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History of the Institute of Arctic Biology
- Brian M. Barnes
Interim Director 2001
- James S. Sedinger
Interim Director 1998-2001
- Robert G. White
Acting Director 198 | History of the Institute of Arctic Biology
- Brian M. Barnes
Interim Director 2001
- James S. Sedinger
Interim Director 1998-2001
- Robert G. White
Acting Director 1985-1986
Interim Director 1992
- Francis S.L. Williamson
- John Bligh
- George C. West
Acting Director 1974-1977
- Peter Morrison
- Laurence Irving
Abstracted from "IAB, the First 25 Years,"
by George C. West
In the fall of 1962, Laurence Irving, then chief of the physiology section of the Arctic Health Research Laboratory of the U.S. Public Health Service in Anchorage left the comforts of Alaska’s largest city and moved to the more typically arctic winter climates of Fairbanks. His long-time associate and technician, Leonard J. Peyton and his research assistant, L. Keith Miller, joined Irving in Fairbanks.
Prior to 1962, Irving had been collaborating with scientists around the world in studies related to human survival in the north. In the army, Irving and his son-in-law Per F. Scholander, originally from Oslo, Norway, but then from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, observed human reaction to the dark, cold, and confining conditions of arctic winter. They published papers on the affects of carbon monoxide on humans while attempting to heat tightly sealed structures for warmth in the Arctic.
Larry Irving was director of the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory at Barrow, Alaska, from 1947 to 1949, and traveled around the North Slope observing and recording animal, plant, and human adaptation to the cold. He spent time with the native Eskimo people, the Nunamuit, at Anaktuvuk Pass, and gathered treasures of accumulated native experiences in the Arctic from his friend, and later colleague, Simon Paneak.
In July 1963, Irving had an opportunity to meet with and listen to a number of scientists concerned with environmental physiology in the cold at a symposium held at the Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory on Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks. The symposium, “Comparative Physiology of Temperature Regulation,” brought together many individuals who would play a role in the future Institute of Arctic Biology (IAB): J. Patrick Hannon and Charles J. Eagan, both human physiologists at the Aeromedical Laboratory; Eleanor G. Viereck, a mammalogist acting as editor of the symposium proceedings (future IAB faculty); Peter R. Morrison, environmental physiologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin (future IAB director); J. Sanford Hart, head of the physiology section at the National Research Council of Canada Laboratories in Ottawa; C. Ladd Prosser, comparative physiologist and professor at the University of Illinois (feasibility committee member); William R. Dawson, avian physiologist and professor at the University of Michigan of Oslo; Max Kleiber, renowned for his work in energy metabolism and retired professor from the University of California, Davis; Jack W. Hudson, environmental physiologist and professor at the Universit |
There is a paucity of clinical trial data supporting the efficacy of most drugs used to treat Cushing's disease, researchers reported.
Just one drug -- pasireotide -- has been evaluated in a randomized, double-blind trial, but even it | There is a paucity of clinical trial data supporting the efficacy of most drugs used to treat Cushing's disease, researchers reported.
Just one drug -- pasireotide -- has been evaluated in a randomized, double-blind trial, but even it was judged by the researchers to have only a'moderate' level of evidence supporting its effectiveness and safety.
The review of the literature evaluating drug treatments for Cushing's disease, a rare pituitary disorder, is the first to employ a rigorous systematic approach with strict, predefined inclusion criteria and formal analysis of the quality of evidence using an established standard, researcher Monica Gadelha, MD, PhD, of Brazil's Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and colleagues wrote in the journal Clinical Endocrinology.
"This systematic review indicates that the majority of medical therapies currently used in the treatment of Cushing's disease are supported by a low level of evidence," the researchers wrote. "Further well-designed prospective studies of medications in Cushing's disease would help to inform clinical practice further."
Cushing's disease is the most common form of endogenous Cushing's syndrome, a hormonal disorder resulting from persistent exposure to abnormally high levels of the hormone cortisol. In the case of Cushing's disease, the cortisol is secreted by a pituitary adenoma.
Prolonged exposure to high levels of cortisol raises the risk for diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and nephrolithiasis. Patients with persistent Cushing's disease have a 3- to 5-fold higher mortality than the general population.
Surgery to remove the pituitary adenoma is the first-line treatment for Cushing's disease in the U.S., and when the procedure is performed by an experienced surgeon, remission rates in patients with smaller tumors range from 65% to 90%. The long-term remission rate is lower, however, because many patients develop recurrent disease.
Several medical therapies are widely used to treat patients who are not candidates for surgery or who experience relapse following surgery.
Novartis Oncology's somatostatin analog drug pasireotide (Signifor) became the only drug approved for this indication in December of last year. And the progesterone-blocking drug mifepristone, best known as the abortion pill once called RU-486, was approved in February of 2012 for the treatment of Cushing's disease-associated hyperglycemia.
Other drugs -- including metyrapone, mitotane, cabergoline, and ketoconazole -- are also used off-label in the treatment of Cushing's, and several have shown better response rates than pasireotide in small studies.
In their systematic review, Gadelha and colleagues identified 15 studies that included at least 10 adults with Cushing's disease and reported treatment responses as the proportion of patients reaching a specified definition of response. Studies examining combinations of medications were excluded from the analysis, as were studies with indefinite diagnoses of Cushing's disease.
For medications other than mifepris |
Estrogen can improve the health of post-menopausal women by reducing the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. But hormone replacement therapy can also increase the risk of heart disease and breast cancer.
Researchers are trying to figure out the exact mechanism of | Estrogen can improve the health of post-menopausal women by reducing the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. But hormone replacement therapy can also increase the risk of heart disease and breast cancer.
Researchers are trying to figure out the exact mechanism of estrogen activation in the brain; such knowledge could one day lead to new drugs providing middle-aged women the cognitive benefits without increasing their risk for other illness.
In a new study, Dr. Karyn Frick, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), uncovered details about estrogen’s role in the complex cellular communication system underlying memory formation.
“The receptor mechanisms that regulate estrogen’s ability to enhance memory are still poorly understood,” said Frick.
“With this study, we’ve begun to sort out several of the key players needed for estrogens to mediate memory formation.”
The research, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, focused on estrogen effects in a brain region called the hippocampus, which is critical to memory and deteriorates with age or Alzheimer’s disease.
The researchers found that each of the two known estrogen receptors rapidly activate a specific cellular pathway necessary for memory formation in the hippocampus of female mice, but only if they interact with a certain glutamate receptor, called mGluR1.
The study revealed that when this glutamate receptor is blocked, the cell-signaling protein ERK cannot be activated by the potent estrogen, 17β-estradiol. Because ERK activation is necessary for memory formation, estradiol failed to enhance memory among mice in which mGluR1 was blocked.
Frick’s team also found evidence that estrogen receptors and mGluR1 physically interact at the cell membrane, allowing estradiol to influence memory formation within seconds to minutes.
Collectively, the data provide the first evidence that the rapid signaling initiated by such interactions is essential for estradiol to enhance memory regulated by the hippocampus.
“Our data suggesting that interactions between estrogen receptors and mGluR1 at the cell membrane are critical for estradiol to enhance memory provides important new information about how estrogens regulate memory formation,” Frick says.
Researchers know that membrane proteins are better targets for drug development than proteins inside the cell. As a result, they believe the study findings could lead to a new generation of pharmaceutical therapies that provide the cognitive benefits of estrogens without harmful side effects. |
The method for modeling the rest of the object is the same. Start with a Line, continue your way to Edit Spline, add, move and shape new vertices and segments according to the image and make a spline cage ready for Surface Modifier to | The method for modeling the rest of the object is the same. Start with a Line, continue your way to Edit Spline, add, move and shape new vertices and segments according to the image and make a spline cage ready for Surface Modifier to serve you with the third dimension. Set the Steps level to zero and convert the mesh to editable poly. Add, move, and shape new vertices and edges in editable poly mode and use NURBS to smooth the mesh. Finding and using a Front View Blueprint or image is very useful to guide us to how much we should move the vertices along the Z Axis. You can add this image later just to fix up the model and make it more accurate.
So we have this after a few steps (Fig.05 - 06).
Section 2 - Modeling the car
In this section we are going to talk about Car Paint Material, lighting, rendering and the Photoshop settings to use to get a good result. These steps lead us to get a good render without using a lot of time. I'm going to use the mental ray engine for the rendering passes, but the method could be used with any other engines too. I've chosen mental ray as it is a part of 3ds Max and so we can easily apply ready to use shaders and settings.
So, let's start with the car body material. One of the greatest materials included in mental ray is Car Paint Material, which could be found in the Materials list if you set the rendering engine to mental ray. So press F10 and in the Assign Renderer tab change the Production renderer to mental ray. Open up the material editor and choose an empty slot. Set the material to Car Paint Material. (Mental ray materials are shown with a yellow sphere).
There are a few tabs in Car Paint Material. Let's have a brief review:
- Diffuse Coloring: here you set the color of the car body, controlling weight and bias
- Flakes: here you set the density, color, scale and other options of the body paint through tiny metallic pieces called Flakes
- Specular Reflections: here you set how the body paint will respond against light and GI
- Reflectivity: here you set how reflective and shiny |
Understanding File System Options
A file system, also referred to as a file management system or filesystem, is exactly what its names implies -- the mechanism an operating system or program uses to organize and keep track of files. The files systems most commonly used | Understanding File System Options
A file system, also referred to as a file management system or filesystem, is exactly what its names implies -- the mechanism an operating system or program uses to organize and keep track of files. The files systems most commonly used with Windows operating systems are the File Allocation Table (AKA FAT) and NTFS. FAT is available in two versions, FAT16 and FAT32.
FAT16 File SystemsWhether you're looking for a refresher on files systems or want to learn the difference between FAT file systems and NTFS file systems, this tutorial explains the ins and outs, and pros and cons of each.
The File Allocation Table (commonly known as FAT or FAT16) is supported by Windows Server 2003 as well as all Windows operating systems, DOS, and a host of other non-Microsoft operating systems.
FAT partitions are allocated in clusters, the size of which varies automatically based on the size of the partition in use. The larger the partition, the larger the cluster size; the larger the cluster size, the more space "required" when writing data to the disk.FAT File System Cluster Sizes
|0 MB - less than 16MB||4,096 bytes||12-bit|
|16 MB - 128MB||2,048 bytes||16-bit|
|128 MB - 256 MB||4,096 bytes||16-bit|
|256 MB - 512 MB||8,192 bytes||16-bit|
|512 MB - 1024 MB||16,384 bytes||16-bit|
|1024 MB - 2048 MB||32,768 bytes||16-bit|
As you can see, with a 2 GB partition size (the maximum allowed under FAT16 in many cases), if you were to save 50 different files, all 1024 bytes (1 KB) in actual size (or to have 50 fractions of larger files "fall over" to the next cluster by that same amount), the amount of hard drive space used up would be 1,638,400 bytes (a littl |
New Zealand's Recent HistoryEdit
Major Events in the Twenty First Century - 2000-2007Edit
The population of New Zealand reached four million.
The Foreshore and Seabed Controversy
The foreshore and | New Zealand's Recent HistoryEdit
Major Events in the Twenty First Century - 2000-2007Edit
The population of New Zealand reached four million.
The Foreshore and Seabed Controversy
The foreshore and seabed controversy was under heavy debate in 2004. The foreshore and seabed debate involved the Maori wanting ownership of New Zealand beaches, as they saw it a customary right. This claim was based around the fact that Maori used to 'own' the beaches before Europeans came to New Zealand, and the Treaty of Waitangi stated that Maori could keep their lands and possessions.
The New Zealand public were surprised and shocked by the claim to the beaches. The Prime Minister at the time, Helen Clark, said that the Government would be passing law to ensure that beaches remained in public hands. However, the law incorporated Maori being consulted over foreshore and seabed matters. Due to this, the Labour Party was heavily attacked by National Party leader, Don Brash, who said the Government showed favouritism towards Maoris. Soon afterwards National was ahead of Labour in an opinion poll.
On the 18th of November 2004, the Labour Government passed the Foreshore and Seabed Bill and it became law. The Act made the foreshore and seabed property of the Crown. However, the Act was still subject to dispute, with some calling for modifications to the law.
The Maori Party Formed
The Maori Party was launched on the 7th of July 2004. It was formed around a former Labour Party Cabinet Minister, Tariana Turia, and as its name suggests, it is based on the indigenous Maori population. The foreshore and seabed controversy was one of the main reasons for setting up the party.
The Maori Party contested the 2005 general elections, and won four of the seven Maori seats and 2.12% of the party vote.
Anti-smacking Bill Passed as Law
The Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007, commonly known as the anti-smacking Bill, was a highly controversial Bill introduced by Green Party MP Sue Bradford, which amended Section 59 of the Crimes Act. The Bill removed legal defence of'reasonable force' for parents prosecuted of assaulting their children.
There was large-scale public opposition to the Bill. In opinion polls, there was overwhelming public opposition to the Bill. Despite this, the Bill was passed on the 16th of May 2007, with a large majority of 113 votes against 8. |
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) - CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It is a vegetable subscription program where individuals and families purchase a share of the harvest, paying the farmers in the winter and early spring, and receiving produce in the summer.
| Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) - CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It is a vegetable subscription program where individuals and families purchase a share of the harvest, paying the farmers in the winter and early spring, and receiving produce in the summer.
Rain barrel - A rain barrel is a system that collects and stores rainwater from your roof that would otherwise be lost to runoff and diverted to storm drains and streams.
Native plants - A plant species that occurs naturally in a particular region, ecosystem, and habitat without direct or indirect human actions.
Invasive plants - A non-indigenous species that adversely affect the habitats they invade economically, environmentally, and ecologically.
Bio-diesel - Bio-diesel is a domestic, renewable fuel for diesel engines derived from natural oils like soybean oil, and which meets the specifications of ASTM D 6751.
Farmland preservation - Farmland preservation |
The new Minor in Digital Humanities is an interdisciplinary program that introduces students to one of the most important emerging fields in the arts and humanities. Digital Humanities develops and uses computing tools to explore texts, images, and ideas in novel ways. Harnessing the | The new Minor in Digital Humanities is an interdisciplinary program that introduces students to one of the most important emerging fields in the arts and humanities. Digital Humanities develops and uses computing tools to explore texts, images, and ideas in novel ways. Harnessing the processing power of the computer and the possibilities for collaboration and communication offered by the internet, it produces new insights, information, and perspectives into literature, language, history, and art. Learning in the courses is enabled through a hands-on approach that allows the students to learn by doing. Digital Humanities is a potent mix of both theory and practice: students are taught to apply the methods and perspectives of the humanities to the digital medium, while also learning the coding, programming, and design skills needed to build and employ a variety of digital tools. In this way, Digital Humanities offers students training in critical thinking an |
How to Build
3D Web Links
3-D models are built using special software (e.g., 3D Studio MAX, Lightwave). Complex 3-D objects can be created from simple objects (spheres, cylinders, boxes) | How to Build
3D Web Links
3-D models are built using special software (e.g., 3D Studio MAX, Lightwave). Complex 3-D objects can be created from simple objects (spheres, cylinders, boxes) by applying various transformations (bending, extruding, etc.). Also, complex surfaces can be built automatically using 3-D scanners. However, most insects are too small for scanning.
We bought 13 insect images from Viewpoint Labs and then modified them to increase biological accuracy. For example we added textures to several insects, wing veins for a bee and and fly, etc.
To make a stereo image, you need to have 2 pictures for the right and left eye. Then place them side by side on one larger picture. For example, if each image is 320x240 pixels, then the combined image will have the size of 640x240 pixels. The picture for the left eye should be on the right side, and the picture for the right eye should be on the left. Save this combined picture |
The Concentration Camp The Beginning of Protective Custody (Part 5 of 5)
Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression
Volume I Chapter XI
C. Persecution of Jews. Thousands of Jews, were, of course, confined in | The Concentration Camp The Beginning of Protective Custody (Part 5 of 5)
Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression
Volume I Chapter XI
C. Persecution of Jews. Thousands of Jews, were, of course, confined in concentration camps. (For a fuller discussion of this point see Chapter XII.) Among the wealth of evidence showing the confinement of Germans only because they were Jews, a teletype from SS Gruppenfuehrer Heydrich is typical. This order is dated 10 November 1938, and is addressed to all headquarters of the State Police and all districts and sub- districts of the SD (3051-PS).
Paragraph 5 of this teletype, which was entitled "Measures against Jews tonight," provided: "*** 5. Inasmuch as in the course of the events of this night the employment of officials used for this purpose would be possible, in all districts as many Jews, especially rich ones, are to be arrested as can be accommodated in the existing prisons. For the time being only healthy men not too old are to be arrested. Upon their arrest, the appropriate concentration camps should be contacted immediately, in order to confine them in these camps as fast as possible." (3051-PS)
Himmler in 1943 indicated that use of the concentration camp against the Jews had been motivated, not simply by Nazi racialism, but also by a fear that the Jews might have been an obstacle to aggression. In a speech delivered at a meeting of the SS Major Generals at Posen on 4 October 1943, Himmler sought to justify the Nazi anti-Jewish policy: "I mean the clearing out of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. It's one of those things it is easy to talk about -- 'The Jewish race is being exterminated', says one party member, 'that's quite clear, it's in our program, elimi- [Page 954] nation of the Jews, and we're doing it, exterminating them'. And then they come, 80 million worthy Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course, the others are vermin, but this one is an A-1 Jew. Not one of all those who talk this way has witnessed it, not one of them has been through it. Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500 or 1,000. To have stuck it out and at the same time -- apart from exceptions caused by human weakness -- to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written, for we know how difficult we should have made it for ourselves, if -- with the bombing raids, the burden and deprivations of war -- we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators and trouble- mongers." (1919-PS)
It is clear from the foregoing evidence that prior to the launching of a Nazi aggression, the concentration camp had been one of he principal weapons by which the conspirators achieved the social cohesion which was needed for the execution of their plans for aggression. After the conspirators launched their aggression and their armies swept over Europe, they brought the concentration camp and the whole system of Nazi terror to occupied countries.
In addition, they brought the citizens of the occupied countries to Germany and subjected them to the whole apparatus of Nazi brutality. In a communication to Himmler dated 116 February 1942, Mueller, for the Chief of the Security Police and SD, deals with the seizure of Polish Jews for deportation to concentration camps in Germany. I should like to quote the body of this communication: "In connection with the increase in the transfer of labor to the concentration camps, ordered to be completed by 30 January 1943, the following procedure may be applied in the Jewish section.
"1. Total number: 45,000 Jews. "2. Start of transportation: 11 January 1943; End of transportation: 31 January 1943. (The Reich railroads are unable to provide special trains for the evacuation during the period from 115 February 1942 to 10 January 1943 because of the increased traffic of armed forces leave trains). "3. Composition: The 45,000 Jews are to consist of 30,000 Jews from the district of Byalystock. 10,000 Jews from the Ghetto Theresienstat, 5,000 of whom are Jews fit for work who heretofore had been used for smaller jobs required for the Ghetto, and 5,000 Jews who are generally incapable [Page 955] of working, also over 60 year old Jews *** As heretofore only such Jews would be taken for the evacuation who do not have any particular connections and who are not in possession of any high decorations. 3,000 Jews from the occupied Dutch territories, 2,000 Jews from Berlin 45,000. The figure of 45,000 includes the invalid (old Jews and children). By use of a practical standard, the screening of the arriving Jews in Auschwitz should yield at least 10,000 to 15,000 people fit |
Math Counts Pasta Counter
This easy-to-make Math Counts Pasta Counter is the perfect manipulative for teaching children to add numbers zero through ten to get a sum of ten. This is an important concept for all children to learn since it teaches them that | Math Counts Pasta Counter
This easy-to-make Math Counts Pasta Counter is the perfect manipulative for teaching children to add numbers zero through ten to get a sum of ten. This is an important concept for all children to learn since it teaches them that each pasta piece represents one number- a skill all children are expected to learn in kindergarten! After creating this craft from simple materials and easy instructions, children and their parents will enjoy exploring the world of addition!
What you'll need:
How to make your pasta counter:
- 5 pieces of penne pasta
- Scotch tape
- Tacky glue
- colored marker
- Hole punch
- 2 large pieces of cardstock
- 1 small pieces of cardstock
- 1 clothespin
- 15 inches of yarn or string
- Take one large cardstock and turn it horizontally. Write “Math Counts!” on the top of the large piece of cardstock. Write the numbers one through ten along the bottom of the cardstock. Write “What is the answer?” along the bottom of the cardstock next to the number ten. Punch one hole in the center of either side. An alternative is to write “What are the addends?” If you choose to write addends, you can explain to your child that these are the two or more numbers added together to get the sum or the answer! (see photos).
- Thread the yarn or string through the left hole punch and secure to the back with scotch tape.
- Cut the five penne pasta pieces in half and thread them onto the yarn. Thread the end of the yarn through the hole on the right side of the cardstock and secure with scotch tape.
- Place glue on the edges of the back of the cardstock and place the other piece of cardstock on top. Press down firmly and allow glue to dry. (see photos)
- Meanwhile, cut a “+” out of the small piece of cardstock and glue it to the end of the clothespin that opens up. Allow the glue to dry. (see photos)
- Once the glue is dry, your pasta counter is ready for use. To use, place the addition sign clothespin somewhere on the yarn, in between the pasta. Have your child count up the number of pasta to the left of the clothespin and add it to the number of pasta on the right side of the clothespin. If you want to practice addition with sums other than ten, all you need is another clothespin. Simply push the unwanted pasta to the side and use the second clothespin as a “wall.” For example, if you wanted to add three plus four, your pasta counter would have three pasta pushed to the side, followed by the second clothespin (without the addition sign), followed by the three pasta pieces, then the addition clothespin followed by the final four pasta pieces.
