a baker. Being little (and also Libran) I couldn’t choose only one answer – I also wanted to be an artist and an architect – all those things all at the same time thank you, a well rounded creative life for me.
I’ve baked cakes for a long time – baking is definitely kind of magical, and I have always wanted to explore different recipes and give new things a go. Learning by doing is the way I like to roll, so the sourdough trend of 2020 feels all kinds of right to me. Baking is comfort in itself, the eating is an added bonus.
My day-dreaming, weekend dreaming and holiday dreaming is often related to baking. My kind of relaxing is reading a cookbook, and the place I start planning a holiday? The bakery. I want to stay somewhere where the great bakeries are.
What?! You don’t plan your holidays around bakeries?! Well, I totally recommend it. Great bakeries are often in vibrant neighbourhoods filled with interesting people making interesting things and when visiting a new city that’s where I want to go, so that’s how I start my research – with the bakery. It gives you a starting place for your explorations (a morning visit to the bakery can double as time to plan the day ahead) and helps you imagine what it would be like living in that place, which is what I really want to do.
Eating a great croissant or baguette in my new favourite bakery lets me feel more like a local, and helps me feel at home when I’m far away. I am happy in a great bakery, wherever I go.
Seek out bakeries wherever you may be – Rose Bakery in Paris (the old store in the Marais which is no longer, with its curved front window and warm lights), Tartine in San Fransisco (yes, the pastries are most definitely worth lining up around the block for) and the teeny, tiny Söderberg & Sara in Malmo. If it’s squishy, all the better – remember those days when we could all squeeze in to some place great, together? What’s your favourite bakery – I’d love for you to share, maybe it can become someone else’s favourite bakery too. I hope we can all go out for a pastry together again, soon.
I have dreamt about creating that bakery magic myself which is why, I guess, I bake at home. When I’m feeling fanciful, I day-dream about opening that little bakery of my own and what it would look and feel like – warm lighting, close seats, pale pink tiles and french radio playing in the background; somewhere you could sit all day and feel cosy, kind of like being at home.
If I ever do open a bakery, you would surely find this on the menu. For now, I hope you can enjoy it in your home and feel the some of those vibes of your favourite bakery, all while in your pyjamas.
The sourdough craze has been my kind of craze, I am all there for it. Happiness is a good oven spring! Pulling your own sourdough loaf out of the oven is the epitome of simple pleasures. Now I’ve found my rhythm with making sourdough, we can have amazing crusty bread at home at a *moments* (okay, two days) notice. I may not be able to go to Tartine for their bread right now (honestly, for me the trek is a long one at the best of times!) but luckily now I have learnt to make it at home.
If you’re having a go at making your own sourdough too, I recommend checking out Jennifer Latham’s – head of bread at Tartine – videos. Watching her fold the dough, and seeing what it looks like when it’s fully proved, has turned my sourdough into something I would happily buy from a bakery – a life goal to say the least. I like the Tartine Breadwhole-wheat bread recipe for our every day loaves for the extra nuttiness and heft a whole-wheat loaf provides; their country loaf recipe is a classic staple and the basis for many of their loaves so it’s a really great place to start.
What do you do with all that delicious sourdough? Apart from devouring half the loaf with salted butter the same day it’s out of the oven, the following few days you can make delicious french toast in a snap, just like your own favourite bakery at home. Serve it with the best, and quickest, berry compote and your morning is complete. Oh, and don’t forget to pop on some french radio to complete the picture.
Serves 1 (multiply the recipe for however many you need) + enough compote for the whole family.
150g frozen blueberries
150g frozen raspberries
2 tablespoons of xylitol (or sugar, or 1 1/2 tablespoons maple syrup)
1 slice of sourdough bread
1 egg, whisked together with 1 tablespoon of milk
a little vanilla paste or extract, if you’re feeling fancy
1 tablespoon olive oil
a couple of tablespoons of berry compote
For the compote – add the berries and sweetener into a medium sized saucepan. Cover and heat over medium heat until the berries have lost their chill – around 5 minutes. Remove the lid and simmer for another 5 minutes, or until the compote is deeply purple. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool slightly.
For the french toast – whisk together the egg and milk (and perhaps a little vanilla) in a broad, shallow bowl – hopefully one big enough to comfortably accommodate your slice of bread. Soak the bread in the egg mixture for a few minutes each side, pressing it down gently with the back of a fork so it soaks up all the egg mixture.
Heat the oil in a medium sized frying pan until it just shimmers, then add the soaked sourdough to pan and reduce the heat to medium/low. Cook on one side for around 2 minutes, or until golden, before flipping and cooking for another 2 – 3 minutes on the other side.
Serve hot from the pan with some berry compote, a little natural yoghurt, or maple syrup and cinnamon if you wish. | https://amberrossouw.com/2020/05/sourdough-french-toast-with-quick-berry-compote/ |
Test Kitchen tips: Storing bread
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Whether you bake a lot of bread, buy from a favorite bakery or get your loaves from the supermarket, knowing how to properly store your bread can delay staling and help it to last longer.
Store the bread in a cool, dry place, away from direct sunlight. Store your bread in a bread box if you have one, or keep the bread in it’s original packaging (whether plastic or paper). The shelf life of bread will vary by type, but should keep anywhere from 2 days up to a week.
If the bread is still warm from baking, give the bread time to cool before storing it -- wrapping the bread while it is still warm can trap excess moisture, causing it to go soft, even moldy.
You can also freeze bread. Bread will keep, tightly wrapped in foil or plastic, up to a few months. Thaw the bread before using (you can toast frozen bread slices straight out of the freezer).
Whatever you do, don’t refrigerate your bread -- refrigeration can actually cause the bread to stale (called starch retrogradation) faster.
To refresh a loaf of bread, warm it in an oven, or toast the slices.
If you have any kitchen tips or questions you’d like me to explore, leave a comment below or email me at [email protected].
ALSO: | https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/daily-dish/story/2011-10-29/test-kitchen-tips-storing-bread |
Kabul bakery donates bread as millions in Afghanistan suffer extreme hunger
Dozens of people gathered outside a bakery in central Kabul on Monday in the hope of receiving a free loaf of bread.
Hamena, a 14-year-old girl from Kunduz province, said it has been tough to make ends meet with her father working as a market porter and her mother sick at home, Reuters reported.
“So I come here to get some bread for my home,” she said.
Bakery owner Mehr Dil Khan Rahmati, 58, has been handing out free bread for about three years, but said he has noticed an increase in poverty since the collapse of the former government.
Before the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan came to power, about 500 people would wait outside his shop each day, but now, there are days where as many as 2,000 try to get a free loaf, he said.
His service is entirely donation-based, so the amount of bread he hands out varies from day to day. People contribute what they can, anywhere from 50 Afghani ($0.50) to 10,000 Afghani ($98). The loaves he sells go for 20 Afghani ($0.20) each.
“When people donate extra money, we bake more bread (for people in need) and will usually bake until eight or 10 o’clock at night,” he said, adding that there are days when his workers bake as many as 20,000 loaves, Reuters reported.
Last month, the United Nations appealed for $4.4 billion in humanitarian aid for Afghanistan in 2022. On Wednesday (January 26), it said it needed a further $3.6 billion for health and education, basic infrastructure, promotion of livelihoods and social cohesion, specifically the needs of women and girls. | https://tech-consultingstudies.eu/2022/02/02/kabul-bakery-donates-bread-as-millions-in-afghanistan-suffer-extreme-hunger/ |
Maybe it’s the decadence of a double-chocolate Milano. Or those buttery, melt-in-your-mouth Chessmen. Or the handful of Goldfish (“the snack that smiles back”) a harried mom throws into a Ziploc bag on the way out the door with her little ones. Pepperidge Farm has been America’s bakery for generations. But did you know it all started with a housewife, a sickly little boy and a stately tree on a Connecticut farm?
Margaret Fogarty grew up in Flushing, Queens, New York. After graduating as valedictorian of her high school, she found a job as bookkeeper with a brokerage firm in 1915. It was there she met and married a partner in the firm, Wall Street broker Henry Rudkin, in 1923.
The couple lived an idyllic life on a 125-acre farm in Fairfield, Connecticut, named for the pepperidge trees growing on their property. He golfed and played polo; she showed horses, won ribbons, and cared for their three sons. Along with an English Tudor farmhouse, the property boasted a stable for 12 horses and a garage large enough for a fleet of cars.
Great Depression disaster
But the Great Depression, coupled with a serious accident in 1932 that left Henry Rudkin unable to work for six months, turned their perfect lives upside down. Margaret Rudkin, always practical and analytical, dismissed the servants, sold the horses and all but one car, and began selling apples from their 500-tree orchard, along with turkeys they raised on Pepperidge Farm, to help make ends meet.
It wasn’t until her youngest son became ill with asthma and food allergies that Margaret Rudkin started baking. After an allergist suggested she steer clear of processed flour and refined sugars, she started researching wholesome, preservative-free foods, starting with her Irish grandmother’s whole-wheat bread recipe using stone-milled whole wheat flour, honey, molasses, sugar syrup, milk, cream and butter, and a coffee grinder from a local feed store to grind the wheat.
Quest for health bread
In 1937, at age 40, Rudkin produced her first loaf of “health bread.” But you know that saying, “if at first you don’t succeed?” Rudkin described her first try as something “that should have been sent to the Smithsonian Institution as a sample of bread from the Stone Age,” rock-hard and barely an inch high. Undeterred, she continued to experiment and, after discovering the wonder of yeast, settled on a vintage recipe that produced a tender, delicious loaf.
The bread seemed to improve her son’s symptoms. His allergist was so impressed he asked Rudkin to bake loaves for him and his other patients. Since the family was down to one car, Rudkin outfitted the garage as a bakery and, with one helper, began baking in small batches, using stone-ground wheat from an old mill on the Connecticut River, rescuing a set of baby-weighing scales from Rudkin’s attic, and gathering every mixing bowl and baking tin they could find.
25¢ a loaf
Rudkin took a basket of bread to Mercurio’s Market, a Fairfield treasure that, for more than 100 years, had provided quality foods and exceptional customer service. The grocer was skeptical when asked if he’d be willing to sell her bread. After all, not only was Rudkin inexperienced, she had the audacity to demand 25¢ for each loaf, enough to cover her costs, at a time when a white loaf sold for one thin dime. Then Rudkin sliced a loaf down and offered him a taste. Not only did he become a believer, taking every loaf she had brought into the store; but by the time she got home, he had left a phone message asking for more.
She next set her sights on the Manhattan market, turning out loaves of white bread from a vintage recipe using unbleached flour. By now, Henry Rudkin was back at work. Commuting into the city every day loaded down with two dozen loaves of bread, a porter met him at Grand Central Station and took the bread to Charles & Co., a specialty food store on 43rd Street. Before long, Charles & Co. upped their order to 1,200 loaves a week.
A push from Reader’s Digest
In the late 1930s, Rudkin spent $987 — a small fortune at the time — on professional equipment. Her bookkeeper figured she’d need to bake almost 3,000 loaves of bread a week just to break even. A distribution plan was hatched with the purchase of Pepperidge Farm’s first truck and a full-time driver who started at $18 a week. Within a year, Margaret Rudkin’s bakery was turning out 4,000 loaves a week. At the same time, Reader’s Digest discovered the brand, writing, “this home-baked bread industry has presented the local community with a thriving business, 45 new jobs and an annual payroll in excess of $50,000” (over $900,000 in today’s currency).
Never one to blow her own horn, Rudkin attributed her success to “quality and timing.” With so much commercially-produced, puffy white bread available, and fewer women baking bread at home, there was nothing like her loaves on grocery shelves. As the company grew, adding whole wheat and pumpernickel bread, along with dinner rolls, to their line, Rudkin needed more space. So the bakery moved into a former Packard automobile showroom and took over an unused hospital building. Within a decade, Pepperidge Farm was turning out 40,000 loaves an hour in a specially designed production plant in Norwalk, Connecticut.
World War II rationing
With World War II and its system of rationing, Pepperidge Farm’s special ingredients — Grade A butter, fresh eggs, fresh whole milk, unsulphured molasses and dark, sweet honey — were harder to come by. Rudkin had a choice. She could either lower the quality of her bread to meet the wartime demand for rationing, or she could limit production. She chose quality over quantity. While her bakers scraped the bottom of their flour bins, Margaret Rudkin learned how to substitute so quality never suffered. For every pound of butter the bakery had to cut from a recipe, it substituted 1/4 cup of heavy cream, since both had the same butterfat content.
After the war, the Rudkins sailed to Europe, where Margaret discovered cookies made by the company that supplied Belgium’s royal family. After somehow sweet-talking Delacre into allowing Pepperidge Farm to use its “secret” cookie recipes, Rudkin sent bakers to Belgium to train before importing a 150-foot cookie oven and bringing Belgian engineers and quality-control people to the U.S. to oversee production. By the end of 1955, Pepperidge Farm had introduced six new “distinctive” cookies to America, prompting Los Angeles Times food columnist Richard Sax to swoon: “Her insistence on high-quality ingredients was a breakthrough for American cookie lovers!”
Women’s advocate
But Margaret Rudkin was about more than just healthy breads and scrumptious cookies. After all, hers is the story of how one woman with no experience in the food industry founded a successful business at the height of the Great Depression.
Always a strong believer in working women, in the 1940s she offered advice for women who wanted to go into business while calling out the business world for not hiring women who clearly demonstrated their abilities in managing a home and family. Early in her career, she hired housewives, writing, “Look at what a bunch of women over 40 have done,” about the 125 women working in her bakery. “None of us had training or business experience. Most of us have children and home responsibilities. But we’re running this business and making it pay.”
Champion of women war workers
A wife and mother who understood women’s needs, she offered flexible hours. Unmarried local women preferred morning hours so they could do farm chores while the day was still young, while married women with children needed after-school shifts when older children could look after younger ones. She cited multi-tasking and everything housewives did as assets that prepared them to run a business: “Knowledge of how to buy well, use food properly, prevent waste, and maintain cleanliness, routine and system.” And when America’s women took to factory floors during World War II, Rudkin was their champion, telling the Edinburg Daily Courier in 1941: “I don’t believe there is any job women can’t do. They handle machines as well as men, and they’re marvelous to work with.”
Pepperidge Farm became known as a good place to work, with a benefit package that included six sick days per year, 10th-anniversary bonuses equal to four weeks’ wages, and safe-driving awards for truckers. And while it’s true Rudkin paid higher wages than most, and made it a point to hire women whenever she could, she was a product of her time when it came to equal pay for equal work: in 1961, a male mixer was hired at $2.15 an hour, while his female counterpart earned $1.75 for the same work.
“Outstanding achievement”
By the late 1950s, Henry Rudkin had taken over marketing and finances for Pepperidge Farm. But Margaret remained the company’s public face. In 1955 the Women’s International Exposition presented her with their “Award to Industry” for outstanding achievement. The next year, she was named one of the “Famous Seven” best-known female executives in America. And Fortune Magazine included her as one of its 50 most powerful businesswomen in the decade from 1950-1960.
Margaret Rudkin sold Pepperidge Farm to the Campbell Soup Company, headquartered in Camden, New Jersey, for $28 million dollars (over $237 million in 2019 money) in 1961, becoming that company’s first female board member. Her Pepperidge Farm Cookbook, which included some 500 recipes, was released in 1963, becoming the first cookbook to find itself on the New York Times bestseller list.
1966 retirement
Margaret Fogarty Rudkin retired in 1966 and died of breast cancer the following year at Yale-New Haven Hospital at the age of 69. She is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York. | https://wednesdayswomen.com/margaret-fogarty-rudkin-feminist-founder-of-pepperidge-farm/ |
To maximize the shelf life of English muffins, keep tightly closed in original packaging and store at room temperature. Properly stored, English muffins will last for about 2 weeks at normal room temperature.
Many BAYS lovers have found that placing the muffins in a resealable plastic bag once they’ve been opened keeps them fresh in the refrigerator. You can enjoy the freshness by freezing your muffins in your freezer.
One may also ask, how long can you keep bread in the refrigerator? Bread has a short shelf life, lasting just 3–7 days at room temperature. Proper sealing and storage, as well as using the refrigerator or freezer when needed, can help prevent mold and increase shelf life.
Also, can you eat English muffins after the expiration date?
Most unopened grains stay for at least six months past the date on the package. Packaged bread lasts for five to seven days in the pantry, but for six months in the freezer. It stores great. English muffins are easy to separate, so they can easily be kept in the freezer and you can just take one out when you want it.
How do you store fresh English muffins?
Muffins are good for up 5 days stored in an airtight container at room temperature or in the refrigerator. Muffins can also be wrapped in plastic wrap, sealed in a zip-top bag, and frozen for up to 3 months. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator and toast before serving.
Can you eat Thomas English Muffins without toasting?
They’re aimed to be toasted, and they do have a bit of raw flavor, though they are fully cooked. In an ideal world you’d get your muffin hot off the griddle, and it doesn’t need toasting.
Can you eat bread a month after expiration date?
Bread. It might get stale, but bread past its expiration date can be safely eaten, even if there is some slight mold on it. If the bread smells sour or spoiled, don’t eat it, but you can always slice a moldy end off and enjoy the rest of the loaf.
Why do English muffins taste sour?
Corn or other meal is used under the muffin as it rises so that the muffin does not stick to the surface on which it rests while rising. They are like really drab, dry pancakes, and maybe your brain associates them with pancakes, and judges that they are not sweet enough – hence, sour.
How long do eggs stay good?
5 weeks
How long is bread good for after expiry?
According to Ask.com, Bread can be eaten past the “best by” or expiration date. A package of plain bread can last five to seven days past the best by date. Bakery bread has a shorter lifespan of two to three days past the best by date.
How long is breast milk good in fridge?
Freshly expressed breast milk can be stored in the back of the refrigerator for up to five days in clean conditions. However, use or freezer storage within three days is optimal. Deep freezer. Freshly expressed breast milk can be stored in the back of a deep freezer for up to 12 months.
Does bread last longer in the fridge?
Don’t keep your bread in the fridge. While it slows the arrival of mould, bread goes stale more quickly in the fridge. Shop-bought loaves should be kept in a plastic bag at room temperature rather than in the fridge.
How long can you eat something after the best by date?
Here’s how long these foods are safe to eat after their best before date, if they’re stored properly: Milk, opened or unopened: 7 days. Yogurt, opened or unopened: 1 to 2 weeks. Butter, opened or unopened: 4 weeks.
Do English muffins go bad in the freezer?
Keep English muffins in the freezer for up to 6 months. English muffins, like most breads, last a long time in the freezer. While they can last up to 6 months, it’s a good idea to use them within a few months. After that, they can start to develop freezer burn and take on the taste of other foods in the freezer.
Can you eat 2 year old frozen meat?
As long as it has been kept frozen meat and poultry will be safe to eat indefinitely. The quality of the meat may deteriorate with time. This depends on whether the meat was packed in a airtight container before freezing. The major risk is freezer burn which attacks the edges and surface of meat first.
How long can you eat chocolate after the expiration date?
If unopened and stored properly, dark chocolate lasts 2 years (from the day it was made). If opened, but still stored properly, the rule of thumb is one year. As for milk and white chocolate bars, the time available is cut in half. One year if unopened and stored properly, and 6-8 months if opened and stored properly.
Can you eat chocolate a year out of date?
Chocolate is a product that doesn’t actually have an expiration date. Instead, it has a best before date. An expiration date, which is actually called a use-by date, is only included for products that are unsafe to eat after a certain period. Chocolate is safe to eat after its best before date. | https://theflorencemill.org/how-long-do-thomas-english-muffins-last-in-the-refrigerator/ |
28 Interesting Bread Facts with Statistics to Prove it
There is a ton of fascinating information on the internet about anything, from current affairs to historical handicrafts and bread fun facts. As a result, over the course of our investigation of our daily material, we often discover information that we just did not know. Here are some interesting facts regarding bread.
Interesting Bread Facts
- Around 12 billion sandwiches are consumed annually in the UK. This translates to 380 every second.
- In 1943, pre-sliced bread was temporarily outlawed in the United States as part of a conservation drive. Because the bread has been associated with humanity for such a long time and is so noteworthy.
- The sandwich has the name of the 4th Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu (1718–1792), who basically popularized the practice of slicing beef between two slices of bread.
- In the majority of cultures around the world, bread represents a slice.
- The bread was utilized as an absorbent plate in medieval times. It was known as a trencher. Then trenchers might then be consumed, donated to the needy, or fed to dogs after the meal. A trencher is said to be the source of pizza.
- Before it was discovered that white bread has less nutritional value than dark bread, it was the favored bread of the wealthy.
- The country that consumes the most bread per person globally is Germany, followed by Chile.
- In the UK, 99% of households buy bread. Why the remaining 1% doesn’t intrigue us!
- each American consumes annually 53 pounds of bread on average.
- A bakery was the origin of the Great Fire of London.
- The Latin roots of the term companion are com, which means “with,” and panis, which means “bread.” the person with whom you share bread.
- Sales of bread have decreased by 11.3% during the past five years in the US.
- A 1.2-kilometer-long loaf of bread was the longest one ever cooked.
- Approximately 76g of bread is consumed daily by British women, compared to 113g of men.
- For the 52 weeks that ended August 11, 2013, there were $5.8 billion in unit sales of fresh bread and rolls in the US.
Fun Facts About Bread
- Before rubber erasers were created, graphite was cleaned up with a rolled-up piece of white bread.
- It included people valuing bread so highly that regulations governing it in the 13th-century Magna Carta.
- After the first bread-slicing machine was created, 80% of the bread sold in the USA was sliced within five years.
- According to urban legend, chewing the bread crust makes one’s hair curlier. Around 10,000 years ago, during the Neolithic, bread developed to become a staple diet.
- Although bread is typically baked, it can also be steamed, fried, or boiled in various cultures.
The bread-slicing machine wasn’t patented until after the automatic pop-up toaster.
- The Wheat Montana Farms and Bakery team, who recaptured the Guinness World Record in 1995, holds the record for the fastest “bun” in the West. During exactly eight minutes and thirteen seconds, they harvested and ground the wheat, combined, scaled, shaped, and baked a loaf.
- National Cinnamon Raisin Bread Day is celebrated on September 16.
- As much as communion and religious expression go hand in hand, as does bread. Hot cross buns honor Lent and Good Friday; red-dyed eggs are used in Greek Easter bread to symbolize the blood of Christ, and Jewish families use challah to mark the beginning of the Sabbath on Friday evening.
- According to a legend, the eater of the last slice of bread must kiss the cook.
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Hidden Facts About Bread
- The First Footing ceremony is customarily held in the early hours of New Year’s Day in the United Kingdom. Therefore, it is believed that leaving a piece of bread, a piece of coal, and a silver coin outside a door will bring you food, warmth, and wealth in the next year.
- Each loaf of bread sold brings in about 5 cents for farmers.
- Pita bread’s “pocket” is created by steam. Basically, the dough is puffed up by the steam, and a pocket is left in the middle as the bread cools and flattens.