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Bicycle locks endangering health of McGill’s most vulnerable trees
The tree in question, a 10-year-old magnolia acuminata, stands in front of the Macdonald-Harrington Building. It’s not much to look at | Bicycle locks endangering health of McGill’s most vulnerable trees
The tree in question, a 10-year-old magnolia acuminata, stands in front of the Macdonald-Harrington Building. It’s not much to look at, standing barely 10 feet tall, with a few spindly branches at its uppermost reaches – branches that carry fewer and fewer leaves in the summer months.
The tree, a protected species in North America and the only one of its kind on McGill’s lower campus, is dying. And it’s not dying of disease or as a result of an infestation of some exotic bug. Ironically, it’s being killed by cyclists.
With the greening of lower campus, more people are riding their bikes to McGill and the extra two-wheel traffic means crowded bike racks. The University is in the process of doubling the number of bike racks on lower campus from 1,200 to 2,4000. Nevertheless, some cyclists insist on chaining their rides to anything that doesn’t move, including fences, signposts, wheelchair access ramps – and small trees.
The problem with the latter is twofold. First, the constant rubbing and banging of locks, chains, pedals and pointy derailleurs cut into the protective bark, leaving the tree susceptible to disease, fungi and insects. It also impairs the flow of sap, which usually runs just below he surface of the bark.
Second, the relentless traffic of people and bikes at the base of the tree tamps down the soil, compacting it and making it more difficult for the roots to absorb water – another hindrance to the healthy flow of sap.
With its vital supply line of sap in an increasingly compromised state, the magnolia tree is literally withering to the point where its trunk at bike level is significantly thinner than it is higher up the tree (see photo). It is slowly strangling to death.
“This tree has almost stopped growing,” said Champagne. “It should be twice as large as it is now. And it’s a shame because in Canada this is a fairly rare tree.”
The situation is compounded because cyclists are locking their bikes to smaller trees all around campus, including just inside the Milton Gates. As a result, a generation of smaller, less robust trees is increasingly at risk of developing serious problems.
Gee, I wonder why bicycles are being inappropriately and excessively crowded just inside the Milton Gates? |
Health & Fitness News
New Device May Lessen Need for Surgery for Kids with Scoliosis
Hemera Technologies/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Ashley Crane, 24, had her first scoliosis surgery when she was | Health & Fitness News
New Device May Lessen Need for Surgery for Kids with Scoliosis
Hemera Technologies/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Ashley Crane, 24, had her first scoliosis surgery when she was 14.
“I had two surgeries, a week apart,” she said. “I remember my spine was very unstable…then I had the rods and screws placed.”
For Crane, who today is a nursing student as well as a competitive tap dancer, two operations were enough. But for most younger patients with scoliosis, many more surgeries await.
Scoliosis is an abnormal bend or curve in the spine that usually affects children and young adults. For up to 80 percent of scoliosis cases, the cause is unknown. More than 4 percent of the population is affected by scoliosis; however not all will require surgery. For those who do, surgery can be extensive.
The reason spinal fusion doesn’t work well in young patients is that they are still growing. Instead, doctors use adjustable rods that they can lengthen as time goes by.
It works, but it has a price -- these children and teens must undergo surgery every six months to lengthen the rods appropriately. Because of this, these young patients may require half a dozen operations -- or even more. Each of these surgeries requires full general anesthesia and re-opening of the old wounds to access the rods.
While this technique has proven successful and beneficial for many children afflicted by the disease, it is invasive, painful and requires multiple hospitalizations, which often keeps these children in the hospital and out of school. With multiple procedures also comes an increased risk of complications and infections.
But hope may be on the horizon for these kids.
A new study released in the journal Lancet reports the results of a new device that has been developed to minimize the number of operations required to help straighten the spine of young children affected by severe scoliosis.
This device uses the same concept of the growing rod, but instead of relying on surgery for adjustments, the rods instead are lengthened non-surgically using magnets -- thus eliminating a great deal of pain and recovery time.
In the new study, researchers from Hong Kong report its use in five patients. So far, two of these patients have gone two ye |
What should school kids eat for lunch? Save the hot dogs for the weekend…there are new recommendations out today that say children should be eating a lot more of the good stuff. It’s been a while since the menu has been tinkered with | What should school kids eat for lunch? Save the hot dogs for the weekend…there are new recommendations out today that say children should be eating a lot more of the good stuff. It’s been a while since the menu has been tinkered with, so the Institute of Medicine (a science research arm of Congress) has taken an extensive look. The group finds that subsidized school lunches need to include much more veggies and fruits and much less french fries. While that sort of approach will be costly, keeping the menu the same is arguably more costly — obesity is a crisis among America’s children. But when you look at the recommendations today there is one that jumps out. While there is no question the report is pushing hard for healthier options, according to the Associated Press, here’s what they say about fruit at lunch: “Each week, kids should be offered 2 ½ to 5 servings of fruit for lunch, depending on their grade…No more than half the fruit servings should be juice.” Juice is a fruit? Sounds like ketchup is a vegetable. |
AIDS Epidemic Now 20 Years Old, But Still in Early Stages
Major Influx of Funds Still Needed to Fuel Response, UNAIDS Says
June 5, 2001
Cape Town -- When the first official | AIDS Epidemic Now 20 Years Old, But Still in Early Stages
Major Influx of Funds Still Needed to Fuel Response, UNAIDS Says
June 5, 2001
Cape Town -- When the first official report of the disease now known as AIDS was published exactly 20 years ago, no one knew it would become the most devastating epidemic in human history.
"It was inconceivable that AIDS would spread so rapidly," said Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), "that within the first 20 years it would infect 58 million people, killing 22 million of them."
The first official report of the disease that came to be known as AIDS was made on 5 June 1981 in a nine-paragraph report by the US Centers for Disease Control. The report catalogued five cases.
Today, the epidemic has spread rapidly to all parts of the globe and has shifted in emphasis. "It is a brief history of evolving understandings and shifting paradigms," Dr. Piot said, "from a medical curiosity to a complex health issue with major development, political, and human security dimensions."
The brief history of the epidemic has been peppered with significant milestones. In 1983 a heterosexual AIDS epidemic was revealed in Africa, and by 1985, at least one case of HIV/AIDS had been reported from each region of the world. Efforts to respond to the epidemic gathered momentum and 1987 saw the creation of a number of bodies to deal with the rapidly spreading disease: the World Health Organization's Special Programme on AIDS (which later became the Global Programme on AIDS), the International Council of AIDS Service Organizations (ICASO), and the Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS. It would take several more years, until 1991, for the first success to be declared in a developing country -- HIV prevalence in young pregnant women in Uganda began to decrease between 1991 to 1993.
The first drug to treat AIDS was approved by the Federal Drug Administration in the United States in 1987 but triple antiretroviral therapy would have to wait until 1996. Meanwhile, although trials are underway in several countries, the world continues to search for a vaccine.
The dramatic reality of AIDS is that in many parts of the world it is still in its early stages. "HIV is characterized by a relatively long gap between infection and major illness," Dr. Piot said. "Its natural dynamic is to show up first among those at heightened risk, while at the same time it gradually moves across the whole of the sexually active population."
To mark their commitment to reversing the epidemic, world leaders will gather in New York later this month, from 25-27 June, at a Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on AIDS.
Around the world, 36.1 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, the vast majority of them in sub-Saharan Africa, where 3.8 million people became newly infected just last year. Of the more than 10.4 million AIDS orphans living worldwide, over 90% live in sub-Saharan Africa.
This article was provided by UNAIDS. Visit UNAIDS' website to find out more about their activities, publications and services. |
Even if kids don't fully understand maths they can still learn about how money works from an early age.
In the current global climate, children are constantly surrounded by round-the-clock financial news and information.
However, helping them apply it to real life | Even if kids don't fully understand maths they can still learn about how money works from an early age.
In the current global climate, children are constantly surrounded by round-the-clock financial news and information.
However, helping them apply it to real life and bringing them up to be financially savvy is primarily down to parental guidance and some real-life example setting.
If you’re unsure of what age to start teaching your children about financial responsibility, the answer is now.
Young infants can start to get a feel for money exchange by playing with toy shops or being allowed to hand over the coins for your morning coffee. Always encourage children to make stalls, selling products like homemade lemonade from the front door, or holding a garage sale of their u |
When climate change affects where birds sing
AbstractRecent changes in temperature and precipitation have implications for transmission and excess attenuation of sounds, with important consequences for the choice of vocal display sites by animals. Birds typically sing from within or at the top of the | When climate change affects where birds sing
AbstractRecent changes in temperature and precipitation have implications for transmission and excess attenuation of sounds, with important consequences for the choice of vocal display sites by animals. Birds typically sing from within or at the top of the vegetation, and the relative height of such song posts varies consistently among species. I estimated relative height of positions in the vegetation used by singing birds in 1986--1989 and again in 2010 after spring and summer temperatures had increased by 20% and precipitation by 30%, predicting that these changes would increase the height of song post positions. Average song post height increased by 18% or 1.2 m during the study. Because the increase in song post height should depend on relative costs and benefits of such change, I predicted that sexually dichromatic species and species with increasing populations and hence intense intraspecific competition for mates should cause increases in song post height, whereas high predation risk by the sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus should prevent increases in song post height because sparrowhawks preferentially prey on birds high in the vegetation. That was indeed the case. These results suggest that display sites for singing birds can change rapidly, with potential consequences for optimal design of songs, variance in mating success, and predator--prey interactions. Copyright 2011, Oxford University |
Scroll down to see full description and guide.
Three objects are spinning so quickly that you see only a blur. From the shape of the blur it is difficult to guess the shape of the object. Push a button to stop the spinning and see what | Scroll down to see full description and guide.
Three objects are spinning so quickly that you see only a blur. From the shape of the blur it is difficult to guess the shape of the object. Push a button to stop the spinning and see what is really there.
The three objects are: a line that rotates to make a hyperboloid, a cube that rotates to make a combination of cones and hyperboloid, and three ellipses that rotate to make a cylinder. |
Trans Identities at a Glance
- Many people’s gender identities differ from the sex assigned to them at birth.
- Trans is an umbrella term that includes many ways people’s gender identities may differ from their sex.
- Trans people can have | Trans Identities at a Glance
- Many people’s gender identities differ from the sex assigned to them at birth.
- Trans is an umbrella term that includes many ways people’s gender identities may differ from their sex.
- Trans people can have fulfilling lives and relationships.
What if you have a guy’s body but you feel like a girl? What if you like your girl’s body but want people to treat you like a guy? What if you can’t stand your woman’s body because it keeps you from being the man you know you are? What if wearing opposite-sex clothing just feels right? What if you don’t feel like either “man” or “woman” accurately describes you?
Millions of people have asked themselves these and other questions about their gender identities. Here are some of the most common questions we hear about trans identities. |
Environmentalists monitoring the Australian oil spill and harm to sea turtles and other marine life have spotted sea turtles with eyes burning due to the chemical dispersents being used to stop the out-of-control oil spill. World Wildlife Fund reported that endangered hawksb | Environmentalists monitoring the Australian oil spill and harm to sea turtles and other marine life have spotted sea turtles with eyes burning due to the chemical dispersents being used to stop the out-of-control oil spill. World Wildlife Fund reported that endangered hawksbills and threatened Australian flatback sea turtles were seen swimming in the oil. The oil rig has caught on fire and will likely melt into the sea and contaminate the region for years.
Long-time activist Richard Charter who has been fighting to protect California's coast from new offshore oil rigs for decades has been pointing to the the Australian oil disaster as a reason why we need to halt the push to drill in the U. S.
He was interviewed tonight (Nov. 4, 2009) on the CBS Evening News. See the outsta |
|This section needs additional citations for verification. (May 2009)|
სოხუმი, Аҟәа,
Sokhumi, Akwa,
|Partially recognized country | |This section needs additional citations for verification. (May 2009)|
სოხუმი, Аҟәа,
Sokhumi, Akwa,
|Partially recognized country||Abkhazia|
|• Mayor||Alias Labakhua|
|Highest elevation||140 m (460 ft)|
|Lowest elevation||5 m (16 ft)|
|Time zone||MSK (UTC+4)|
|Area code(s)||+7 840 22x-xx-xx|
Sukhumi (Georgian: სოხუმი, Sokhumi; Abkhaz: Аҟәа, Aqwa; Russian: Сухум, Sukhum); is the capital of Abkhazia, a disputed region on the Black Sea coast. The city suffered significant damage during the Georgian–Abkhazian conflict in the early 1990s.
In Georgian, the city is known as სოხუმი (Sokhumi) or აყუ (Aqu), in Megrelian as აყუჯიხა (Aqujikha), and in Russian as Сухум (Sukhum) or Сухуми (Sukhumi). The toponym Sokhumi derives from the Georgian word Tskhomi/Tskhumi and means beech. In the ancient Greek sources (Pseudo-Skilak of Kariand- IV c. B. C. ) it is mentioned as Dioskuria. According to the antique traditions this name originates from the mythical Dioskures. Dioskures- Greek Dioskurio, (exactly - sons of Zeus) – twin brothers Kastor and Polidevkes. It was believed that, the town was established by the coach-men of the Dioskures, the Argonauts Telkius and Amphyst. But, the names of the town may be the Greek comprehension of the old Georgian word combination. It is significant, that “dia” in several dialects of the Georgian language and among them in Megrelian means mother and “Skuri” means water. In Abkhaz, the city is known as Аҟәа (Aqwa) which according to native tradition signifies water.
The medieval Georgian sources knew the town as Tskhumi (ცხუმი). Later, under the Ottoman control, the town was known in Turkish as Suhum-Kale, which can be derived from the earlier Georgian form Tskhumi or can be read to mean 'water-sand fortress'. Tskhumi in turn is supposed to be derived from the Svan language word for 'hot', or the Georgian word for 'hornbeam tree'.
The ending -i in the above forms represents the Georgian nominative-suffix. The town was initially officially described in Russian as Сухум (Sukhum), until 16 August 1936 when this was changed to Сухуми (Sukhumi). This remained so until 4 December 1992, when the Supreme Council of Abkhazia restored the original version, that was approved in Russia in autumn 2008, even though Сухуми is also still being used.
Sukhumi is located on a wide bay of the eastern coast of the Black Sea and serves as a port, rail junction and a holiday resort. It is known for its beaches, sanatoriums, mineral-water spas and semitropical climate. Sukhumi is also an important air link for Abkhazia as the Sukhumi Dranda Airport is located nearby the city. Sukhumi contains a number of small-to-medium size hotels serving chiefly the Russian tourists. Sukhumi botanical garden was established in 1840, one of the oldest botanical gardens in the Caucasus.
The city has a number of research institutes, the Abkhazian State University and the Sukhum Open Institute. From 1945 to 1954 the city's electron physics laboratory was involved in the Soviet program to develop nuclear weapons.
The history of the city began in the mid-6th century BC when an earlier settlement of the second and early first millennia BC, frequented by local Colchian tribes, was replaced by the Milesian Greek colony of Dioscurias (Greek: Διοσκουριάς), geographically the remotest that Miletus ever established. The city is said to have been so named for the Dioscuri, the twins Cast |
To what extent do animals consciously experience emotions?
The question is one that until recently could not have been asked with any seriousness at a scientific conference without risking snorts of derision. Heretofore it just wasn’t done to speculate on animal | To what extent do animals consciously experience emotions?
The question is one that until recently could not have been asked with any seriousness at a scientific conference without risking snorts of derision. Heretofore it just wasn’t done to speculate on animal emotions, because to do so ran the risk of “anthropomorphizing” your subject.
Yet at an animal behavior meeting I attended last week at the University of Newcastle in northeast England, a session of talks was devoted to just that.
We might assume that animals have some level of conscious experience, said Mike Mendl, a biologist at the University of Bristol in southwest England — but how on earth can we measure emotion?
You can’t as |
Also available at:
Last updated 2009.11.23
The World Wide Web, cyberspace and personal computing in general are wonderful things, but they are also big and nebulous and carry some risks. It pays to take some | Also available at:
Last updated 2009.11.23
The World Wide Web, cyberspace and personal computing in general are wonderful things, but they are also big and nebulous and carry some risks. It pays to take some precautions to protect your time and your information investments. We have worked intensively with computers for over twenty years, from microcomputers to mainframes. We have learned a few things along the way, which can be of benefit to you.
Go find your startup diskette (or CD-ROM or Zip disk or whatever media it is on). Now!
Got it? Good. Make a point of starting your system from this media in the next while. Make sure it behaves as expected. If not, make or get a new one, and test the new one. Once you have a known good startup media, put it away again in a safe, easily accessible place. Test it occasionally.
Couldn't find it or don't have one? Go, make one as soon as you possibly can and test it to ensure it works correctly. In the event of a system failure or a severe virus attack, this may be your lifeline to recovering your computer and your data.
Thou shalt make copies of valued data.
If you are one of the few that actually make regular backups of your computer system, and test them, no need to spend your time reading the rest of this section. Unfortunately, those that need to read this the most will probably not do so.
Hardware fails. Viruses attack. Power fluctuates or fails. Files are deleted unintentionally, and occasionally, deliberately. Upgrades have unintended consequences. Those files you knew you would never need again, well, surprise, now you need them again. Spilled coffee does not enhance system performance. Whatever the cause, it is not a matter of "IF", it is a matter of "WHEN". Eventually, you will need to retrieve a file that is no longer on your system. And after many years of experience, the only reliable means I have found to accomplish a resurrection from the electronic hereafter is a backup. Simply put, it is a copy of the files on your system as of a specific point in time.
Computers have an annoying tendency to fail when you can least afford it. However, they will fail. Most learn this the hard way, just after they really needed to know. Occasionally you will get lucky. Perhaps there is a fix for the virus that attacked your system that will repair most or even all of the damage, and you will know enough to be find it and administer it in time. Perhaps someone you know has a copy of the file you need and can provide it to you in a timely manner. Perhaps you have an IT support group at your disposal with enough resources to respond to your crisis right when you need them, even at 2:00 a.m. on Saturday morning as you are working the weekend to meet a Monday morning submission deadline. Perhaps you have friends that just love to drop the rest of their life to come and rescue you from your "File not found" error. (If you have just found yourself in one of these situations, I am not your friend.) If you are the beneficiary of such good fortune, good for you. However, in my experience, depending on good luck is a poor long-term strategy.
There are those that believe in mirrored and RAID disk drive
systems to protect their data. I have used both and think highly
of them. But they are not backups. They simply provide some
redundancy to protect you from a minor hardware failure. They
cannot help you to retrieve a file that was intentionally deleted
a couple of weeks ago, or damaged by a virus or lost in fire or
flood. I have worked for many years as a computer systems
professional, and I can assure you that every large system I ever
worked on, including those with mirrored drives and RAID arrays,
had a regular schedule of independent backups to a separate media,
and those media were taken off-site for safe storage. It isn't
just a matter of habit, it's simply good business. In any system I
have ever worked with, the data stored on the system is far more
valuable than the hardware, software or facilities housing them.
If the computer room burns up, that is a major headache, and it
will typically take days to get an equivalent facility back into
operation. However, if you lose the company's data (customer
contacts, customer history, inventory records, employee records,
accounts receivable, accounts payable, taxes collected and
remitted), well, then you're out of business. Count on it. You may
think you can recover, but the first irate customer or lawyer that
finds out your data is toast will finish you off. Guaranteed. And
that applies to a one-person operation using a single small
computer (even as small as a Blackberry or a Palm Pilot o |
Durham Regional Forest
Durham Regional Forest is 596 hectares (1,473 acres) of forested property owned by the Region of Durham and managed by us. Much of this forest consists of land that was reforested in the | Durham Regional Forest
Durham Regional Forest is 596 hectares (1,473 acres) of forested property owned by the Region of Durham and managed by us. Much of this forest consists of land that was reforested in the 1920s to prevent soil erosion. Although forest management remains a priority for the Durham Regional Forest, it also provides outstanding recreational opportunities and wildlife habitat.
There are over 16 kilometres of trails in four marked loops, as well as numerous secondary trails throughout the main tract of Durham Forest which provide an opportunity for hiking, biking, horseback riding or skiing on the rolling topography of the Oak Ridges Moraine. The trail network in Durham Regional Forest also contributes to larger regional and national trail networks through its contribution to the Oak Ridges Trail and the Trans Canada Trail.
The forest is also part of a larger complex of public protected areas, including the East Duffins Headwaters owned by Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, and the Town of Uxbridge’s Countryside Preserve.
FACILITIES & SERVICESHiking and walking trails
Oak Ridges Moraine
Mature example of reforestation
Durham Forest Environmental Education Centre (managed by the Durham District School Board)
LOCATION AND MAPS
The main tract of the forest can be accessed from a parking lot on the 7th Concession of Uxbridge. Many of the smaller tracts, which also have recreational trails, have small parking lots on adjacent Concession roads. |
Think about it. Media literacy no longer protects “only” the quality of the information we take in. It now protects our relationships and even our identities – on several levels. It’s an understatement to say we need to be media literate | Think about it. Media literacy no longer protects “only” the quality of the information we take in. It now protects our relationships and even our identities – on several levels. It’s an understatement to say we need to be media literate more than ever now. I’ve posted plenty about the relationships part (social literacy), so this time the identity part, because I’ve seen no better illustration of why we and our children need media literacy than in legal commentator Jeffrey Rosen’s “Who do They Think You Are?” in the New York Times Magazine.
We parents have been talking about “profiles” and what information kids put in them for almost a decade (see this about “the IM life of middle-schoolers”), but that’s almost a distraction from what we need to teach them about the profiles that are put together for us and our children: our consumer profiles. Together with what we do and post in social media, these profiles – amassed by marketing companies (which of course help make digital media “free” and ubiquitous) – not only shape our online “identities” but also how we view our world. Which can have an impact on one’s actual identity, not just the so-called online one (a distinction that will be made less and less anyway).
But I’m getting ahead of myself. How does digital technology shape our identity? You’ve heard about personalized advertising and tracking cookies, and Rosen goes into detail about how it all works, citing University of Pennsylvania professor Joseph Turow’s book The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry Is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth. For example, he writes, “a consumer gets a particular reputation and is then inundated with offers online and off, and the results are tracked as he passes through an advertising gantlet – from customized articles (whose writers’ pay is based on how many products their stories sell) to discount offers transmitted to TVs and mobile phones. Some marketers are even looking forward to digital billboards that will flash discounts or personalized pricing the moment you enter a store, after reading your customer profile from your mobile device.”
Digital blinders & constraints
Here’s where media literacy comes in. All that (and do read the article to understand how it’s done) points to two developments we all need to know about:
* A kind of con |
Palm Oil... The Ape Killer
Animal and environmental welfare organisations call on consumers to question products containing palm oil which destroys Orangutan habitats
Ordinary food shoppers are unwittingly causing the extinction of rain forest animals such as the much-lo | Palm Oil... The Ape Killer
Animal and environmental welfare organisations call on consumers to question products containing palm oil which destroys Orangutan habitats
Ordinary food shoppers are unwittingly causing the extinction of rain forest animals such as the much-loved Orangutan.
One in ten of supermarket products contain palm oil; from foods like bread, crisps and chocolate to cosmetics, soaps, shampoos and toothpaste.
Most mass-produced palm oil is responsible for the accelerated destruction of precious rain forests in Malaysia and Indonesia, home to the Orangutan. Around 5,000 of these intelligent apes are being driven from their unique habitats in Borneo and Sumatra each year, as loggers make way for palm oil plantations.
Orangutans and other animals wander dazed and confused across the tree-flattened areas, while plantation workers butcher the frightened apes with machetes or even burn and bury them alive. Hundreds of orphaned babies are also left alone to die or sold in the illegal pet trade.
At the current rate of destruction, it's expected that Orangutans could be extinct in ten years, along with their forest habitat.
Friends of the Earth have recently reported on the current state of corruption and political greed existing in Borneo. Researchers say that forest fires, deliberately set by palm oil companies since 1998, have now killed around one third of the orangutan population. Friends of the Earth also say that the Indonesian Government is planning to convert a significant area of Tanjung Puting National Park, the world's most famous protected area for orangutan, into an oil-palm plantation.
Animal Welfare group, Ape Alliance, represent organisations such as the Borneo Survival Foundation and Safe Palm Oil. They have websites that are appealing to the public to write to supermarket CEO’s, asking them to stop palm oil sourced from environmentally destructive plantations being used in the products they sell. Safe Palm Oil also has a sample letter for consumers to download and post or hand in to shops, supermarkets and manufacturers.
The animal and environmental website VeggieGlobal also has a support page that draws together web linked information to help consumers take urgent action.
A spokesperson for VeggieGlobal says, "Palm oil is used in most savoury snack foods and chocolate, which should give the consumer an idea of how serious the problem is, since millions of packets of crisp type snacks and sweets are eaten daily."
In the 1980's a welfare campaign forced many food manufacturers to change their sourcing of tuna fish, because careless fishing methods were also killing dolphins that get caught up in nets.
VeggieGlobal says, "If you were making conscious efforts to buy 'dolphin friendly' tins of tuna, then it's now time to think twice before buying foods or cosmetics containing palm oil which could be destroying entire forests and all the animals living there. In the end, it's the consumer who carries the responsibility as well as the power to stop such atrocities. If you ignore an ethical issue as important as this, it means that unscrupulous plantation growers will continue to provide manufacturers with ingredients that destroy habitats on a global scale. So ask questions. When the ingredients on a product include vegetable oil, it may be that that this includes palm oil, so find out where it comes from. A shop manager will probably have no idea, but persist and make sure your question is logged. And if you don’t get a satisfactory answer, don't buy the product."
VeggieGlobal also adds, "It's just like the Brazilian rain forest destruction, where areas the size of Portugal are unnecessarily lost each year to soy plantations. The rich growers couldn't care less about the environmental costs, and the paradox is that ordinary farm land is available to produce palm oil and soy beans. It's purely a question of high yield profits, because growers pay much less for felled forest land, or in many cases the forest is illegally logged and claimed for plantation. These countries clearly need to provide strong incentives to steer growers towards non-destructive means. Until then these practices will continue as long as manufacturers and consumers create the demand for unethically sourced ingredients."
To help and act on this crisis visit:
Safe Palm Oil
Save the Orangutan
VeggieGlobal's Good-Cause Support to Help Save the Orangutan
UK Friends of the Earth archive report worth reading at www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/one_in_ten_supermarket_pro_22092005.html
© 2006 VeggieGlobal & Looking-Glass |
Behind the buzz and beyond the hype:
Our Nanowerk-exclusive feature articles
Posted: May 15, 2007
Lighting up the nanoverse
(Nanowerk Spotlight) Integrating biochemical analysis with micro- and nano | Behind the buzz and beyond the hype:
Our Nanowerk-exclusive feature articles
Posted: May 15, 2007
Lighting up the nanoverse
(Nanowerk Spotlight) Integrating biochemical analysis with micro- and nano-oelectromechanical systems (MEMS and NEMS) has led to the development of a new class of biomedical analytical devices called lab-on-a-chip. They combine a number of biological functions (such as enzymatic reactions, antigen-antibody conjugation, and DNA probing) with proper micro- or even nanofluidic laboratory components (such as sample dilution, pumping, mixing, metering, incubation, or separation) and detection in micron- and nanometer-sized channels and reservoirs into one single device. In order to reduce the size of these lab-on-chip devices even more, researchers increasingly are finding ways to turn micron-sized components into nanosized components. One problem they have been faced with so far is the issue of illumination. Today, many state-of-the-art lab-on-a-chip devices use external illumination sources, such as lasers or light emitting diodes (LEDs). Being able to fully integrate the excitation and detection mechanisms on lab-on-a-chip devices would allow further size reductions and increase the flexibility for using and handling them. Researchers at Cornell University have electrospun light-emitting nanofibers that, if they can be integrated with micro- and nanofluidic devices, could achieve excitation of light-induced fluorescence and detection within that same device.
Schematic of an electroluminescent nanofiber spanning two electrodes
(in yellow) with 500nm spacing. Light emission was confined to a small region between the electrodes (orange glow) (Image: Craighead Group, Cornell University)
"Even though LEDs are relatively inexpensive and can have sub-millimeter size, they are still much larger than the typical micro- or nanofluidic device and have to be mounted outside of the sensing region" José Manuel Moran-Mirabal explains to Nanowerk. "Some attempts have been made at fabricating
on-chip point sources that can be coupled to micro- and nanofluidic devices. However, these point sources are usually much larger than the fabricated devices, can be expensive to fabricate, or do not emit in the visible spectrum. Our work was motivated by the need to have emission sources that can be easily integrated intro micro and nanofluidic devices. Our goal was to fabricate such a device. Our demonstration of the emission from electrospun light-emitting nanofibers was the first step towards this goal."
The basic impact of this work is in the development of sub-wavelength emission sources. Although the immediate application would be for lab-on-a-chip devices,
such light emitters could also be used in combination with flexible and conventional electronics wherever a small light source is needed.
In the past, some sub-wavelength light sources have been fabricated with dimensions similar to the ones of the Cornell group. Yet the processes used to make them were highly involved and more expensive. The electrospinning technique used for fabricating the nanofibers is both easier and cheaper than high resolution electron beam lithography. Consequently, the nanoscale emission sources that Moran-Mirabal and his colleagues made are easily fabricated and inexpensive.
Electrospinning is a well-developed electrohydrodynamic method used to produce micro- and nanofibers from a variety of dissolved materials without the need of expensive fabrication methods. Within the class of solution processable organic electroluminescent materials, ionic transition metal complexes (iTMCs) have emerged as materials that allow the fabrication of efficient, single-layer light-emitting devices employing airstable electrodes.
"Due to their characteristics, iTMC light-emitting devices make attractive candidates for on-chip light sources" says Moran-Mirabal. "In this sense, having a light-emitting nanofiber based on an iTMC could provide a point source emission profile, with the axial dimension restricted by the iTMC operational mechanism and the radial dimension given by the diameter of the nanofiber."
The researchers also studied the conductance/emission properties of the fibers and found that the intrinsic properties of the luminescent compound, in particular the band-gap and ion mobility, determine the device's response.
Moran-Mirabal describes how the fibers were successfully lit on devices containing gold interdigitated electrodes (IDEs) with interelectrode gaps of 5µm and 500 nm. "Light emission from the fibers spun on 500 nm IDEs was readily detectable with a CCD camera with voltages as low as 3.2 V and visible to the naked eye at 4 V. Emission from the fibers was found to be highly confined to planar regions 240 x 325 nm2 or smaller, with imaged emission areas small enough to be limited by diffraction of the microscope."
The most immediate challenge for the researchers, which they are currently working on, is the stability of the light sources in aqueous solutions. Plans for future research include the development of emitters that have different wavelengths, and multiplexing of light emission into different channels. |
The word “stress” is used in many contexts. Emotionally speaking, we can be “under stress” and we can “stress out”. Physically speaking, we can stress structures or devices to determine how they will hold up, and | The word “stress” is used in many contexts. Emotionally speaking, we can be “under stress” and we can “stress out”. Physically speaking, we can stress structures or devices to determine how they will hold up, and we can stress parts of our body to achieve strength or flexibility. In the world of mental health, stress is defined as a normal physical response to events that make you feel threatened or upset your balance in some way. Our bodies carry something called a “stress response” – meaning, we have an involuntarily defensive reaction to a stressful event. This response helps us to remain extra alert and focused, and it can produce a sudden burst of energy. One of the most common examples of a stress response would be slamming on the brakes of the car when someone suddenly cuts in front of you in order to avoid an accident. The stress response also can sharpen your concentration and keep you on your toes, enabling you to perform more productively in a particular task.
Last week we discussed the negative effects which stress has on us, both physically and psychologically. While we concluded that some stress simply cannot be avoided, and that a small amount of stress is beneficial and can even provide the motivation for better performance on the job or in a particular situation, our main goal should be to reduce the overall amount of stress in our lives.
Recent research as well as emerging science conclusively links stress to pain of all types, heart disease, digestive disorders, sleep disorders, depression, obesity, autoimmune diseases and skin conditions such as eczema. And while the secretion of the stress hormone cortisol can have a positive effect on us in small amounts – enhancing our memory, immune systems and helping to produce a greater threshold for pain, the downside is that having too much cortisol in our system impairs our cognitive functions, causes blood sugar imbalances, muscle loss and fat gain, higher blood pressure and weakens our immune system.
As a means of learning to control our stress as opposed to our stress controlling us, we presented eight tips from Don R. Powell, Ph.D. of the American Institute for Preventive Medicine. For the benefit of those who missed that column, we will reprint the first eight, and round things out with the remaining eight.
• Maintain a regular program of healthy eating, good health habits and adequate sleep.
• Exercise regularly. This promotes physical fitness as well as emotional well-being.
• Balance work and play. All work and no play can make you feel stressed. Plan some time for hobbies and recreation. These activities relax your mind and are a good respite from life’s worries.
• Help others. We concentrate on ourselves when we’re distressed. Sometimes helping others is the perfect remedy for whatever is troubling us.
• Take a warm shower or bath. This will soothe and calm your nerves, and relax your muscles.
• Have a good cry. Tears of sadness, joy or grief can help cleanse the body of substances that accumulate under stress, and will also release a natural pain-relieving substance from the brain.
• Laugh a lot. When events seem too overwhelming, keep a sense of humor. Laughter makes our muscles go limp and releases tension. It’s difficult to feel stress in the middle of a belly laugh. Learn to laugh as a relaxation technique.
• Learn acceptance. Sometimes a difficult problem is out of your control. When this happens, accept it until changes can be made. This is better than worrying and getting nowhere.
• Talk out troubles. It sometimes helps to talk with a friend, relative or member of the clergy. Another person can help you see a problem from a different point of view.
• Escape for a little while. When you feel you are getting nowhere with a problem, a temporary diversion can help. Reading a book, visiting a museum or taking a drive can help you get out of a rut. Temporarily leaving a difficult situation can help you develop new attitudes.
• Reward yourself. Starting today, reward yourself with little things that make you feel good. Treat yourself to a bubble bath, buy the hard cover edition of a book, call an old friend long distance, buy a flower, picnic in the park during lunch time, try a new perfume or cologne or give yourself some “me” time.
• Do relaxation exercises daily. Good ones include visualization (imagining a soothing, restful scene), deep muscle relaxation (tensing and relaxing muscle fibers), meditation and deep breathing.
• Budget your time. Make a “To Do” list. Rank in priority your daily tasks. Avoid committing yourself to doing too much.
• Develop and maintain a positive attitude. View changes as positive challenges, opportunities or blessings.
• Rehearse for stressful events. Imagine yourself feeling calm and confident in an anticipated stressful situation. You will be able to relax more easily when the situation arises.
• Modify your environment to get rid of or manage your exposure to things that cause stress.
While these tips may seem a bit daunting and/or unrealistic at first, read them several tim |
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The Ten Commandments, or Decalog(ue), are a list of religious and moral imperatives which, according to Biblical tradition, were written by God and given to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of | Hover over main image to zoom
The Ten Commandments, or Decalog(ue), are a list of religious and moral imperatives which, according to Biblical tradition, were written by God and given to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of two stone tablets. They feature prominently in Judaism and Christianity. The phrase "Ten Commandments" generally refers to the very similar passages in Exodus and Deuteronomy. Some distinguish between this "Ethical Decalogue" and a series of ten commandments in Exodus 34 that are labelled the "Ritual Decalogue". |
OED has this for eponym:
1.a. One who gives, or is supposed to give, his name to a people, place, or institution; e.g. among the Greeks, the heroes who were looked upon as ancestors or | OED has this for eponym:
1.a. One who gives, or is supposed to give, his name to a people, place, or institution; e.g. among the Greeks, the heroes who were looked upon as ancestors or founders of tribes or cities.
and this for protonym:
The first person or thing of a certain name; something from which another person or thing takes its name.
The distinction appears to be that with eponym, the later thing takes its name from a direct relationship with the earlier thing; whereas with protonym the second thing has simply been given the same name as the first.
Wikipedia gives an example:
A synonym of eponym is namegiver (not to be confused with namesake.) Someone who (or something that) is referred to with the adjective eponymous is the eponym of something. An example is: "Léon Theremin, the eponymous inventor of the theremin."
OED has this:
1880 Scribner's Monthly Mar. 667/2: "The wrecked canal-boat, the Evening Star,..quenched in the twilight, with its heavenly protonym palpitating in the vapor above it."
The instrument called the theremin takes its name from its eponymous ("name-giving") inventor; whereas the boat Evening Star was simply given the existing name of an unrelated thing.
In the question, David Beckham is the protonym of the child.
In British English, the word namesake is a "bi-directional" relation: David Beckham and the child are namesakes. It appears from the Wikipedia entry that in American English namesake can mean protonym as well, and imply a uni-directional relationship. |
The latest news on Arctic
Vessel can hold 500 people annually, operate for 300 days per year for at least 30 years.
Potential impacts include dead zones, acidification, shifts at the base of the ocean's food chain.
| The latest news on Arctic
Vessel can hold 500 people annually, operate for 300 days per year for at least 30 years.
Potential impacts include dead zones, acidification, shifts at the base of the ocean's food chain.
Until recent years, fires on the Arctic tundra were rare.
Wildfires are transforming the Alaskan tundra and may be an accelerant to climate change.
Animals living closest to the North Pole seem to be disappearing.
Sediments had been thought to be capped by subsea permafrost.
The aircraft was the first ever taken to Antarctica, in 1912.
There is increased evidence that the Arctic could face seasonally ice-free conditions.
The northern coastline of Alaska is eroding by up to one-third the length of a football field annually.
Global warming, climate change, UN, greenhouse gases, melting glaciers, melting polar caps, environment, copenhagen, cop15, united nations |
Edited by Webster, Imperatrix, Sondra C, Cipher_nemo and 9 others
Adjusting the tension on a sewing machine can be one of the most daunting tasks to hinder someone who is a "newbie" to sewing. | Edited by Webster, Imperatrix, Sondra C, Cipher_nemo and 9 others
Adjusting the tension on a sewing machine can be one of the most daunting tasks to hinder someone who is a "newbie" to sewing. In fact it often stops people from advancing and using this versatile & creative vehicle of self-expression.
By grasping a few basic concepts, one can understand how to adjust the tension on most any machine, regardless of brand and model.
Most domestic sewing machines are of the "lockstitch" variety. That means an upper thread and a lower thread "lock" together. If they don't lock together in the correct place, the tension is "off" and the seam lacks proper strength.
As the threads lock together, they form a knot. If this knot is in the correct place, it is never seen...it is hidden (locked) between the two layers that are being sewn together. When these knots are obvious on the bottom or the top sewing surface, it's time to adjust your tension.
Basic Concept: If you get a picture in your mind of the tension knob as a device to raise and lower these knots, it makes the adjustment much easier.
1Sew a test seam.
2Observe the seam on the top and the bottom surface using a magnifying device if need be.
3Find the position of the knots.
4Tighten the tension and "pull the knots up" if the knots appear on the bottom side of the sewn seam.
5Loosen the tension and "drop the knots down" if the knots are on the top surface.
6Sew a test on the fabric you will be using. Tensions often have to be adjusted when changing fabric types and weights.
7Continue adjusting the tension and inspecting the seam until your seam is balanced.
- When sewing your test seam, use the same fabric as your project, and the same type of thread, BUT use different thread colors. Choose contrasting top and bottom thread colors, and make sure both contrast with your fabric. This will make everything much easier to see and therefore make your adjustments more accurate. Just remember to change to the right color thread when you are ready to sew!
- Most machines tensions are tightened by turning the tension knob clockwise (see your owner's manual for the location of this dial). Conversely turning the tension knob counter-clockwise loosens the tension.
- There are two tensions on most machines: The upper tension and the bobbin tension. Generally speaking, the bobbin tension never needs adjusting and the sewing person with just average skills can get into much trouble by changing this setting. It may end up with a trip to a professional repairman!
- As you begin sewing a seam, remember to pull the thread tails to the back of the machine and away from the needle area or "bird nesting" can occur. This is another common and frustrating occurrence for new machine operators.
Categories: Sewing Machine Skills
Recent edits by: Mr.Bean, Davjohn, Leona
In other languages:
Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 168,188 times. |
The '7 billionth baby' was officially born today, the United Nations estimates. Key to stabilizing that rapid population growth – and creating a sustainable future – is closing the gender gap and empowering women.
Erik De Castro/AP
The world | The '7 billionth baby' was officially born today, the United Nations estimates. Key to stabilizing that rapid population growth – and creating a sustainable future – is closing the gender gap and empowering women.
Erik De Castro/AP
The world welcomed its 7 billionth inhabitant today when tiny Danica May Camacho made her appearance in a Manila, Philippines, hospital to great fanfare. India also greeted its version of the 7 billionth person on earth: a girl named Nargis, born in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
That these two symbols of a major population milestone were girls is only a coincidence, but it is also a reminder that central to global progress in stabilizing population growth has been the empowerment of women and greater gender parity. Given greater opportunities and rights, women make decisions that slow population growth, and this impact is being seen worldwide, says Babatunde Osotimehin, the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund.
"The move from the 1960s, when the population was 3 billion, to the currently predicted 7 billion," notes Paul Demeny, a distinguished scholar at the New York-based Population Council, "well, that happened in, what – half a century? It will not happen again at that scale. There is every possibility [for the] global economy to cope with this [latest] addition."
It took only a dozen years to make the leap from 6 billion. And according to the same projections found in this year's State of the World Population report from the UNFPA, the population will top 9 billion by 2050 and 10 billion by the end of this century.
Of course, the United Nations' pinpointing of Oct. 31 as the day the world population tops 7 billion is an imprecise choice, as the date was based on mere projections. The 7 billionth inhabitant could have been born months ago, or could still be in the womb.
While the numbers may be staggering, the report paints a far less Malthusian picture than has been bandied about in recent years.
Total population is still climbing, but the rate of growth peaked in the 1960s at about 2 percent. It has steadily declined since then, although it remains well above replacement level in places like sub-Saharan Africa, where it still tops 2 percent.
Stabilizing fertility rates – the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime – is key to managing population growth. The starting point: more education for girls. That can start a "virtuous cycle" of delayed marriage and childbearing, which leads to fewer children and more investment in the children that are born, says Judith Bruce, a senior associate and policy analyst at the Population Council.
If a girl in the developing world spends just a few more years in school, she has more bargaining power in the home when she does marry. When girls and young women have a say, they tend to have fewer children, and those children stay in school longer, Ms. Bruce says.
Education "has a tremendous return [in] all the things that change family size and improve the distribution of resources," Bruce says. "A woman who educates her children sets in process reduced fertility" – fewer, better-cared-for children.
Of the Millennium Development Goals set forth by the UN in 2000, expanding education for women is the one where the world has made the most progress, Mr. Osotimehin says. A high school education is now widely accepted as the minimum a girl should have.
If marriage and childbearing are delayed just five years in the least developed countries, until after adolescence, this would lead to 224 million fewer children born by 2050, according to Population Council data. That would represent a 39 percent reduction in how much the UN expects the population to increase by 2050.