- A combine can gather enough wheat in 9 minutes to bake around 70 loaves of bread.
- 53 pounds of bread are consumed annually on average by each American.
- A typically packaged slice of bread has 75–80 calories and 1 gram of fat.
- The amount of wheat grown in Kansas in 1997 was sufficient to manufacture 36.5 billion loaves of bread, or 6 loaves of bread, for every person on the planet.
- When he insisted on a loaf of dark rye bread for his horse during the Prussian war, Napoleon gave a common bread its name. He said, “Pain pour Nicole,” which translated to “Bread for Nicole,” his horse. Because the request sounded like “pumpernickel” to Germanic ears, which is the name we now give to this traditional loaf.
- According to superstition, it is unlucky to cut an unbaked loaf of bread or turn a loaf of bread upside down.
- In Russia, bread and salt are representations of hospitality.
- National Sourdough Bread Day is observed on April 1.
- The day dedicated to banana bread is February 23.
- According to Scandinavian customs, if a boy and a girl share a loaf of bread, they will inevitably fall in love.
- It is National Date Nut Bread Day on December 22.
Summary
Bread plays very important in the lives of humans. As you can see from this article, bread goes back to the early days, and it is also the foundation of some major historical events in certain areas.
And because bread is so nutritious but isn’t expensive to afford, most people eat bread. Bread can either be eaten as a meal or it can be eaten as a snack depending on the preference of the consumer. | https://suntrustblog.com/bread-fun-facts/ |
Pain de Campagne means country bread, and it is as varied as the French countryside. There are a variety of recipes, flour combinations, and leavening methods out there, but all seem to create a beautiful, rustic loaf that goes perfectly with a soup or a meaty ragout.
We spent the Christmas holiday with Nico’s family in the mountain village Ax-les Thermes in the French Pyrenees. Each afternoon, after hours of cavorting in the snowy slopes, we would have an open air picnic. Nico’s mom would pack cheeses, tomatoes, and meats, and hunks of Pain de Campagne picked up from the bakery in the morning. This bread was different than the country loaves I had become accustomed to. There was something other than bread flour in there. After days of eating it, I decided it was rye and made a deal with myself to give it a try when I got home.
Most of the Pain de Campagne loaves I have seen are round, but I loved the mountain breads. They were like fat, rye baguettes…so that is where I started. I used my baguette recipe and edited it to create a rather close replica of the beautiful breads I ate in the Pyrenees.
Have patience with your loaves and yourself. Do not try to rush the rising process, but do not judge yourself if the loaves don’t look perfect the first time around. Odds are, if you followed the recipe, the bread will be delicious!
I like to use a Japanese sashimi blade to slice slits into my loaves, I find most other knives catch a bit too much on the dough and leave awkward serration marks, but have also had great success with razor blades.
Your loaves are always best day of, but mine last in aluminum foil for up to 3 days. Freeze in foil if keeping for longer.
Ingredients:
- 3 cups warm water
- 2 1/2 teaspoons yeast
- 5 1/2 cup bread flour
- 1 1/2 cup rye flour
- 2 teaspoons salt
- oil for greasing dough
- 1 cup ice cubes
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-
- Mix water and yeast, leave for 10 minutes.
- Mix flours together and mix into yeast water. Leave to hydrate for 20 minutes.
- Add salt and knead for 8-10 minutes..
- Oil, cover, and leave to rise in cold oven with pilot light on to double in size. About 45 minutes.
- Remove to counter. Spread into a 10×10 inch square and fold as depicted in the images below (the dough photographed is a plain baguette, but the procedure is the same).
- Fold two sides of dough onto itself to make a 5×10 inch rectangle. Fold the new long sides onto the center to make a 5×5 inch square. Pinch the edges shut.
- Place seam side down back into bowl. Let rise for another hour in the cold oven.
- Take a clean kitchen towel and spread generously with flour.
- Divide dough into two sections.
- Spread each piece of dough into a long rectangle about 8 inch wide by 10 inch long.
- Roll into a cigar shape and pinch the seam. You will end up with a 10 inch cigar.
- Roll on towel to cover with flour. Repeat.
- Place on a cookie sheet prepared with a bit more flour or even better corn starch. Cover with another clean towel and allow to rise for another hour.
- Place a metal pie pan or comparable dish in the oven on the low rack, reserving the top rack for the baguettes.
- Preheat oven to 450°F with the convection fan on.
- Cut ¼ inch deep slits with a razor blade or very sharp knife. Place in oven
- Cut ¼ inch deep slits with a razor blade or very sharp knife. Place in oven.
- Place 1 cup of ice cubes into the lower pan you placed in there earlier.
- Bake for 20-30 minutes or until dark brown on the outside. Flip halfway if you do not have a convection oven. | https://cheznousdinners.com/2018/01/08/pain-de-campagne/ |
Okay I’ve had several experiments on baking whole wheat bread, but this one has become a classic for us! We haven’t bought bread from bakeries for about 6 months (Wow!) as we love homemade version more, and we know what it contains when we make it home.
Bread has a significant place in Turkish cuisine and no Turk gets full without bread. However, people are used to eating white bread and almost all bakery shops make it with white flour. Whole wheat bread is becoming popular these days though. The craziness of homemade version started last summer. We were sick of looking for whole wheat bread at markets as we couldn’t find it any time we wanted. Glad that we couldn’t.
Friends can’t believe when I tell them we never buy bread and we always make it at home. “How can you save time for it?” they ask. It may not sound easy to make it always at home if you are a working woman. But believe me it’s become a piece of cake for me after some practising. I can easily bake it even when I come late from work, even when I’m tired. The recipe itself is so simple and easy with few steps; mix everything, wait to rise, shape and bake! What’s more, it’s definitely fun to make it, you can add any nuts or fruits or herbs you like to make a change each time. My new motto: If you want to eat healthy and tasty bread, bake it yourself! It may not look as attractive as bakery version, but it tastes as good, even better.
You may also want to see the Whole Bread With Carrot and Walnut I wrote before.
Easy Whole Wheat Bread
Healthy Whole Wheat Bread
Ingredients
- 1 kilo whole wheat flour
- 1 tbsp dry instant yeast
- 1 tsp sugar
- 2 tsp salt
- 5 walnuts, crumbled
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 3 ½ cups warm water
Instructions
- Mix everthing except water in a large bowl.
- Add water little by little and combine it with your hand each time you pour water.
- You should get a wet and sticky dough at the end.
- So if the amount of water is not enough, add a little more to make it wet.
- Cover the top of that bowl and wrap it with a blanket so that it keeps warm and doesn’t get air inside.
- Let it wait for 1 hour to rise.
- Lay baking sheet in an oven tray.
- Dust the counter with some flour.
- Take some dough with either with your hand or with a ladle and put it on floured counter.
- Give it a ball shape and place it on the baking sheet.
- Do this step as quickly as you can because dough might stick if you wait.
- Repeat this until dough finishes.
- Don’t preheat the oven. Bake the loaves at 160C for 35 minutes.
- Wait until it gets cool before slicing. | http://www.giverecipe.com/easy-whole-wheat-bread/ |
How It Started
First I want to thank you all so much for those who have supported us, especially from the beginning when our first winter market was cancelled due to the pandemic.
For those who don’t know, earlier this year Stephen reached out to the Winter Farmers Market at the Domes asking about selling his breads there (what it all takes, if there was licensing, restrictions on home bakers, etc.) it wasn’t until beginning of March did he hear back from them asking to sell at the last few winter markets.
Stephen has been baking for about 8 years, but this was going to be his first time really selling his breads. We were so excited, especially knowing that not everyone can get into the winter market, we knew how lucky we were. We thought this was finally his way to get his name and breads out there. He planned for over a week and baked like mad that weekend before the market. He worked so hard to bake as many breads as he could for a home baker in a small home kitchen, with a normal kitchen oven, no mixer or anything, all done by hand. While I (His wife, Christine) was planning his display and what else would be needed besides breads (packaging, card reader, bags, table, baskets, etc.) He was able to make about 60 loaves of breads right before the market, we were ready to sell!
Unfortunately, the Thursday evening before, the pandemic hit, and everything including the markets were cancelled. All this bread and no place to sell them. We do not have a store front, and haven’t even built a customer base yet, we weren’t sure what to do. We were hoping this winter market would be the start of slowly building our bakery, but then it was cancelled. In all honesty we felt a little defeated, not sure what to do with all this bread.
However I did not want to give up, so I took a chance and posted on Facebook groups, specifically the Bay View Town Hall group since we both grew up there, still live near by and love Bay View, looking for people to purchase our breads. I wasn’t sure if people would be interested, I figured we might as well try and at least sell a few loaves of bread. Little did I know we would completely take off.
We had over 100 comments, over 50 messages and people sharing our post, selling out of all our breads in just an hour, and even having orders for more. Essentially, we went a little viral! A columnist for the Journal Sentinel saw the post, reached out and wrote an article about us. Once the article was published, we had back orders for up to 3 weeks, yet people were more than happy to wait that long!
Since then we have been in several markets this season, on the news and local newspapers. If it wasn’t for the community helping us in our time of need, we would not be where we are today. Which is one of the reasons why we choose the Bay View Community Center to donate our Neighbor Loaves breads.
Again, we are just a small, home bakery, that Stephen and I (his wife Christine) run by ourselves. This is now Stephen’s full time job and he does all the baking himself, so everything you see baked on our site, social media and markets, are all done by him, with the exception of my bread flowers and cupcakes!
I help with everything else (Writing and sending newsletters, cleaning our home, running the website, social media, cleaning, packaging, managing markets, CLEANING, charities, answering emails and messages, SO MUCH CLEANING, etc.) While maintaining my day job and teaching paint classes at the Farmhouse Paint & Sip now and then.
Even buying one loaf of bread, or just a croissant or cookie, or even just by signing up for our newsletter and sharing our posts on social media, if it wasn’t for you, we would not have come as far as we have, especially during these trying times. Thank you.
We will continue working hard, and making our dream of opening a small bakery come true. We are not sure when it will happen, whether it’s a year or several years from now, we will keep high hopes for our future, and with your help it is possible! There may be hard times, (like now during a pandemic) but we will not give up, because every single smile we give is worth it! Again, thank you all so much for your support!
The Process of Bread
Making bread has always been a process. It isn’t something that can be done in 30 minutes or even in an hour, when the goal is to allow the bread to ferment over the period of at least a day to develop a depth of flavor.
When you attempt to speed up the process all you get is underwhelming and bland bread. Bread relies on the baker to be patient and accepting of the environment that the dough is rising in. The dough will rise once and then it will be shaped and will rise a second time before it gets put into a piping hot oven. Each rise requires hours of patience, if the dough doesn’t rise long enough the end result will be flat and dense.
I started making bread to learn the process and to be able to make my own bread. At the beginning I didn’t understand what was all required to end up the loaves of bread people see in books and in bakeries. Breads that are sold at most bakeries and grocery stores have commercial yeast in them to help speed up the process and to make all the bread consistent in look and rise. It also will have the least amount of flavor because of the quick rise times. Naturally Fermented Bread(Sourdough) uses a Sourdough Starter which is wild yeast that gathered when flour and water is mixed and allows to sit out to ferment. It takes upwards of 3 weeks to have an active starter to be strong enough to allow a loaf of bread to rise. Wild Yeast also requires a lot of time to rise. It doesn’t move as fast as commercial yeast but it develops way more flavor and it lasts longer before mold forms and ruins the bread.
All the bread I make is with my Sourdough Starter that I have been using for over 5 years. I get my Wheat from Local Farms like Anarchy Acres, Janie’s Mill and Meadowlark Organics. Sometimes I will purchase already stone milled flour from them, other times I will purchase wheat berries, which I then mill myself to get the flour for the breads and baked goods. Flour that is milled at a local farm or at home will always be more healthy than the flour that is sold in stores. All that is removed is some of the bran of the wheat berry to help facilitate the bread to rise without being dense.
It has taken a lot of practice to have good consistent results but it is always worth it in the end. Every time a new batch of dough is started, the end result will always be a surprise. The goal is to be able to make something that others will enjoy and then all the time spent will never be disappointing. | https://stephensbreads.com/about-us/ |
The soft slices of French baguette quickly petrified and dried out after just a day. You will need to reheat them before consuming them.
So, how to heat up French bread in the oven? You need to follow these steps:
- Preheat the oven to 350°F.
- Moisten hands with a bit of water and rub along the surface of the bread.
- Cover the loaf with aluminum foil and place it in the oven.
- Depending on the size, reheat the bread for 15-25 minutes.
- Take out and enjoy.
Except for the traditional oven reheat method, you can use four more ways to bring bread back to life. Let’s find out in this article.
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How To Heat French Bread: The Best 5 Methods?
How to warm up French bread while keeping it moist and delicious? We will introduce you to the five most effective methods in the section below.
Use The Oven
Warming in the oven
Heating French bread in oven is the most common and the best method that comes to mind first. This way, your baguette will have the perfect temperature and a soft, freshly-baked texture.
However, the disadvantage of these methods is that they do not save time. You will have to wait a while to enjoy the dishes, but they are worth it.
Follow these simple steps:
Preheat Oven To 350°F
350 degrees F is the optimal temperature for reheating loaves of baguette. It helps the cake heat up quickly, so it retains the moisture of the texture.
If you want a crispy and soft crust, preheat the oven to this temperature. You should also keep the loaves intact and only slice them after complete reheating.
Seal With Aluminum Foil
The foil will keep your baguette hot without scorching in the oven. Without them, your loaf is very easy to burn black and dry.
Bake Bread In 15-25 Minutes
Small, thin baguette loaves will need about 15 minutes to become crispy. For thick loaves, increase the time to about 25 minutes.
To prevent cakes from cooling down, enjoy them right out of the oven. Continuous reheating will reduce the flavor and change the texture of the food.
Use The Stovetop
The second way in the manual on how to heat up store-bought French bread is to use a stovetop.
First, you will need to cover the bread with aluminum foil. This step helps the cake heat evenly and not burn during the heating process.
Then place the loaf in a pot with a lid and cover. Do not choose too large pots, but choose the size that fits the loaf.
Finally, you put the pot on the stove on low heat for five minutes. The low temperature makes the baguette much warmer. You can take out the cake and check if the condition is ok.
If the baguette is still not warm enough, put it back in the pot and heat it for a few more minutes.
Another alternative method is to steam the old baguette in a steamer with boiling water. Although it won’t create a crispy crust, this method works well with stale, aged, and dry loaves.
Use The Microwave
Using the microwave
Are you in a rush and need to find a way to reheat French bread as quickly as possible? This problem will not be problematic if you have a microwave at home.
It’s also straightforward to do.
First, open the package of frozen bread. Wrap a damp paper towel or place a water bowl in the microwave.
Improperly reheating baguettes can cause them to dry out like a log. So, you need to put a bowl of water in the microwave or cover the bread with damp paper.
This method of adding moisture gives food a fresh, store-bought flavor.
Reheat the baguette for about 30 seconds. After each interval, you should take out the loaves and check to see if they have reached the desired temperature.
Use The Air Fryer
Air fryers are slowly becoming extremely popular because of their convenience. They are capable of generating high temperatures without the need for grease.
The method of reheating baguettes with an air fryer is also possible. However, it will make the texture inside become more crispy.
- If necessary, you should preheat the fryer to 350F.
- Depending on the size of the loaf, you may need to break it in half or three. Place the baguettes in the fryer’s tray or basket.
- Bake the cake for about five minutes.
- Check out the food. If you want a crunchier texture, fry it for about a minute.
Using this device is extremely simple and suitable for those who like a crispy baguette. You can also spice it up by adding olive oil or herbs.
Make Toast
Cheese and garlic toasts
The last way that you can apply is to make toasts. This method is very suitable for making a quick breakfast for the whole family.
First, you need to find a specialized knife and cut the bread into thin slices. Their thickness should be just enough to make sandwiches or the like.
The thinner the baguette slices, the shorter the reheating time will be. If you cut them too thick, you can use the oven for baking them.
Then use the toaster to toast the bread to the degree of doneness you require. You should be careful when removing the cakes from the toaster as they can burn your hands.
Never use a knife and fork to remove toasts from the toaster. It would help if you also unplugged it after using it.
To add more flavor to the dish, add some cheese and bake the toasts in the oven. They make a great snack.
How To Tell If Your Bread Is Bad?
An expired toast
Although reheating frozen bread is an effective way to save money, you still need to pay attention to their condition.
Just because baguette slices are dry and chewy doesn’t mean they’ve gone bad. Technically, you can still consume these baguettes.
Reheating them properly will make the taste much better and regain the texture of the baguettes. We talked about the five methods above.
There are signs that your cake has spoiled and is no longer edible. Consuming moldy bread is dangerous to your health.
Some notable signs are:
- Blue, green, black, or white spots on the surface.
- Mold.
- The odor is like wine, vinegar, or sour yeast.
Even if your loaf is just smelling rancid without any other signs, we still recommend that you immediately toss them in the trash.
How To Store French Baguette
Just reheating bread is not enough. You also need to store it properly. Otherwise, all you get is a hard, dry log.
What do you usually do after buying a baguette at the store? Usually, people will put them right on the kitchen counter or counter.
In the long run, it will ruin your loaf very quickly. So, follow these helpful tips:
- Pre-cut slices of bread dry out very quickly, so don’t buy them.
- Keep the rest of the loaf in a tightly tied paper bag.
- After slicing a slice of cake, place the end of the loaf upside down on a cutting board or table.
- Cover the cake well to keep it moist.
- Freezing baguettes helps you to preserve them longer.
- Let the cakes rest for 10-15 minutes after baking as they are not yet ready to be consumed.
- Before reheating a frozen loaf, let it thaw completely at room temperature.
You should also check the video below for more exciting baguette preservation tips.
Frequently Asked Questions
If you still have any questions regarding how to warm French bread, keep reading below for some helpful knowledge.
FAQs
Should You Heat French Baguettes?
Reheating a delicious French baguette will enhance the flavor of the dish. However, you need to apply the proper method so that the cake does not become hard or dry.
It’s best to heat French bread in oven as long as you’ve preheated it. To make sure the crust is soft and moist, wet it a little and wrap more foil around.
How Do You Heat Bread Without Drying It Out?
An excellent tip to keep baguettes from drying out after reheating is that you don’t cut them into pieces. Instead, wrap them in aluminum foil.
This coating will help distribute the heat evenly over the surface without burning the bread. You can also brush a little more to make the cake moister.
How Long Do You Put French Baguette In The Oven?
How long to heat French bread will take anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes, depending on the size of the loaf.
First, rub your damp hand along the baguette so that the surface is slightly damp but not wet. Then, cover the loaf with aluminum foil.
When the cake warming temperature has reached the desired level, you can take it out and enjoy the food.
What Is The French Law For Making Bread?
The French have their own rules and regulations regarding their ingredients and proportions in a slice of baguette.
If a bakery wants to be a boulangerie, they need to knead the dough and bake the loaves in the shop. They can use flour, yeast, salt, and water.
Other than that, there aren’t any additional ingredients. It also causes a soft, moist loaf to become rock-hard overnight. Oil-free blend to retain moisture.
During the baking process, the moisture inside the cake is converted into steam to keep the inside moist. However, the water will gradually evaporate once you take it out of the oven.
The fat will help retain moisture longer. So, you need to add oil or butter and the ingredient list.
Conclusion
How to bake French bread from store? There are five methods that you can take advantage. Each method will have its advantages and disadvantages. Explore and choose the way that suits you best. Happy baking! | https://www.annisarestaurant.com/how-to-heat-french-bread/ |
Most of us would find it hard to picture a childhood without school. For as long as we can remember, going to school has been taken for granted as a normal part of growing up. Education and childhood are often seen as two inextricably linked concepts ‒ which is just as it should be, for as established by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), every child is inherently entitled to an education. Yet, in spite of the numerous existing policies and legislations that demand all children have equal access to learning, there still exists a vulnerable group of children who are habitually denied this right ‒ the differently-abled.
As we pointed out in a previous article, differently-abled children are nearly always have to face stigma, and countless social, cultural, financial, pedagogical, and attitudinal barriers are known to make it difficult ‒ and sometimes nearly impossible ‒ to gain access to quality education. However, it is explicitly conveyed by the UNCRPD (the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) that:
- Differently-abled children are entitled to all the fundamental freedoms and rights afforded to other children.
- Differently-abled children are entitled to an inclusive and quality education on equal basis with other children.
- Differently-abled children are entitled to any extra support they might need to facilitate their education
Education is a fundamental right, which means that it is vital for the very survival of human existence and social development. The concept of inclusive education aims to guarantee differently-abled children this right. All the same, while the advantages of inclusion are clear, many educators, academics, and even parents have mixed feelings about it.
What Is Inclusive Education?
Unless you have a connection of some sort to an education sector or a special needs child, there is a good chance that you are unfamiliar with inclusive education and what it’s all about.
The concept of inclusive education involves the mainstreaming of differently-abled children in a regular school or classroom, with the aim of providing them with opportunities and experiences equal to that of their ‘normal’ peers. Simply put, it is the idea that children with special needs should attend school and take part in classroom activities just like any other child without special needs.
The principle stems from the rationale established by UNESCO’s Salamanca Statement, namely that every child has unique characteristics, interests, abilities and learning needs, and therefore education systems should be designed and implemented to take into account the wide diversity of these characteristics and needs. However, there is an existing perception that special needs children should be treated differently and kept separately, and inclusion remains a much-debated and complicated issue.
How inclusive is Sri Lanka’s education system?
With an impressive literacy rate of 92% and primary school enrolment rate of 93%, ours is a country which has always placed particular importance on education. Sri Lanka has also had a long history of providing support for differently-abled children; the practice of integrated education dates as far back as the late 1960’s, and the country’s policies on disability are completely supportive of inclusion. However, though the Compulsory Education Ordinance makes it obligatory for all children from the ages 5 to 16 to attend school, studies reveal that only a small percentage of the school-aged differently-abled children actually attend school. In fact, a UNICEF survey on Sri Lankan adults with disability revealed that only 35% of those with intellectual disability and 48% of those with speech disability had acquired some degree of schooling when they were children.
So why is this the case?
Speaking to Roar, Malathi Kahandaliyanage, consultant special educator and behaviour therapist explains that though many schools in Sri Lanka practice inclusive education, most of them are not geared to accommodate the different needs of differently-abled children. “This is mainly because our education system is not based on child-centered learning. We also don’t have the necessary resources and infrastructure to accommodate their different needs,” she said.
These “different needs” vary according to the nature of each child. For instance:
- Some children on the autism spectrum may learn better with the help of the visuals. They might also need instructions to be broken down into simple steps to achieve learning goals.
- Some children may need sensory breaks to regulate their needs ‒ which can be seen as a disruption to the classroom environment.
- Children with cerebral palsy may need wheelchair accessibility or adaptive devices to communicate.
- Children with Down’s syndrome may need more time to complete activities.
- Children with learning disabilities may benefit with oral examination rather than written test papers.
According to Kahandaliyanage, our education system is geared to achieving results through standardised tests rather than assessing the strengths of an individual student. Because of this, schools find it challenging to accept children who look, learn, and present themselves differently.