Modernization also plays a critical role. A glimpse of better living options typically spurs people to improve their lot in life. The effect of this is evident in Western Europe, where population growth is at a virtual standstill, Mr. Demeny says.
People rapidly adjust their plans for large families as they realize that children are expensive to raise.
"The basic pressure of conflict between striving for a better standard of living and raising four, five, six children will result in a natural adjustment in fertility rates," Demeny says.
Among city dwellers, particularly couples who are better educated, the average number of children drops by a considerable margin, he says. With more than half the world now living in cities, according to the UN report, that trend has considerable implications for easing population growth.
But even if fertility rates begin declining more rapidly, population growth is "certain" because of the vast number of young people who are entering their childbearing years, says Jose Miguel Guzman, chief of the population and development branch at UNFPA. According to the UN report, people under the age of 24 make up 43 percent of the world population today, and, according to Mr. Guzman, almost 48 percent of the population in developing countries.
The proportion of young people in developing countries is likely to continue increasing at least until 2050, he says. The biggest challenge posed by the boom in the youth population – which, according to Guzman, will not stabilize until 2100, at about 30 percent of the world |
Conditions of Use
1 How do cells divide? If a cell splits in half to become two cells how are both those able to work?
A1 The cell's chromosomes doubles themselves, then both of them move to differnt cell walls. The | Conditions of Use
1 How do cells divide? If a cell splits in half to become two cells how are both those able to work?
A1 The cell's chromosomes doubles themselves, then both of them move to differnt cell walls. The cell elongates and it's plasma membrane grows inward, then the cell splits! The cell divides and creates two twin cells. Those twin cells are able to work because the mother cell gives them everything they need to produce and survive.
Q2 Write a brief description of what is happening at each of the seven stages of cell division starting with Interphase.
A2: 1. Interphase- This is the longest part of the complete cell cycle. The cell is very active while the DNA replicates, centrioles divide, and proteins are being made.
2 Prophase- During the first stage of mitosis, the nucleolus fades and replicated (copied) DNA and associated proteins, also called the chromatin, condenses into the chromosomes. Each one of these chromosomes has two chromatids, all of those chromatids have the same genetic information. The microtubules of the cytoskeleton also disassemble.
3 Prometaphase- the nuclear envelope collapses in this stage so there is no longer a recognizable nucleus. Some spindle fibers connect to chromosomes, but others elongate and and overlap each other at the cell center.
4 Metaphase- Tension applied by the spindle fibers aligns all chromosomes in one plane at the center of the cell.
5 Anaphase- Spindle fibers shorten, the kinetochores separate, and the daughter chromosomes, also called chromatids, are pulled apart and begin moving to the cell poles.
6 Telophase- The daughter chromosomes arrive at the poles and the spindle fibers that have pulled them apart disappear.
7 Cytokinesis- the spindle fibers that didn't attach themeselves to chromosomes start breaking down until only a small portion of the overlap is left. Also in this region, a contractile ring finally separates the cell into two sister cells. Microtubules in both of those cells then reorganize themselves into a new cytoskeleton for the return of cell interphase.
Article posted January 31, 2012 at 06:54 PM •
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Getting the Most from your Combustion Analyzer: 60 minutes
(up to 1 BPI CEU available)
Instructor: Bill Spohn
Come learn the basics of combustion and the latest diagnostic procedures that are used to determine if vent | Getting the Most from your Combustion Analyzer: 60 minutes
(up to 1 BPI CEU available)
Instructor: Bill Spohn
Come learn the basics of combustion and the latest diagnostic procedures that are used to determine if vented and unvented combustion appliances are operating safely. Learn how carbon monoxide is formed and which tools are used to diagnose problems and ensure safe equipment operation. Learn how basic combustion science works so you are better able to interpret the results from your combustion analyzer.
This course will help you understand the basics of combustion and carbon monoxide emissions for both vented and unvented appliances, know what to look for when assessing and testing for combustion safety, better understand the science of combustion to be more knowledgeable for your employer/client, as well as discover the equipment and underlying technology used to conduct combustion safety testing |
This question is a part of the museum's Systems at Work exhibit. We encourage the exhibits online visitors to leave their thoughts on these topics, just as visitors to the actual exhibit are doing.
Postal workers have used a variety of machines to help sort | This question is a part of the museum's Systems at Work exhibit. We encourage the exhibits online visitors to leave their thoughts on these topics, just as visitors to the actual exhibit are doing.
Postal workers have used a variety of machines to help sort and process mail as quickly as inventors could create them. What seems easy, mailing and receiving a letter, is only deceptively simple. The size of the United States, combined with its growing population (of many different national origins and writing styles) and (until recently) ever-increasing mail volumes, has long made mailing and receiving a letter a challenging process.
There are four aspects to mails’ journey. It is collected, or deposited, into the postal system. Then it is processed, and then transported (these two aspect |
GOES Satellite Eyeing Late Season Lows for Tropical Development
Hurricane Season 2011: System 90E (Eastern Pacific Ocean)
Its late in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific hurricane seasons, but the calendar isn't stopping the tropics | GOES Satellite Eyeing Late Season Lows for Tropical Development
Hurricane Season 2011: System 90E (Eastern Pacific Ocean)
Its late in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific hurricane seasons, but the calendar isn't stopping the tropics. The GOES-13 satellite is keeping forecasters informed about developing lows like System 90E in the eastern Pacific and another low pressure area in the Atlantic.
System 90E and the Atlantic low pressure area were both captured in one image from the NOAA's GOES-13 satellite today, Nov. 18, 2011 at 1145 UTC (7:45 a.m. EST). The image was created by the NASA GOES Project (in partnership with NOAA) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
The low called System 90E appears to be getting organized on the GOES infrared imagery with the largest amount of clouds north and east of the low's center of circulation.
System 90E was located about 475 miles south of the Gulf of Tehuantepec near 9.2 North and 95.9 West at 1 a.m. EST on November 18. It was moving to the west at 15 mph, and is producing a concentrated area of showers and thunderstorms near its center of circulation, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC). NHC gives System 90E a 40 percent chance of becoming a tropical depression over the weekend.
Meanwhile in the Atlantic Ocean GOES-13 captured another low pressure system that has less of a chance of developing this weekend. The low pressure area is located in the central Atlantic and appears elongated from north to south. It contains a large area of clouds and showers. The low is about 900 miles east and northeast of the Leeward Islands.
It developed from a combination of three factors: an interaction between a surface trough (elongated area) of low pressure, an upper level low pressure area and a tropical wave. The NHC expects slow development over the next couple of days, and has given it a 10 percent chance of development over the weekend.
West of the Atlantic Low is the strong cold front denoted by a line of clouds stretching from northeast to southwest that brought severe weather (including tornadoes) to the southeastern U.S. on November 16.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
/, Greenbelt, Md. |
The overall field of political science includes several major subfields: American politics, comparative politics, international relations, political economy, and political philosophy. Most political science departments at universities encourage students to specialize or concentrate in one of these subfields.
The biggest | The overall field of political science includes several major subfields: American politics, comparative politics, international relations, political economy, and political philosophy. Most political science departments at universities encourage students to specialize or concentrate in one of these subfields.
The biggest subfield of political science in the United States, American government focuses on voting behavior, political parties, lawmaking, the Constitution, public administration, public policy, the role of the courts, and other facets of American government. Some departments refer to this subfield as “civics.”
Comparative politics compares systems of government in other countries. For example, a comparative political scientist might examine the impact of political parties on elections in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, or she might compare the constitutions of Argentina and Barbados.
International relations scholars examine the ways in which nations interact. Whereas comparative politics compare the internal workings of a state, international relations focuses on how states relate to one another, such as why and how states trade, cooperate, and fight.
Political economy is the study of how economics and politics affect each other. Political scientists in this subfield might look at the impact of economic power on international relations or how different economies develop within similar political systems.
Some political scientists study the tradition of political philosophies from Plato to the present. This subfield tries to answer questions and develop theories about such abstract issues as ethics, authority, the nature of liberty and freedom, the meaning of civil rights and civil liberties, and how governments should function. |
Fuguitt Elementary truly embraces the “it takes a village” approach to character education. Staff members are focused and intentional as they work to build the academic program on the foundation of a strong character education base. Student leaders, known as Character Co | Fuguitt Elementary truly embraces the “it takes a village” approach to character education. Staff members are focused and intentional as they work to build the academic program on the foundation of a strong character education base. Student leaders, known as Character Coaches, lead discussions of the school’s character book of the month. Reading and writing programs have been intentionally linked to character education. Teachers have integrated the service learning program into the curriculum and provide structured opportunities for student initiative and reflection. Students are included in the planning and leadership stage, and both pre- and post-reflection opportunities are developed for each activity. The assistant principal, who launched the Bully-Free Club, and the guidance counselors and classroom teachers all have critical roles in the success of the school. At Fuguitt, all employees ar |
Library of Congress
The Spanish Tragedy become accepted as William Shakespeare's work, it will be the first time new work has been added to Shakespeare's canon since Edward III was acknowledged as his in the 1990s.
If the | Library of Congress
The Spanish Tragedy become accepted as William Shakespeare's work, it will be the first time new work has been added to Shakespeare's canon since Edward III was acknowledged as his in the 1990s.
If the 325 lines from Thomas Kyd's play
William Shakespeare was a singular genius who sometimes made that hard to see — or at least read.
The New York Times reports this week that modern computer analysis has persuaded scholars that 325 lines in the 1602 edition of Thomas Kyd's play The Spanish Tragedy were truly authored by Shakespeare.
The Bard's name was not on the script, but researchers have scoured other Elizabethan plays for bits and pieces of Shakespeare because he was a showman who would get called in occasionally to "punch up" a speech or plot — like a Hollywood script doctor.
Douglas Bruster of the University of Texas at Austin, who is editor of a forthcoming new edition of the complete works of Shakespeare that will include those lines from The Spanish Tragedy, says there's been skepticism about that passage because it seemed to have little of Shakespeare's powerful music or metaphor.
But new analysis suggests that the Elizabethan printer may have simply misread Shakespeare's speech because the Bard was a genius who had poor penmanship.
Bruster told the Times, "What we've got here isn't bad writing, but bad handwriting."
His observation might make you wonder if, over the centuries, scholars were simply stymied by Shakespeare's quill-and-ink chicken-scratches and just kind of wrote in something on their own.
What if, for example, Shakespeare's Marc Antony was mostly thirsty when he began his funeral oration over Julius Caesar, and Shakespeare actually began, "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your beers..."
A classic tragedy sounds like a Budweiser spot.
What if Shakespeare had Hamlet, woe-struck by the hatred that can hide in the human heart, including his own, actually greet Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by remarking, "What a piece of jerk is a man!"
What if Shakespeare really wrote that Lady Macbeth looked down at her tunic after the killing of the King of Scotland that she had inspired and saw not a splotch of blood, but something on her shoe and said,"Out, damned knot!"
A little less powerful, isn't it?
What if Shakespeare wrote that Romeo looked up to the balcony of the Capulet household and actually exclaimed, "But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet looks like she might be a lot of fun."
Not the same brilliant image as a beloved who shines like the sun, is it?
And what if two Ps got confused for Bs in the opening lines of Hamlet, "to be or not to be" — and it turns out that Shakespeare was only trying to decide what he was going to do during intermission? |
<time, standard> (UT) The mean solar time along the prime meridian (0 longitude) that runs through the Greenwich Observatory outside of London, UK, where the current system originated. UT is tied to the rotation of the Earth in | <time, standard> (UT) The mean solar time along the prime meridian (0 longitude) that runs through the Greenwich Observatory outside of London, UK, where the current system originated. UT is tied to the rotation of the Earth in respect to the fictitious "mean Sun".
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was measured from Greenwich mean midday until 1925 when the reference point was changed from noon to midnight and the name changed to "Universal Time".
There are three separate definitions, U |
With Sonoma Valley students headed back to the classroom on
August 21, they likely start each day with the Pledge of Allegiance or some
other “appropriate patriotic exercises” — a tradition that goes back
In California, as is | With Sonoma Valley students headed back to the classroom on
August 21, they likely start each day with the Pledge of Allegiance or some
other “appropriate patriotic exercises” — a tradition that goes back
In California, as is the case with many states, classrooms in public schools are required to offer the pledge or a patriotic exercise like singing the National Anthem daily, but students are not required to actually stand up and recite it. Most do, of course, but some students object to the phrase "Under God" and refuse to take part in the daily routine.
The issue has surfaced nationally. Earlier this year, a state lawmaker in Arizona introduced a bill to require students to recite the pledge. Other states, including Oregon and Nebraska, have had discussions on whether to require the pledge to be recited in schools.
For three decades, the pledge didn’t have the phrase “Under God.” But in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower pushed for Congress to add the phrase to combat communist threats, leaving Americans with the 31-words we have today:
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
We asked the question on Facebook and got a resounding yes from those who replied to the question.
“I did when I was in school, said Margaret Tinsley Rodgers on the Sonoma Valley Facebook page. “It taught me my Country was a special place. I knew it was to be revered and respected and love and pride was developed. And what is wrong with that?”
What do you think? Should the Pledge be required? Should we drop “under God”? Tell us in comments. |
Water is an extra-ordinary compound. It is the only substance that occurs in nature in three phases i.e. solid, liquid and vapour, within the normal range of earth’s temperature.
Water is of extreme importance to living organisms. It | Water is an extra-ordinary compound. It is the only substance that occurs in nature in three phases i.e. solid, liquid and vapour, within the normal range of earth’s temperature.
Water is of extreme importance to living organisms. It plays an important role in the sustenance of life as:
(i) It is an important active constituent of the living matter, the protoplasm.
(ii) It serves as a metabolite in many metabolic processes.
(iii) It is a universal solvent and a medium of transport.
12.1.1 Water as a component of cell
In living cells, water is invariably present. It normally constitutes 85-90 percent of the protoplasm.
However, there are certain structures produced by living organisms, such as seeds, spores, cysts etc. in which the water content may be as low as 10 percent. The reason for the low percentage of water in them is that they are produced under special conditions and are meant for special purpose i.e. reproduction or presentation. They have a very low physiological activity rate, which does not require much water.
Water is present within the cells and also bathes the cells, all around within the body of the organism.
Do you know that the existence of life on our earth is due to the presence of water? If there were no water, life would not have originated or evolved on our earth, no water, no life. Water is not everywhere, but wherever there is water, there is life.
12.1.2 Water as a Solvent
Water is an excellent solvent for the substances, which are very important to all processes of life. The salts dissolve to a much greater degree in water than in any other solvent. The solvent potential of water is due to the dipolar nature of its molecules, which causes it to orient itself around charged particles dissolved in it. When, for instance, NaCl (table salt) is dissolved in water, its Na+and Cl- disperse as independent ions. The negative zones of the water dipoles will arrange themselves around the positively charged Na+ ions, while the positive zones of the water molecules will do so around the negatively charged Cl- ions.
This alignment of the salt ions in this way keeps them separated and thus promotes a high degree of dissociation. Substances, when dissolved in water, become chemically reactive.
12.1.3 Water as a Metabolite
W |
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Commentary & Opinion
Mon September 3, 2012
Laura Dudek - Everyday Toxins
In 2006, thirteen men and women from Maine participated in study titled “Bod |
In the last two lessons about Abraham, we learned of the birth of Isaac, his son. Then, when Abraham’s loyalty to God was tested, he willingly sacrificed his only son, Isaac. Though Isaac’s sacrifice did not push through because an | In the last two lessons about Abraham, we learned of the birth of Isaac, his son. Then, when Abraham’s loyalty to God was tested, he willingly sacrificed his only son, Isaac. Though Isaac’s sacrifice did not push through because an Angel of the Lord spoke and said that Abraham was found faithful. What then happened to Isaac after that?
When Abraham was old, Isaac was also grown up too. When he still did not have a wife, Abraham asked his chief servant to go to back to his country and his relatives and look for a wife for Isaac. He specifically told him to bring the woman back with him immediately and will not bring Isaac to her. That is a tall order. Would a woman really come with him and marry Isaac even if she has not seen the man she’s going to marry?
Abraham’s servant then went on with the journey taking with him 10 camels bringing all kinds of goods on its back. When they reached the home town of Abraham, he had the camels kneel near the well outside of town. Then, he prayed:
“O Lord, God of my master Abraham, give me success today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. May it be that when I say to a girl, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’ – let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this, I will know that you have shown kindness to my master.”
When he finished praying, Rebekah, the granddaughter of Abraham’s brother, came out with her jar. The servant asked her, “Please give me a little water from your jar.” Then Rebekah answered, “Drink, my Lord.” After he had a drink, she also said “I’ll draw water for your camels too.”
The servant was excited looking closely at what happened. He asked about the family of Rebekah and learned that they were Abraham’s relatives. He stayed in their house, explained the purpose of his journey and what happened at the well. He also asked for the hand of Rebekah in marriage for Isaac.
Laban (Rebekah’s brother) and Bethuel (Rebekah’s father) then said, “This is from the Lord. Here is Rebekah; take her and go and let her become the wife of your master’s son, as the Lord has directed.” Rebekah also agreed to go.
The servant was overjoyed and bowed down to the ground before the Lord and praised Him. Then, he gave gold and silver jewelry and articles of clothing to Rebekah. He also gave gifts to her brother and her mother. The next day, they immediately went on their way back to Isaac. Isaac and Rebekah got married and Isaac loved Rebekah.
You can find this story in Genesis 24.
KIDS DISCUSSION (Hear what the kids have to say.)
1. Aa arranged marriage is common in Isaac’s time, would you agree to marry someone you do not know someday?
2. What made the servant’s mission successful? Why was he able to find a willing bride for Isaac? because of the servant’s faith? because God answers prayer?
3. What do like most about this story? What did you learn? be prayerful, trust God always
4. Can you trust God in everything? in your family? finding your future husband or wife? in your school?
MEMORY VERSE: Proverbs 16:3
Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.
1. Ask the children to dramatize or make a simple play from the story of Finding a Bride for Isaac.
2. The 10 camels were instrumental in the servant’s knowing how to find the right girl for Isaac. Print this paper camel masks which the kids can also use during the play.
3. You can find a lot of other camel crafts from Artists Helping Children website.
4. Coloring page of Isaac and Rebekah. |
Managing Difficult Conversations
Is this course for me?
If you have line management responsibility at any level and need to have one-to-one conversations exploring areas such as poor performance, inappropriate behaviour, or negative attitudes, then this course is for you | Managing Difficult Conversations
Is this course for me?
If you have line management responsibility at any level and need to have one-to-one conversations exploring areas such as poor performance, inappropriate behaviour, or negative attitudes, then this course is for you.
The course includes advice on how to: identify situations that may be improved by having a 'difficult conversation'; recognise factors that cause situations to escalate; use key questions to prepare for the conversation; use a structured approach to conduct the conversation; identify ways to manage your emotions during a difficult encounter; explore the effects body language, tone of voice and language have on the situation; identify different ways to deal with defensive reactions.
At the end of the course you will be able to:
- Understand the need for 'difficult' conversations
- Conduct conversations using a structured approach
- Use a range of listening and questioning skills
- Describe a 3 stage process that can be used to defuse anger, calm someone down and move the situation forward.
- 05/02/14 - 09.30-12.30
- 17/03/14 - 13.30-16.30
To find out more information or to book a place, please email the OED team direct.Please take a look at the on-line guides and tools to support your development. There are a number of useful areas covered, whether you are managing staff or just for your own development.
Last updated 11/10/13 (JB) |
Lifestyle-related diseases stemming from tobacco, alcohol and obesity, have taken over infectious diseases such as HIV and malaria to become the greatest killer of people worldwide.
Director-General of the World Health Organisation Margaret Chan yesterday released a report that showed non-communic | Lifestyle-related diseases stemming from tobacco, alcohol and obesity, have taken over infectious diseases such as HIV and malaria to become the greatest killer of people worldwide.
Director-General of the World Health Organisation Margaret Chan yesterday released a report that showed non-communicable illnesses including cancer, diabetes and heart disease had contributed to 36.1 million deaths in 2008 - nearly two thirds of the 57 million deaths around the globe that year.
Speaking at a meeting in Moscow, Dr Chan said the rise of these diseases was an enormous challenge for affluent countries, but more so for low and middle-income countries that experienced 80 per cent of the 36.1 million deaths in 2008.
''For some countries, it is no exaggeration to describe the situation as an impending disaster; a disaster for health, for society, and most of all for national economies,'' she said.
''Chronic non-communicable diseases deliver a two-punch blow to development. They cause billions of dollars in losses of national income, and they push millions of people below the poverty line, each and every year.''
However, Dr Chan stressed that the diseases were largely preventable and could be treated and controlled with the right medical interventions. She said millions of lives could be spared if governments adopted stronger anti-tobacco controls while promoting healthier diets, physical activity and less harmful consumption of alcohol.
Without action, Dr Chan said the epidemic was projected to kill 52 million people annually by 2030.
In Australia, the report said about 63,400 men and 63,200 women died in 2008 because of non-communicable diseases. About 40 per cent of the population did not exercise enough with 64 per cent deemed overweight or obese.
It also noted that 17 per cent of Australians smoked daily, 36 per cent had high blood pressure and 9 per cent had high blood glucose levels. And in 2008, every Australian consumed about 10 litres of alcohol.
Professor Rob Moodie from the Nossal Institute for Global Health at Melbourne University said Australia had a high burden of non-communicable diseases and needed to ramp up its efforts to reduce the incidence.