Even those students who are lucky enough to gain acceptance into a school are often segregated from other students in pull-out classes or special units attached to the school. While Special Education Units are a stepping stone towards full inclusion, they defeat the whole idea of inclusive education, which is providing differently-abled children with the integrated environment they need.
Other barriers to inclusivity include a lack of awareness, as well as the attitudes and perceptions of parents, teachers, principals and other stakeholders. There is also a significant lack of training, support services, and material for the most essential components of inclusive education ‒ teachers. In fact, research has revealed that many teachers feel incompetent and unprepared for the task of teaching special needs children in the classroom.
“Training of the teachers should be an ongoing process,” says Kahandaliyanage, adding that it is imperative to value special education teachers within schools, as they often go unrecognised or find themselves looked down on. She also points out that while schools are bound by country policies to accommodate the needs of all children, it is not uncommon for parents seeking admission for their differently-abled children to be turned away. “Regulations regarding the admission of children with special needs should not rely solely on the principal’s discretion,” she explains. “School authorities need to be held accountable and responsible for implementing the inclusive education policy.”
Why Inclusive Education?
Or as many proponents prefer to ask: why not? After all, special needs children are children too. They too need to feel a sense of belonging, to be able to learn and play and grow in a nurturing environment where every child is made to feel welcome, rather than being shunted to a corner and isolated because they are different.
Properly implemented, inclusive education can equip a special needs child with the social skills they will need to later navigate through life. By interacting with their peers and forming friendships, there is a decline in the sense of alienation and invisibility they are usually afflicted with. In a country like Sri Lanka, where stigma and culturally-induced misconceptions run rampant, inclusive settings in a school can also encourage all children ‒ with and without special needs ‒ to learn to embrace differences and shake off prejudice.
Education is one of the most effective ways to break the seemingly endless cycle of disempowerment and stigma faced by special needs children. Without a proper education, many of them are condemned to a lack of self-sufficiency, unemployment, or worse, lifelong institutionalisation. As certain academics argue, inclusive education does have its stumbling blocks; but it is also a crucial first step towards nurturing the open-minded and diverse society the world so desperately needs. | https://roar.media/english/life/reports/special-needs-children-question-inclusive-education |
VISION of Special Children Special People:
‘Equipped Special Needs People For Full Community Integration’
MISSION of Special Children Special People:
To champion inclusive education, nurturing, rehabilitation and capacity building of special needs people, particularly special needs children, through a participatory approach that involves persons with disabilities, their parents or guardians, the community and the society leadership to achieve better inclusion of special needs persons into their communities.
CORE VALUES:
- Love and care.
- Accountability and transparency.
- Self respect and respect for others.
- Integrity and God fearing
OBJECTIVES of SPECIAL CHILDREN SPECIAL PEOPLE
- To equip special needs people through capacity building in self-help and empowerment skills.
- To empower special needs people through vocational skills for self sustenance and income generation.
- To provide early intervention therapies for special needs children.
- To extend welfare support to special needs people.
- To provide communities with knowledge on the needs and potential of persons with disabilities.
- To build tolerance, understanding and support of special needs people.
- To provide counseling and guidance to special needs children, their parents, families and the community.
- To promote home and community based therapy and rehabilitation interventions
- To provide suitable education services for children with disabilities like sign language.
- To provide daycare and nursery services to children for integration of special needs children.
- To promote recreation, games and sports for therapeutic and rehabilitative procedures.
Provide information to the community in order to enhance the understanding of disability to reduce on stigma and rejection. | https://specialchildrenuganda.org/vision-special-children-special-people/ |
UK income inequality is among the highest in the developed world. Evidence shows that this is bad for almost everyone, and exacerbates the impact of social inequalities. The Equality Trust works to improve the quality of life in the UK by reducing economic and social inequality.
People in more equal societies live longer, have better mental and physical health and have better chances for a good education regardless of their background. Community life is stronger where the income gap is narrower, children do better at school and they are less likely to become teenage parents. When inequality is reduced people trust each other more, there is less violence and rates of imprisonment are lower.
If we want to build a better society, it is essential we take action. The Equality Trust is working with others to build a social movement for change. We analyse and disseminate the latest research, promote robust evidence-based arguments and support a dynamic network of campaign groups across the country. We also run several projects that aim to reduce inequality, including working with young people in schools and youth clubs, campaigning against the privatisation of development aid, and building a coalition for action on the disproportionate pay ratios we see in FTSE100 companies.
Please contact Jo Wittams on 020 3637 0324 for more information.
Mermaids UK is the only UK-wide charity working to support transgender or gender non-conforming children, young people, and their families. Their goal is to create a world where gender-diverse children and young people can be themselves and thrive. Mermaids promotes education and awareness, and offers information, support, friendship, and shared experiences to those in need.
https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/
SANE is a leading UK mental health charity set up in 1986 to improve the quality of life for anyone affected by mental illness. Its three main aims are to raise awareness and combat stigma about mental illness, educating and campaigning to improve mental health services; to promote and host research into the causes and more effective treatments for mental illness at its flagship Prince of Wales International Centre for SANE Research; and to provide guidance and emotional support for people with mental health problems, their families and carers through its helpline, SANEline, TextCare and other services.
For more information, please visit www.SANE.org.uk. SANEline is available from 4.30 – 10.30pm every day of the year on 0300 304 7000
Shine provides specialist support from before birth and throughout the life of anyone living with spina bifida and/or hydrocephalus, as well as to parents, families, carers and professional care staff. Shine enables people to get the best of life.
Today, Shine is a community of 75,000 individuals, families, friends, and professionals, sharing achievements, challenges and information on living with hydrocephalus, or spina bifida, and related issues. Working together throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland, we strive to overcome challenges and achieve the best for you and your family.
Our vision is to create a society that meets the needs, values the contribution and celebrates the lives of people living with spina bifida and hydrocephalus.
Our aim is to make a positive difference to the lives of people affected by spina bifida and / or hydrocephalus, and associated conditions.
Our values:
- Promote the empowerment and participation of people with spina bifida and hydrocephalus, and associated conditions
- Value and respect all the different people with whom we work
- Challenge the ways in which society disables our members
- Work to achieve excellence
- Welcome challenge and review
- Use resources ethically, thoughtfully and responsibly
For more information visit www.shinecharity.org.uk
Call 01733 555988
Email [email protected]
Working Families is the UK’s work-life balance organisation. We help working parents and carers—and their employers—find a better balance between responsibilities at home and in the workplace.
We provide free legal advice to parents and carers on their rights at work. We give employers the tools they need to support their employees while creating a flexible, high-performing workforce. And we advocate on behalf of the UK’s 13 million working parents, influencing policy through campaigns informed by ground-breaking research. | https://www.postevents.co.uk/diversityawards/partners |
Poverty and socioeconomic status impacts school readiness, language development, and the important early intervention of learning disabilities. During the Covid-19 pandemic, these already underserved communities were even more drastically impacted by the inequities of our special education system. There are a lot of layers to this overwhelming problem, but through the work of organizations like the Special Needs Network in LA and individuals like Daniel Mendoza and Marcos Aguilar, we are spreading awareness and access to services otherwise difficult to obtain.
In this episode, Daniel and Marcos explain how children with special needs are impacted by inequities in their community. Daniel is the Clinical Director for the Special Needs Network’s Applied Behavior Program and shares in this episode how some children with Autism are not given the services they need in underserved communities. Marcos is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and Assistant Clinical Director at Special Needs Network and together with their behavioral health team, provides education and resources to families, children, and adults. They have created multiple “access points” to reach as many families in need as they can.
We could have multiple episodes on this important topic, but their mission is clear. The Special Needs Network is doing tremendous work in their community in raising public awareness of developmental disabilities and impacting public policy. I’m honored to have Daniel and Marcos on the show today to further spread this awareness.
Show Notes:
[1:59] – Dr. Wilson shares her experience with the Special Needs Network at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
[2:57] – Daniel explains the beginning of the Special Needs Network and how it has grown since 2005.
[4:22] – There has been an increased awareness regarding the inequities in education, particularly special education.
[5:30] – The programs that Special Needs Network offer were crucial during Covid-19. Daniel describes the experience for many parents and families.
[6:28] – During the pandemic, Special Needs Network was able to help fill the gap in services when services couldn’t continue in school.
[7:29] – Daniel explains what ABA therapy is and the benefits of it for anyone but especially those with Autism.
[9:01] – Marcos further explains ABA therapy for those with Autism. Some behaviors are due to an inability to effectively communicate.
[10:03] – The delay in services for children with Autism can be up to 2 years in underserved communities.
[11:22] – Daniel points out that in underserved communities, parent concerns are not taken as seriously. Parents tend to give up in their efforts to find support and early intervention.
[12:17] – The lack of understanding and access to services has caused some children to not obtain therapy in some cases till they are teenagers.
[13:43] – Dr. Wilson shares that she has known of families crossing state lines to seek services in other states. This is inequitable as services should be available everywhere.
[14:22] – The United States is “late to the game” on services for Autism.
[15:18] – Underserved communities also experience inequities in other services, even healthcare.
[16:40] – Daniel describes how the Special Needs Network approaches this overwhelming work.
[17:42] – What is “boots on the ground”?
[19:09] – Special Needs Network also attracts people with resources and supplies like backpacks and food during special events. They also partner with larger corporations to reach more families.
[20:50] – All the different access points for Special Needs Network, they’ve created an infrastructure in their community, including pediatricians.
[22:00] – Special Needs Network also partners with schools and is working on referral systems for school psychologists and another entry point for students.
[24:07] – Parent support is also vital as having a child with special needs can be very isolating and have a negative stigma.
[25:08] – Marcos emphasizes the importance of collaboration with families.
[26:27] – When the team works together as a unit, that is when you see the child “take off.”
[27:27] – Marcos tells families that he doesn’t want to be the best to work with their child, but wants to be able to access work for their child and connect them to the right programs.
[28:43] – Parents connecting with each other creates word of mouth for Special Needs Network but also builds a community of support for families with similar challenges.
[31:26] – Parent mentoring also helps with the negative stigma of having a child with special needs. It creates hope for parents who are discouraged.
[32:31] – Society has two different models of looking at developmental disabilities. Daniel explains them both.
[34:24] – There needs to be societal change in this area of acceptance.
[37:29] – Dr. Wilson invited Daniel and Marcos to speak at a town hall coming up.
[38:37] – Daniel describes a new facility opening in December of this year and what they will be able to offer in one building.
About Our Guests and Special Needs Network:
Daniel Mendoza is the Clinical Director for Special Needs Network’s Applied Behavior Analysis program, and Marcos Aguilar is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and Assistant Clinical Director at Special Needs Network, Inc. Both Daniel and Marcos are part of an interdisciplinary behavioral health team that includes behavioral analysts, clinical psychologists, social workers, and pediatricians, providing behavioral health treatment to children diagnosed with autism.
Special Needs Network, Inc. is a community-based non-profit organization dedicated to addressing the needs of underserved families struggling with raising a child with developmental disabilities. Their mission is to raise public awareness of developmental disabilities and to impact public policy, while providing education and resources to families, children and adults. SNN serves as a link between under-served communities and mainstream developmental disability organizations and governmental institutions, which often fail to address issues specific to these communities. SNN firmly believes that dignity, hope and opportunity are the birthright of all children.
Founded in 2005, Special Needs Network, Inc. (SNN) grew out of the struggles of Areva D. Martin, Esq. after her son Marty was diagnosed with autism at the age of 2. After finding it incredibly difficult to access services for Marty, Ms. Martin became aware of the enormous challenges faced by families affected by developmental disabilities in underserved communities – in particular, the neighborhood of South Los Angeles. A Harvard-trained attorney, Ms. Martin used her entrepreneurial and legal skills, as well as her own experiences navigating the complex system of care, to create a parent-centered organization with a mission to help the communities in need through four resolutions:
1. Reduce the waiting period for families to have their children diagnosed;
2. Bring education, resources, and services directly to the community;
3. Provide unique learning opportunities for children and young adults with developmental disabilities; and
4. Forge an action-based coalition of families empowered to self-advocate at all levels of government.
Connect with Daniel and Marcos: | https://childnexuspodcast.com/35-providing-support-to-children-from-underserved-communities-with-special-needs-network-inc/ |
Children’s Mental Health Matters!
The Children’s Mental Health Matters! Campaign brings together non-profits, schools, agencies, and other partners with the goal to raise public awareness of the importance of children’s mental health and substance use. The Campaign also helps reduce the stigma of mental health, lets parents know that they are not alone in caring for children with mental health needs, and connects families throughout Maryland with information and services to help their child. This statewide Campaign is co-sponsored by the Mental Health Association of Maryland and the Maryland Coalition of Families. We partner with many organizations that contribute to our efforts across the state: Maryland Association of Non-Public Special Education Facilities, Maryland Department of Disabilities, Maryland Department of Health, Maryland State Department of Education, and National Center for School Mental Health.
Please visit our site to learn more about the Campaign, find resources for families, teens and young adults, providers, and others who work with kids. Join us in helping to spread the word that a child’s mental health is just as important as their physical health! | https://www.mhamd.org/what-we-do/outreach-and-education/childrens-mental-health-matters/ |
It’s a sunny morning when I step onto the playground that leads to the ABC School of Early Learning. The shady bungalow in Colombo 5 is painted in bright blues, greens, and oranges, and the sound of children reciting a nursery rhyme accompanies my entrance.
There are children everywhere. It’s hard to distinguish between ages and abilities in this mélange of kids who are all singing, writing, or playing. ABC’s egalitarian space mimics their approach to children with special educational needs. “Our goal at the ABC School of Early Learning,” explained Principal Surangi Munaweera, “is to work our hardest to integrate students with special needs into our regular classrooms.”
Sri Lanka’s education system is known for being more accessible than most: it’s free, mandatory, and schools are available across the island. But is the education system as friendly to children with neurodevelopmental conditions like autism, Down’s Syndrome, Asperger’s, or cerebral palsy?
Integration To The Mainstream
Munaweera and I meet in a ground-floor classroom, where one of the preschool’s playgroup classes is having a music lesson. We strain to hear each other over the sound of children singing to a piano accompaniment. As we are talking, some students I had met earlier in the Special Needs Unit join in the session of choreographed dance. They are accompanied by a ‘shadow teacher’—a teaching assistant who works closely with individual students to help them learn—and are slow to catch up to the pace of the already sweating three-year-olds, but join the jive with bubbling enthusiasm.
Children with special needs are encouraged to join their peers, as ABC believes integration is imperative to a holistic special needs education. As one student with Down’s Syndrome joins in—she is the youngest in the Special Needs cohort, at three-and-a-half years old—she is greeted by other students in the class, who dance with her. “It’s important to put special needs children around neurotypical children,” explained Ishanthi Perera, a behavioural therapist at ABC. “The children play, talk, and learn social skills off each other.”
Glancing at her peers, the student imitates their movements, and—with some assistance from her shadow teacher—joins the class rendition of the popular nursery rhyme Bingo Was His Name-O. “It’s often easier to teach the children with special educational needs through example,” said Perera. “This visual, imitative style of learning has, in my experience, tended to work better with a lot of our kids.”
The advantage of socialisation in schools is twofold. For neurotypical children, it normalises being around their neurodiverse peers, and shows them, from a young age, that there’s little to be afraid of. For children with special needs, mixing can help them adapt to environments they might be uncomfortable in.
Hari Darshan, whose son Louis* lies between mild and moderate on the autism spectrum, says he is keen to get his six-year-old into a mainstream school next year because he believes socialisation is important, but he is worried about Louis making friends, because he is non-verbal. “If it’s done sensibly, and the class is monitored and set up carefully, then I think there’s a good chance he will fit in and do well,” he said.
Louis attends both ABC and Reach Beyond, a therapy centre for children with learning difficulties in Borella. Darshan said ABC helps Louis with socialisation and academic requirements, while Reach Beyond also looks at behavioural change alongside academics.
As might be expected, there are varying opinions on whether integration is necessarily successful beyond pre-school, if children with special needs were to enter the mainstream. Perera admits that integration is a lot easier in an environment like ABC’s. “Once you get to public schools, their only option is to follow the national syllabus,” she said. “At ABC we focus on fundamental skills: Can a child eat, drink, and go to the bathroom? Especially for children from one-a-half years to three, we really focus on making sure the student is ready to learn.”
Others point out that academic readiness does not equate to the independence that is often expected when a child starts school. Malathi Kahandaliyanage, a founder at Reach Beyond whose son has autism, said, “If a child with autism can go to school and recite the alphabet and knows all the shapes and so on, but has to wear a diaper because they have no idea when they need to go to the bathroom, are they really ready for school?”
Institutional Recognition
But with little institutional recognition for children with special needs in Sri Lanka, where only a ‘one-size-fits-all’ national syllabus is published, parents are left with few choices for education.
For this reason, they are compelled to push their children into mainstream schools once they are done with preschool. Even then, and despite growing awareness of conditions like autism in Sri Lanka, it is still not easy to find accommodations for children with learning difficulties in mainstream schools.
According to educational psychologist Tamara Handi, who works at the University of Kelaniya’s Multidisciplinary Clinic in Ragama, which helps children with a range of neurodevelopmental and neurological conditions, schools are often reluctant to take on kids with disabilities.
The problem is further compounded by the fact that the government only wields limited influence as far as these decisions are concerned. “The Education Ministry itself struggles to convince teachers and principals because the education system is quite decentralised — the ministry does not have a lot of say on individual schools, where most decisions are made by school principals,” she said.
Schools that do take on children with special needs, often struggle to meet those needs. “[Louis] is not severely affected by his condition, and so I am hoping he can do some sort of mainstream education,” Darshan said. But he explained that while there were a number of schools willing to accept Louis, many of them didn’t have an understanding of his condition, or how to teach children with it. Willatgamuwa, who is a coordinator and founder at Reach Beyond, agreed. “I have been to schools that claim to have an inclusive set up, but in reality, the special needs kids don’t do anything all day — they are just being babysat,” she said.
While children like Louis may be able to enrol at a school with a personal shadow teacher to help academics, others with severe autism, or with similar neurodevelopmental conditions that require radically different methods of teaching, may find it even harder to secure an education. “There are some children who need one-on-one teaching,” said Willatgamuwa. “Sometimes, if the child is severely autistic, then there is no way they are going to be able to sit and be with a class.”
Opening a special needs unit can have an unintended negative effect on schools because of widespread social stigma. “When we opened our Special Needs Unit at ABC, a lot of the other children were pulled out of the school by their parents,” said Munaweera. “With a lot of children running around and throwing things, parents worry that their child might get hurt.”
The Future
Whether it’s inclusive mainstream schools or specialised ones, Darshan argues that parents should have options to choose from. Given that conditions like autism are defined on a spectrum and the range of developmental needs that different children might vary from child to child, there is no universal approach to special needs education.
Kahandaliyanage, whose son is mild to moderately autistic, and also has a range of learning difficulties, was homeschooled after grade five. “We didn’t get much from the education system. I just wanted my son to be able to sit in class with other people, even though he couldn't learn anything,” she said.
Tharsiny Markandu, whose daughter was diagnosed with ADHD after two years in an international school, found a move away from academically competitive institutions to be helpful: “After grade two, everything was going over her head, so we put her into a much smaller school,” she said. “The smaller environment sat well with her and she really developed.”
Darshan suggests that early intervention programmes that teach life skills, like at Reach Beyond, are of fundamental importance for any holistic special needs education. He also believes that individualised education plans for children with special education needs are imperative moving forward. But Willatgamuwa said she would be happy with inclusion, with added resources like therapy in order to prepare the children for school.
For the time being, however, it is small-scale workshops and therapy centres at the grassroots that cater to children with special needs in Sri Lanka. Even at Handi’s public sector Ragama clinic—which, among other things, works to make sure children with neurotype conditions participate in education—children’s educational needs are met through personal interaction with schools across the island, due to a lack of a reliable system to depend on.
Parents do most of the legwork in this improvised framework, and are often forced to give up their careers to cater to an already life-altering diagnosis. With many expenses like therapy, private education, and shadow teachers, parents are typically the ones financially burdened with making sure their child is accommodated and taken care of.
While Darshan admits things have changed a lot in the last decade, he is quick to emphasise how much more there is to be done. For instance, he said his son Louis has a beautiful voice—despite being non-verbal—and enjoys singing. “It takes a creative approach to teach children with autism,” he said. Darshan’s efforts to find Louis a swimming coach and a music teacher have been stymied by an unwillingness to take atypical approaches to teaching.
But recalling Louis’ first meeting with his extended family, Darshan said that although he was nervous about how they would react: “I was really surprised when some of my relatives went on their knees to introduce themselves to Louis. Speaking to him at his eye-level made him feel comfortable, and he immediately engaged with them.” It is evident that teaching children with special educational needs is more than simply getting them up-to-speed with their peers. Working to meet children like Louis half-way, and encouraging the education system to be adaptable could be a healthy first step to bridging the gap.
Working towards inclusivity for children with special needs. | https://roar.media/english/life/in-the-know/special-education-needs-inclusivity |
On 6 July, during a regular assembly of the Garissa county, MCAs unanimously voted for the passing of the Autism Education motion.
This is an enormous step forward in terms of awareness and care for children with special learning needs. Garissa is the first county in Kenya to adopt the Autism Education motion, and MCAs hope that this will inspire other counties to follow their example.
According to recent statistics, currently, about one in every forty kids in Kenya is on the spectrum, which means that all these children do not have a chance to get proper education, as the country is still lagging in developing regulation for special education.
Autism awareness
One of the main supporters during the discussion of the motion was Autism Lights Inc, a not-for-profit organization, which aims to raise awareness for children who are on the spectrum and need to benefit from special education.
The main activities of Autism Lights Inc include events on autism acceptance and inclusive environment. The organization also aims to provide support and education for the parents of children with special needs. Autism awareness campaigns are one of the main engines of change towards a more inclusive education legislature.
Before the final decision on the motion was taken, MCAs and Autism Lights Inc participated in an informative session. During this session, representatives of Lights Inc presented essential details about the educational needs of children with autism.
The NGO played a crucial role in the process leading up to the passing of the motion, as the more informed MCAs become about the issue, the more inclined they were to pass the Autism Education motion.
The Autism Education motion is a significant step forward in the right direction, as children with special learning needs should not be neglected by county officials and the policies they accept. | https://www.englishforums.com/news/autism-education-kenya/ |
Did you know that approximately 20% of U.S. households have a child with special needs? This means that out of 100 employees with children, 20 of them could be struggling to support those additional needs at home.
So, how many of your employees are struggling at home? What does this mean? What does it look like? What is their truth?
OUR NEW NORMAL
In the first episode of our podcast “Hiding in Plain Sight – Your Workforce at Home with Special Needs Children” we discuss the “new normal” regarding what work from home looks like through the lens of parents of special needs children. Currently for many people, home is the new workplace, and for many of those, a sudden turn-around didn’t give much of an opportunity for planning or transitioning. There was no orientation, no online tutorial, and certainly no built-in childcare.