He said although the Australian government had done well on anti-tobacco policies, it needed to limit the widespread availability of alcohol and increase pressure on the food industry to reduce the salt content of foods and advertising of unhealthy products to children. |
Peter P. Jacobi served as associate dean of the Medill School of Journalism (Northwestern University), professor of journalism (Indiana University), and as a regular staff member for the Highlights Foundation’s Chautauqua Workshops in New York, | Peter P. Jacobi served as associate dean of the Medill School of Journalism (Northwestern University), professor of journalism (Indiana University), and as a regular staff member for the Highlights Foundation’s Chautauqua Workshops in New York, among other things. His book, The Magazine Article, How to think it, plan it, write it, provides wonderful information on writing.
Here are his eight techniques, taken from poets and poetry, which illustrate how to enhance any magazine article.
Technique one: Mind opening and perspective freshening. Try, like a poet, to develop a subject and use language so adeptly readers will gain a fresh understanding.
Technique two: Creativity. “Creativity isn’t always make-believe. It’s making the most of a subject.” Attempt inventiveness and originality.
Technique three |
Clovis points are the characteristically-fluted projectile points associated with the North American Clovis culture. They date to the Paleoindian period around 13,500 years ago. Clovis fluted points are named after the city of Clovis | Clovis points are the characteristically-fluted projectile points associated with the North American Clovis culture. They date to the Paleoindian period around 13,500 years ago. Clovis fluted points are named after the city of Clovis, New Mexico, where examples were first found in 1929.
At the right is depicted a typical Clovis, which is a medium to large lanceolate point. Sides are parallel to convex, and exhibit careful pressure flaking along the blade edge. The broadest area is near the midsection or toward the base. The base is distinctly concave with a characteristic flute or channel flake removed from one or, more commonly, both surfaces of the blade. The lower edges of the blade and base are ground to dull edges for hafting. Clovis points also tend to be thicker than the typically thin latter stage Folsom points. Length: 4–20 cm/1.5–8 in. Width: 2.5–5 cm/1–2 inches.
Clovis points are thin, fluted projectile points created using bifacial percussion flaking (that is, each face is flaked on both edges alternatively with a percussor). To finish shaping and sharpening the points they are sometimes pressure flaked along the outer edges. Clovis points are characterized by concave longitudinal shallow grooves called "flutes" on both faces one third or more up from the base to the pointed tip; The grooves may have permitted the points to be fastened (hafted) to wooden spears, dart shafts or foreshafts (of wood, bone, etc.) that would have been socketed onto the tip end of a spear or dart. Clovis points could also have been hafted as knives whose handles also served as removable foreshafts of a spear or dart. (This hypothesis is partly based on analogy with aboriginal harpoons that had tethered foreshafts Cotter 1937). There are numerous examples of post-Clovis era points that were hafted to foreshafts, but there is no direct evidence that Clovis people used this type of technological system. Specimens are known to have been made of flint, chert, jasper, chalcedony and other stone of conchoidal fracture. Ivory and bone atlatl hooks of Clovis age have been archaeologically recovered; known bone and ivory tools associated with Clovis archaeological deposits are not considered effective foreshafts for projectile weapons. The idea of Clovis foreshafts is commonly repeated in the technical literature |
The pelvic floor muscles are the muscles beginning at the pubic bone (the lower front and centre part of your pelvis, above your genitals) and ending at the base of the spine. These muscles support the organs of the pelvis, including | The pelvic floor muscles are the muscles beginning at the pubic bone (the lower front and centre part of your pelvis, above your genitals) and ending at the base of the spine. These muscles support the organs of the pelvis, including the uterus, vagina, bladder, urethra, and rectum. They are also used to control or stop the flow of urine.
The pelvic floor muscles can become weakened or damaged due to a variety of causes, including childbirth, hysterectomy, and prostate surgery.
If your pelvic floor muscles are weakened, it can be difficult to hold in urine. You may release urine involuntarily after sneezing, coughing, or activities such as jumping and skipping. Weakened pelvic floor muscles can also result in decreased sensitivity and satisfaction for women during sexual intercourse.
The good news is that there are simple and convenient ways to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles and relieve your symptoms.
Kegel exercises were developed as a way to tone up the muscles around the vagina, urethra, and rectum so that you are better able to control your urine. The exercise consists of squeezing the muscles tightly for 1 or 2 seconds and then relaxing for 10 seconds. The goal is to work your way up to squeezing the muscles for a period of 10 seconds with a 10-second relaxation period afterward. This exercise should be repeated 10 times in a row, 3 to 5 times a day. This exercise can be done while standing, sitting, or lying down.
It can be difficult for people to know if they are working the right muscles. To do the exercise properly, pretend that you are trying to stop your flow of urine mid-stream and trying to stop yourself from passing gas at the same time. You shouldn't be tightening your abdominal, buttock or leg muscles and you shouldn't be holding your breath.
Vaginal cones are weighted devices that help women to find and train the right muscles. This type of therapy is called "biofeed |
Pakistan's population rate adds to domestic ills
Jan 18, 2011
Between militancy issues and a growing disconnect between the government and its people, Pakistan is suffering from many domestic problems. With a soaring population, Pakistan must face | Pakistan's population rate adds to domestic ills
Jan 18, 2011
Between militancy issues and a growing disconnect between the government and its people, Pakistan is suffering from many domestic problems. With a soaring population, Pakistan must face the growing prospect of providing food security, healthcare and education to its citizens, according to IRIN News.
The population is expected to reach 191 million by 2015, up from the current total of 170 million. The fertility rate sits at 4.1 children per woman, which reflects the traditional size of a Pakistani family.
"In general, it has been found that where there is rapid population growth and high fertility rates, poverty incidence is also the highest," Rabbi Royan, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) representative in Pakistan told the news source.
One of the main problems is the long-held belief that more children will lead to a higher income, while typically more offspring means more mouths to feed. Additionally, the clash of traditional values with the realities of a 21st century population will likely pose a struggle for Pakistan in the coming years.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, since the increase in food prices in 2008, almost half the population of Pakistan faces food insecurity. |
Writing with Ethos, Logos and Pathos in 21st Century Authentic TextsMarch 9, 2012 | Todd Finley
Protégé of Plato and instructor to Alexander the Great, Aristotle was the archetypal | Writing with Ethos, Logos and Pathos in 21st Century Authentic TextsMarch 9, 2012 | Todd Finley
Protégé of Plato and instructor to Alexander the Great, Aristotle was the archetypal learner-teacher whose contribution to modern writers were three rhetorical proofs: pathos, ethos and logos. When combined with 21st century communication platforms, Aristotle's proofs shower rocket fuel on rhetorical efficacy. Using these rhetorical pillars, students can analyze how texts persuade and how unpersuasive texts can be reconfigured.
To teach students how to understand and apply these rhetorical principles in an academic context, I first familiarize writers with the definition of ethos, pathos and logos, using this short video from Read/Write/Think. Use the chart below to help novice writers apply the proofs to a variety of persuasive texts in their environment, such as magazine or newspaper advertisements and editorials:
(How the audience's feelings are engaged)
(How the audience perceives the credibility of the writer)
(How the audience perceives the text as reasonable)
|Means of Persuading||Themes
You needn't reserve the heuristic above for assessing dusty rhetorical moments (Charles de Gaulle's June 18th 1940 speech comes to mind). Instead, try having students analyze George Bush's Ground Zero bullhorn speech ("I hear you!"), an incontestably powerful moment of rhetoric that holds up to repeated viewing. A transcript and analysis of pathos, ethos and logos used in Bush's speech can be found in multiple places throughout the Internet.
Next, have students create Aristotelian advertisements for something they possess in their book bag or purse. Or they can use the proofs to persuasively design digital book trailers. When all three proofs are used effectively, prose is at its most persuasive.
21st Century Product Reviews: Ubiquitous Persuasive Texts
Let's look at some alternate 21st century persuasive texts. If you're like me, a wary consumer, the product reviews from real buyers on Amazon greatly influence your purchase choices.
Hottest Watch I've EVER owned. I've collected many. November 2, 2010 by PMNOrlando
"This is definitely the hottest watch I've ever owned and I've owned many as I used to collect Men's watches. I just received it today and I have to say it had the biggest WOW factor straight out of the box. If you're a big man like I am you need a nice, classy, masculine watch like this. For the price I paid I feel like I stole it."
Walk through the ethos, logos and pathos characteristics of some Amazon reviews like the one above. Then show how these product reviews have become oddball art forms, spaces where inspiring writers might, for instance, pay homage to the climactic moment of Blade Runner.
Tuscan Whole Milk
Replicant Heaven May 23, 2011 by Roy Batty
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. But the creamy yumminess of Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz will be praised across the galaxy forever more. Time to die."
Other sites (Cool Tools, Land's End or Yelp) work just as well for students to analyze and contribute product reviews. Even Twitter can be a persuasive social media space. CaryW tweeted,"Drive is such an amazing film, went in with a crush on Carey Mulligan. Left with a crush on Ryan Gosling." [Twitter post discovered by eonline.com]
What makes all of these digital mentor texts authentic? First, they provide real writing models and the mechanism to persuade real audiences. In these genres, students' effective use of ethos, logos and pathos matter and can be "favorited" or retweeted by other users of the social media platforms.
Other 21st Century Mediums
Lastly, the Internet spawns challenging mashup genres and new tools to produce them literally everyday. Here are a few that students of all ages will enjoy analyzing and creating:
- Jux -- a simple tool for quickly creating magazine-quality blog posts
- Common Craft -- explanatory animations
- TED Talks -- inspiring speeches
- Stripgenerator -- a comic creation tool useful for informing and persuading (see Daniel Pinks' The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, which uses Manga as a teaching tool)
- This I Believe -- spoken word essays, based on the 1950's radio program, hosted by Edward R. Murrow |
Cassiopeia Constellation — Cassiopeia is a northern constellation representing the legendary queen of Ethiopia Cassiopeia, who was the wife of Cepheus and the mother of Andromeda. It is one of the | Cassiopeia Constellation — Cassiopeia is a northern constellation representing the legendary queen of Ethiopia Cassiopeia, who was the wife of Cepheus and the mother of Andromeda. It is one of the 88 modern constellations, and was also one of the 48 listed by Ptolemy.
Five of the stars of Cassiopeia form a W shape, which is one of the most distinctive patterns in the northern sky. Since it is close to the north celestial pole, it remains in the sky all night long in most northern countries.
It is frequently used as a rough indicator of sidereal time; the leading bright star of the W, β Cassiopeiae, called Caph, lies almost at zero hours right ascension and hence a line drawn through Polaris and β Cassiopeiae must pass close to the vernal equinox.
The hour angle of this line must be equal to sidereal time. Hence, when β Cassiopeiae is on the meridian directly above the pole the sidereal time is zero, when on the meridian directly below the pole the sidereal time is 12 hours, etc.
γ Cassiopeiae is a peculiar variable star. The brightness varies from 1.6 to 3 magnitudes. γ Cassiopeiae is assumed to be a binary star containing a Be star and a neutron star. It is the brightest X-ray binary on the sky, no other X-ray binaries can be seen with naked eye.
Cassiopeia was the site of Tycho Brahe’s supernova of 1572, and is also the location of Cassiopeia A, the strongest radio source in the sky (other than the sun). Cassiopeia A is the remnant of a supernova which apparently occurred in about 1667, although there is no record of it having been observed.
If we were to observe Earth’s Sun from Alpha Centauri, it would appear to be in Cassiopeia.
Meaning in English: the Queen
Right ascension: 1 h
Visible: to latitude Between 90 and -20
On meridian: 9 p.m., November 20
Area – Total: Ranked 25th 598 sq. deg.
Stars with apparent magnitude < 3:
Brightest star – Apparent magnitude: Shedir or Shedar 2.23 |
Understanding Common Denominators
Date: 07/16/97 at 09:30:53 From: eleanor Turino Subject: Fractions What is a common denominator?
Date: 09/01/97 at 11: | Understanding Common Denominators
Date: 07/16/97 at 09:30:53 From: eleanor Turino Subject: Fractions What is a common denominator?
Date: 09/01/97 at 11:58:40 From: Doctor Sonya Subject: Re: Fractions Dear Eleanor, Common denominators are the hardest and the most important things to learn about when you are studying fractions. They can also be really fun, because they allow you to take horribly complicated problems and turn them into beautiful, neat fractions. Let's start with an example in which you would need to use a common denominator. If I told you to find 1 + 4, you would know how to add them to get 5. But what if I say: What's 4/5 + 1/3? How do we go about adding these two numbers? The secret to doing this is to use a common denominator. The common denominator is just what it sounds like - a denominator that is the same for both fractions (remember that the denominator is the number on the bottom of the fraction). For example, what if I asked you to do: 1/5 + 2/5? This is a much easier problem, because there is a common denominator. Think of fifths like apples. If you add 1 apple and 2 apples, you get three apples. Similarly, one fifth and two fifths is three fifths. Here are some other examples to make this a bit clearer: 1/6 + 2/6 = 3/6 2/7 + 4/7 = 6/7 Can you do these? 1/5 + 4/5 =? 1/4 + 2/4 =? The hard part comes in when the two fractions have different denominators. Adding four fifths and one third is just like trying to add apples and oranges. It can't be done. We need to give these fractions the same denominator so we can add them. The secret to this is realizing that we can always write one fraction in many different ways. Let's say we have 1/2 of a pie. Draw a circle to represent the pie, divide it in two, and color in half. But what |
Energy continues to be much in the news these days; rising gas prices affect all Americans – families feel the pinch at the pump, and businesses and farmers see the increased costs impact their bottom line.
The Obama Administration recently released a Blueprint for a Secure | Energy continues to be much in the news these days; rising gas prices affect all Americans – families feel the pinch at the pump, and businesses and farmers see the increased costs impact their bottom line.
The Obama Administration recently released a Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future (pdf) that outlines a comprehensive national energy policy that aims to:
Do you want to know what is being done at the Department of Energy and its national laboratories that will help reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign sources of energy, what new or alternative sources of energy are being developed and how we can use energy more efficiently?
Science Accelerator allows the user to search, via a single query, for scientific and technical information tailored to what the user wants and contains the results of DOE research and development (R&D) projects and programs, descriptions of R&D projects under way or recently completed, major R&D accomplishments and recent research of interest to DOE. Through this gateway, you can find out about ongoing research projects, explore significant DOE discoveries, learn about DOE Nobel Prize Winners, access and search scientific e-prints, locate science conference papers and proceedings, and more.
Solving our energy challenges will take time and effort. We’re glad to know DOE scientists are working hard to help solve the problems through research and innovation. |
Better Students Ask More Questions.
How Do Chlorofluorocarbons Affect The Earth's Ozone Layer?
2 Answers | add yours
The ozone layer is found from 10 to 20 miles above the earth's surface. It | Better Students Ask More Questions.
How Do Chlorofluorocarbons Affect The Earth's Ozone Layer?
2 Answers | add yours
The ozone layer is found from 10 to 20 miles above the earth's surface. It is composed of oxygen atoms and has a blue tint. As sun rays pelt the earth, the ozone layer absorbs part of the radiation and prohibits it from hitting the earth's surface. This protects earth's inhabitants from harmful sun damage.
CFCs are man-made chemicals that have been in production for more than a half century. These chlorine containing substances are found in refrigerant, aerosols, and solvents. Due to their long lifetimes and the fact that they do not wash away in rain, it is possible for CFCs to rise up into the ozone layer above the earth, where they eventually break down due to exposure to ultraviolet radiation. As they decompose, they release chlorine and bromine into the ozone layer. These two chemicals are responsible for damaging and depleting the ozone layer. For every one chlorine atom that is released into the ozone layer, 100,000 ozone molecules are destroyed. Thus, the CFCs cause the ozone layer to break down faster than it can replace itself. While some atmospheric chlorine may be cause by certain natural occurrences, such as large fires, volcanic eruptions and marine life, most chlorine in the ozone layer is due to CFCs and other man-made chemical
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are hydrocarbons, such as freon, in which some or all of the hydrogen atoms have been replaced by fluorine atoms. CFCs can be liquids or gases, are nonflammable and heat-stable, and are used as refrigerants, aerosol propellants (such as in deodorant, whipped cream, and air fresheners), and solvents.
When released into the air, CFCs slowly rise through the Earth's lower atmosphere, and up to the stratosphere (second atmospheric layer, located |
Porites Coral Care
How to maintain Porites corals in captivity.
Dana Riddle |
Corals of the genus Porites (pronounced por-eye-tees) are some of the most widespread corals in the world, with their | Porites Coral Care
How to maintain Porites corals in captivity.
Dana Riddle |
Corals of the genus Porites (pronounced por-eye-tees) are some of the most widespread corals in the world, with their geographical range spanning both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Porites corals can be interesting additions to reef aquaria and are quite hardy if aquarists are willing to meet their requirements.
A successful reef aquarium depends on many factors, including water motion, lighting, water temperature and chemistry, and more. This article will detail how to maintain Porites corals in captivity.
As reef hobbyists, we often think of intense lighting as a prerequisite for success with corals. While it is true that attention must be paid to lighting requirements, water motion is just as important (perhaps even more so).
Estimating the water motion requirements of Porites is relatively easy. Boulderlike (massive) Porites specimens (Porites lobata, P. lutea and others) are often found in relatively shallow waters and can be subjected to intense wave surge, while fingerlike (P. cylindrica, P. compressa) or delicate plating Porites (e.g., P. rus) are usually found in areas sheltered from wave action or in deeper waters. Hence, any of the newer propeller pumps are recommended, though the number used and the size of the pump(s) will vary. However, do not blast the animals with a continuous stream directly from the pumps. Instead, an indirect current will be appreciated by your Porites. If the coral polyps do not expand a day or so after introduction to the aquarium (and the coral is not in the direct path of the pump discharge), increase the amount of indirect water movement. Corals can sense water motion and will not expend the energy to keep polyps expanded if there is little chance of catching suspended food particles. Once the polyps have expanded, look for current-induced movement of the polyps (they should appear as a field of wheat gently nodding in a breeze).
Caribbean Porites coral. Photo by Louie Wray
Providing too much indirect flow is not likely to occur in aquaria. During research efforts in even calm water (such as Children’s Beach at Kahalu’u here in Hawaii), I have had sensors attached to 5-pound lead dive weights picked up by wave surge and tossed about as if they weighed only a few ounces.
Since all healthy Porites corals should contain symbiotic algae (dinoflagellates of the genus Symbiodinium, or "zooxanthellae”), lighting is one of the primary concerns for these animals. Most recommendations for "proper” lighting of corals are based on subjective observations. Although these can lead to success, there is an objective method for making such recommendations. First, we should consider the physiology of the coral animal. The Latin word "Porites” is based on the root word "pore,” meaning its calcium carbonate skeleton perforated with small holes, and these pores are filled with living coral tissue and zooxanthellae.
Obviously, light cannot penetrate very far into the skeleton. This provides a clue — the zooxanthellae within Porites’ tissues are adaptable to low light intensity, which makes for a paradoxical situation. The coral and its zooxanthellae are often found in shallow water (sometimes only a few inches deep) and often are subjected to intense sunlight, but they do not require a great deal of light.
Enter the second set of evidence — genetic fingerprinting of zooxanthellae. At one time, we thought there was only one species of zooxanthellae (Symbiodinium microadriaticum). Today, through the efforts of genetic scientists and their work with algae from different corals, we know there are many species and hundreds of "subspecies” called clades. These clades can be "specialists” (found in only one or two coral species) or "generalists” (highly adaptable to a number of environmental conditions, such as light, temperature or both). Researchers have determined that many Porites specimens contain a zooxanthella clade that is remarkably adaptable to changes in light intensity and is tolerant of slightly elevated temperatures (clade C15). In fact, black corals containing C15 zooxanthellae have been found at depths of about 1,500 feet.
So, we are faced with another paradox — if these zooxanthellae require light, and there is none to speak of at a depth of 1,500 feet, how do they manage to survive? The answer seems to be this: At extreme depths, the relationship between the coral and zooxanthellae shifts from one of symbiosis (where both partners benefit) to one where zooxanthellae become parasitic and mooch off the coral host in order to survive. |
|EWTN Catholic Q&A|
Question from Rheinland on 10-31-2012:
I am interested in word study (eg. what does Malaka really mean) and such. In Protestant Traditions, we use the | |EWTN Catholic Q&A|
Question from Rheinland on 10-31-2012:
I am interested in word study (eg. what does Malaka really mean) and such. In Protestant Traditions, we use the Vine or Strongs Concordance of Hebrew and Greek for word study. I am interested, what ones are used in the Catholic/Orthodox traditions?
|Answer by Fr. John Echert on 11-06-2012:|
In my own time of graduate studies in Sacred Scripture we used the same resources for word studies that Protestants did, as far as concordances and lexicons. There are some Catholic biblical dictionaries, to include one by Scott Hahn. It is not highly academic but solidly Catholic. God bless, Father Echert |
In a sweeping 5-0 vote, the Carmel-by-the-Sea City Council took action yesterday evening to ban single-use plastic bags in the quaint and beautiful coastal city of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
Oceana, | In a sweeping 5-0 vote, the Carmel-by-the-Sea City Council took action yesterday evening to ban single-use plastic bags in the quaint and beautiful coastal city of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
Oceana, as part of the Central Coast Sanctuary Alliance of local businesses and conservation organizations, has been advocating to the Council for months to take action to rid this source of pollution in the area and today invite you to celebrate this victory with us. This rides on the heels of similar bans put in place by neighboring Monterey and dozens of other California cities and counties.
Several other cities around Monterey Bay are currently discussing banning single-use plastic bags as well. Oceana will continue the effort to eliminate these plastic bags across the Bay, ultimately moving toward the goal of a statewide ban.
California distributes 19 billion plastic bags per year, many which end up littering our beautiful rivers and beaches and causing undue harm to wildlife.
Ordinances to ban single-use plastic bags are picking up steam here in California. A growing list of cities and counties in the state are taking action to get rid of this frequent source of pollution, which trashes our beautiful rivers and beaches and causes undue harm to wildlife.