Being parents to special needs children during the COVID-19 pandemic can be particularly challenging and frustrating. The hidden truth about employees who have family members with special needs is not a dirty secret. In fact, it’s a truth that we all must face.
The reality for many employers is that they employ the sandwich generation – their workforce is filled with people caring for the generation above and below them, which naturally means they are pulled in a number of directions. Being a good employee, meeting work expectations, and succeeding in their career is important, but so are the loved ones they are responsible for.
THE CHALLENGES
Adding remote work to an already full agenda can be quite distracting and is arguably leaving many employees feeling like they aren’t filling any one role successfully. If they are a good at-home teacher for their child’s online schooling, then they feel like they aren’t being a good employee and could be struggling to meet their work goals.
What if your child isn’t able to participate in online education independently? What if your child’s daily programming offers one-on-one support and attention while you are at work, and now, you are expected to be the provider of that one-on-one attention? What if your child does not feel safe without you being in the same room? How does that affect your attention during a Zoom meeting?
There is a clash here. Over the years, we’ve found that what truly works for families and working parents doesn’t always mesh with the expected work period. For example, if a parent needs to work from 9 a.m.-5p.m., maybe scheduling or completing some of the instruction or therapy for their child is easier after working hours. Or maybe they find time on the weekend to meet these objectives.
During this emergency period, everyone seems to be adjusting. We’ve heard that all parents are struggling to find a schedule or a groove that works for them. Educational institutions are expecting curriculum learning to happen during school hours, but parents are expected to work during work hours. We think flexibility is key- under normal circumstances, but it’s most certainly critical now.
We hear about a variety of scenarios from families; some have shared how resourceful or supportive employers have been, while others have tried to hide some of their child’s special needs in order to take on a career role where they can support the whole family. These are tough decisions.
IN CLOSING
Work defines many of us. As federal and state governments begin planning to lift stay-at-home orders, the challenges all remote-working parents face – and particularly those of special needs children or adults – won’t go away.
In addition to Part 1 of our podcast “Hiding in Plain Sight - Your Workforce at Home with Special Needs Children”, join us for Part 2 where we explore the application of some solutions to the challenges identified in this blog post.
For some resources on this topic, please visit the organizations noted below, or feel free to contact us at:
- Kari Hatfield [email protected]
- Tim Kernan [email protected]
Outside resources for your employees and families as they adjust to the new normal:
- To contact International Diagnostic Solutions (IDS) to find out about services for your child while at home through Telehealth visit:
IDSalliance.com/contact (all special education services are provided- speech, OT, reading, counseling, behavior, and more)
- For at home learning support and help from at-home education to reading support, behavior tips, and more, visit: IDSalliance.com/news
- https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/coronavirus-front-line-home-special-children/story?id=69872230
- Time Timer https://www.timetimer.com/collections/all
Social stories for kids and adults to help them understand COVID-19: | https://blog.aires.com/hiding-in-plain-sight-your-workforce-at-home-with-special-needs-children |
# Wolof language
Wolof (/ˈwoʊlɒf/; Wolofal: ولوفل) is a language of Senegal, Mauritania, and the Gambia, and the native language of the Wolof people. Like the neighbouring languages Serer and Fula, it belongs to the Senegambian branch of the Niger–Congo language family. Unlike most other languages of the Niger-Congo family, Wolof is not a tonal language.
Wolof is the most widely spoken language in Senegal, spoken natively by the Wolof people (40% of the population) but also by most other Senegalese as a second language. Wolof dialects vary geographically and between rural and urban areas. The principal dialect of Dakar, for instance, is an urban mixture of Wolof, French, and Arabic.
Wolof is the standard spelling and may also refer to the Wolof ethnicity or culture. Variants include the older French Ouolof, Jollof, Jolof, Gambian Wolof, etc., which now typically refers either to the Jolof Empire or to jollof rice, a common West African rice dish. Now-archaic forms include Volof and Olof.
English is believed to have adopted some Wolof loanwords, such as banana, via Spanish or Portuguese, and nyam in several Caribbean English Creoles meaning "to eat" (compare Seychellois Creole nyanmnyanm, also meaning "to eat").
## Geographical distribution
Wolof is spoken by more than 10 million people and about 40 percent (approximately 5 million people) of Senegal's population speak Wolof as their native language. Increased mobility, and especially the growth of the capital Dakar, created the need for a common language: today, an additional 40 percent of the population speak Wolof as a second or acquired language. In the whole region from Dakar to Saint-Louis, and also west and southwest of Kaolack, Wolof is spoken by the vast majority of people. Typically when various ethnic groups in Senegal come together in cities and towns, they speak Wolof. It is therefore spoken in almost every regional and departmental capital in Senegal. Nevertheless, the official language of Senegal is French.
In The Gambia, although about 20–25 percent of the population speak Wolof as a first language, it has a disproportionate influence because of its prevalence in Banjul, the Gambian capital, where 75 percent of the population use it as a first language. Furthermore, in Serekunda, The Gambia's largest town, although only a tiny minority are ethnic Wolofs, approximately 70 percent of the population speaks or understands Wolof.
In Mauritania, about seven percent of the population (approximately 185,000 people) speak Wolof. Most live near or along the Senegal River that Mauritania shares with Senegal.
## Classification
Wolof is one of the Senegambian languages, which are characterized by consonant mutation. It is often said to be closely related to the Fula language because of a misreading by Wilson (1989) of the data in Sapir (1971) that have long been used to classify the Atlantic languages.
## Varieties
Senegalese/Mauritanian Wolof and Gambian Wolof are distinct national standards: they use different orthographies and use different languages (French vs. English) as their source for technical loanwords. However, both the spoken and written languages are mutually intelligible. Lebu Wolof, on the other hand, is incomprehensible with standard Wolof, a distinction that has been obscured because all Lebu speakers are bilingual in standard Wolof.
## Orthography and pronunciation
Note: Phonetic transcriptions are printed between square brackets following the rules of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
The Latin orthography of Wolof in Senegal was set by government decrees between 1971 and 1985. The language institute "Centre de linguistique appliquée de Dakar" (CLAD) is widely acknowledged as an authority when it comes to spelling rules for Wolof. The complete alphabet is A, B, C, D, E, Ë, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, Ñ, Ŋ, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, W, X, Y. The letters V and Z are not included in Wolof.
Wolof is most often written in this orthography, in which phonemes have a clear one-to-one correspondence to graphemes.
Additionally, two other scripts exist: a traditional Arabic-based transcription of Wolof called Wolofal, which dates back to the pre-colonial period and is still used by many people, and Garay, an alphabetic script invented by Assane Faye 1961, which has been adopted by a small number of Wolof speakers.
The first syllable of words is stressed; long vowels are pronounced with more time but are not automatically stressed, as they are in English.
### Vowels
The vowels are as follows:
There may be an additional low vowel, or this may be confused with orthographic à.
All vowels may be long (written double) or short. /aː/ is written ⟨à⟩ before a long (prenasalized or geminate) consonant (example làmbi "arena"). When é and ó are written double, the accent mark is often only on the first letter.
Vowels fall into two harmonizing sets according to ATR: i u é ó ë are +ATR, e o a are the −ATR analogues of é ó ë. For example,
There are no −ATR analogs of the high vowels i u. They trigger +ATR harmony in suffixes when they occur in the root, but in a suffix, they may be transparent to vowel harmony.
The vowels of some suffixes or enclitics do not harmonize with preceding vowels. In most cases following vowels harmonize with them. That is, they reset the harmony, as if they were a separate word. However, when a suffix/clitic contains a high vowel (+ATR) that occurs after a −ATR root, any further suffixes harmonize with the root. That is, the +ATR suffix/clitic is "transparent" to vowel harmony. An example is the negative -u- in,
where harmony would predict *door-u-më-léén-fë. That is, I or U behave as if they are their own −ATR analogs.
Authors differ in whether they indicate vowel harmony in writing, as well as whether they write clitics as separate words.
### Consonants
Consonants in word-initial position are as follows:
All simple nasals, oral stops apart from q and glottal, and the sonorants l r y w may be geminated (doubled), though geminate r only occurs in ideophones. (Geminate consonants are written double.) Q is inherently geminate and may occur in an initial position; otherwise, geminate consonants and consonant clusters, including nt, nc, nk, nq (), are restricted to word-medial and -final position. In the final place, geminate consonants may be followed by a faint epenthetic schwa vowel.
Of the consonants in the chart above, p d c k do not occur in the intermediate or final position, being replaced by f r s and zero, though geminate pp dd cc kk are common. Phonetic p c k do occur finally, but only as allophones of b j g due to final devoicing.
Minimal pairs:
### Tones
Unlike most sub-Saharan African languages, Wolof has no tones. Other non-tonal languages of sub-Saharan Africa include Amharic, Swahili and Fula.
## Grammar
### Notable characteristics
#### Pronoun conjugation instead of verbal conjugation
In Wolof, verbs are unchangeable stems that cannot be conjugated. To express different tenses or aspects of an action, personal pronouns are conjugated – not the verbs. Therefore, the term temporal pronoun has become established for this part of speech. It is also referred to as a focus form.
Example: The verb dem means "to go" and cannot be changed; the temporal pronoun maa ngi means "I/me, here and now"; the temporal pronoun dinaa means "I am soon / I will soon / I will be soon". With that, the following sentences can be built now: Maa ngi dem. "I am going (here and now)." – Dinaa dem. "I will go (soon)."
#### Conjugation with respect to aspect instead of tense
In Wolof, tenses like present tense, past tense, and future tense are just of secondary importance and play almost no role. Of crucial importance is the aspect of action from the speaker's point of view. The most vital distinction is whether an action is perfective (finished) or imperfective, (still going on from the speaker's point of view), regardless of whether the action itself takes place in the past, present, or future. Other aspects indicate whether an action takes place regularly, whether an action will surely take place and whether an actor wants to emphasize the role of the subject, predicate, or object. As a result, conjugation is done by not tense but aspect. Nevertheless, the term temporal pronoun is usual for such conjugated pronouns although aspect pronoun might be a better term.
For example, the verb dem means "to go"; the temporal pronoun naa means "I already/definitely", the temporal pronoun dinaa means "I am soon / I will soon / I will be soon"; the temporal pronoun damay means "I (am) regularly/usually". The following sentences can be constructed: Dem naa. "I go already / I have already gone." – Dinaa dem. "I will go soon / I am just going to go." – Damay dem. "I usually/regularly/normally/am about to go."
A speaker may express that an action absolutely took place in the past by adding the suffix -(w)oon to the verb (in a sentence, the temporal pronoun is still used in a conjugated form along with the past marker):
Demoon naa Ndakaaru. "I already went to Dakar."
#### Action verbs versus static verbs and adjectives
Wolof has two main verb classes: dynamic and stative. Verbs are not inflected, instead pronouns are used to mark person, aspect, tense, and focus.: 779
#### Gender
Wolof does not mark sexual gender as grammatical gender: there is one pronoun encompassing the English 'he', 'she', and 'it'. The descriptors bu góor (male / masculine) or bu jigéen (female / feminine) are often added to words like xarit, 'friend', and rakk, 'younger sibling' to indicate the person's sex.
Markers of noun definiteness (usually called "definite articles") agree with the noun they modify. There are at least ten articles in Wolof, some of them indicating a singular noun, others a plural noun. In Urban Wolof, spoken in large cities like Dakar, the article -bi is often used as a generic article when the actual article is not known.
Any loan noun from French or English uses -bi: butik-bi, xarit-bi "the boutique, the friend."
Most Arabic or religious terms use -Ji: Jumma-Ji, jigéen-ji, "the mosque, the girl."
Four nouns referring to persons use -ki/-ñi:' nit-ki, nit-ñi, 'the person, the people"
Plural nouns use -yi: jigéen-yi, butik-yi, "the girls, the boutiques"
Miscellaneous articles: "si, gi, wi, mi, li."
### Numerals
#### Cardinal numbers
The Wolof numeral system is based on the numbers "5" and "10". It is extremely regular in formation, comparable to Chinese. Example: benn "one", juróom "five", juróom-benn "six" (literally, "five-one"), fukk "ten", fukk ak juróom benn "sixteen" (literally, "ten and five one"), ñent-fukk "forty" (literally, "four-ten"). Alternatively, "thirty" is fanweer, which is roughly the number of days in a lunar month (literally "fan" is day and "weer" is moon.)
#### Ordinal numbers
Ordinal numbers (first, second, third, etc.) are formed by adding the ending –éél (pronounced ayl) to the cardinal number.
For example, two is ñaar and second is ñaaréél
The one exception to this system is "first", which is bu njëk (or the adapted French word premier: përëmye)
### Temporal pronouns
#### Conjugation of the temporal pronouns
In urban Wolof, it is common to use the forms of the 3rd person plural also for the 1st person plural.
It is also important to note that the verb follows specific temporal pronouns and precedes others.
## Literature
The New Testament was translated into Wolof and published in 1987, second edition 2004, and in 2008 with some minor typographical corrections.
Boubacar Boris Diop published his novel Doomi Golo in Wolof in 2002.
The 1994 song "7 Seconds" by Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry is partially sung in Wolof. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouolof_language |
Summary and Keywords
The Dravidian languages, spoken mainly in southern India and south Asia, were identified as a separate language family between 1816 and 1856. Four of the 26 Dravidian languages, namely Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam, have long literary traditions, the earliest dating back to the 1st century ce. Currently these four languages have among them over 200 million speakers in south Asia. The languages exhibit prototypical OV (object–verb) properties but relatively free word order, and are rich in nominal and verbal inflection; only Malayalam lacks verb agreement.
A typical characteristic of Dravidian, which is also an areal characteristic of south Asian languages, is that experiencers and inalienable possessors are case-marked dative. Another is the serialization of verbs by the use of participles, and the use of light verbs to indicate aspectual meaning such as completion, self- or nonself-benefaction, and reflexivization. Subjects, and arguments in general (e.g., direct and indirect objects), may be nonovert. So is the copula, except in Malayalam.
A number of properties of Dravidian are of interest from a universalist perspective, beginning with the observation that not all syntactic categories N, V, A, and P are primitive. Dravidian postpositions are nominal or verbal in origin. A mere 30 Proto-Dravidian roots have been identified as adjectival; the adjectival function is performed by inflected verbs (participles) and nouns. The nominal encoding of experiences (e.g., as fear rather than afraid/afeared) and the absence of the verb have arguably correlate with the appearance of dative case on experiencers. “Possessed” or genitive-marked N may fulfill the adjectival function, as noticed for languages like Ulwa (a less exotic parallel is the English of-possessive construction: circles of light, cloth of gold). More uniquely perhaps, Kannada instantiates dative-marked N as predicative adjectives. A recent argument that Malayalam verbs originate as dative-marked N suggests both that N is the only primitive syntactic category, and the seminal role of the dative case.
Other important aspects of Dravidian morphosyntax to receive attention are anaphors and pronouns (not discussed here; see separate article, anaphora in Dravidian), in particular the long-distance anaphor taan and the verbal reflexive morpheme; question (wh-) words and the question/disjunction morphemes, which combine in a semantically transparent way to form quantifier words like someone; the use of reduplication for distributive quantification; and the occurrence of ‘monstrous agreement’ (first-person agreement in clauses embedded under a speech predicate, triggered by matrix third-person antecedents).
Traditionally, agreement has been considered the finiteness marker in Dravidian. Modals, and a finite form of negation, also serve to mark finiteness. The nonfinite verbal complement to the finite negative may give the negative clause a tense interpretation. Dravidian thus attests matrix nonfinite verbs in finite clauses, challenging the equation of finiteness with tense.
The Dravidian languages are considered wh-in situ languages. However, wh-words in Malayalam appear in a pre-verbal position in the unmarked word order. The apparently rightward movement of some wh-arguments could be explained by assuming a universal VO order, and wh-movement to a preverbal focus phrase. An alternative analysis is that the verb undergoes V-to-C movement.
Keywords: N-movement, case, property concepts, serial verbs, light verbs, questions, quantifiers, finiteness, word order
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By John McWhorter, Ph.D., Columbia University
While some Proto-Indo-European languages seemed to move on with the times, particularly those which had little Proto-Indo-European language left, others were more conservative. Which were these conservative languages?
Baltic Languages
Some Indo-European languages are very conservative. In particular, the Baltic languages, which only have two members now, Lithuanian and Latvian—both closely related. In Lithuanian, there is ‘tooth’, ‘of the tooth’, which is an ending, and ‘to the tooth’, which is an ending. There is a different ending if something is done to the tooth, and the tooth is the object. There are vocative endings with objects. Vocative makes sense with people, for example, when somebody is called in a language with a vocative, a different form is used. All of that traced back to Proto-Indo European. Lithuanian, a complex language had disorder and tone.
Behavior Toward Ancestry
Spanish is a very advanced language. For, tooth: diente, of the tooth, there was no genitive form, it is del diente. Approaching the tooth is, al diente. Doing something to the tooth is just diente, with no ending. If it is on the tooth, it is sobre el diente. Doing something with the tooth, is con el diente. There is no dientum, dientis, it always stays the same. Calling the tooth in Spanish would be “Ay, diente!” but there was no ending for the vocative. Spanish moved along, as did the Romance languages and English. Some of the Proto-Indo-European languages almost moved on without their ancestry, whereas some of them held on to it. The Slavic languages like Russian were almost as close as the Baltic languages, but, were quite different from French.
Learn more about the attempts to create languages for use by the whole world.
Black Sheep Languages
Just like the conservatives and the ones that moved ahead, some of the languages were just black sheep, different from others, that turned away from their family. But, Albanian and Armenian, spoken in between the Black and Caspian Seas, were not like the rest.
Those were Indo-European languages, but it took a while for them to be noticed. It wasn’t until 1854 that it was actually even noticed that Albanian was an Indo-European language and, for a long time, people thought Armenian was Persian because those languages took a lot of words from other language groups.
This is a transcript from the video series The Story of Human Language. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
Borrowed Words of Languages
In Albanian, one in 12 words are actually from Proto-Indo European, the rest are borrowed. In Armenian, it is only one in four. For example, in English, the word for six is six, in French, it is six, pronounced as see but still spelled with an x at the end, which gave a clue as to how it used to be said; ‘see’ sounded like six. In Spanish, it was seis. In German, it was sechs, in Greek, héks. In Albanian it was gjashtë, and that had nothing to do with it.
In English, it is two, in French, deux which is t and d but there is a relationship. In Greek, dúo, in German, zwei. There is a two in one language, a deux in one, and zwei in another. In Armenian, it is erku, which didn’t sound like it, or like three, French trois, Spanish treis, German drei and in Armenian, erek’. Though something was odd, yet those were Indo-European languages, words tracing back to Proto-Indo European, but the sound changes made them extremely different.
Learn more about the movements to revive dying languages.
Multicultural Indo-European Languages
The ‘Indo’ part of Indo-European, is that there are many of these languages spoken in India. These languages are quite different from the European languages in many ways, partly because of a contact situation that they’ve had. India is split linguistically between the Indo-European languages and another family called Dravidian, which takes up a southern portion of India. Dravidian is the family that includes languages like Kannada, Malayalam, and Tamil, a language that many Indians speak. Tamil, not related to Hindi, is a part of the Dravidian group. Dravidian speakers and ‘Indo’ Indo-European speakers had encountered each other in India and the languages came to be rather like each other.
As a result, the Indian languages in India had the verb at the end. For, I met Apu, is, I Apu met in Hindi. That is normal in those languages with sounds unknown in Europe. The various features of those languages show they are very much languages of South Asia that have encountered and mixed with those Dravidian languages, which work differently from Indo-European languages. They are the multicultural Indo-European languages with a very different experience.
Learn more about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Differences Among the Languages
There are considerable differences among languages, all going back to one. Proto-Indo-European was by no means a simple language. It was not that all of those declensions developed in Latin and Sanskrit, but were already there in Proto-Indo-European. The Proto-Indo-Europeans were almost illiterate, seen as less advanced than others, but they spoke a language that gave others strokes to try to learn. Language is complex, regardless of the level of the cultural development of its speakers.
Proto-Indo-European, long gone, is now represented by a large number of progeny. All of them carry badges of Proto-Indo-European in different ways, but none of them are Proto-Indo-European.
Common Questions About Human Language
Albanian, spoken in between the Black and Caspian Seas is an Indo-European language and not a Slavic language.
Yes, Sanskrit is one of the oldest European languages. | https://www.wondriumdaily.com/proto-indo-european-and-borrowed-words-of-languages/ |
This one does not need any commentary.
Widely believed theory of Indo-Aryan invasion, often used to explain early settlements in the Indian subcontinent is a myth, a new study by Indian geneticists says. “Our study clearly shows that there was no genetic influx 3,500 years ago,” said Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj of CCMB, who led the research team, which included scientists from the University of Tartu, Estonia, Chettinad Academy of Research and Education, Chennai and Banaras Hindu University. “It is high time we re-write India’s prehistory based on scientific evidence,” said Dr Lalji Singh, former director of CCMB. “There is no genetic evidence that Indo-Aryans invaded or migrated to India or even something such as Aryans existed”. Singh, vice-chancellor of BHU, is a coauthor.[Indians are not descendants of Aryans, says new study]
Here is a link to the paper.
Summing up, our results confirm both ancestry and temporal complexity shaping the still on-going process of genetic structuring of South Asian populations. This intricacy cannot be readily explained by the putative recent influx of Indo-Aryans alone but suggests multiple gene flows to the South Asian gene pool, both from the west and east, over a much longer time span. We highlight a few genes as candidates of positive selection in South Asia that could have implications in lipid metabolism and etiology of type 2 diabetes. Further studies on data sets without ascertainment and allele frequency biases such as sequence data will be needed to validate the signals for selection.
The point is that nothing exciting happened following the decline of the Harappan civilization. The Dravidian folklore is just that – folklore. Migrations did happen to the region, but they date to much earlier period before there were Dravidian and Indo-European languages. | http://varnam.nationalinterest.in/2012/01/3271/ |
Serial Narratives and Temporality
This panel addresses the various relationships between seriality and temporality.
The serial principle has a important influence on contemporary culture: novels, movies and television shows, comic books, video games, etc. are published in series. Consequently, this principle largely informs contemporary ways of conceiving, producing and making sense of narratives in general. This panel wants to locate the importance of seriality within our present-day mediascape.
It is interesting to see that, while individual studies of mostly 19th-century serial novels and 20th-century television shows are available in large numbers, the phenomenon of serialization has rarely been acknowledged as a medial practice that informs contemporary culture as a whole. In approaching seriality as a general cultural paradigm, this panel will bring together contributions on serial practices in various media.
In order to create a comprehensive theoretical framework for the various serial practices, this panel will focus on the concept of temporality. Many series experiment with narrative time. The individual episodes/installments/posts allow for the most diverse temporal structures: continuous, constellatory, reverse or cyclical. Time stretching, acceleration as well as 'real time' are integral parts of recent narrative experiments. What can we learn from these experiments about the ways in which we conceive time and about how these notions are expressed in narrative?