Did you know that 19 billion plastic grocery bags are distributed in California each year, many of which end up as litter?
When plastic enters marine waters, it continually breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces that absorb toxic chemicals. Chemical laden plastic pieces are then ingested by wildlife and enter the food chain that we depend upon. In addition, animals can inadvertently ingest or choke on plastic bags. Over 267 species of marine wildlife have been affected by plastic bag litter.
One species in particular is the endangered Pacific leatherback sea turtle. The largest of all sea turtles, the leatherback swims an incredible 6,000 miles from its nesting beaches in Indonesia to California waters to feed on jellyfish. These prehistoric turtles easily mistake plastic bags swirling in the water for jellies and once ingested the turtles suffer dire consequences like malnutrition, starvation, intestinal blockage, suffocation, and drowning. One study found that one third of Pacific leatherbacks autopsied had plastic in their gastrointestinal tract.
Good thing we have alternatives to plastic bags like re-useable cloth bags, some of which you can even wash after a few v |
How To Keep Your African Violets Healthy And Blooming
Many people take African Violets for granted. This hearty plant can provide your with most beautiful bloom all year around, with very minimum care. Some people get discouraged quickly after trying | How To Keep Your African Violets Healthy And Blooming
Many people take African Violets for granted. This hearty plant can provide your with most beautiful bloom all year around, with very minimum care. Some people get discouraged quickly after trying to care for African Violets because their plant does not bloom no matter how diligent they are in caring for their plant.
In order for your violet to produce beautiful flowers all year around three crucial things are needed: light, water and nutrition.
Keep Your African Violets In A Well Lit Place.
African violets need plentiful but not direct sunlight. You can place your violets in the window in rooms that face north, thus they will receive sufficient amount of light but will never be in the direct sunlight. If you would like to keep your violet in the rooms with window facing south keep them several feet away from the window itself. It would be the best if there is a window curtain in such rooms to soften the sunlight your violets receive.
Water Your Violets Regularly, But Do Not Over Water.
It is very important not to water your violets from the top, as some of the water may end up on the leafs, something African Violets do not handle well. The leafs will loose color around the spots where drops of water land, and the plant may eventually die. If you have noticed these spots, you still can save your plant by starting to water it from the bottom. The watering from the bottom can be accomplish by placing a dish under the pot, or using a planter that has a dish attached to the bottom. You can also purchase self watering double planters (shown in the picture) with the porous inside piece. You can find these planters in your local Homedepot, Lowes or even your supermarket’s florist section.
It is sufficient to water the plans once a week if planted in a pot with a dish under it. If you decide to plant your violet in a double planter, once every two to three weeks will be enough.
One sign that your violet needs more water is when the leafs become limp and weak. Shortly after you water your violets, you will notice that leaves will perk up and will feel hard to the touch. The goal is to maintain this “perkiness” of the plant’s leafs to keep your violets healthy.
Keeping Your Violets Well Fed.
While African Violets are very hearty plants, if you do not replant them at least once a year, you will need to provide them with some extra nutrition as the plant exhausts nutrients from the soil it is planted in. There are variety of plant food you can find that is formulated specifically for African Violets. However one particular brand stands out: Schultz African Violet Plus Liquid Food Plant.
The reason this plant food works the best is that it comes in a liquid form. With 14 African Violets in our home, a 4 oz bottle of this solution will last us well over a year (if watering every 3 weeks). All you need to is to add 7 drops or 1/8 of a teaspoon of to one quart of water. It’s much easier to prepare the water ahead of time.
We always have on hand two gallons of water enriched with Schultz African Violet Plus Liquid Food Plant.
If you are making this feeding solution it is a good idea to mark the containers so no one confuses it with a drinking water. What is good for the plants can be dangerous to humans.
What To Do If Your Violets Are Not Blooming.
Our friends are always surprised to see most of our African Violets blooming all year around. But it can happened that you have perfectly healthy plant, well watered and receiving plenty of light, yet it has been months since you seen your plant flowering.
When you think about any plant that produces flowers, it is to produce the seed- a sort of “species preservation” mechanism. While the only plants in our house that do not flower are the new plants that have not yet fully developed and reached the stage when they can flower. Many adult plants can go into a sort of a dormant state as far as flowering is concerned. If you want your violet to flower, you need to awaken that “species preservation” mechanism. It seams that plant will flower when it “feels” some threat. We have no problem to keep our plants flowering due to the fact that we propagate violets by cutting off the leaves. Therefore most of our plants are blooming very nicely and frequently.
If you have a healthy violet plant but it does not produces flowers you can do one of the following things. Try to cut off some older leafs on your plant. The older leafs are generally the largest ones. You can use these leafs to propagate a new plant. This cutting of the leafs seems to awaken the “species preservation” mechanism of the plants and you can see the flowe |
Truth Be Told
by Kyle Butt and Eric Lyons
If you have ever spent much time looking through popular science textbooks, then you know that they contain some good science. You also know, however, that sprinkled in among the accurate, | Truth Be Told
by Kyle Butt and Eric Lyons
If you have ever spent much time looking through popular science textbooks, then you know that they contain some good science. You also know, however, that sprinkled in among the accurate, solid scientific facts are evolutionary assumptions and false ideas. These evolutionary ideas do not always make up the bulk of textbooks, but they do permeate them in such a way as to contaminate the text for those students who are unprepared to deal with them. For this reason, Kyle Butt and Eric Lyons have spent hours poring over many of the most popular science textbooks to find the most oft’-repeated alleged proofs used to teach evolution. Truth Be Told is a compilation and refutation of these false evolutionary ideas. It is designed and written, not as a comprehensive science textbook, but as a guide for preparing and equipping students to deal with false evolutionary assumptions that often make their way into many science books used in schools. This book will excite, encourage, and inform students who want to know the truth. In the end, that truth leads the honest student to the fact that this magnificent Universe did not evolve, but rather was created by an all-powerful God.
2013, eBook (download includes both PRC and EPUB file formats)
(Written on a middle school grade level; 5th-8th grades)
Downloading Instructions: After submitting your order, a link will be provided that you will be able to use to download the file to your computer. You may download this file by clicking on the link provided. You must download the file within three days. Your order confirmation e-mail will also contain the link to this download. Download time will vary depending on Internet speed. Using a two MBPS speed, the file will take approximately 5 minutes to download completely. |
Bangka and Belitong are two neighboring islands with almost similar geo-characteristics that separate themselves from the rest of the northeastern Sumatra’s small islands. Here, kingdoms and colonial rulers came to take control since centuries ago. Tin was and still | Bangka and Belitong are two neighboring islands with almost similar geo-characteristics that separate themselves from the rest of the northeastern Sumatra’s small islands. Here, kingdoms and colonial rulers came to take control since centuries ago. Tin was and still is the sole cause for the ruling powers to take charge. Bangka itself means "tin" in an ancient language, the Sanskrit. In Belitong, there are meteorites found everywhere within the soil that also bears tin ores. The locals name it Batu Satam, while the Dutch named it the Bilitonites. With so many distinctive features to offer, Bangka and Belitong are presented here in a series of images.
Gedong Village is some 50 kilometers away northern of Sungailiat, Bangka Island. Here, traditional houses of Hakka people are set out along a meandering red soiled road. The light blue house is one of the 150-year-old original houses. The local government attempted to develop the area to reduce the impact of annual flood, but the residents refused the idea in the name of heritage preservation. Gedong Village is now one of the prominent tourism villages to be promoted in Sumatra.
Mention the name of famous Tung Tau, and you will be led to one of the most elusive coffee houses in Bangka Island. Mr. Fung Tung Tau started his coffee shop in 1938 in Sungailiat, a small town, 35 kilometers from Pangkalpinang, Bangka. Now, the name emerges to represent coffee drinking habit of the locals. It serves various delectable home-made breads and invigorating coffee as its best carte du jour.
Four-hour voyage by a fast boat from Bangka’s harbor, Pangkal Balam, you will be in Belitong Island whose distinctive beaches are quite illustrious. Giant granite rocks mysteriously enhance the clear turquoise water. In an island named Lengkuas, the description of Belitong’s beach is best epitomized. A light house built in 1882 is its imposing icon you can never miss.
We had to agree with the locals when they urged us to sample Bangka’s best noodle, Mie Koba. It is named after a city where it originated decades ago. Although Koba is where the noodle was created, the best served Mie Koba is still in Pangkalpinang, the capital city of Bangka Belitung. Come to Jalan Balai no. 83, in Pangkalpinang to experience their recommended offer.
To understand a destination, one must understand its historical record. Bangka, whose name is derived from a word ‘vanka’, meaning tin in Sanskrit, is presented audio-visually here in the same house where Soekarno, the first president of Indonesia, held a meeting to claim national independence.
One of the stunning beauties in Bangka is Matras Beach. This quiet local recreational beach is located between Pangkalpinang and Sungailiat. The beach is actually linked to a picturesque resort called Parai Beach Resort & Spa. There, giant rock formations that complement a crescent beach are found. Come in the afternoon to watch sunset, although sunrise here is also particularly spectacular.
The Rock Island in Parai Tenggiri Beach is a part of the existing resort, attracting both locals and tourists to enjoy beach life. Come to a grill and café there to spend a romantic evening on the island, connected by a bridge.
There are hundreds of beaches in Bangka and only a few have names. This is Rambak Beach, a secluded and a beach less visited by the locals. Giant rock formation is a good foreground for those surreal pictures you take to brag about.
Crossing the strait from Bangka to Belitong Island for about 4 hours, and you will find more giant granites. In an island called Lengkuas, the combination of rock formation, history, and beach activities is packaged as a one-day excursion in Belitong. Climb up the light house, and be prepared to get visually astounded.
Belitong's beautiful scenery and social life had encouraged a Belitong-born artist, Andrea Hirata to film his childhood life. Laskar Pelangi, or the Rainbow Troops, is a movie in 2008 that inspired many, both nationally and internationally. This tarnished school is one of the movie sets. Gaining a national fame, it has attracted many to visit. |
Perhaps Charminar is the pictogram of Hyderabad. Rising to the astounding height of 180 feet, the monument lies centrally in the old city. This marvelous monument is a true picture of elegance, a great tribute to the fighting spirit of human | Perhaps Charminar is the pictogram of Hyderabad. Rising to the astounding height of 180 feet, the monument lies centrally in the old city. This marvelous monument is a true picture of elegance, a great tribute to the fighting spirit of human race. Charminar was built by Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah in 1591, to commemorate the obliteration of Plague from the city. The term 'Charminar' is derived from two terms, 'Char' suggesting 'four' and 'Minar' meaning'minarets'. Char Minar of Andhra Pardesh is actually a mosque with four minarets.
It is renowned for its intricate carvings and beautiful structure. As
per the legends, Quli Qutb Shah pleaded to the Lord to provide relief
from the plague and took the vow to erect a'mosque' in return. The
construction of |
This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
4. Then, on the water's edge and at the sides of the platform, let marginal walls be constructed, about one and one half feet thick and brought up to a level with the surface | This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
4. Then, on the water's edge and at the sides of the platform, let marginal walls be constructed, about one and one half feet thick and brought up to a level with the surface above mentioned; next, let the sloping part be filled in with sand and levelled off with the marginal wall and the surface of the platform. Then, upon this level surface construct a block as large as is required, and when it is finished, leave it for not less than two months to dry. Then, cut away the marginal wall which supports the sand. Thus, the sand will be undermined by the waves, and this will cause the block to fall into the sea. By this method, repeated as often as necessary, an advance into the water can be made.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system. |
Innovation is often seen as the way to the future for solar energy. Everybody sees the value of solar panels on rooftops or in fields, but they also see the huge price tag attached to solar energy. Prices have dropped substantially in the past | Innovation is often seen as the way to the future for solar energy. Everybody sees the value of solar panels on rooftops or in fields, but they also see the huge price tag attached to solar energy. Prices have dropped substantially in the past couple of years, mainly because of the Chinese entry and domination of the solar panel industry (and some will say unfair dumping of cheap modules onto the U.S. market). But that still leaves the question of the extent to which innovation plays a role in the developing solar industry. The Wide Lens, a recent book by Dartmouth professor Ron Adner, should be required reading for up and coming solar equipment manufacturers.
The U.S. Department of Energy is investing a lot of money not so much on creating a new technology, but on how better to use and deploy the technology that is already available. The DOE SunShot Initiative aims to make solar energy cost competitive with other forms of energy by the end of the decade. The goal of the program is to reduce “the installed cost of solar energy systems by about 75%,” that will “drive widespread, large-scale adoption of this renewable energy technology and restore U.S. leadership in the global clean energy race.” The emphasis is on how to reduce cost of installing current technology not to come up with a new breakthrough technology.
If you need a primer on the various technologies that are used in producing solar energy, then you should read SolarTown’s learning article on solar photovoltaic technologies. What you will find there is that the leading technology and what most people associate with the solar industry is crystalline silicon (c-Si). The most visible face of the solar energy industry is that blue or black crystalline solar module you place on your roof to produce electricity for your home. The basic technology has not substantially changed in 25 years.
It is rather like the airline industry. Thirty years ago, you could get on a plane and cross the U.S. in five hours and now, guess what; you can get on a plane and cross the country in five hours. Ticketing is faster now; the only e-tickets used in those days were to get onto certain rides at Disneyland. Baggage handling is expedited (except when the handlers go through your luggage). But the basic technology has not changed.
And the basic technology for the solar industry has not changed either. There have been and continue to be attacks on the dominance of crystalline modules from such upstarts as thin film. Thin film manufacturers compete favorably on price, and they easily trot out their studies showing better performance in hot climates or in picking up ambient light, but these subtleties have been overtaken by the sharp drop in crystalline solar panels and thin film is hanging on by a thread. The more efficient crystalline technology still continues to dominate.
The focus on innovation in the solar industry is not on the basic technology, but on efficiency or balance of system components, such as solar racking systems and solar inverters. Take a look on some of the SunShot awardees, like to Georgia Tech that was awarded almost $3 million to develop reengineered, whole-system designs to include module mounting, integration, materials, and wire management. The major area of innovation in the solar industry has been with the solar inverters, basically that component of your solar energy system that converts direct current (DC) created at the panel to alternating current (AC) that you need to power your refrigerator on the inside of your house. Until recently, the only viable option was a central inverter otherwise known as a string inverter that would take the DC from all of the solar panels on your home and convert them through one inverter. Then came the commercial introduction of the micro inverter, which converts the electricity right at the panel level. If you have 20 panels, you would have 20 micro inverters (some micro inverters service two modules, but that is not important).
Although there are several companies that are competing for the micro inverter market, and many more companies who would like to compete for the micro inverter market, the dominant market leader is Enphase. The micro inverter was such a good idea that one of its major critics, Samlex, a major manufacturer of central inverters, has now come out with its own micro inverter. In the meantime, Enphase has gone |
|In the United
States, more than 112,000 people enter the emergency room at the hospital
per year with scald burns. Of these, 6 percent or 6,700 have to be hospitalized.
Almost 3, | |In the United
States, more than 112,000 people enter the emergency room at the hospital
per year with scald burns. Of these, 6 percent or 6,700 have to be hospitalized.
Almost 3,000 of these scald burns come from tap water in the home. The two
high risk groups are children under the age of five and adults over the age
of 65. It only takes one second to get a serious third degree burn from water
that is 156 degrees Fahrenheit. If instant coffee granules melt in your tap
water, it's set too hot and could cause serious burns to you or someone in
Safe Water Temperatures:
Water at temperatures between 124 and 130 degrees Fahrenheit is hot enough to do laundry, dishes and other household cleaning tasks without causing a major threat to you and your family. However, water heaters often are installed at somewhere between 140 and 150 degrees.
A word of caution - water heater thermostats are not very reliable. Many are marked "low-medium-high" and who knows what that is? Those that have numbers shouldn't be relied upon either.
Turn on just the hot water at your sink or bathtub. Let the water run for three to five minutes. Then check the water temperature with a meat or candy thermometer. If the water is 130 degrees or higher, the thermostat on the water heater should be turned down. Wait one day for the water to reach the new temperature and then check the tempereature at the same faucet again. Repeat the process until your water temperature is between 124 and 130 degrees Fahrenheit.
Precautions For Bathing A Child:
Another way to prevent scald injuries is to change behavior when it involves children. Run cold water into a bathtub first and then add hot water to adjust the temperature. Before placing a child into the tub, measure the temperature of the water. It should not exceed 102 degrees.
Take the phone off the hook while bathing the child. This will help maintain necessary continuous supervision of the child who is in the bathtub. Clearly mark the hot water setting on single valve units and turn the valve to the cold setting after filling the tub. This will reduce the risk of unintentionally introducing hot water into the tub.
Keep toys out of the bathtub. Placing toys in the tub while bathing the child establishes the bathtub/bathroom as a "play area." Give the child a washcloth to hold and face the child away from the faucet handles. This will take their attention away from the faucets and reduce the risk of them turning on the hot water during the bathing activity. As the child matures, teach them that the bathroom is a place for specific activities and not a play area. Establish designated "play areas" in the home and teach the child that these are the places to play rather than the bathroom or other areas of risk.
Regulate The Water Temperature
Install a tempering valve (pressure/temperature regulating) in the water line, which leads to the bathroom from the water heater. Set the temperature at 120 degrees. This valve has the potential of totally eliminating the risk of tap water scald burn injuries.
If you live in an apartment, ask the building's maintenance department to lower the hot water temperature. Explain why if they don't seem to understand.
"Child-Proof" Faucet Valves
If you are building a home or remodeling a bathroom, position the faucet valves at a distance of 36-40 inches above the bathtub. This will prevent young children from gaining access to the valve handles. Where practical, install the "push and turn" type valve handles. These handles are somewhat like the "child-proof" caps on medicine bottles.
Treatment For Scalding
If anyone is burned by scalding, run cool water over the burn. Cover the burn with a clean cloth and seek medical attention. Never put ointments, butter or anything greasy on a burn.
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Content Copyright © 2003-12, Michael
Cossey. All Rights Reserved. Don't |
From the first crunching step, bow hunters will know just how dry conditions are in Oregon's forests. This summer, nearly 70,000 acres have burned in wildfires - six times the average at this point in the year. For this reason | From the first crunching step, bow hunters will know just how dry conditions are in Oregon's forests. This summer, nearly 70,000 acres have burned in wildfires - six times the average at this point in the year. For this reason, the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) is asking early-season hunters to exercise extreme caution as they hea |
What are inhalants?
Inhalants are substances that produce chemical vapors that when inhaled cause a mind altering effect.
How are inhalants used?
Inhalants can be breathed in through the nose or mouth in the following ways:
- | What are inhalants?
Inhalants are substances that produce chemical vapors that when inhaled cause a mind altering effect.
How are inhalants used?
Inhalants can be breathed in through the nose or mouth in the following ways:
- Sniffing or snorting fumes from containers
- Spraying aerosols directly into the mouth
- Sniffing fumes from substances sprayed into a plastic or paper bag
- Huffing from an inhalant soaked rag
- Inhaling from balloons filled with nitrous oxide
What are the short term effects of inhalants use?
Inhalants produce a rapid high that resembles alcohol intoxication than causes drowsiness, disinhibition, lightheadedness, and agitation. If sufficient amounts of chemicals are inhaled, a loss of sensation and unconsciousness may occur. Other effects that may occur both during and after use include: headache, euphoria, slurred speech, depressed reflexes, muscle weakness and apathy.
What are the long term effects of inhalants use?
There are many devastating consequences of inhalant use, these include:
Asphyxiation, suffocation, convulsions, coma, choking, and fatal injury. Also, long term use can cause damage to the brain and nervous system. Not only are inhalants damaging to the brain and nervous system, but they are also highly toxic to other organs. Chronic exposure can cause damage to the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys. |
When our planet was still forming, collisions with other planetesimals — and a Mars-sized object that sheared away the moon — turned the embryonic Earth into a roiling ball of molten rock. Iron and other heavy elements sank toward the | When our planet was still forming, collisions with other planetesimals — and a Mars-sized object that sheared away the moon — turned the embryonic Earth into a roiling ball of molten rock. Iron and other heavy elements sank toward the core, and other iron-loving elements did, too. As a result, there’s plenty of gold at our planet’s center. So why, then, is there also gold in the hills? A new study supports the theory that it was all a gift from above. |
|October 25, 2013|
Solar Battery Chargers and PV System Controllers
|One of the
problems with solar power is that the
output of the solar panel is variable.
These solar charge controllers are
designed to extract the | |October 25, 2013|
Solar Battery Chargers and PV System Controllers
|One of the
problems with solar power is that the
output of the solar panel is variable.
These solar charge controllers are
designed to extract the maximum amount
of power available from the solar
panels and deposit it in the battery.
Solar PV charge controllers take the
uncertain voltage from a solar panel
and condition it to safely charge lead
acid batteries. These solar PV charge
controllers energy harvesting, and a
three-stage charging method, bulk,
absorption, and float (maintenance)
charge, but due to the nature of solar
panels these are different in nature
than a typical AC driven charger. They
pulse charge the battery. During the
pulse the solar panel is virtually
short-circuited to extract the maximum
power from the panel and also to allow
the panel to work more efficiently.
These solar charge controllers also
protect your panels from discharging
through the batteries after the sun
goes down. Solar charge controllers are
necessary to protect your PV battery
The SBC-6112 is the less expensive version of the solar PV charge controllers. It regulates the power from the solar panels and controls the charge of the batteries. It also cuts out the batteries from the load when the lead acid batteries are depleted to prevent damage to the battery. It has an LED bar readout to show the status of the solar charging system and batteries. The manual for the SBC-6112 solar PV charge controller can be read by clicking on the link below.
The SBC-7112 solar PV charge controller has the same functionality as the SBC6112, and also has several new features. It has a liquid crystal (LCD) display, which gives allows the user to display system information, such as the battery voltage, PV panel voltage, input current, total amp-hours during the day, and total amp hours for one or two days previous. It also allows the fill and float charging voltages for the battery charger to be changed by a series of dip-switch settings. The manual for the SBC-7112 solar PV charge regulator can also be read by clicking on the link below.
Both solar PV charge controllers have the capability of temperature compensation of the battery charging algorithm with a thermistor that can be put on the battery.
These solar charge controllers also have system functions, for example dusk detection which can be used to turn on the load connected to the DC output at dusk, and turn off the load to prevent the batteries from being over-dischsarged. They have very low quiescent current draw, which means that when the solar panels are not producing enough power to charge, and when the battery current is not called for, the system can sleep without draining the batteries.
Read the Complete Solar Photovoltaic Control Charger SBC-6112 Manual, Click Here
Read the Complete Solar Photovoltaic Control Charger SBC-7112 Manual, Click Here |
The Hawaiian Government Reorganization bill, also known as the Akaka bill, has been introduced and reintroduced in Congress continuously from 2000 to now. There have been more than a dozen different versions of the bill, but the only one that | The Hawaiian Government Reorganization bill, also known as the Akaka bill, has been introduced and reintroduced in Congress continuously from 2000 to now. There have been more than a dozen different versions of the bill, but the only one that ever had hearings locally in Hawaii was the first one, in August 2000, when independent reporter Bob Rees estimated that 5 days of testimony ran in a ratio of 9-1 in opposition. In 2009 a Zogby poll found a majority of Hawaii's people oppose the bill. It passed the U.S. House on three occasions. In the Senate it has been kept off the floor by holds and filibusters ever since it was first introduced; and it failed a cloture motion in 2006 following 5 hours of heated debate over a two-day period. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has repeatedly and strongly opposed the bill; President Bush sent a letter to the Senate saying he would veto the bill if it ever came to his desk; President Obama said he would be happy to sign it but Congress never sent it to him.
The current, active version of the Akaka bill is always identified, and its text is made available, at
A neutral compilation of all significant news reports and commentaries, including transcripts from the Congressional Record, for the current 112th Congress, with links to similar compilations for the entire period from 2000 to now, is at
For Media and the Public: Up-to-Date, Basic, Quick Information About The Hawaiian Government Reorganization Bill (Also known as the Akaka bill) with the most recent major events at the top:
Hundreds of articles opposing the Akaka bill have been written by well-known commentators and institutions, including the Wall Street Journal and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (repeatedly), and published in newspapers and magazines of national circulation. An index to all of them in chronological order, with links to the full text of each one, is at
SUMMARY OF MAIN POINTS AGAINST THE AKAKA BILL
The Hawaiian Government Reorganization bill is highly controversial, unconstitutional, and dangerous to all 50 states. Also known as the Akaka bill, it would authorize federal recognition for a phony Indian tribe invented out of thin air. The purpose is to protect over 160 race-based programs under court challenge because of a Supreme Court decision. It would carve up Hawaii by race and set a precedent for similar balkanization throughout America. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has repeatedly condemned this bill as race-based and divisive. 20% of Hawaii's people, completely integrated and intermarried, living working and praying side by side with everyone else throughout all neighborhoods, would be singled out by law solely because they have a drop of native blood, and given a new government. 75% of them have less than 25% native blood. Many of them oppose the whole idea of a race-based government. Beginning January 17, 2004 and continuing ever since with intensive advertising and community outreach, fewer than 25% of ethnic Hawaiians have placed their names on a racial registry expected to be used as a tribal roll. But if the bill passes Congress, a race-based government can be created to protect the wealth and power of Hawaii's race-based institutions and to keep federal dollars flowing to Hawaii. There will never be a vote by all ethnic Hawaiians or by all Hawaii's people on this issue, even though a newspaper poll yielded 75% opposed, two scientific surveys a year apart showed 67% opposed, and a Zogby poll released December 2009 showd most people are opposed. Ethnic Hawaiians who sign up for the "tribe" get to vote for a "tribal" council and get federal recognition; ethnic Hawaiians who oppose it (probably a majority), and the remaining 80% of Hawaii's people, are shut out. The bill allows a negotiated settlement dividing up Hawaii's lands and resources without any ratification vote by the tribe's members or by the people of Hawaii. No other state has 20% of its people eligible for an Indian tribe whose members also vote for the governor and legislators who will negotiate with the tribe. The U.S. Department of Justice under President Bush repeatedly objected to the bill; while the DOJ under President Obama forced major changes to it as a condition for supporting it. 200 years ago Kamehameha the Great unified all the Hawaiian islands into a single multiracial Kingdom; today the Akaka bill seeks to split up Hawaii.
The Hawaiian "tribe" would be the largest in America. According to Census 2000 it would have over 400,000 possible members. 240,000 of them live in Hawaii, 60,000 in California (more than any current California tribe), and 100,000 in the other 48 states. A population study in September 2005 projects nearly a million "Native Hawaiians" by year 2050. This huge "tribe" would compete against genuine tribes for federal handouts at the expense of all America's taxpayers. Hawaii Senators Inouye and Akaka sat on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee for many years, even though there have never been any tribes in Hawaii. They constantly inserted "Native Hawaiians" into legislation intended to benefit real Indians and Alaska natives. Because of court challenges, they now want Congress to make it official that "Native Hawaiians" are federally recognized as a tribe. Nearly all Hawaii politicians, both Democrat and Republican, favor the bill to make all America's taxpayers keep sending money to Hawaii! Bill supporters justify it partly by saying that ethnic Hawaiians have the worst statistics for income, education, unemployment, drug abuse, and diseases; but such victimhood claims are mostly bogus because they ignore that ethnic Hawaiians are 13 years younger on average than other groups, and about 3/4 of "Native Hawaiians" each have more than 3/4 of their ancestry |
HISTORY OF FLIGHT Use your browsers 'back' function to return to synopsisReturn to Query Page
On July 31, 1998, about 1200 Pacific daylight time, a Cessna 172, N835T, | HISTORY OF FLIGHT Use your browsers 'back' function to return to synopsisReturn to Query Page
On July 31, 1998, about 1200 Pacific daylight time, a Cessna 172, N835T, registered to a private owner and operated by the pilot as a 14 CFR Part 91 personal flight, collided with trees in mountainous terrain located 18 miles northwest of Baker City, Oregon. Visual and instrument meteorological conditions prevailed at the time and no flight plan was filed. The aircraft was substantially damaged and the private pilot was fatally injured. The two passengers were not injured. The flight had departed from Troutdale, Oregon, about two hours prior to the accident and was en route to Mountain Home, Idaho.
One of the passengers, the pilot's wife, reported that she and her two-year-old daughter were sitting in the rear seats. The daughter was strapped into a child restraint seat. The wife stated that they had departed from Troutdale at 1000. The wife reported that at the beginning of the flight, she could see the Columbia River. The flight was smooth and there was some scattered clouds. The wife stated that as the flight continued, the clouds and fog increased around them. The pilot increased his altitude, and the clouds were then above and below the aircraft.
The wife stated that she felt airsick and the pilot told her to put her head down and close her eyes. She did that for a while, but continued to feel sick. The wife stated that the clouds continued to get closer and told the pilot that she did not like it. The pilot agreed with her, and then initiated some turns. The wife stated that at about this time, she put her head down again and had her head down when the accident occurred. The wife stated that the engine sound remained the same up to the time of the crash.
The wife stated that after the accident she and the child were uninjured and unable to get out of the wreckage. The pilot was unconscious and pinned in the wreckage. The wife stated that right after the crash, the wind blew very hard and heavy rain was falling. The rain stopped after a short time. The wife was able to find the cell phone that they had in the aircraft, and called the pilot's brother in the Portland, Oregon area, who in turn called 911 and reported the accident. The 911 operator called the wife, and after some discussion to try and locate the accident site, the operator was able to narrow the search area down to the Baker City, Oregon, area. A pilot, located at the Baker City Airport, took off and flew around the local area. After a short time, the pilot picked-up a weak emergency locator signal. The pilot located the accident site and rescue personnel were notified.
Rescue personnel arrived at the accident site about 1600. The pilot was still alive and medical aid was administered. The wife and child were removed from the wreckage and transported to the hospital. The pilot succumbed to his injuries while en route to the hospital.
At the time of the accident, the pilot held a private pilot certificate for single-engine land aircraft. The pilot's flight logbook indicated that a total flight time of 344 hours had been accumulated, with 156 hours in the Cessna 172.
At 0741, the pilot contacted McMinnville, Oregon, Automated Flight Service Station and requested a weather briefing. The pilot indicated a 0900 departure from Troutdale to Mountain Home, with a stop in either Baker City, Oregon, or Burns, Oregon. The pilot confirmed that this was a VFR flight.
The specialist began the briefing with an airmet that was effective for the entire route of flight. The airmet was for occasional mountain obscurement due to clouds west of the Cascades, and precipitation east of the Cascades, with a potential for isolated thunderstorm activity. The thunderstorm activity was expected to become widely scattered in the afternoon in Oregon and Idaho. The specialist explained that this type of scattered coverage becomes a flight precaution and is not easily circumnavigated.
The specialist reported the current conditions at Troutdale, which was marginal VFR. The specialist also reported the current pilot reports that indicated marginal VFR through the Columbia River Gorge.
The specialist reported the current conditions at The Dalles, Oregon, as 3,000 feet scattered, 7,000 feet scattered, and the ceiling up to 15,000 feet broken, with cumulonimbus clouds northeast of The Dalles and toward Pendleton, Oregon. Pendleton was reporting rain showers, with a visibility of ten miles. The sky was 4,800 feet scattered, and the ceiling was 7,000 feet broken, and overcast at 11,000 feet. LaGrande, Oregon, was reporting a ceiling at 10,000 feet. Baker City, Oregon, was reporting a 20 mile visibility with scattered clouds at 11,000 feet and 14,000 feet. Ontario, Oregon, was clear below 12,000 feet. Boise, Idaho, and Mountain Home were reporting 7,000 feet scattered and 12,000 feet broken.
The forecast indicated local mountain ob |
How to Graph a Rational Function with Numerator and Denominator of Equal Degrees
After you calculate all the asymptotes and the x- and y-intercepts for a rational function, you have all the information you need to start graphing the function | How to Graph a Rational Function with Numerator and Denominator of Equal Degrees
After you calculate all the asymptotes and the x- and y-intercepts for a rational function, you have all the information you need to start graphing the function. Rational functions with equal degrees in the numerator and denominator behave the way that they do because of limits. What you need to remember is that the horizontal asymptote is the quotient of the leading coefficients of the top and the bottom of the function.
Take a look at
which has equal degrees on the variables for each part of the fraction. Follow these simple steps to graph g(x), which is shown in this figure:
Sketch the vertical asymptote(s) for g(x).
Graphing the vertical asymptote first shows you the number in the domain where your graph can’t pass through. The graph approaches this point but never reaches it. With that in mind, what value(s) for x can you not plug into the rational function?
Set the denominator of the rational function equal to zero.
For g(x), 4 –3x = 0.
Solve this equation for x.
4 – 3x = 0
x = 4/3
You find only one vertical asymptote at x = 4/3, which means you have only two intervals to consider:
Sketch the horizontal asymptote for g(x).
To find a horizontal asymptote of a rational function, you need to look at the degree of the polynomials in the numerator and the denominator. The degree is the highest power of the variable in the polynomial expression.
The function g(x) has equal degrees on top and bottom. To find the horizontal asymptote, divide the leading coefficients on the highest-degree terms:
You now have your horizontal asymptote for g(x). So you can now sketch a horizontal line at that position.
Plot the x- and y-intercepts for g(x).
The final piece of the puzzle is to find the intercepts (where the line or curve crosses the x- and y-axes) of the rational function, if any exist:
To find the y-intercept of an equation, set x = 0. (Plug in 0 wherever you see x.) The y-intercept of g(x), for instance, is:
So the y-intercept of g(x) is 3.
To find the x-intercept of an equation, set y = 0 and solve for x:
For any rational function, the shortcut to finding the x-intercept is to set the numerator equal to zero and then solve. Sometimes when you do this, however, the equation you get is unsolvable, which means that the rational function doesn’t have an x-intercept.
So, g(x) has an x-intercept at –2.
Use test values of your choice to determine whether the graph is above or below the horizontal asymptote.
The two intercepts are already located on the first interval and above the horizontal asymptote, so you know that the graph on that entire interval is above the horizontal asymptote (you can easily see that g(x) can never equal to –2). Now, choose a test value for the second interval greater than 4/3. For example, if you choose x = 2, then substituting this into the function g(x) gives you –12. You know that –12 is way under –2, so you know that the graph lives under the horizontal asymptote in this second interval. |
The question of Bernard's participation in the Battle of Hastings and therefore in the Norman Invasion is subject to debate. While Bernard had close family connexions to the port of Saint-Valery-sur-Somme from which William's invading fleet launched | The question of Bernard's participation in the Battle of Hastings and therefore in the Norman Invasion is subject to debate. While Bernard had close family connexions to the port of Saint-Valery-sur-Somme from which William's invading fleet launched, Bernard himself was not the ruler of that city and need not have been in the fleet. He had later connexions with Battle Abbey: he established a cell of that abbey in Brecon, but that may have been an analogous foundation intended to mark his conquest of Brycheiniog. Bernard's peculiar absence from the Domesday Book more or less damns the case for his presence at Hastings, for it is impossible that a noble participant in the victorious battle should not have received land to be recorded in Domesday if he was still living in 1087.
Probably as a consequence of his rapid rise in the marches, Bernard attracted the attention of Osbern fitz Richard, who gave him his daughter, Agnes, whose mother was the Welsh princess Nest, daughter of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, in marriage sometime before 1099. She brought with her a dowry of Berrington and Little Hereford.
All of Bernard's estates lay in the valley of the river Wye and along an old Roman road which led from Watling Street to Y Gaer and on into Brycheiniog. The military possibilities of that road could only have encouraged his subsequent ventures into Wales.
The chronology of events at this juncture is often confused. Bernard may well have already been in power in Brycheiniog by 1088 if he had already inherited a claim to it after the defeat of Roger de Breteuil, Earl of Hereford, in 1075. In 10 |
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. a telecommunications hand tool used to work on punchdown blocks without shorting terminals. It has a hook on one end and a notched blade on the other.
| from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. a telecommunications hand tool used to work on punchdown blocks without shorting terminals. It has a hook on one end and a notched blade on the other.
- n. a computer technician’s tool used as a pry bar and probe for plastic parts.
- n. an electronics tool made of nylon filled with glass, for holding components while soldering.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An implement for tamping, stirring, or mixing.
1425–75; late Middle English spuddle ("short knife"). (Wiktionary) |
Patients that present for ophthalmic surgery are often geriatric or pediatric, painful and anxious, and may present as emergency
cases. Not uncommonly, the reason for their ocular complaint is a direct result of systemic disease, for example diabetic | Patients that present for ophthalmic surgery are often geriatric or pediatric, painful and anxious, and may present as emergency
cases. Not uncommonly, the reason for their ocular complaint is a direct result of systemic disease, for example diabetic
cataracts. Anesthetic challenges include safe choices of drugs in a patient who may be very young or very old, or in a patient
with underlying disease, assuring a calm and pain-free recovery during which the patient does not traumatize their eye, minimizing
increases in intra-ocular pressure, ensuring no sudden patient movement during intricate surgical steps, and, for intra-ocular
procedures, a central and dilated pupil. Further anesthetic challenges (as with any patient) include maintaining good blood
pressure and heart rate, good ventilation, maintaining adequate anesthetic depth and ensuring a smooth recovery without lengthening
the hospital stay unnecessarily. Some of these goals may appear conflicting; for example, it will be necessary to provide
excellent analgesia for the recovery phase, yet systemic analgesics such as opioids may prolong recovery and/or lengthen the
hospital stay. Likewise, assuring that there is no risk of sudden patient movement during surgery may cause the anesthetist
to make the animal excessively deep, which will in turn depress cardiovascular and respiratory function.
This lecture will take a case-based approach to anesthetic management of patients presenting for various ophthalmic procedures.
Entropion repair – Sharpei puppy
This is an otherwise healthy 6 month old female puppy. Anesthetic concerns would include: achieving good sedation for IV catheter
placement, providing good analgesia for recovery without depressing ventilation excessively, maintaining normothermia, and
maintaining good blood pressure, heart rate and ventilation during surgery. At 6 months of age, this puppy likely has relatively
mature hepatic and renal function, but hypoglycemia and clearance of drugs may be a concern. Also, at this age blood pressure
tends to be physiologically lower than in adults and blood pressure is more heart rate dependent. Thus, we want to prevent
excessive bradycardia and we may want to choose anesthetic drugs that are either reversible or have extra-hepatic clearance.
Pre-anesthetic preparation would include a thorough physical exam and screening bloodwork, e.g. PCV, TP, glucose and BUN via
azostick. Premedication choices should include a sedative and an agonist opioid for analgesia. For sedation acepromazine should
only be used at very low doses because of its long duration and extensive hepatic metabolism. Other choices for sedation could
include midazolam: desirable in that it is reversible and short-acting, but undesirable in that it provides little to no sedation
when used alone in healthy young animals. A 3rd choice for sedation could be dexmedetomidine, which would certainly provide
excellent sedation and is reversible if its effect is prolonged, but this sedative will cause bradycardia and depress ventilation.
My personal choice would be a very low dose of acepromazine (0.01-0.02 mg/kg IM) combined with an effective agonist opioid.
The inclusion of the opioid provides analgesia and synergistic sedation. Reasonable opioid choices could be hydromorphone
(may cause panting), oxymorphone (expensive), or morphine (may cause nausea but this is offset by acepromazine to some extent).
So let's say we decide to premedicate this patient with acepromazine and mid-dose morphine (0.5 mg/kg IM). Now 15-30 minutes
later we have a moderately sedate animal that is amenable to IV catheterization (always a challenge in the Sharpei!). For
this case the choice of induction drug is wide open, but propofol or ketamine with diazepam would be the two most likely choices.
Ketamine may increase intra-ocular pressure, but this would not be a concern in an entropion repair. Induction would be followed
by intubation and maintenance with inhalants (isoflurane or sevoflurane) in oxygen. Anesthetic management would include monitoring
of temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, oxygenation (pulse oximetry), and ventilation (capnography or visual assessment),
with occasional glucose checks to make sure this puppy is not becoming hypoglycemic. Fluid therapy would include any isotonic
crystalloid at 10 ml/kg/hour. Once good blood pressure monitoring was in place, an NSAID such as carprofen could be administered
for intra- and post-operative analgesia. Furthermore, lidocaine could be infiltrated into the eyelids for analgesia (Guiliano
EA, Regional anesthesia as an adjunct for eyelid surgery in dogs. Topics Companion Animal Medicine, 2008 Feb; 23(1):51-6.).
For recovery of this patient, I would want to make sure that she does not paw at or traumatize her repair, and I would want
to keep her temperature normal. While not truly a brachycephalic breed, we would also want to ensure that she could "protect"
her airway after extubation and that she is awake enough to breath normally. For analgesia, if I have used morphine in my
premedication and she has received an NSAID during surgery, she may not need any additional opioid at recovery, |
Molecular evolution in Panagrolaimus nematodes: origins of parthenogenesis, hermaphroditism and the Antarctic species P. davidi
1 Department of Zoology and Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing | Molecular evolution in Panagrolaimus nematodes: origins of parthenogenesis, hermaphroditism and the Antarctic species P. davidi
1 Department of Zoology and Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, 97331, USA
2 Department of Biological Sciences, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, California, 91768, USA
BMC Evolutionary Biology 2009, 9:15 doi:10.1186/1471-2148-9-15Published: 16 January 2009
As exemplified by the famously successful model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, nematodes offer outstanding animal systems for investigating diverse biological phenomena due to their small genome sizes, short generation times and ease of laboratory maintenance. Nematodes in the genus Panagrolaimus have served in comparative development and anhydrobiosis studies, and the Antarctic species P. davidi offers a powerful paradigm for understanding the biological mechanisms of extreme cold tolerance. Panagrolaimus nematodes are also unique in that examples of gonochoristic, hermaphroditic and parthenogenetic reproductive modes have been reported for members of this genus. The evolutionary origins of these varying reproductive modes and the Antarctic species P. davidi, however, remain enigmatic.
We collected nuclear ribosomal RNA gene and mitochondrial protein-coding gene sequences from diverse Panagrolaimus species and strains, including newly discovered isolates from Oregon, to investigate phylogenetic relationships in this nematode genus. Nuclear phylogenies showed that the species and strains historically identified a |
Frogs and/or toads are the other iconic symbol for Davis (the more common symbol being a penny-farthing bicycle). Various local artists, including David Gilhooly, Heidi Bekebrede, and others have used this | Frogs and/or toads are the other iconic symbol for Davis (the more common symbol being a penny-farthing bicycle). Various local artists, including David Gilhooly, Heidi Bekebrede, and others have used this motif. So has Lyon Real Estate in their famous Frog Signs. Davis is also home of the famous Toad Tunnel. Toad Hollow Dog Park is just beyond.
All toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads (that line is a good conversation starter). Generally what people consider to be toads are the species that are stubbier, have dry-warty skin, walk instead of jump, and prefer dryer climates. Here in Davis if you encounter a toad it is likely to be a California Toad (also called Western Toad) and if you encounter a frog it's probably a Pacific Tree Frog. They both operate at night so you're lucky if you see one at all. Frogs and Toads lay their eggs in water so you're more likely to encounter them there.