Studying this field of experimentation necessitates a confluence of disciplines. This panel will indeed attempt to bring together three domains: the study of narrative, the philosophy of time and the field of cultural studies will provide a theoretical perspective that allows to elaborate the cultural importance of the temporal structures constructed in contemporary serial narratives.
By approaching a transmedial corpus from an interdisciplinary viewpoint, this panel aims at providing useful and original insights into the principle of seriality and the role it play in the various domains of cultural production.
We invite theoretical reflections as well as analyses of individual serial narratives (in literature, Television, comics, blogs, etc.). Please send 250-500 word abstracts and brief biographical statements to Toni Pape, Université de Montréal, [email protected]. | https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/37456 |
Portuguese verbs conjugation. Most of the Portuguese verbs end in one of the three terminations: - er, - ar or -ir and follow conjugation rules specific to each group of verbs. To conjugate a regular verb in Portuguese, you have to add to the verb root different terminations upon person, mood, tense.
DA: 100 PA: 16 MOZ Rank: 92
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_verb_conjugation
Those whose infinitive ends in -er belong to the second conjugation (e.g. correr, comer, colher); Those whose infinitive ends in -ir belong to the third conjugation (e.g. partir, destruir, urdir); The verb pôr is conventionally placed in the second conjugation by many authors, since it is derived from Old Portuguese poer (Latin ponere).
DA: 64 PA: 40 MOZ Rank: 16
https://en.bab.la/conjugation/portuguese/
Just type a Portuguese verb into the bab.la Portuguese verb conjugation search field, click "Conjugate" and you immediately get the Portuguese verb conjugation. If you are not sure about the specific spelling of the Portuguese verb conjugation you can also use the Portuguese verb conjugation search by letter.
DA: 10 PA: 4 MOZ Rank: 95
https://www.verbix.com/languages/portuguese.html
Portuguese verbs are divided into three conjugation groups according to the ending of the infinitive: -ar, -er and -ir. In addition the verb pôr 'put' and its compounds have distinct endings. There are round 1000 irregular verbs in Portuguese. Most of the verbs are regular belonging to the conjugation group of verbs ending in -ar.
DA: 78 PA: 31 MOZ Rank: 83
https://cooljugator.com/pt
About Portuguese conjugation. Portuguese conjugation is a procedure in which Portuguese verbs are changed to match with various other features of the phrase and its context. In Portuguese, you usually have to have a couple of basic forms of the verb to work out its other forms. In Portuguese, the basic forms are: the infinitive - ser, estar, falar, etc.
DA: 59 PA: 77 MOZ Rank: 24
https://www.fluentu.com/blog/portuguese/portuguese-verb-conjugation/
In Portuguese, the person doing the verb will be one of the following: Eu — I or me Tu — You, singular (Most commonly used in Portugal, though you hear it said in some parts of Brazil.)
DA: 92 PA: 58 MOZ Rank: 37
https://verbugata.com/
Portuguese Verb Conjugation Practice. Verbugata is a tool to help practice conjugating Portuguese verbs. Select the options and start practicing! Verb Selection. Number of Verbs. Top 100. Verbs to use in the exercise. Include tu/vós? Pick Tenses. | https://www.keywordresearchinc.com/find/portuguese-conjugation |
All Spanish verbs end in either -ar, -ir, or -er. Each of these verb categories has specific rules governing how it changes to express layers of crucial information about the situation. There are many similarities between English verbs and Spanish verbs, but, if you’re like most native speakers, you don’t usually consider what tense a verb is in, whether it has an irregular conjugation, is reflexive, is in its infinitive form, etc. You just use the form of the verb which communicates the specific information you wish to express.
The goal is to get you to the same level of fluency with your second (or third, etc.) language, where you avoid existential moments (Am I speaking? Who am I speaking to? Is it reciprocal? Did this action have a specific ending point in the past? Would it be considered habitual?) and simply speak Spanish without a second thought.
To arrive at that point, you have to become aware of all the nitty-gritty grammatical features of your own language, so that you can begin to translate the meaning you wish to express into the available grammatical structures of your foreign language. In this guide, we will bring your attention to a few basic verb-related concepts which exist in both English and Spanish, as well as point out a few differences.
The importance of verbs cannot be understated in the endeavor of fluency. One little word can express so much about a situation, completely changing the meaning. For example, the difference between “I would like to eat some cake” and “I ate some cake” is striking. All that changed was one little constituent – the verb (from conditional tense to past tense, if you’re curious). So, while memorizing vocabulary is an extremely important exercise when learning a language, if you’re not aware of how to use the verbs you learn appropriately, you’ll be extremely limited in what you’re able to say.
Where to start:
- How Verbs Change
- Who?
- When?
- Finite Verbs that Stay the Same:
- Reflexive Verbs
- Auxiliary Verbs
Science says there’s a faster way to learn Spanish
How Verbs Change
The form of a verb changes to show who performed the action (the “person”) and when it occurred (the “tense”). Verbs can also change according to categorizations called “moods,” which are similar to tenses. Rather than helping you express when something happened, mood allows a speaker to express their attitude toward a subject. Some examples of mood in Spanish are indicative (used to express facts/declarative sentences), imperative (used to give commands), conditional (used to express possibility), and subjunctive (used to talk about opinions and desires).
Who?
Spanish uses one extra person category (vosotros) that corresponds to addressing “you all / you guys” in English. Spanish allows you to express respect or formality by using usted/ustedes instead of tú when speaking to someone older than you or in a higher social position. Note that the same conjugation is used for usted or ustedes as you would for él/ella or ellos/ellas respectively, so it often appears grouped together in conjugation charts.
In English, it’s always required to include a subject before a verb. The pronoun that stands in for the subject of the sentence (the person responsible for the action) is called the subject pronoun. In Spanish, because verbs change so dramatically to indicate the person, it’s not required to include a subject pronoun, and in fact it can sound odd. They’re mainly only included for emphasis, or perhaps to add extra clarification.
Spanish Subject Pronouns
|Person||English||Spanish|
|first person singular||I||yo|
|second person singular||you/you (formal)||tú/usted|
|third person singular||he/she/it||él/ella|
|first person plural||we||nosotros|
|second person plural||you (plural) / you (plural +formal)||vosotros/ustedes|
|third person plural||they (masc./fem.)||ellos/ellas|
Note that the accents on tú and él are crucial, as they distinguish them from the possessive adjective tu (“your”) and the definite article el (“the”).
When?
Though native speakers may not notice it, English verbs also change depending on when the action occurs. Most verbs only change in the third person singular (see below) in English, but all verbs change to distinguish when something occurs.
|Person (Singular)||Present tense||Past tense|
|First person||I walk||I walked|
|Second person||You walk||You walked|
|Third person||He/She walks||He/She walked|
In most cases (apart from irregular verbs), the English past tense is formed by adding -ed to the word. Whereas English verbs don’t change much in either spoken or written form, Spanish verbs change drastically in both spoken and written form. In some cases, an accent over the letter may be the only difference in spelling, but the pronunciation lets your audience know which tense you’re referring to.
Both English and Spanish have a lot of irregular verbs, which simply need to be memorized, but learning the rule for regular verbs makes conjugation much easier. Generally, irregular verbs are some of the most common verbs in the language because historically their forms have fossilized, rather than evolving to match new patterns in the language (since they’re just used so much!).
There are several distinctions in Spanish that don’t exist in English to describe when something occurred. Among the many past tense forms, there is an important distinction with regard to “complete” actions, for which Spanish uses the preterite (or simple past tense). For actions which were more habitual or didn’t have a specific duration but still occurred in the past, Spanish uses the imperfect.
Additionally, when talking about the future, Spanish uses ir (“to go”) + a + infinitive (just like “I am going to eat”) for actions occurring in the near future, and the Spanish future tense for less certain future actions.
Being exposed to verbs in context (rather than just in a Spanish conjugation chart) is also crucial to becoming comfortable using them – not to mention it’s more fun! Use Lingvist’s Spanish Course to see verbs in context, as well as look over grammar tips to clarify concepts explicitly as needed.
Never Change! Finite Verbs that Stay the Same
Infinitivos
The infinitive form of a verb is its most basic form. You can spot them easily in Spanish because they retain their original ending of -er, -ir, or -ar. The equivalent meaning in English is the same as “to [verb],” so correr translates to “to run.”
The infinitive form needs to be adjusted to express the who and when. This is where conjugation comes in. For regular verbs, the infinitive lends its stem to its conjugated forms in a predictable way. The stem, or radical (from “root” in Spanish: raíz), is the part that occurs before the -er, -ir, or -ar. The exception to conjugation is when stacking two verbs together in indicative tenses, in which you can leave the second verb (infinitive) alone in both English and Spanish (“She [hates] [to run]”/ “Ella [odia] [correr]”).
Participles
The other type of verb that doesn’t change form are the present and past participles. Participles are used in several different ways in Spanish, including as an adjective, a noun, and in conjunction with other verbs. The present participle (sometimes called gerund or gerundio) usually ends with either -ando or -iendo in Spanish and -ing in English. It’s used with an auxiliary verb to form the present progressive. You will mainly encounter the past participle, which is used in conjunction with the auxiliary (“helping”) verb haber when forming past tense forms.
As participles are combined with another inflected (i.e., conjugated to reflect person/tense) verb, they don’t need to change their form.
Example: “to run” infinitive: correr present participle: corriendo past participle: corrido
There are several categories of irregular present participles. But, for most verbs, form the present participle by dropping the -ar, -ir, or -er, and adding the appropriate ending:
|-AR verbs||-IR/-ER verbs|
|-ando||-iendo|
|ex.: olvidar = olvidado||ex.: partir = partido|
To form the past participle of the verb, simply drop the -ar, -ir, or -er ending, and add the appropriate ending:
|-AR verbs||-IR/-ER verbs|
|-ado||-ido|
|ex.: olvidar = olvidado||ex.: partir = partido|
A few common irregular past participles:
Escribir = escrito Romper = roto Volver = vuelto Morir = muerto Hacer = hecho
Reflexive Verbs
Reflexive verbs “reflect” the action back upon oneself, meaning that the person performing the action is also the one receiving it. This reflective meaning is inherent in some verbs, while others require specification that the action is being done back to the subject. In Spanish, reflexive verbs (or verbos reflexivos) are commonly used to talk about motion, your own body, your clothing, your state of mind, and your routines. Spanish is much more strict about which verbs need to specify the reflexive pronoun; you’ll notice these infinitives have the neutral reflexive pronoun -se attached to the end. For example, these verbs are always reflexive:
irse (to leave) acordarse (to remember) olvidarse (to forget) darse cuenta de (to realize) sentirse (to feel)
For other verbs, adding a reflexive pronoun changes the meaning.
|Example Verbs||Used Reflexively||Used Non-Reflexively|
|volver||to become (friends, etc.)||to return|
|encontrar||to meet, to feel (unwell)||to find|
|dormir||to fall asleep||to sleep|
|ir||to go away, to leave||to go|
|llamar||to be named||to call|
Reflexive verbs are also used for reciprocal actions. Notice in the example below that hablar is not a necessarily reflexive verb but can be made reciprocal (Technically, the infinitive created is hablarse) to fit the situation.
Nos hablamos a menudo. We talk to each other often.
Auxiliary Verbs
Auxiliary verbs (or “helping verbs”) are used to support a certain form of a verb but don’t contribute any semantic meaning to the compound form. In English, common auxiliary verbs are “have” and “be,” as in the sentence “I have written two letters” or “I am sleeping.” In these sentences, “have” and “be” don’t really express their dictionary meaning, but instead help define the tense of the main verbs, “to write” and “to sleep.” In Spanish, the following verbs can serve as auxiliary verbs:
Haber (to have) Tener (to have) Estar (to be) Ser (to be)
The verb haber (to have) and, less commonly, estar (to be) function very similarly in Spanish. You’ll see the verb estar (to be) helping out in the present and past progressive constructions, called “perífrasis verbales” (estar + gerundio, in this case), just as in English:
Estamos haciendo nuestra tarea. (We are doing our homework.)
Estábamos haciendo nuestra tarea. (We were doing our homework.)
Haber is sometimes similar to the auxiliary have in English, as in: I have been studying Spanish for two years.
Yo he estudiado español durante dos años. It can also be used in temporal phrases, like the English word “ago.”
Two years ago I went to Spain. Yo fui a España hace dos años.
You’ll also see it used similarly to “there + to be” in English, which is called its impersonal usage.
There are many books. Hay muchos libros.
This usage is called impersonal because the verb doesn’t have a subject to conjugate for, just as there is no specific person or thing that has the property of “having/being” the “many books” in the example of above. The books simply exist. You can therefore see how this ties into haber’s secondary meaning, “to exist.” You do not need to inflect hay according to the number of objects as you do in English, however.
Hay muchos libros. (There are many books.)
Hay un libro. (There is a book.)
Hopefully, the comparison of these concepts in English and Spanish will help you get started with changing verbs to fit your intended meaning. Spanish grammar can certainly seem overwhelming, but knowing the English equivalents can help you navigate the stormy sea of verbs. For exercises to practice conjugations, sign up for Lingvist’s Spanish Course, and for more in-depth explanations, here’s a list of all of our Spanish verb guides: | https://lingvist.com/course/learn-spanish-online/resources/spanish-conjugation/ |
In search of languages genetically related to Japanese, linguists over the last one hundred years have compared Japanese with almost every other language in the world-not only those of neighbouring peoples such as Ainu, Korean and Indonesian, but even Greek; yet none of these efforts have succeeded in establishing any kind of kinship.
It was more than ten years ago that interest in the Dravidian languages of South Indian began to spread among some Japanese researchers. Similarities between Japanese and Dravidian had been first pointed out in the mid-nineteenth century. In his major work, A Co~nparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Language, the English missionary R. Caidwell, cites resemblances and discusses the connection between the two languages.
The Japanese-Dravidian connection was studied in Japan for the first time by Susumu Shiba, who approached the subject from the point of view of religion. His findings were presented in “Kodai ni okeru Nihonjin no shikO” (Ways of Thinking of Ancient Japanese), which appeared in 1970 in the journal Jinbun ronsã (No.18, Kyoto Women’s University), and in a later study, “Dravida-go to Nihongo” (Dravidian Languages and Japanese), published in the same journal (No.22-23, 1973-74).
Comparative linguist Akira Fujiwara, began publishing the results of his research on Dravidian in 1974. In 1981 he put out a book entitled Nihongo wa doko kara kita ka (Whence the Japanese Language? Tokyo: Kodansha). His extensive comparisons of lexical items, comparing a number of words, including some particles and auxiliaries, were impressive. However, bececaue he took on the Dravidian family as a whole, his methodology was rather clumsy, and he failed to sufficiently demonstrate a kinship with Japanese. Another problem was that he did not take ancient Dravidian languages into consideration.
Prof. Minoru Go, who has been engaged mainly in research on Japanese genealogy, with a focus on Altaic for several decades, has also kept an eye trained on Dravidian, although he has not published anything on this subject. I got my start in this direction when he suggested that I study Telugu, one of the Dravidian languages. I became the fourth Japanese to undertake the genealogical study of Dravidian and Japanese.
First, it is a language spoken by a large group of over 48 million. Second, it is a very old language; 2,500 Cañkam verses, written in ancient Tam ii between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D., are preserved. Third, a detailed grammar of ancient Tamil survives, the Tolkãppiyam, written around the third century B.C. (Among other Dravidian languages, literature in the Kannada language can be traced back only as far as 1100 A.D., and that of Telugu, to 1200 A.D.,).
Fourth, while dictionaries in other Dravidian languages are small and simple, there is a large Tamil lexicon. Published in 1936, the Tamil Lexicon consists of seven volumes compiled over a period of twenty years by a special committee at the University of Madras. It contains 1,04,000 word entries, giving ancient usages, indicating dialects, and detailed definitions. An additional reference I have used is A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, edited by T. Burrow and M.B. Emeneau, which came out in 1960. A revised and enlarged edition appeared in 1984 (hereafter abbreviated DEDR).
These are the tools that make possible the accurate comparison of Tarn ii and Japanese as far as the meaning of words and grammatical features are concerned. The geographic neighbors of Japanese suffer from a dearth of documentary sources going back to earliest times. The oldest extant documents in Korean were produced in the fifteenth century, and those in Monoglian in the thirteenth century. The Ainu language does not have a writing system. This paucity of documents recording the ancient forms of the languages in the vicinity of Japan has been a major stumbling block in the study of the genealogy of Japanese. Tamil is extremely important in that its very old forms are known to us.
I travelled to South India in 1980 to continue my research, receiving invaluable aid from Ms. Rama Lakshmi and Ms. V.N. Balambal. On New Year’s Day the following year, I showed Prof. Jaroslav Vacek of Charles University in Prague a list of the word correspondences I had collected for Tamil and Japanese. He kindly took time out of his busy schedule to check over the list with great care. For one year beginning in the fall of the same year, I studied the reading of classical Tamil at the University of Madras under Prof. Pon. Kothandaraman. During the winter break I visited the Trichi district, his home village, and was able to observe the old Tam ii New Year’s celebrations.
As guest researchers here at Gakushuin University, Mr. and Mrs. Sanmugadas studied classical Japanese literature and are now working on a translation of the Man ‘yoshu into Tamil. They have meanwhile continued to give me invaluable assistance in my study of the Tamil language. They themselves are Tamils, and have taught me much not only about their language but about Tam ii customs as well.
The oldest writings preserved in Japan, which go back to the eighth century, tell us that (1) ancient Japanese had eight vowels, that (2) there was no distinction between long and short vowels, that (3) diphthongs were strictly avoided, (4) all syllables ended in a vowel, and that (5) the eight vowels were divided into two groups.
The vowels in group A were found in 85 percent of all vowel usage, and those in group B in only 15 percent. Word roots and the initial parts of words used group A vowels, rarely those of group B. The same vowel in group A could be repeated with a consonant in between to form a word, such as kata (hard), kimi (millet), ko:to: (matter)and turu (crane). But this was never the case for the vowels in group B.
From all these, it can be hypothesized that the vowel system prior to the eighth century was made up of four vowels, or those in group A. I compare these four with Tamil vowels.
Neither Japanese nor Tamil have (1) clusters of consonants coming at the beginning of words, (2) double consonants in the middle of words, (although they occur rarely in Tamil words). Japanese has no cerebrals.
Note : Zero signifies no corresponding consonant.
As this shows, the five forms of the verb saku share the same root, sak-, which expresses the basic concept of saku. This stem functions in actual usage, when it is followed by one of various suffixes, -a, -i, -u, -e: and -e linking it to the next word.
Nouns, too, may conjugate. Take the word kaze (wind) for example. When combined with another word to make a compound noun, kaze sometimes become kaza, such as kaza-Fana (“windflower”, meaning “snow or rain falling like flowers in an early winter wind”) and kaza-maturi (“wind festival”, or ritual for warding off storms). kaz- is the root of kaze.
The most basic unit of a word, whose further subdivision would deprive the word of its core meaning, is what we call the “word-root”. For Japanese verbs and nouns, the initial part of the word, made up of a consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC-) sequence, is the word-root.
Word-roots in Tamil, too, consist of a CVC- sequence, as is well known in the world of linguistics. In comparing Japanese and Tamil words, therefore, I focus on these CVC- roots, observing the phonemic rules strictly, and only then considering similarities in meaning.
My research has shown very close phonemic correspondences between Japanese and Tamil words, in a comparison of 400 pairs of words, but because of space limitation here, let me give a sample of the correspondences for Japanese “F” and Tamil “p” and “pp” below. Most of the Japanese samples are words in the ancient language, and the Tamil samples are those found in Cangkam verses. The entire list is given in Sound Correspondences between Tamil and Japanese (Tokyo: Gakushuin University, 1980) and in Nihongo izen (Before Japanese) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1987).
The sound “F-” shown above is pronounced “h-” today. It is widely accepted among Japanese linguists that this “F-” was ‘-p-‘ in prehistoric Japanese. “Japanese F-: Tamil p, pp”, therefore, is the same thing as “Japanese -p : Tamil p, pp”.
A comparison of kinship terms in the two languages also indicates a connection. Many kinship terms which are not mentioned in the oldest extant documents (8th century) and which have not been found in mainstream Japanese since then have been preserved in dialects spoken in the northeastern end of Honshu and the south western tip of the Japanese archipelago. The reason for this is still unknown, but it has been discovered that corresponding kinship terms existed systematically in old Tamil. It is, therefore, difficult to dismiss the similarities as accidental.
The following are some of my findings through typological comparison.
1. Nouns do not decline.
2.Subject is followed by predicate.
3. Adjective comes before noun.
Tarnil : Enrum aruLal veeNtum.
Tamil : Kallin naatpali uutti.
6.There are no relative pronouns.
Tam ii : Avar irunta en nenjcu.
7.Auxiliary verb comes after the verb and at the end of sentence.
Tamil : Enntuum pariyal veeNdaa.
2. passive, 4. aspect, 5. negative, 6. tense and 7. interrogative, as in the following sentence.
9. Particle comes after noun and verb.
10. Interrogative form has interrogative particle at the end of a sentence.
Japanese : Ori ka hoka no hito ha.
11. Unlike in Japanese, the personal suffix comes at the end of a Tamil verb, but this was not always the rule at a time when CaGkam poems were written, and never the case in the Malayalam language. These facts seem to show that the use of the personal suffix was a later development.
12. Japanese demonstrative pronouns - “ko” (indicating objects “near”), “so” (“middle”), “a” (“far”), and “idu” (“when, where”)-correspond to Tamil pronouns, “i”, “u”, “a” and “e”. The list below details the correspondences.
1. Because of consonant correspondence (26) and vowel correspondence (6), the Japanese ~‘so” corresponds to the Tamil “u”.
2. The pronoun “a” that began to appear in the Heian period (794-1192) may have been a result of sound shift from “ka”, but it may also be that “a” had been in use since much earlier and appeared for the first time in the Heian-period documents. If the latter is the case, the demonstrative pronoun indicating objects far was the same between old Tamil and Japanese.
3. Because of the vowel correspondence (4), the indefinite pronoun “i” in Japanese corresponds to “e” in Tamil.
3. From these, we can say that the stems of the “middle”, “far” and “indefinite” demonstrative pronouns were very similar between Tamil and Japanese.
Below is a list of particles and auxiliary verb correspondences between the two languages.
Follows the verb to link it with another verb.
for making a sentence. Not related to case.
Past k . . . .
If we assume that when a noun or a verb was followed by a particle the vowel at the beginning of that particle was always dropped, we can say that the Japanese particles correspond to Tarnil particles, taking a form that has dropped the initial vowel. The consonant/vowel correspondences between Japanese and Tamil in the particles and auxiliary verbs listed above are all supported by the consonant-vowel correspondences in the word roots of noun, adjective, and verb.
A Study on the Relationship between Tamil and Japanese (I.J.D.L., Vol. XII, No.2, 1983).
“Worldview and Rituals among Japanese and Tamils” (Gakushuin University, 1985).
One general remark at the outset: a distinction must be made between evidence and proof Is there any valid evidence at all for a (genetic?) relationship between Tamil and Japanese? This question in my opinion, expressed with utmost caution, may be answered in the positive. On the other hand, if we ask about proof of such relationship, there is, so far, none. However, the evidence-in matters of deep grammar, lexicon, and probably even in phonology-is such that the positing of some kind of non-accidental connexion between Japanese and Tamil (Dravidian) is not intrinsically ruled out. It would be premature, sweepingly to dismiss such a hypothesis as impossible and fantastic.
In Sound Correspondences Ohno also dealt briefly with phonology; but more importantly, he has discussed two problems pertaining to phonology in the two papers mentioned above. Although the paper on the loss of the initial affricate/sibilant in Tamil/Japanese (April, 1982) may be somewhat lacking in philological sophistication, the phenomenon itself is striking; we must not forget, however, that this tendency is in fact confined to South Dravidian and is strongest in Tamil-Malayalam. It points rather to parallel but unconnected developments in the two languages or groups of languages. Nevertheless, even a common tendency, though not a proof of genetic relationship and a ‘special connexion’, points to shared trend or direction in phonological development and should not be dismissed altogether, particularly in the light of other cumulative evidence. The August 1982 paper on intervocalic -p- is thought-provoking indeed; according to Ohno, intervocalic -p- actually did exist in old Tarnil, at least in a few relic forms, and it corresponds to Japanese -F- which developed from earlier -p-. This Japanese -F- is ‘voiceless’ and ‘bilabial’. Some Dravidianists (Emeneau, Krishnamurti) do not reconstruct *...p.. even for the proto stage but according to D.W. McAlpin, for example, it seems best to maintain it since the contrast helps separate -v- ( -~p-) from a possible *v. and from other shifts. In mymanual of comparative Dravidian phonology I discussed this problem at some length and tended rather to maintain an intervocalic *..p... Now Ohno cites a Japanese correspondence for the Tamil lapu ‘to kill’ (which he correctly locates in the old Tamil grammar Tolkãppiyam, aithogh he greatly antedates the work into the fifth century B.C), viz, taFu-. If we accept this correspondence, it would support our hypothesis of the reconstruction of a pre-Tamil *..p.. for Dravidian. According to Ohno whereas the contrast of -p-; -v- was lost in Tamil, it has been preserved in Jap. -F-; -b-.
Prof. Roy Andrew Miller of Washington University, in the United States, attacked Zvelebil’s cool appraisal in a severely critical essay, “Tamil and Japanese?” (B.S.O.A.S., Vol. XLIX, part 3, 1986), dismissing my findings altogether. He says, “Ohno has studded his 1980 book, and indeed all his books and papers, with hundreds of alleged Japanese linguistic forms that are entirely imaginary, ‘words’ that are attested for no known stage of the language, ‘words’ that can neither be cited nor documented- forms that are, most simply put, lexical ghosts”.
I wrote a response to this salvo and sent it to the editor of the B.S.O.A.S., This respected journal, however, apparently does not wish to follow through the debate. Although I feel that pursuing the debate is not nearly as important as getting on with my research and that it will take a very long time before this theory can be sufficiently tested, I wish to defend myself on several accounts.
1. Miller claims that I have encountered criticism in Japan for my findings presented in Nihongo to Tamirugo [Japanese and Tamil] (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1980). I was frankly astonished by much of the hubbub at that time for I realized that my critics were for the most part neither scholars of old Japanese nor of Tamil. As they are unfamiliar with the ancient literature, they could not comprehend the forms and meanings of the words I was citing. At the time, no university in the country was actively studying the possibility of a Tamil-Japanese connection, but as a result of my probing the issue, the University of Tokyo as well as Gakushiin University where I teach, opened up an inquiry into the matter. There was suddenly a surge of media coverage of the subject, and I found myself, although at the beginning of my research, in the center of a nationwide debate. I am still avidly pursuing my research into the matter, and a verdict has not yet been reached concerning the extent of the correspondence between Tam ii and Japanese.
2. Since January 1983 I have been presenting my findings in Kaishaku to kansho: (Interpretation and Appreciation), one of the leading scholarly journals in the field. I have so far presented over 300 words in each language, and precisely explained the form, meaning and source of each correspondence. Some of them may be off the mark - scholars of the future will sort out the facts and build on my findings to make further revelations - but Miller’s claim that out of 12 words he considered from my list only 2 (17%) are possibly accurate is a gross miscalculation that harms the credibility of my research. Below I will answer his charges directly. As each of the examples with their technicalities takes up a lot of space to explain, I will here limit myself to four of the words.
Ofobune wo! kogino susumi ni/ifa ni fun! kaferaba kaferel imo ni yoritefa (#557). (If I cannot marry her, my big ship which I row along may capsize by running against a great rock).
Funega cayeru. (A ship capsizes) Virarse, ou emborcarse a embarcação. (p.
According to the above example, the dialectal form “gara” corresponds to the standard form “kara” (p.204). “Gara” once again appears as a dialectal form meaning “stone” in the highly authoritative Nihon kokugo daijiten Vol.5 (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 1974), p. 176, and its usage is widespread, found on Sado Island, and in the Niigata, Mie, Kyoto, Nara and Toyama prefectures. One can see from the above how an untrained student in the field, ignorant of ”gara” and unaware of the dialectal correspondence between “k” and “g” might be led to mistakenly believe that I invented “kara”; however, a closer reading of a wide range of materials attests to the credibility of my claim.
Sanseido, 1967) p.439, and in Ni/ion kokugo da~jiten, Vol. 12, p.656 with the meaning of ”to kill, to make fall down” and “to die, to fall down”. Therefore, in the light of other research that confirms a correlation between Japanese -f- and Tamil -p-, it seems to me that a possible correspondence between Japanese “tafuru/tafusu” and Tamil “tapu” is not so far-fetched. Certainly it is an exaggeration to claim that I am inventing ghosts. I just happen to read more widely than Miller.
di>d31>ji thus “di” and the original “ji” were fused together.
du>dzu>zu thus “du” and the original “zu” were fused together.
But “je” (/ze/ and /je/ had no differentiation) in the Middle Ages could not have derived from old “de”. From this example, we can see that Miller is mistaken and that the old Japanese “aze/aje” could be related to “reed instrument” or “pressing down the threads”.
My example refuting Miller’s hasty conclusions regarding the validity of my research could be expanded, but these few should at least make it amply clear that he is basing his remarks on only a superficial reading of a small body of reference materials.
3. As for why some of the words I bring forth to support my claims of correspondence are not in the dictionary I co-authored, Kogojiten (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1974), Miller clearly does not realise that it was published on a relatively small scale, and aimed at university students. It only contains about 42,000 words in total, unlike the Nihon kokugo daijiten which contains about 4,50,000 words. If a word does not appear in my dictionary, it in no way implies that the word is a fabrication. If so, what can we say for the 4,0 8,000 “ghosts” that are catalogued in the Nihon kokugo dajiten?
I was delighted to read in Prof. Zvelebil’s unprejudiced article (B.S.O.A.S., XLV1II, 1, 1985, pp.1 16-120) that he calls for a fair examination of the evidence before any hasty conclusions are drawn. In contrast I was equally disappointed to read how someone like Miller, who has obviously only a cursory knowledge of old Japanese and appears unable to use classical dictionaries, should try to poison the atmosphere of international cooperation in tackling the knotty, as yet unsolved problem of the genealogy of the Japanese language. I fully agree with Miller that “at the very least, the study of these questions will also need the services of someone able, and willing, to look up words in a Japanese dictionary, if we are ever really to learn anything about Tamil and Japanese”. Unfortunately it seems that Miller has to use other than modern dictionaries and also has to read original texts of Japanese classical literature if he wants to keep abreast of these matters.
The evidence for a Japanese-Tamil relationship can be further accumulated, and this will increase the possibility that a linkage can be proven. The questions that will quickly follow, then, are when and how their connection began. There are three possibilities. One is that language was transmitted (from India) to Japan by land. Another is that it was transmitted by sea. The third possibility is that an intermediary language existed-possibly in what is presently the Chinese province of Yunnan, or further west-and that it was carried southward to India and eastward to Japan. Deciding when and how the Japanese-Tam ii relationship began, however, is a task for the future.
1856 Caldwell, R. A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages. Madras : University of Madras.
1957 Ohno, Susumu Nihongo no kigen (The Origins of the Japanese Language). Iwanami Shinsho series. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
1970 Shiba, Susuinu “Kodai ni okeru Nihonjin no shiko (1)” (Ways of Thinking of Ancient Japanese, Part 1). Jinbun ronso, Vol.18 (Kyoto Women’s University).
1971 Shiba, Susumu “Arutai-kei minzoku no shu:kyO hyo:shO” (On the Religion of the Altaic Peoples). Speech delivered at the Japanese Society of Ethonology (Tokyo).
1973 Shiba, Susumu “Dravida-go to Nihongo (1)” (Dravidian Languages and Japanese, Part 1). Jinbun ronso, vol.22 (Kyoto Women’s University).
1974 Shiba, Susumu “Dravida-go to Nihongo (2)” (Dravidian Languages and Japanese, Part 2), Jinbun ronso, vol.23 (Kyoto Women’s University).
1974 Shiba, Susumu “Dravida-go to Nihongo: Sushi no hikaku o chushin ni” (Dravidian Languages and Japanese, With focus on Comparison of Numerals). Speech at the Japanese Society of Ethnology.
Fujiwara, Akira “Cho (Ga, Kaiko, Komori, Tako) Ko” (On Butterflies [Moths, Silkworms, Bats, Kites]). Speech at the Society for the Study of Japanese Language.
Fujiwara, Akira “A Comparative Vocabulary of Parts of the Body of Japanese and Uralic Languages, With the Backing Up of Altaic Languages, Kokuryoan, and Korean”, Gengo ken/cvu, Vol. 65.
Fujiwara, Akira “Japanese, Dravidian and Scythian with Special Reference to the Vocabulary of Parts of the Body”, Kinki Daigaku Kyoyo-bu kenkyu kiyo, 6-2.
Go, Minoru “New Guinea no Nan-go ni tsuite” (On the Nan Languages in New Guinea). Gengo kenkyu, vol.65.
1975 Fujiwara, Akira “Japanese and Dravidian with Special Reference to Words Beginning with Original *K..”. Kinki Daigaku Kyoyobu kenku kiyo,7-2.
1976 Fujiwara, Akira “Nihongo to Dravida shogo” (Japanese and Dravidian Languages), Gengo kenkyu, Vol.70.
1979 Fujiwara, Akira “Nihongo no shikisai-mei kigen” (The Origin of Japanese Color Words). Kinki Daigaku Kyoyo-bu kenkyu kiyo, 10-.2.
Fujiwara, Akira “Nihongo no kiso doshigo no kigen” (The Origin of Japanese Basic Verbs.) Gengo kenkyu, vol.76.
Go, Minoru “Nihongo no kigen o motomete” (In Search of the Origins of the Japanese Language). Nihon bunka, vol.4.
1980 Ohno, Susumu “Kosho Nihongo to Tamil-go” (A Historical Study of Japanese and Tamil). Gengo, Jan.-Oct.
Fujiwara, Akira Nihongo no kiso doshi no kigen (The Origins of Japanese Basic Verbs). Gendai-no Esprit series. Tokyo: Shibun do.
Shiba, Susumu Dravida-go to Nihongo (Dravidian Languages and Japanese. Gendai-no-Esprit series. Tokyo: Shibun do.
1980 Go, Minoru Papua-go to Nihongo to no hikaku (Comparision of Papuan and Japanese). Gendai-no-Esprit series. Tokyo: Shibun do.
Ohno, Susumu Sound Correspondences between Tamil and Japanese. Tokyo: Gakushuin University.
Ohno, Susumu Nihongo no seiritsu (The Origins of the Japanese Language), Tokyo: Chuo Koron sha.
Fujiwara, Akira “Nihon-Dravida hikaku goi, a-i” (Comparison of Japanese and Dravidian words, “A”- “1”). Kinki Daigaku Kyoyo-bu kenkyu kiyo,12-1.
and Dravidian words “u”-”o”, “Sa”). Kinki Daigaku Kyoyo-bu kenkyukiyo, 12-3.
Fujiwara, Akira Nihongo wa doko kara kita ka (Whence the Japanese Language?) Tokyo: Kodan sha.
Ohno, Susumu Nihongo to Tarnil-go (Japanese and Tamil), Tokyo: Shincho sha.
Murayama, Shichiro Nihongo no kigen o ineguru ronso (The Debate on the Origins of the Japanese Language), Tokyo: San’- ichi Shobo.
Murayama, Shichiro “Ohno Susumu-shi no hikaku kenkyu wa korede yoi noka” (Are Susumu Ohno’s Comparisons Acceptable?). Kokugogaku, vol. 127.
1982 Ohno, Susumu “Nihongo to Tamilgo to no taio-Murayama Shichiro-shi no hihyo ni kotaete” (Correspondence of Japanese and Tamil Languages: A Response to Shichiro Murayama). Kokugogaku, vol.130.
Fujiwara, Akira “Nihon-Dravida hikaku goi, shi-so” (Comparison of Japanese and Dravidian Words. “Shi”-”So”). Kinki Daigaku Kyoyo-bu kenkyu kiyo, 14-1.
1983 Fujiwara, Akira “Nihon-Dravida hikaku goi, ta-ni” (Comparison of Japanese and Dravidian Words, “Ta”-”Ni”. Kinki Daigaku Kyoyo-bu kenkyu kiyo, 14-3, 15-1,2.
1983 Ohno, Susumu “Nihongo to Tam ilgo no kankei” (Japanese-Tamil Relationship). Kaishaku to kansho, Jan.-Dec.
Ohno, Susumu The Loss of Initial C in Tarnil and S in Japanese, Uyarayvu 1, Madras: University of Madras.
Ohno, Susumu “A Study on the Relationship between Tamil and Japanese Intervocalic Stops, in the Two Languages”, LJD.l., XII, No.2.
Murayama, Shichiro “Kokugogaku’ 130-shu no Ohno Susumu-shi no hanron ni tsuite” (Regarding Susumu Ohno’s Rebuttal in Kokugogaku, vol.130), Kokugogaku, vol.133.
Ohno, Susumu “Murayama Shichiro-shi no Ohno hihan nojittai” (The Facts Behind Shichiro Murayama’s Criticism of the Ohno Thesis), Kokugogaku, vol.135.
1984 Ohno, Susumu “Nihongo to Tamilgo no kankei” (Japanese-Tamil Relationship), Kaishaku to kansho, Jan.-Dec.
Fujiwara, Akira “Nihon-Dravida hikaku gol, nu-hamo” (Comparison of Japanese and Dravidian Words. “Nu”- “Hamo”), Kink! Daigaku Kyoyo-bu kenkvu kiyo, 15-3, 16-1,2,3.
Zvelebil, K. “Tamil and Japanese-Are they related? The Hypothesis of Susumu Ohno”. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, voLXLVIII, 1 (University of London).
Ohno, Susumu “Nihongo to Tamilgo no kankei” (Japanese-Tamil Relationship). Kaishaku to kansho, Jan. -Dec.
Fujiwara, Akira “Nihon-Dravida hikaku goi, haya-higa” (Comparison of Japanese and Dravidian Words. “Haya”- “Higa”. Kinki Daigaku Kyoyobu kenkyu kiyo, 17-1, 2, 3.
Miller, R.A. “Tamil and Japanese?” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. Vol.XLIX, 3 (University of London).
1986 Ohno, Susumu “Nihongo to Tam ilgo no kankei” (Japanese-Tam ii Relationship). Kaishaku to kansho, Jan.-Dec.
1986 Fujiwara, Akira “Nihongo-Dravidago hikaku, hika-hichi” (Comparison of Japanese and Dravidian Words, “Hika”- “Hichi”. Kinki Daigaku Kyoyo-bu kenkyu kiyo, 18-1, 2, 3.
1987 Ohno, Susurnu “Nihongo to Tamilgo no kankei” (Japanese-Tamil Relationship) Kaishaku to kansho, Jan.-.Dec.
Sanmugadas, A. “Japanese-Tamil Relationship: Supporting Evidence for Susumu Ohno’s Hypothesis”. Speech at XIVth International Congress of Linguistics, East Berlin.
Vacek, J. “The Dravido-Altaic Relationship”. ArOr, vol.55, part 2.
Asher, R.E. “Tamil and Japanese : Some Typological Analogies”. VIth International Conference/Seminar ofTamil Studies, Kuala Lumpur.
Sanmugadas, A. “A Comparsion of Tamil-Japanese Quality Words”. VIth International Conference/Seminar ofTamil Studies, Kuala Lumpur.
Sanmugadas, M. “Man’yoshu to sangamu no ai no uta no ruiji” (Similarities in Love poems between the Man ‘yoshu and the Ca,kam) VIth International Conference/Seminar ofTamil Studies, Kuala Lumpur.
Ohno, Susumu “Japanese-Tam ii Relationship: Particle Correspondence between Old Japanese and Old Tamil”. VIth International Conference/Seminar of Tam ii Studies, Kuala Lumpur.
Ohno, Susumu Nihongu izen (Before Japanese), Iwanami Shinsho series, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
1988 Ohno, Susumu “Nihongo to Tamil-go no kankei”(Japanese-Tamil Relationship), Kaishaku to Kansho, Jan.-Dec. | http://arutkural.tripod.com/tolcampus/jap-tamil.htm |
A federal judge ruled Monday that the Capitol rioter known as the “QAnon shaman” must remain jailed until his trial because his behavior – and lack of remorse for those actions – make him too dangerous to release.
In his 32-page opinion, Judge Royce Lamberth stated that Jacob Chansley not only showed a blatant disregard for authority while participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection but also that his actions since, including a jailhouse interview with “60 Minutes+,” have demonstrated zero remorse for those actions.
“Defendant characterizes himself as a peaceful person who was welcomed into the Capitol building on January 6th by police officers. The Court finds none of his many attempts to manipulate the evidence and minimize the seriousness of his actions persuasive,” Lamberth wrote.
Chansley, also known as Jake Angeli, drew widespread attention for donning a fur hat, horns and war paint while carrying a makeshift spear during the Jan. 6 riot and, later, for lamenting the lack of an organic diet during his pretrial incarceration. He has pleaded not guilty to the six-count indictment, CNN reported.
In his ruling, Lamberth pointed to a Twitter post Chansley wrote in November in which he suggested hanging government leaders he deemed traitors as well as incendiary comments he made during the Jan. 6 riot about looking to “get Congressional leaders” as threatening.
“(The words) show that defendant entered the Capitol building on January 6th not to ponder Statuary Hall, but with an intent to disrupt the functions of our government by means of force,” Lamberth wrote.
According to The Arizona Republic, the question before Lamberth was whether Chansley represented an ongoing threat or was simply caught up in a “singular circumstance” but has shown remorse for his self-proclaimed ignorance of the law.
“I didn’t break any windows. I didn’t break any doors. I didn’t cross any police barricades. I was peaceful. I was civil. I was calm,” Chansley, who has no criminal record, told “60 Minutes+” during last week’s interview.
Lamberth stated in his ruling, however, that the 33-year-old Phoenix, Arizona, man’s comments simply proved he does not comprehend the severity of the crimes levied against him, the Republic reported.
“Defendant’s perception of his actions on January 6 as peaceful, benign, and well-intentioned shows a detachment from reality,” Lamberth wrote.
“The statements defendant has made to the public from jail show that defendant does not fully appreciate the severity of the allegations against him. To the contrary, he believes that he – not the American people or members of Congress – was the victim on January 6th,” the judge continued.
Meanwhile, Lamberth also stated that Chansley’s insistence that he acted at former President Donald Trump’s behest illustrated his “inability (or refusal) to exercise his independent judgment and conform his behavior to the law,” the Republic reported.
According to CNN, the judge also found Chansley’s attempts to argue that the spear he carried into the Capitol was not a weapon unpersuasive.
“A six-foot pole with a metal spearhead fixed to the top is, undoubtably, a dangerous weapon,” Lamberth wrote, agreeing with the Justice Department’s perspective in their indictments. | https://www.actionnewsjax.com/news/trending/detachment-reality-judge-denies-qanon-shaman-pre-trial-release-capitol-riot-charges/CD7WDFZ6ARATHFCOXDQQLSH47Q/ |
Is guilt and regret the identical?
1 Reply. ‘Regret’ is self-reproach, ‘compunction’, a realisation that one was certainly guilty- when one’s internal conscience pricks one. So, one is in regret when the consciences scolds one,”Hey, you erred,you harmed, you might be responsible.” Guilt results in regret.
What’s the distinction between guilt and remorse?
First guilt: many counsel guilt happens after we do one thing that we all know is improper whereas we’re doing it, sometimes for moral, ethical or authorized causes. Remorse, then again, is the emotion we expertise after we look again on an motion and really feel we must always or might have finished one thing otherwise.
What’s the distinction between regret and remorse?
It creates a way of guilt and sorrow for hurting another person, and results in confession and true apology. It additionally strikes the remorseful individual to keep away from doing the hurtful motion once more. Remorse leads an individual to keep away from punishment sooner or later, whereas regret results in avoiding hurtful actions in the direction of others sooner or later.
Can Narcissists really feel regret?
So sure then ‘can’ cry and really feel regret however it’s all an act. To ensure that a narcissist to really feel regret, or guilt, they should have empathy. Narcissists will not be empathetic in any respect. … They solely have a tendency to think about themselves in conditions the place they should act out emotions of regret and to cry. | https://banjaluka.news/popular/is-guilt-and-remorse-the-same/ |
We all heard it as children: “Tell your brother (or sister) you’re sorry.” Those words typically elicited a grudging and grumpy “I’m sorry” — only to be followed by plans for later revenge against the tattletale who got us in trouble in the first place. I can’t remember even one incident as a child where the ordered “I’m sorry” changed anything.
On the other hand, the words that have stuck with me all my life are what my mom said to me once, when I quickly apologized for something and was unhappy when the magic words didn’t work as I’d planned. My mom said, “I’m sorry means that you won’t do it again.” Oh, well, that’s a little harder.
I’ve been thinking a lot this week about apologies and forgiveness, about actions and consequences, about what it means to be accountable for one’s behavior. The suspension of Ray Rice indefinitely from the NFL, as well as the reduction in the sanctions leveled against Penn State in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, should prompt all of us to consider how that plays out in the lives of perpetrators and of victims.
What does it mean to be accountable? Certainly, the first step is an empathetic understanding of the hurt one has caused others and remorse, that deep regret or guilt for a wrong committed. Being sorry for your actions, however, is easily confused with being sorry that you’ve been caught. Even when remorse is genuine, feelings often are fleeting and fade quickly. Although remorse is unpleasant, it really isn’t until the next step in the accountability process that the work begins.
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And make no mistake, accountability is hard work. It requires first doing whatever possible to make things right with and for the injured party — the victim — and second, working to change the circumstances that allowed for the injury in the first place. Restoration of the victim to some semblance of wholeness is a critical part of the process. Sometimes that includes monetary compensation because being a victim of a crime of violence has very real negative financial implications in people’s lives. But hopefully, restoration also includes justice being done, perpetrators being punished and someone saying, “I believe you, and I’m sorry this happened to you.”
The second part of accountability — working to change the circumstances — is even harder. For the individual perpetrator of violence, it may mean unlearning the lessons of a lifetime, giving up power and control over others, staying away from the one you have injured. It will always mean accepting the consequences of your behavior and not shifting the responsibility to anyone or anything else — not the victim, not the system, not your upbringing. None of that is easy and all of it takes a long time.
But the community has a part to play in accountability as well. Community accountability means creating systems that send clear messages to perpetrators that violence will not be tolerated and that there will be consequences for those who use violence. It means teaching all those in the community, whether it be the university or the wider community, how to appropriately recognize and respond to problematic or suspicious behavior. And it means putting policies, practices and procedures in place that will protect victims, rather than perpetrators.
Again, none of this is easy, and just like with individuals, in communities it takes a commitment over time. For both individuals and communities, “I’m sorry means you won’t do it again.” It sounds so easy, but making it real in healthy relationships demands much of all of us. | http://www.centredaily.com/living/article42862062.html |
Sometimes children are quick to use the phrase “I’m sorry.” At times these words are spoken in an attempt to avoid personal consequences, while at other times they are spoken in haste by one who is remorseful over getting caught in a wrongful act. Then, there are times when this phrase is used by one who desires to correct undesired behavior.
Are you a parent who can easily distinguish genuine repentance from mere remorse or regret?
Before you answer this question, you may want to examine the importance of it:
2 Corinthians 7:10 tell us: Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. Worldly sorrow is merely sadness over the personal consequences suffered rather than recognition of a sinful act. Godly sorrow, however, acknowledges sinful behavior as being against a holy God and demonstrates a desire to change personal behavior to please Him.
Parents desiring to develop spiritually self-disciplined children will be careful to examine the phrase “I’m sorry” for genuine qualities. For example, does your child say, “I’m sorry” then try to reason or justify their behavior? Does your child use the phrase, “I’m sorry,” then make excuses for their actions? Does your child try to avoid undesired consequences by using the words, “I’m sorry?”
In Matthew 3:8 John the Baptist told the hypocrites of Jesus’ day to “produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” In Acts 26:20 the apostle Paul affirms this truth by teaching that genuine repentance is proven by deeds rather than through words alone.
Teach your child the significance of and God’s desire for genuine repentance. Train him to understand that it’s easy to say, “I’m sorry.” And even though the phrase should be used, its sincerity is demonstrated through action. Praise your child for acts reflecting true repentance and lovingly hold him accountable for those that do not.
When it comes to developing genuine repentance in children, it’s helpful to remember: actions speak louder than words! | https://www.carlamaclachlan.com/parenting/actions-speak-louder-than-words |
The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.
Quote by Anais Nin
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Psychopathy is a personality disorder defined by a cluster of interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and antisocial characteristics, including egocentricity, grandiosity, deceptiveness, impulsivity, shallow emotions, lack of empathy and remorse, irresponsibility, and the ready violation of social and legal norms. Among the most extreme features of the disorder are a callous disregard for the rights of others and a propensity for predatory behavior and violence.
its implications for the mental health and criminal justice systems and for society in general. | http://jkseminars.com/p57/Without_Conscience:_Understanding_and_Assessing_Psychopaths/product_info.html |
Report Scope:
This report provides an updated review of nanotextile technology, including materials and production processes, and identifies current and emerging applications for this technology.
BCC Research delineates the current market status for these products, defines trends, and presents growth forecasts for the next five years. The market is analyzed based on the following segments: nanotextile type, functionality, nanostructured material, application, and region. In addition, technological issues, including key events and the latest developments, are discussed.
More specifically, the market analysis conducted by BCC Research for this report is divided into five sections.
In the first section, an introduction to the topic and a historical review of nanotextiles are provided, including an outline of recent events. In this section, current and emerging applications are also identified and grouped in segments (apparel, technical, household, and other consumer products).
The second section provides a technological review of nanotextiles. This section offers a detailed description of materials used for production of nanofabrics, properties of nanotextiles, and typical fabrication methods. This section concludes with an analysis of the most important technological developments since 2016, including examples of significant patents recently issued or applied for. The chapter ends with a highlight of the most active research organizations operating in this field and their activities.
The third section entails a global market analysis for nanotextiles. Global revenues (sales data in millions of dollars) are presented for each segment (nanotextile type, functionality, nanostructured material, application, and region), with actual data referring to the years 2017 and 2018 and estimates for 2019. Dollar figures refer to sales of these products at the manufacturing level.
The analysis of current revenues for nanotextiles is followed by a detailed presentation of market growth trends, based on industry growth, technological trends, and regional trends. The third section concludes by providing projected revenues for nanotextiles within each segment, together with forecast compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) for the period 2019 through 2024. Projected and forecast revenue values are in constant U.S. dollars, unadjusted for inflation.
In the fourth section of the study, which covers global industry structure, the report offers a list of the leading manufacturers of nanotextiles, together with a description of their products. The analysis includes a description of the geographical distribution of these firms and an evaluation of other key industry players. Detailed company profiles of the top players are also provided.
The fifth and final section includes an analysis of recently issued U.S. patents, with a summary of patents related to nanotextile materials, fabrication methods, and applications. Patent analysis is performed by region, country, assignee, patent category, application, and material type.
Report Includes:
- 55 data tables and 29 additional tables
- Detailed overview and industry analysis of nanotextiles and their global market
- Analyses of global market trends with data from 2017, 2018, estimates for 2019 and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2024
- Segmentation of the global nanotextiles market by product type, fabrication technology, application, end use industry and geographical region
- Identification of the fastest-growing applications and technologies, and a holistic overview of the current and future market trends which will lead to increasing demand for nanotextiles production
- An extensive U.S. analysis of recently issued patents, with a summary of patents related to various types of nanotextiles and their fabrication methods and applications
- Description of the geographical distribution of manufacturers and detailed company profiles of the top industry players including Donaldson, eSpin Technologies, Finetex EnE, Nano-Textile and Parker Hannifin"
Summary
Nanotextiles are a class of textiles that utilize nanotechnology during their fabrication process. In particular, the term nanotextiles applies to four categories of products: nanocoated textiles, fabrics consisting of nanofiber webs, textiles obtained from composite fibers based on nanostructures, and nanoporous textiles.
Although the origin of nanotechnology can be traced back to the 4th century, the first nanotextiles were only introduced during the 1980s in the form of nanofiber-based membranes for filtration. During the past 40 years, sales of nanotextiles have expanded steadily and are currently experiencing very strong growth, due to their increasing use in the fabrication of mass-market products within a range of sectors. This study provides an updated, comprehensive description of nanotextiles and their characteristics, highlighting the latest developments in their fabrication technology and features. It also offers a detailed market analysis for these products by segment (nanotextile type, functionality, nanostructured material, application, and region), describing technical aspects and trends that will affect future growth of this market.
As shown in the Summary Table, the global market for nanotextiles increased from nearly REDACTED in 2017 to REDACTED in 2018 and is estimated to be valued at REDACTED in 2019.
BCC Research has divided all the applications where nanotextiles have current and potential use in two main groups: consumer products and technical products.
Consumer products, which include mainly apparel and household articles, currently account for the largest share of the market, at an estimated REDACTED of the total in 2019, corresponding to REDACTED in 2019. Within this segment, nanotextiles are being used primarily for the fabrication of high-performance outerwear and stocking. Sales of these products have risen at a very healthy CAGR of REDACTED during the 2017-2019 period.
By comparison, nanofabrics for technical products represent a share of REDACTED of the total, corresponding to estimated 2019 revenues of REDACTED. This segment has been expanding at a REDACTED CAGR since 2017, mainly driven by applications in the mechanical/chemical/environmental, life science, and energy sectors.
Sales of nanotextiles are projected to continue rising at a double-digit rate during the next five years. Relevant factors that will contribute to market expansion through 2024 are the following -
- Increasing penetration in large industry sectors such as apparel, filtration and separation, catalysis, biomedical, energy, and automotive.
- Greater utilization in the fabrication of products characterized by strong demand, such as membranes, photocatalysts, and tissue engineering scaffolds.
- Growing market penetration of nanotextiles in developing countries.
- Increasing use of these products in wearable electronics and wearable medical devices.
- High levels of related R&D activities.
As a result, the total market for nanotextiles is forecast to rise at a CAGR of REDACTED from 2019 to 2024, reaching global revenues of REDACTED in 2024."
"Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction
Study Goals and Objectives
Reasons for Doing This Study
Intended Audience
Scope of Report
Methodology and Information Sources
Market Breakdown
Analyst’s Credentials
BCC Custom Research
Related BCC Research Reports
Chapter 2 Summary and Highlights
Chapter 3 Market and Technology Background
Nanomaterials and Nanotextiles
The Nanotechnology Industry
Milestones in the History of Nanotechnology and Nanotextiles and Recent Events
Current and Emerging Applications for Nanotextiles
Apparel
Technical
Household
Other Consumer Products
Chapter 4 Technology
Introduction
Materials for Nanotextiles
Nanofibers
Nanoparticles and Other Nanostructures
Nanoporosity
Properties of Nanotextiles
Production Methods for Nanotextiles
Nanotextiles Based on Nanofibers
Nanocoatings
Incorporation of Nanomaterials
Creation of Nanoporosity
Latest Technological Developments, 2016 to Present
Nonwoven Textile for Wound Dressings Based on Fibroin Nanofibers
Film Fiberizing Spinning
Textiles Coated with Boron Nanoparticles
Protective Clothing Based on Carbon Nanofibers
Other Relevant R&D Activities
Chapter 5 Global Markets
Analysis Outline
Global Market Summary
Current Market Status
Market, by Type
Market, by Functionality
Market, by Nanostructured Material
Market, by Application
Market, by Region
Market Growth Trends
Apparel
Technical Textiles
Household
Others
Technological Trends
Regional Trends
Market Forecast
Market, by Type
Market, by Functionality
Market, by Nanostructured Material
Market, by Application
Market, by Region
Chapter 6 Global Industry Structure and Company Profiles
Leading Suppliers of Nanotextiles
Distribution of Leading Suppliers, by Technology Type and Region/Country
Other Industry Players
Company Profiles
ASAHI KASEI
DOGI
DONALDSON
ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA
ESPIN TECHNOLOGIES
EVEREST TEXTILE
FINETEX ENE
HEIQ MATERIALS
HOLLINGSWORTH & VOSE
JAPAN VILENE
NANOPOOL
NANOTEX
NANO-TEXTILE
NIPPON PAPER INDUSTRIES
ORGANOGENESIS
PARKER HANNIFIN
STELLENBOSCH NANOFIBERS
TEIJIN
TORAY INDUSTRIES
XANOFI
Chapter 7 Patent Analysis
Introduction
Summary of Recently Awarded Patents
General Trends
Trends, by Country and Region
Trends, by Assignee
Trends, by Patent Category
Trends, by Nanostructured Material
Trends, by Application"
A research methodology is a systematic approach for assessing or conducting a market study. Researchers tend to draw on a variety of both qualitative and quantitative study methods, inclusive of investigations, survey, secondary data and market observation.
Such plans can focus on classifying the products offered by leading market players or simply use statistical models to interpret observations or test hypotheses. While some methods aim for a detailed description of the factors behind an observation, others present the context of the current market scenario.
Now let’s take a closer look at the research methods here.
Secondary Research Model:
Extensive data is obtained and cumulated on a substantial basis during the inception phase of the research process. The data accumulated is consistently filtered through validation from the in-house database, paid sources as well reputable industry magazines. A robust research study requires an understanding of the overall value chain. Annual reports and financials of industry players are studied thoroughly to have a comprehensive idea of the market taxonomy.
Primary Insights:
Post conglomeration of the data obtained through secondary research; a validation process is initiated to verify the numbers or figures. This process is usually performed by having a detailed discussion with the industry experts.
However, we do not restrict our primary interviews only to the industry leaders. Our team covers the entire value chain while verifying the data. A significant number of raw material suppliers, local manufacturers, distributors, and stakeholders are interviewed to make our findings authentic. The current trends which include the drivers, restraints, and opportunities are also derived through the primary research process.
Market Estimation:
The market estimation is conducted by analyzing the data collected through both secondary and primary research. This process involves market breakdown, bottom-up and top- down approach.
Moreover, while forecasting the market a comprehensive statistical time series model is designed for each market. Macroeconomic indicators are considered to understand the current trends of the market. Each data point is verified by the process of data triangulation method to arrive at the final market estimates.
Final Presentation:
The penultimate process results in a holistic research report. The study equips key industry players to undertake significant strategic decisions through the findings. The report encompasses detailed market information. Graphical representations of the current market trends are also made available in order to make the study highly comprehensible for the reader. | https://www.marketexpertz.com/industry-overview/nanotextiles-market |
Demographic classifications in the UK refer to the social grade definitions, which are used to describe, measure and classify people of different social grade and income and earnings levels, for market research, social commentary, lifestyle statistics, and statistical research and analysis.
The National Readership Survey (NRS) is a non-profit but commercial British survey concerned with monitoring, analyzing and providing estimates on the number and nature of people who read Britain’s newspapers and consumer magazines. It is funded by the UK Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA), and Periodical Publishers Association (PPA).
The social grade definitions by the NRS are widely used as a generic reference series for classifying and describing social classes, especially for consumer targeting and consumer market research by the advertising UK media and publishing sectors. | https://www.whichlist2.com/knowledgebase/uk-consumer-demographics/ |
As the employee of World Bank you have been asked to study the requirements of country with particular economic concern.
Choose a country and the economic concern, like population, unemployment, etc.
Answer the problems given below:
Where were you able to determine data sets?Describe the relationship between variable that you selected and economy?What trends do you see in data sets? Support assertions of trends with statistical evidence.
Objective:
Recognize current trends in macro and microeconomics.Critically research market structures, consumer behavior, production costs, and international trade.Locate and interpret economic data, like data on prices and quantities of specific goods and services, GDP, unemployment, and inflation.
Project Management, Management Studies
Question 1: What might be some effective strategies to prevent the misuse of health program evaluations? Question 2: In what ways might evidence based practice (of any health discipline) benefit from a meta-evaluation of ...
Impact of Regulatory Requirements on Sustainability Initiatives Though sustainability initiatives are often driven by regulatory requirements, an increasing number of companies notice that they frequently result in decre ...
1. Compare and contrast a trade discount and a quantity discount. 2. What is the reason for using the term F.O.B.? 3. What are the major methods used for transfer pricing?
EXERCISE 1 • Individual homework for next class (Formulation) + Solution with graphical method • In a radio chain there are two stations, one in FM and one in AM. The FM station daily broadcasts 6 hours of rock, 2 hours ...
DISCUSSION As we have seen this week, project scope creation is very different in traditional project management versus Agile project management. What advantages and disadvantages can you see with the process of scope cr ...
Writing 12 pages on the topic of: "Literature review on IP Multimedia Subsystem" References page must be provided and it must be from "scientific papers" which can be found on ( http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/home.jsp ...
Leading and Managing in Organisations Learning outcomes: Demonstrate an understanding and awareness of the concepts of managing and motivating oneself and be able to explain and apply the fundamentals of motivation theor ...
Write a 500-750-word paper that identifies the major characteristics of services compared with goods, and describe how technology is changing the customer service and service offerings.
CONSIDER THE IMPORTANCE OF NETWORK SECURITY Write a report about the importance of computer and network security in your daily life, in terms of the four principles of computer security. If you have a job in addition to ...
Assignment This assignment consists of two (2) parts: a project schedule, and a written response. You must submit both parts as separate files for the completion of this assignment. Label each file name according to the ...
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Write us your full requirement for evaluation and you will receive response within 20 minutes turnaround time. | http://www.mywordsolution.com/question/describe-the-relationship-between-variable-that/932995 |
The NPD Group is the industry authority for technology research and solutions for consumer electronics, information technology, and commercial (B2B). We combine our point-of-sale data, insights into consumer trends, and industry expertise to provide comprehensive, high quality technology market research to our respective client bases.
For more than 25 years NPD has been tracking and analyzing trends in the consumer electronics market, offering both retail and consumer information for all channels, including online.
In commercial technology, we are the only source for tracking sales-out data in the commercial technology channel. Our monthly reports, available for key PC, storage, and networking categories, provide timely technology market research information and insights – including unmatched detail down to the item level. | https://www.npdgroup.ca/wps/portal/npd/ca/industry-expertise/technology/ |
Title:
Building a marketing plan : a complete guide
Author:
Wong, Ho Yin.
Edition:
First edition.
Publication Information:
New York, N.Y. : Business Expert Press,
©2011
Physical Description:
xiv, 221 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.
Summary:
"This book aims to provide a comprehensive, holistic, and practical framework for the essential business process of marketing planning. It is targeted toward students of marketing and business practitioners-- marketers and nonmarketers alike-- and draws together elements of theoretical concepts, strategic thinking processes, latest research findings, and marketing applications in a straightforward, logical manner"--Abstract.
Language:
English
Contents:
Introduction to marketing planning -- The situation analysis -- Analyzing the target market, part 1, marketing research -- Analyzing the target market, part 2, consumer behavior and the target marketing process (segmentation, targeting, and positioning) -- Marketing objectives and strategy formulation -- Planning for products and brands -- Planning for pricing -- Planning for integrated marketing communications -- Planning for distribution channels and market logistics -- Marketing implementation and control -- Appendix: Pindari Boomerang Factory marketing plan example.
ISBN:
9781606491591
Format : | https://bepl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_ILS$002f0$002fSD_ILS:1832118/ada |
Comprehensive Report on Facial Recognition Market Expected to Increase in Value by 2026
A brief analysis of the basic details of the global Facial Recognition Market assessment, industry expansion, and market growth opportunities influencing the market growth. Likewise, this analysis offers a broad overview of the technology spending over the forecast period, providing a unique perspective on the global facial recognition market in each of the categories included in the survey. The Global Facial Recognition Industry Review helps customers assess business challenges and prospects. The research includes the most recent business forecast analysis of the facial recognition market for the period in question. In addition, the annual study of the industry closely presents the latest information on technical developments and market development opportunities according to geographic climate.
The Facial Recognition Market research report compiles actionable information on the major drivers and opportunities that will facilitate the market expansion during the forecast period. Moreover, it provides detailed information about the challenges that are hampering the growth of the industry and offers several methods to combat them. The research literature also contains exhaustive data on the competitive landscape and the scope of regional markets.
Building on the latest developments, the Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically altered the dynamics of the facial recognition market globally and will continue to impact industry behavior in the years to come. . In this context, the report carefully analyzes the effects of this crisis to better understand the business conditions between 2020-2025.
Request a copy of this report @ https://www.business-newsupdate.com/request-sample/155624
Highlights of the impact assessment of Covid-19:
- Short and long term impact of the pandemic on market expansion
- Changes in supply chain and share of industry demand
- Implications of Covid-19 on the global economy
Overview of the geographic landscape:
- Regionally, the facial recognition market is fragmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East & Africa, South America.
- The regional market growth rate forecasts over the forecast period are included in the study.
- Specifics such as revenue generated and sales of each regional market are listed.
Other Highlights of the Facial Recognition Market Report:
- The facial recognition market product line includes 3D facial recognition and 2D facial recognition.
- The research literature includes statistical information related to the growth rate, market share, production models and production capacity of each product segment.
- In terms of scope, the facial recognition market sphere is divided into Government, BFSI, Transport, Others,, Geographically, the detailed analysis of production and trade of the following countries is covered in chapter 4.2, 5:, United States, Europe, China, Japan and India.
- The forecast for the annual growth rate and market share of each application is given in the report.
- The main players presented in the report are Precise Biometrics AB, Aware Inc. ,, Safran SA, Thales Group, NEC Corp., IDEMIA France SAS, Synaptics Inc., Egis Technology Inc., Cognitec Systems GmbH and ASSA ABLOY AB.
- The product list, pricing model and manufacturing capacity of key companies are shown in the study.
- Details such as gross margins and market shares held by major competitors are also compiled in the research paper.
- Distribution channels and production methods are also studied in detail.
- The research paper informs investors and other industry players about strategic decisions made by key companies such as partnerships, product launches, investments, mergers, acquisitions and collaborations.
- The SWOT analysis and Porter’s five forces model are used to determine the feasibility of investing new projects.
Key Features of the Facial Recognition Market Report:
- By identifying growth, size, leading players, and market segments of the Facial Recognition Market, save and reduce the time required for entry-level research.
- Highlight key business priorities to help the company realign its business strategy.
- The key findings and recommendations highlight vital and evolving industry trends in the Facial Recognition Market so that participants across the entire value chain can formulate effective long term strategies.
- Develop / modify business expansion plans using the massive growth provided to developed and emerging markets.
- Carefully study the global market trends and outlook, as well as the factors driving the market and the factors hampering the development of the market.
- Improve the decision-making process by understanding the strategies that support business interests in customers’ products, segmentation, pricing, and distribution.
Why buy this report?
- Provides in-depth research analysis of the overall Facial Recognition Market. which can help save time for start-ups related to the facial recognition market.
- Facial recognition markets the latest news forecast analysis as well as the main competitors in the market are readily available with all the necessary information.
- The facial recognition report includes graphics, pie charts, and other representations that can help the reader understand the information at a glance.
- With the facial recognition report, manufacturers can understand consumer behavior, business segments and sell the product information provided.
- Impact of COVID-19 on the market and industry as well as analysis of the recovery. | https://aspect-sdm.org/comprehensive-report-on-facial-recognition-market-expected-to-increase-in-value-by-2026/ |
The Key to Happiness is Living in Reality
The past week has been filled with wild news about artificial intelligence—its rapid advance, lingering pitfalls, and serious risks. What struck me most about all the AI takes was a common theme that users had to repeatedly remind themselves that the AI chat bots are not sentient. Which got me thinking—as AI continues to evolve and become more complex, perhaps the only thing that will separate us from it is our being sentient, our ability to experience emotions and feelings.
And the quality of those emotions and feelings will increasingly depend on our ability to live in reality.
As I wrote about extensively in The Practice of Groundedness, our happiness at any given point in time is a function of our reality minus or expectations. If our expectations are unrealistically lofty, we tend not to feel so good.
Tools to falsify reality for the sake of attention and status will continue to improve. This means it will be more important, and more challenging, than ever to live in actual reality. Whatever photoshop could do AI will do times a thousand. As a matter of fact, it already does.
AI is being used to construct unbelievably beautiful “people” (in quotes because they are not real) on Instagram. Meanwhile, on Twitter, so-called influencers are using AI to write their best tweets. If the AI says a post about how great one’s life is will do best, then you better believe that’s what will get generated, regardless of that person’s actual reality.
We need to establish a new rule of thumb: if you see, read, or hear about something that you think might be performative, then you ought to assume it is.
Nobody posts their entire life on social media because it’s truly that good. If anything, the opposite tends to be true: those who feel the need to share a seemingly perfect life tend to have real lives that are anything but perfect.
With more bots whose primary goal it is to capture our attention—and more people who act like bots with the same goal—we’ll have to be extra mindful to keep living in our own realities, not the illusory ones of someone, or something, else. Our individual and collective happiness depends on it. | https://thegrowtheq.com/the-key-to-happiness-is-living-in-reality/ |
Are you ready to jump into an exciting career opportunity that will provide an opportunity to save lives while feeling challenged and professionally enriched on a daily basis?
White Deer Run Behavioral Health System is one of the leading providers of treatment for drug and alcohol addiction in Pennsylvania. The White Deer Run philosophy simply states that each patient will be treated as an individual, receiving treatment plans tailored to their specific needs.
Under the supervision of the Nursing Supervisor, the LPN is responsible for assisting the Physician in providing patient care in a supportive and therapeutic environment. The Licensed Practical Nurse coordinates with the Physician, Registered Nurse and Director of Nursing cooperates with other departments as required to provide for total patient care.
As a LPN at White Deer Run some of the duties performed are:
- Monitor patient health and administer basic care utilizing the nursing process in assessing, planning and carrying out care plan objectives and goals.
- Provide for the basic comfort of patient; implement nursing interventions identified in the plan of care that is individualized to their needs.
- Apply appropriate interventions to progress the patient towards wellness and address maintenance of wellness.
- Discuss the care provided with patient and listen to their concerns. Report status changes and concerns to registered nurses and doctors
- Keep records on patient health.
- Communicate therapeutically and professionally with patient, visitors, coworkers and others involved in the patient's treatment in an effective manner.
- Accurately administer medications per ordered note, document medication administration and reflect accurate count of controlled substance medication administration on required documents.
- Maintain standards of professional nursing practice in accordance with facility policy and procedures, other external governing and credentialing bodies, performance improvement standards and psychiatric nursing standards.
- Provide for the safe delivery of medication in accordance with policies and procedures, physicians orders and/or current practice. | https://apphired.com/company/new-perspectives-at-white-deer-run-u1/ |
1. Who is a rheumatologist?
A rheumatologist may be an internal medicine physician or a paediatrician who is further specialized to diagnose and treat muscular, joints or autoimmune diseases similar to rheumatoid arthritis.
2. What diseases does a rheumatologist treat?
A rheumatologist can treat diseases like gout, osteoarthritis, chronic back pain, rheumatoid arthritis, tendinitis, spondyloarthropathies, psoriatic arthritis, and lupus.
3. What are the symptoms for which you need to see a rheumatologist?
You can see a rheumatologist for symptoms like back pain, joint pain, rashes, swelling in joints, itching or dry mouth, repeated fevers, bruising over skin, stiffness in joints or back, etc.
4. Is a rheumatologist, and an orthopaedic doctor the same?
No, an orthopaedic doctor can only treat joint and bones related problems. However, a rheumatologist in addition to musculoskeletal diseases also treats unexplained fever, rashes and systemic autoimmune disorders.
5. Does a rheumatologist treat bone cancer?
A rheumatologist is only specialized in non-surgical treatments. Bone cancer can be treated by an orthopaedic surgeon.
Branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of rheumatic diseases [musculoskeletal and systemic autoimmune conditions] such as arthritis, lupus, Sjogren’s syndrome, and many other diseases are called Rheumatologists. Physicians who are specialized in Rheumatology are Rheumatologists.
A 5-year medical degree [MBBS] that is recognized by the General Medical Council and a 2-year foundation course of general training are the basic requirements for an individual to be a doctor. However, following are the specialties or extra qualifications required to be a Rheumatologist:
Individuals who are suffering from any of the musculoskeletal disorders should visit a Rheumatologist 2 times a year or as directed by the doctor and healthy people can visit once in a year.
Individuals suffering from any of the following medical conditions can consult a Rheumatologist.
However, these are only a few of the medical conditions and there are over 200 diseases and conditions that can be treated by a Rheumatologist.
Rheumatologists and Orthopedists are well-trained physicians who are specialized in diagnosing and treating medical disorders & diseases related to joints, muscles, and bones. However, Rheumatologists focus more on joint disorders and treat them through medicines & lifestyle modifications and Orthopedists treats through medicines & surgical treatment and manages the fractures of the body.
Yes, a Rheumatologist can diagnose and treat osteoarthritis through medications and lifestyle modifications. However, one can also consult other medical professions like Orthopedic doctors and Occupational therapists for faster recovery from osteoarthritis and better treatment outcomes.
In a few cases, gout may cause arthritis and can lead to joint pain. Rheumatologists can diagnose gout and provide an appropriate treatment plan to reduce the pain. So, Rheumatologists act as a resource for primary care doctors.
Rheumatologists can not perform surgeries and they treat musculoskeletal diseases through therapeutic methods and lifestyle modifications. If surgery is required to perform, then the patient may be referred to specialists who are experienced in performing related surgeries. | https://www.practo.com/hyderabad/rheumatologist |
A transient ischemic attack often referred to as TIA is considered a mini cerebrovascular accident or stroke that happens when a part of the brain or spinal cord becomes ischemic or loses adequate blood supply.
Unlike with a full-blown stroke, however, the ischemic episode is temporary, leaving no lasting damage, and any symptoms incurred is usually temporary.
While not life threatening, having a transient ischemic attack is a sign that a patient is at high risk for stroke, and thus should be managed to prevent further ischemic episodes that may have longer lasting or even permanent, debilitating effects.
Causes of Transient Ischemic Attack
The brain and its supporting structures are very dependent on oxygen to continue functioning. While there are collateral circulations in place to ensure continued blood and oxygen supply to the brain, any prolonged disruption of cerebral circulation can cause the brain to eventually deteriorate.
As with a full-blown ischemic stroke, a transient ischemic attack occurs when there is a blockage in an artery supplying blood to the brain or spinal cord, typically a blood clot. When blood supply is blocked, the cells become deprived of oxygen.
However, unlike with a stroke, the blockage is quickly broken down while the brain’s collateral structure is still able to adequately supply the brain with blood, which is why there is no lasting brain damage and any neurological symptoms experienced are temporary, or transient.
Risk Factors to Transient Ischemic Attack
Transient ischemic attacks can happen in any age group, although some patients are at higher risk than most. Patients most at risk for developing transient ischemic attacks include the following:
- Genetic predisposition to stroke, or other pre-morbid conditions that increase risk for stroke
- Patients with blood clotting or blood disorders
- Hypertension
- Diabetes mellitus
- Patients with high cholesterol (Hyperlipidemia) and atherosclerosis
- Tobacco and marijuana smoking
- Excessive alcohol intake
- Obesity
- Physical inactivity or immobility
- Advancing age – the risk for transient ischemic attack doubles each year once past 55 years old
- Gender – males are more likely to have a transient ischemic attack than females, and African-Americans and Hispanics are at higher risk for experiencing an ischemic episode.
- History of stroke – previous stroke patients are at a higher risk for both transient ischemic attacks and a second stroke.
Signs and Symptoms of Transient Ischemic Attack
The signs and symptoms of a transient ischemic attack are similar to that of a stroke. A common mnemonic used to identify these symptoms is the F.A.S.T:
- Facial asymmetry: a droop or uneven smile in one side of the face
- Arm numbness or dropping: any sign of numbness or weakness in one or both arms; if both patient’s arms are raised, the affected limb either remains unsteady or steadily drops.
- Speech difficulty: Slurring of speech or any sudden onset of speech impairment.
- Time: Note the time when the patient showed signs of a transient ischemic attack or stroke. Effectiveness of treatment regimen is largely dependent on prompt identification and treatment within the golden time (2 hours).
Other symptoms commonly associated with a transient ischemic attack are:
- Severe headache
- Numbness in the face
- Difficulty walking
- Poor limb coordination and balancing
- Vision problems in one or both eyes
- Difficulty in thinking or in comprehension
Even if a patient’s transient ischemic attack symptoms will fade within an hour, emergency consultation and treatment are still highly recommended, as the risk for a stroke remains very high shortly after an episode.
Diagnosis of Transient Ischemic Attack
While generally not considered life-threatening, a transient ischemic attack is still considered a medical emergency.
In order to diagnose a transient ischemic attack, healthcare providers will run a series of laboratory and diagnostic exams to rule out other neurological conditions, including the episode being an actual stroke. Personal history will also be taken to identify any risk factors in developing an attack.
- Physical exam: A physical exam will consist of neurological tests that will determine the patient’s visual acuity, eye movements and responsiveness, speech, limb tone and strength, and any other sensory deficit. The patient will also be assessed for other signs of premorbid conditions that can increase the risk for stroke, such as pathologic heart sounds indicative of atherosclerosis, elevated blood pressure, or blood sugar levels.
- Laboratory tests. Usually done to help determine the cause of a transient ischemic attack, rule out other diseases, as well as any other causative co-morbid conditions. Typical blood works ordered include complete blood count, PT/PTT, lipid profile, and blood sugar tests.
- CT or CTA scans. CT scans are one of the golden standards in confirming the diagnosis of most neurological disorders, including transient ischemic attacks. A CT Scan uses multiple X-Ray images to create a set of 3D composite images of the scanned area, and for transient ischemic attacks, it provides a visual to determine the presence and extensiveness of brain or artery damage. A CTA scan is a type of CT scan but makes use of infused dye to better visualize blood flow in affected blood vessels in the head and neck.
- MRI and MRA. Another diagnostic test can confirm the presence of stroke or transient ischemic attack. MRIs make use of a magnetic field to generate a 3D image of the targeted area. MRA also makes use of magnetic fields to assess blood vessels, and like CTA scans, may include the introduction of an injectable dye for better visualization. While MRIs and MRAs generally produce higher quality images, they are more expensive and less accessible than CT scans.
- Ultrasound. A healthcare provider may conduct a carotid ultrasound to determine if a clot or plaque build-up in the carotid artery is the cause of the transient ischemic attack. It uses sound waves to produce diagnostic images and is helpful in identifying blocks or narrowing arteries.
- Echocardiography (ECG). Evaluating cardiac function is often done to further evaluate heart and blood vessel conditions that may predispose a patient to a transient ischemic attack. Echocardiography makes use of sound waves to create an image, much like ultrasound. Other more extensive forms of echocardiography, such as TEE, allow better visualization of the heart and blood clots that may not be visible in traditional echocardiogram exams.
- Arteriography. An invasive radiological test that gives better visualization of major arteries through the insertion of a catheter in the femoral artery and injection of a dye to provide X-ray images of the cerebral circulatory system. However, the necessity of this diagnostic test is limited.
Treatment for Transient Ischemic Attack
The goal of treating a transient ischemic attack begins with properly identifying the cause of the attack. It is followed by treating any underlying diseases that could predispose the patient to a repeat attack and preventing further episodes from occurring in the future. Treatment, therefore, primarily depends on the cause of the transient ischemic attack.
- Medication. Drug therapy for transient ischemic attacks includes medications that prevent emboli formation.
- Antiplatelet drugs – medications that inhibit platelets from more readily binding together, forming clots that increase the risk for a second episode. For transient ischemic attack patients, antiplatelet therapy using one or two drugs of the same class is often prescribed for at least a month after the attack. But for patients at higher risk for a repeat episode, therapy may last long-term.
- Anticoagulants – medications that prevent clotting by targeting clotting proteins. However, they are less often used for managing transient ischemic attacks than anti-platelets and pose a greater risk for bleeding than the latter. Anticoagulants are usually prescribed for patients with additional cardiac comorbidities, such as atrial fibrillation, wherein there is a greater risk for developing blood clots.
- Antihypertensive medications – for suspected or diagnosed hypertensive patients, taking antihypertensives is important to regulate blood pressure. Depending on physical assessment and responsiveness to therapy, a patient may be prescribed one or more antihypertensive medications. An important patient education point is to encourage compliance with the therapeutic regimen to prevent unstable blood pressure spikes that could increase the risk for another transient ischemic attack or even a stroke.
- Statins – for patients with hyperlipidemia, statins can be prescribed to help lower LDL cholesterol, or the bad cholesterol, levels in the blood. Having elevated cholesterol puts the patient at increased risk for atherosclerotic plaque formations in blood vessels, which can then break down into smaller pieces that can potentially block cerebral blood flow.
- Surgery. As with drug therapy, surgical management aims to eliminate predisposing factors to another transient ischemic attack.
- Carotid endarterectomy – if a transient ischemic attack patient is found to have a moderately to severely blocked carotid artery, they may be recommended for carotid endarterectomy. This procedure involves making an incision on the carotid artery to remove the fatty plaque buildup and help prevent a future attack
- Angioplasty – another procedure to remedy atherosclerosis is angioplasty, wherein a stent, a thin metal wire mesh, is inserted to open a blocked artery and to help maintain its patency.
Prevention of Transient Ischemic Attack
Compliance with treatment and lifestyle modifications are the recommended, proven ways to prevent a transient ischemic attack or a stroke. Lifestyle modifications include:
- Eating a low salt, low-fat diet with adequate amounts of fruits and vegetables
- Take time to exercise. Engage in regular, moderate intensity physical activity at least every week.
- Limit alcohol intake and stop smoking.
- In addition to complying with the prescribed treatment for a transient ischemic attack, the patient should monitor the underlying health conditions that put them at risk for another attack and comply with treating or controlling them accordingly.
Transient Ischemic Attack Nursing Diagnosis
Transient Ischemic Attack Nursing Care Plan 1
Risk for Ineffective Cerebral Tissue Perfusion
Nursing Diagnosis: Risk for Ineffective Tissue Perfusion (Cerebral) related to previous transient ischemic attack episode secondary to TIA
Desired Outcomes:
- The patient will be able to maintain optimal levels of consciousness, sensory and motor function.
- The patient will be free from signs and symptoms of increased intracranial pressure (ICP), and signs and symptoms of further or recurrence of neurosensory deterioration.
Transient Ischemic Attack Nursing Care Plan 2
Deficient Knowledge
Nursing Diagnosis: Deficient Knowledge related to lack of information or educational resources; cognitive limitation or information misinterpretation secondary to diagnosis of TIA, as evidenced by lack of initial awareness on disease condition, inability to maintain compliance with prescribed treatments.
Desired Outcomes:
- The patient will be able to participate and demonstrate understanding of patient education regarding transient ischemic attacks and their potential complications, risk factors, and prevention.
- The patient will verbalize understanding of the necessity of treatment interventions and demonstrate improved compliance with the therapeutic regimen.
Transient Ischemic Attack Nursing Care Plan 3
Activity Intolerance
Nursing Diagnosis: Activity Intolerance related to transient cerebrovascular impairment and/or transient musculoskeletal weakness secondary to TIA, as evidenced by blood pressure or heart activity abnormalities on activity, easy fatigability, and generalized body weakness.
Desired Outcome: The patient will be able to participate in their recommended physical activity plan with acceptable changes in vital signs, tolerate prescribed physical activities, and demonstrate gradual, increased tolerance for continued physical activity.
Transient Ischemic Attack Nursing Care Plan 4
Risk for Ineffective Therapeutic Regimen Management
Nursing Diagnosis: Risk for Ineffective Therapeutic Regimen management related to lack of knowledge regarding co-morbid conditions (e.g. hypertension, diabetes mellitus), new-onset comorbid conditions, or poor compliance to the treatment plan.
Desired Outcome: The patient will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of treatment plans for any comorbidities for transient ischemic attacks and their possible complications and demonstrate proper and continued compliance to these treatment plans.
Transient Ischemic Attack Nursing Care Plan 5
Risk for Injury
Nursing Diagnosis: Risk for Injury related to body weakness, altered sensory perception (reception, transmission, integration) secondary to TIA
Desired Outcome: The patient will be able to interact appropriately with their environment and will be able to avoid the incidence of fall or injury while the patient is still presenting or is at risk for neurosensory deficit or weakness.
Nursing References
Ackley, B. J., Ladwig, G. B., Makic, M. B., Martinez-Kratz, M. R., & Zanotti, M. (2020). Nursing diagnoses handbook: An evidence-based guide to planning care. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier. Buy on Amazon
Gulanick, M., & Myers, J. L. (2022). Nursing care plans: Diagnoses, interventions, & outcomes. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier. Buy on Amazon
Ignatavicius, D. D., Workman, M. L., Rebar, C. R., & Heimgartner, N. M. (2018). Medical-surgical nursing: Concepts for interprofessional collaborative care. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier. Buy on Amazon
Silvestri, L. A. (2020). Saunders comprehensive review for the NCLEX-RN examination. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier. Buy on Amazon
Disclaimer:
Please follow your facilities guidelines, policies, and procedures.
The medical information on this site is provided as an information resource only and is not to be used or relied on for any diagnostic or treatment purposes.
This information is intended to be nursing education and should not be used as a substitute for professional diagnosis and treatment. | https://nursestudy.net/transient-ischemic-attack-nursing-diagnosis/ |
Dyslexia is one of the most common learning disabilities impacting reading, writing, and spelling skills. A comprehensive evaluation based on reading, writing, and spelling skills will help to exclude these conditions and confirm a diagnosis of dyslexia. The goal of the evaluation is to identify strengths and weaknesses to create a plan for accommodations or interventions to help an individual manage their disorder.
It cannot be cured but can be managed with the right treatment plan. The treatment options include tutoring, accommodations in school, and dyslexia therapy. It is estimated that it affects 5-17% of the population, a relatively common condition. This condition occurs in individuals who have normal intelligence and normal vision. With the proper support, people with dyslexia can succeed in their education and careers. This blog post will provide an overview of dyslexia, including its diagnosis and treatment options.
How is Dyslexia Diagnosed
The diagnosis is based on a combination of factors. This evaluation includes testing for reading, writing, spelling skills, and processing speed. It can also assess IQ, achievement, and cognitive abilities. In some cases, neuropsychological testing may be used to evaluate brain function. A diagnosis of dyslexia is usually made after considering all of this information. Although there is no cure for this disorder, early identification and intervention can help lessen its impact.
Reading Evaluation
The testing process may involve having the person read a text aloud, answer questions about what they have read, or complete other tasks that require reading skills. In addition to assessing reading skills, the evaluation may include testing for other conditions impacting reading ability, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or auditory processing disorder.
Writing Evaluation
It can include phonemic, phonology, vocabulary, and grammar assessments. Testing for dyslexia may also evaluate fluency, speed of processing, and memory. A comprehensive evaluation will combine testing with a review of the individual’s medical and educational history.
Spelling Evaluation
A diagnosis requires that a person demonstrate consistent spelling difficulty despite receiving adequate instruction and support. The person’s age, educational history, and other factors will also be considered.
Processing Speed Evaluation
Many people with dyslexia have difficulty processing information quickly. It can impact reading speed and the ability to make quick decisions. This dyslexia evaluation can involve testing of reading, writing, or math skills. In some cases, an assessment of reaction time may also be included. This assessment can also track a person’s progress over time.
When Should you Visit a Doctor?
Individual experiences dyslexia differently and may have a wide range of symptoms. Common signs that someone may have dyslexia include difficulty with phonemic awareness, phonology, word decoding skills, etc. However, it may be worth talking to a doctor if you struggle with:
- reading;
- writing;
- or other language-based tasks.
It can severely affect all elements of a person’s life if it is not treated. One of the significant risks is that people are significantly more likely to experience academic failure. People can experience mental health issues in addition to educational challenges. As people with this illness may find it difficult to make and keep friends, it can also result in social isolation. Finally, it can also cause issues at work.
Dyslexia Treatment
Specific dyslexia treatment is tailored to the individual’s needs. However, some general tips include:
- Conducting dyslexia therapy, which helps to improve reading skills through phonemic awareness training and practice with letter-sound relationships;
- Providing a structured and supportive learning environment;
- Breaking down tasks into smaller, more manageable parts;
- Encouraging the use of visual aids and other tools to help with learning.
Treatment for dyslexia can also consist of specialized instructions, accommodations, and assistive technology. Specialized instruction focuses on teaching reading and writing skills in a way that matches a person’s learning style. Accommodations are changes that can be made to how instructions are given or tasks are completed. Assistive technology is a tool that can help people with this disorder to overcome some of their difficulties. Common examples of assistive technology include text-to-speech software and spell checkers.
It is important to note that dyslexia treatment should be started as early as possible for best results. With early diagnosis and interventions, people can learn to read and spell at age-appropriate levels.
How to Prevent the Development of Dyslexia
The earlier dyslexia is identified, the sooner treatment can begin, and the better the chances are for success. There are also some educational programs, testing, and technologies that can help people with dyslexia. They include:
- specialized teaching methods;
- computer programs;
- and books that use a different kind of font that is easier to read.
People can also benefit from accommodations and modifications in their daily lives. For example, they may need extra time to complete tasks or be allowed to use a computer instead of paper and pencil.
Research suggests that early diagnosis and reading instruction can make a big difference for children at risk for dyslexia. Additionally, ensuring your child gets plenty of opportunities to read and write from a young age can help reduce the risk.
Book an Appointment at Lone Star Neurology Doctors
While dyslexia can occur in people of all ages, it is most commonly diagnosed in childhood. If you suspect your child has this disorder, it is necessary to visit a doctor or other healthcare provider for an evaluation. Early diagnosis and treatment are essential for helping people reach their full potential.
Based on the evaluation results, our Lone Star Neurology specialists can help create a treatment plan that works for you. With early diagnosis and treatment, people with dyslexia can lead successful and fulfilling lives.
FAQs
- Who gets dyslexia?
Dyslexia can affect people of any age, race, or socioeconomic background. While it can occur in anyone, it is more likely to develop in people with a family history. Additionally, boys are more likely to be diagnosed with this illness than girls.
- What is the prognosis for dyslexia?
Some people with dyslexia may find that they can overcome their reading and writing difficulties through various accommodations and strategies. In contrast, others may continue to struggle with this condition throughout their lives. The most important thing for people is to get the support and resources they need to manage their symptoms and succeed.
- What is living with dyslexia like?
For some people, it may mean difficulty with reading, writing, and spelling. For others, it may mean problems with specific math skills or organization. Some people may also have trouble with fine motor skills, such as writing or using a computer. While dyslexia can be a challenge, it is often associated with creativity, out-of-the-box thinking, and strong visual memory.
- Is dyslexia treated with medication?
Some people may find that medication can help them to manage their symptoms and improve their ability to read and write. However, if you think medication may be proper for you, speak to your doctor or dyslexia specialist to discuss your options.
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Pain affects people differently. For some, it triggers obvious physical reactions. However, pain can be much more complex and personal. It can influence emotions, productivity, finances, and have a negative impact on an individual's quality of life. This is why PPMA is dedicated to the diagnosis, management and treatment of acute and chronic pain. Our physicians will perform a thorough evaluation of each patient. A specific treatment plan is then formulated to address the patient's individual needs. This treatment plan may include interventional procedures that help identify and treat the pain generator. Management may also utilize medications, physical therapy, a home exercise program and a holistic approach specifically tailored to each individual patient. | https://www.shacpc.com/PublicPages/Pain-Management.aspx |
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