Large numbers of Pacific tree frogs (Pseudacris regilla) can be heard (in mid February) "ribbiiting" near West Pond. Pacific Tree Frogs are the only species of frog that "ribbit". They are also called "Chorus Frogs" because during the mating season they migrate back to the water source of their birth and the males make a chorus of "ribbits" to attract a mate. When a lot of these frogs get together the resulting choir can be quite spectacular, as they start and stop "ribbiting" at the same time. |
There is one great basic fact which underlies all the questions that are discussed on the political platform at the present moment. That singular fact is that nothing is done in this country as it was done twenty years ago.
We are in the presence of | There is one great basic fact which underlies all the questions that are discussed on the political platform at the present moment. That singular fact is that nothing is done in this country as it was done twenty years ago.
We are in the presence of a new organization of society. Our life has broken away from the past. The life of America is not the life that it was twenty years ago; it is not the life that it was ten years ago. We have changed our economic conditions, absolutely, from top to bottom; and, with our economic society, the organization of our life. The old political formulas do not fit the present problems; they read now like documents taken out of a forgotten age. The older cries sound as if they belonged to a past age which men have almost forgotten. Things which used to be put into the party platforms of ten years ago would sound antiquated if put into a platform now. We are facing the necessity of fitting a new social organization, as we did once fit the old organization, to the happiness and prosperity of the great body of citizens; for we are conscious that the new order of society has not been made to fit and provide the convenience or prosperity of the average man. The life of the nation has grown infinitely varied. It does not centre now upon questions of governmental structure or of the distribution of governmental powers. It centres upon questions of the very structure and operation of society itself, of which government is only the instrument. Our development has run so fast and so far along the lines sketched in the earlier day of constitutional definition, has so crossed and interlaced those lines, has piled upon them such novel structures of trust and combination, has elaborated within them a life so manifold, so full of forces which transcend the boundaries of the country itself and fill the eyes of the world, that a new nation seems to have been created which the old formulas do not fit or afford a vital interpretation of.
We have come upon a very different age from any that preceded us. We have come upon an age when we do not do business in the way in which we used to do business,—when we do not carry on any of the operations of manufacture, sale, transportation, or communication as men used to carry them on. There is a sense in which in our day the individual has been submerged. In most parts of our country men work, not for themselves, not as partners in the old way in which they used to work, but generally as employees,—in a higher or lower grade,—of great corporations. There was a time when corporations played a very minor part in our business affairs, but now they play the chief part, and most men are the servants of corporations.
You know what happens when you are the servant of a corporation. You have in no instance access to the men who are really determining the policy of the corporation. If the corporation is doing the things that it ought not to do, you really have no voice in the matter and must obey the orders, and you have oftentimes with deep mortification to co-operate in the doing of things which you know are against the public interest. Your individuality is swallowed up in the individuality and purpose of a great organization. |
Neuroscience is an Interdepartmental Program managed by the Undergraduate Program in Neuroscience (UPiN), which represents a collaboration between the Department of Psychology and the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB).
What is | Neuroscience is an Interdepartmental Program managed by the Undergraduate Program in Neuroscience (UPiN), which represents a collaboration between the Department of Psychology and the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB).
What is Neuroscience?
Neuroscience is the study of the nervous system. It is a cross-disciplinary field that engages scientists, engineers and physicians in investigating how the nervous system develops and functions on a cellular level as well as the mechanisms that underlie behavior, cognition, mental disorders and neurological disease. An understanding of how the nervous system functions spans both molecular and cellular activity that is best taught by cell and molecular neurobiologists, and behavior that is best taught by psychologists. For this reason undergraduate instruction in neuroscience is done primarily by faculty from the LSA Departments of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology (MCDB) and Psychology.
The overall goals of this major are to:
- provide a course of study in the discipline of Neuroscience that integrates cell/molecular and behavioral components of the field.
- offer abundant opportunities for undergraduate research on cutting edge issues.
- provide a course of study that prepares students for graduate training in the field of Neuroscience, for a career in biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries or any of the health professions (human medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy) or for any other career where strong analytical skills are required, such as law or business.
Outline of the Neuroscience Major
After completing background courses in Biology, Chemistry and quantitative analysis (Math or Statistics) students take 10 upper level courses in biopsychology, molecular and cellular neurobiology, and other areas that encourage breadth. Two upper level lab courses are also required. One of these can be an independent research project under the guidance of a faculty sponsor.
Neuroscience students may not double major in Biology; General Biology; Cell and Molecular Biology; Biopsychology, Cognition and Neuroscience; Brain, Behavior, and Cognitive Sciences; Biochemistry; Biomolecular Science; Plant Biology; or Microbiology; nor elect a minor in Biology, Plant Biology, or Biochemistry.
Students double majoring in Psychology and Neuroscience may share a maximum of 3 courses toward their two programs. |
Survey Launched to Help Improve Family Health
Traveling by bicycle, community interviewers visit homes in Asembo, Kenya to learn
how animal and human disease impacts a family’s health, access to education, and
economic wellbeing. They | Survey Launched to Help Improve Family Health
Traveling by bicycle, community interviewers visit homes in Asembo, Kenya to learn
how animal and human disease impacts a family’s health, access to education, and
economic wellbeing. They will visit more than 1400 households four times each year
over several years to ask about their nutrition, family members’ health, household
assets, and health of their animals. They collect the data on a handheld computer,
or PDA, so that it can be sent back to Pullman the next day for analysis.
The goal is to reduce poverty and hunger and improve health and education.
“Animals are a major financial and nutritional asset for these families,” said Guy
Palmer, director of the Allen School. “When animals are healthier, families tend
to be healthier.”
A family in Asembo, Kenya
Vaccinate a Dog and Save a Child's Life
Dr. Felix Lankester at a Maasai boma
The WSU Rabies Vaccination Program reaches thousands of households each year. According
to the World Health Organization, more than 55,000 people die from rabies. Many
are children. The disease is easily preventable with regular dog vaccinations, or
by post-bite vaccinations within the first 24 hours after a person is bitten by
a rabid dog. But once symptoms appear, the disease is essentially always fatal.
The vaccination zone (a cordon sanitaire) in eastern Tanzania, an area of approximately
11,000 square kilometers around the Serengeti National Park, is now rabies free.
“Human incidence of rabies in the vaccination zone has been reduced to zero since
the project began,” said Dr. Felix Lankester, clinical assistant professor for the
Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health. “The long-term goal is to use these
strategies and knowledge to develop other rabies-free zones and eventually link
these together to eliminate the disease.” |
17 Jan 2013:
Journals of Iconic Naturalists
Reveal Plants Are Blooming Much Earlier
An analysis of records kept by iconic naturalists Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold has revealed evidence that some native | 17 Jan 2013:
Journals of Iconic Naturalists
Reveal Plants Are Blooming Much Earlier
An analysis of records kept by iconic naturalists Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold has revealed evidence that some native plants in the eastern U.S. are flowering as much as much as a month earlier
in spring than they did even just six decades ago. Writing in the journal PLoS ONE
, scientists from Boston and Harvard universities and the University of Wisconsin-Madison report that many plant species found in and around Concord, Mass. — including serviceberry and nodding trillium — are now blooming an average of 11 days earlier than when Thoreau kept copious notes in the 1850s. In Wisconsin, where Leopold and his students collected comprehensive data on spring blooms from 1933 to 1945, the evidence of earlier flowering is even more pronounced: During the unusually warm spring of 2012, the study says, plants bloomed an average of one month earlier than they did 67 years earlier. Scientists say the findings could provide critical insights into the effects of climate change on native plants, and the long-term implications this could have on the plants and the animals and insects that depend upon them. “These historical records provide a snapshot in time and a baseline of sorts against which we can compare more recent records from the period in which climate change has accelerated,” said Stan Temple, a UW-Madison ecologist and co-author of the study. |
Just as almost all aspects of modern European culture have their basis in Rome and Greece, much of Japan's culture was based on Chinese elements, either imported directly or filtered through the Korean Peninsula. Many areas of Japanese life, from the architecture to the | Just as almost all aspects of modern European culture have their basis in Rome and Greece, much of Japan's culture was based on Chinese elements, either imported directly or filtered through the Korean Peninsula. Many areas of Japanese life, from the architecture to the writing system to the structure of early government, originally hail from China. The Japanese pay a lot of attention to the principles of feng shui, and try to design homes and cities so that the layout will promote the flow of positive energy -- the choice of Edo (Tokyo) as the national capital was made in part because it's exactly northeast of Kyoto, which has a special meaning according to feng shui. The Japanese also follow eto, the Chinese sexagenary cycle, the complex system of twelve animals that cycle through each year -- my wife and I were both born in the Year of the Monkey. Although the Japanese adopted the Western calendar in the Meiji Era, they still remember the Chinese New Year with Setsubun, on February 5, a day when Japanese kids throw beans at imaginary devils to chase them out of the house.
One thing about Japan: it's a very seasonal place. Spring is beautiful with its short-lived cherry blossoms, summer is hot and humid with many festivals, fall is filled with crisp brown leaves, and winter is cold and frosty. I've met Japanese who tell me with great pride that, unlike America, Japan has four distinct seasons, and they enjoy every one of them -- apparently these people haven't ventured outside of Southern California. Japanese people tend to avoid being kisetsu-hazure (ki-SET-tsu ha-ZOO-ray), doing the wrong things for the wrong season. In an ESL textbook once there was a picture of a boy flying a kite in summer. But in Japan, flying traditional kites (tako) is nearly always done around New Year's Day, so my students were amazed at the picture.
Japan's tendency to be very seasonal extends to other aspects of daily life. Swimsuits are sold in the summer months, and calendars sold at the end of the year -- don't even bother trying to find something that's out of season, it won't be available. When fruits are in season, they're ripe and delicious, but since Japan doesn't import much fruit from other parts of the world like America does, when something is out of season it's not available for love or money. Strawberries are in season in Japan now, but they won't be for long, so last weekend we took the kids to a place in the mountains where you can eat as many strawberries off the vine as you want for $8 per person. They were delicious. |
HACKETT, NELSON, fugitive slave; b. c. 1810; fl. 1840–42.
To slaves in the ante-bellum United States, the Canadas were virtually synonymous with freedom and heaven | HACKETT, NELSON, fugitive slave; b. c. 1810; fl. 1840–42.
To slaves in the ante-bellum United States, the Canadas were virtually synonymous with freedom and heaven. Though slavery was abolished throughout the British empire only in 1833, Canadian law and custom had long since established emancipation: by statute in 1793 in Upper Canada, and through a judicial decision in 1800 in Lower Canada. In addition, the citizenry could generally be counted on to take action if the law would not; in 1837 Solomon Molesby (Mosely) and Jesse Happy, fugitive slaves accused of horse theft by irate owners, were forcibly rescued from Upper Canadian judicial authorities, who were thereby prevented from extraditing them. So in July 1841, when Arkansan slave Nelson Hackett left home atop a stolen horse and six weeks later crossed over into Upper Canada, he had every reason to believe that freedom would be his until the day he died.
Hackett’s freedom was short-lived, for his master since 1840, Alfred Wallace, determined to make an example of his handsome and articulate runaway. A wealthy merchant, Wallace was socially prominent and well connected in Fayetteville, Ark., and his influence extended to the state capital via fellow townsman Archibald Yell, the governor. Wallace and an associate, George C. Grigg, set out separately to pursue Hackett. In September, in both Windsor and Chatham, Upper Canada, Wallace swore out depositions against Hackett for the theft of his horse, as well as a saddle, coat, and gold watch. Grigg too swore out depositions, in Upper Canada and in Michigan. Wallace had Hackett arrested near Chatham and incarcerated in the Western District jail at Sandwich (Windsor). A charge of raping a “young lady of respectability,” allegedly Wallace’s adopted daughter, was dropped. Hackett confessed to the thefts but later denied them, claiming he had confessed because he had been “severely beaten over the head with a butt of a whip, and a large stick” during his interrogation.
Wallace set the wheels in motion for formal extradition proceedings. Before returning to Arkansas, he retained as counsel Sandwich lawyer and assemblyman John Prince*, and as collaborator Prince’s Detroit friend Lewis Davenport, of Fayetteville background and owner of the Detroit–Windsor ferry. Next, on 18 September 1841, Michigan’s acting governor requested the governor of the Province of Canada, Lord Sydenham [Thomson], to release Hackett to Michigan. On the 21st Wallace petitioned Sydenham through a justice of the peace at Sandwich, Robert Mercer, who added his personal assurance that the request “is all straightforward and not a pretence for merely getting [Hackett] back again as a Slave.”
Wallace’s campaign for extradition was set back by the attorney general for Upper Canada, William Henry Draper*, who had serious reservations about the motives and Michigan’s jurisdiction in such proceedings. Wallace persisted, and on 26 November a grand jury in Washington County, Ark., indicted Hackett for theft. The same day Wallace’s friend Washington L. Wilson, owner of the stolen saddle, petitioned for Hackett’s return. On 30 September Arkansas’s governor, Archibald Yell, had requested that Hackett be released to Lewis Davenport, who would supervise his transfer home. Countering this blitz was a petition from Hackett, drawn up by Windsor lawyer Charles Baby. He begged to remain in Canada for upon returning to Arkansas he would be “tortured in a manner that to hang him at once would be mercy.” This was to be Hackett’s sole legal action.
Canada’s administrator, Sir Richard Downes Jackson, reserved a decision, but in mid January 1842 the newly arrived governor, Sir Charles Bagot, authorized Hackett’s extradition. Implementation of the order was leisurely and secretive, in part to avoid a repetition of the violent rescue of Solomon Molesby. On the night of 7–8 February, Hackett, bound and gagged, was spirited across the Detroit River and lodged in the Detroit jail, where he languished for more than two months. In April the American lawyer and abolitionist Charles Stewart visited him; abolitionists hoped to use his case as a focal point in their campaign. They soon abandoned this idea, however, because of Hackett’s theft of the watch, which undermined their argument that he had merely stolen tools for escape. As well, they could find nothing out of order in the judicial proceedings. In Canada Bagot received approval from the British secretary of state, on these same grounds, for his decision to relinquish Hackett.
As soon as navigation opened in 1842, Hackett boarded a vessel, guarded by Arkansan Onesimus Evans, whom Wallace had sent to help Davenport. Aboard sh |
Researchers have created a unique way of identifying patients at risk of osteoporosis by using ordinary dental x-rays. //
Professor Paul F. van der Stelt and his team at the Academic Center for Dentistry Amsterdam developed the largely automated approach during a | Researchers have created a unique way of identifying patients at risk of osteoporosis by using ordinary dental x-rays. //
Professor Paul F. van der Stelt and his team at the Academic Center for Dentistry Amsterdam developed the largely automated approach during a three-year, EU-funded collaboration with the Universities of Manchester, Athens, Leuven, and Malm?.
Osteoporosis affects almost 15% of Western women in their fifties, 22% in their sixties, and 38.5% in their seventies. As many as 70% of women over 80 are at risk, and the condition carries a high risk of bone fractures, with over a third of adult women falling victim at least once in their lifetime. Wide-scale screening for the disease is not currently viable, largely due to the cost and scarcity of specialist equipment and staff.
The team has therefore developed an innovative software-based approach to detecting osteoporosis using routine dental x-rays, by automatically analyzing specific characteristics of the radiographic trabecular bone pattern. These features include, among others, the thickness, the amount of fragmentation, and the main orientation of the structure of the trabecular bone.
In four clinical centers, 671 women with an average age of 55 years were recruited. To obtain the “gold standard”, the team measured bone thickness at the femur, hip, and spine, using the technique that is common for this kind of expensive examination (Bone Mass Density, BMD). In addition, one panoramic and two intra-oral radiographs were made.
X-rays are used widely in dental practice for several reasons. Using the image information from these radiographs to detect patients at risk for osteoporosis involves no extra radiation and almost no extra cost, while undetected osteoporotic patients can incur bone fractures and suffer from other problems, re |
The latest news from academia, regulators
research labs and other things of interest
Posted: January 5, 2010
Quantum age edges closer
(Nanowerk News) Superfast quantum computing is closer than ever following recent breakthrough | The latest news from academia, regulators
research labs and other things of interest
Posted: January 5, 2010
Quantum age edges closer
(Nanowerk News) Superfast quantum computing is closer than ever following recent breakthroughs by an international team led by researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW).
Quantum computing relies on controlling and observing the behaviour of quantum particles – for instance individual electrons - to deliver enormous processing power.
In the two breakthroughs, written up in the international journals Nano Letters and Applied Physics Letters, researchers have for the first time demonstrated two ways to deliberately place an electron in a n |
In Amplitude Shift Keying, the bandwidth required is given by \$B=(1+d)S\$ where B is bandwidth, S is the signal rate, and d is a value of either \$0\$ or \$1\$. But how | In Amplitude Shift Keying, the bandwidth required is given by \$B=(1+d)S\$ where B is bandwidth, S is the signal rate, and d is a value of either \$0\$ or \$1\$. But how could the required bandwidth...
From the Nyquist formula that \$ Capacity = 2 \times Bandwidth \times log_2(L) \$, where \$L\$ is the level the signal represents, the total number of possible bit combinations the signal can...
Why digital signals have "infinite bandwidth"? Frequency is the number of cycles per second. I have seen before the formula that bandwidth=Maximum Frequency - Minimum Frequency. I remember I was told... |
Geeks the world over know their local host as 127.0.0.1, but why is that specific address, of all available addresses, reserved for the local host? Read on to delve into the history of local hosts.
Image | Geeks the world over know their local host as 127.0.0.1, but why is that specific address, of all available addresses, reserved for the local host? Read on to delve into the history of local hosts.
Image by GMPhoenix; available as wallpaper here.
Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-drive grouping of Q&A web sites.
SuperUser reader Roee Adler, curious about the default localhost IP, posed the following question to the community:
I wondered what is the origin of the decision to make
localhost‘s IP address
127.0.0.1. What is the “meaning” of
127? what is the “meaning” of
What is the meaning, indeed? While it’s possible to live out your entire geeky existence not knowing the answer to those questions, we’re ready to dig in.
Several contributors pitched in to answer Roee’s question, each one of their contributions helps shed more light on how 127.0.0.1 is the place we all call home. John T writes:
127 is the last network number in a class A network with a subnet mask of
127.0.0.1is the first assignable address in the subnet.
127.0.0.0cannot be used because that would be the wire number. But using any other numbers for the host portion should work fine and revert to using
127.0.0.1. You can try it yourself by pinging
127.1.1.1if you’d like. Why they waited until the last network number to implement this? I don’t think it’s documented.
Hyperslug does some archive sleuthing by digging through old memorandums on the subject:
Earliest mention I can find regarding 127′s assignment as loopback is November 1986 RFC 990 authored by Reynolds and Postel:
The address zero is to be interpreted as meaning “this”, as in “this network”.
For example, the address 0.0.0.37 could be interpreted as meaning host 37 on this network.
The class A network number 127 is assigned the “loopback” function, that is, a datagram sent by a higher level protocol to a network 127 address should loop back inside the host. No datagram “sent” to a network 127 address should ever appear on any network anywhere.
Even as early as September 1981 RFC 790, 0 and 127 were already reserved:000.rrr.rrr.rrr Reserved [JBP]... 127.rrr.rrr.rrr Reserved [JBP]
0 and 127 were the only reserved Class A networks by 1981. 0 was used for pointing to a specific host, so that left 127 for loopback.
I know this doesn’t answer the question, but this is as far back as I could dig. It might have made more sense to choose 18.104.22.168 for loopback but that was already given to BBN Packet Radio Network.
While we all know and love 127.0.0.1 as the localhost, it’s worth noting that it won’t be the localhost forever. 127.0.0.1 is how the localhost is designated in IPv4 communications and, as IPv6 slowly takes over, it will be designated by a much more intuitive number: 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1.
Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion threads here.
Jason Fitzpatrick is warranty-voiding DIYer and all around geek. When he's not documenting mods and hacks he's doing his best to make sure a generation of college students graduate knowing they should put their pants on one leg at a time and go on to greatness, just like Bruce Dickinson. You can follow him on Google+ if you'd like.
- Published 10/9/12 |
More In This Article
When Ida Washington received a letter inviting her to participate in a women’s health study to explore the environmental roots of breast cancer, she didn’t think twice. Her mother was diagnosed with the disease nearly 40 years ago | More In This Article
When Ida Washington received a letter inviting her to participate in a women’s health study to explore the environmental roots of breast cancer, she didn’t think twice. Her mother was diagnosed with the disease nearly 40 years ago, and since then, it has been a terrifying mystery she has yearned to unravel.
Washington was just a teenager when the lump was found on her mother’s left breast. In the years that followed, as her mother’s cancer went into remission, she began to wonder what caused it. “My mother didn’t smoke, she didn’t drink. Breast cancer didn’t run in the family,” she said.
Ida’s mother, Willie Mae Washington, now 92, participated in the first generation of a scientific study that has endured for more than half a century to investigate whether environmental exposures may trigger breast cancer. Now Ida Washington, 52, is continuing the legacy as part of its second generation.
The two women are among the more than 15,000 mothers, daughters and granddaughters in the San Francisco Bay Area enrolled in a project known as the Child Health and Development Studies, launched in 1959. Tens of thousands of samples of the women’s blood are stored, providing more than 50 years of continuous data on health outcomes and environmental exposures.
Scientists tap into this unique trove as they struggle to figure out what role environmental exposures play in the development of diseases such as breast cancer.
“These women are a national treasure,” said Barbara Cohn, director of the Child Health and Development Studies and Three Generations follow-up study, based in Berkeley, Calif. “They hold the key to understanding the risks.”
While billions of research dollars have been spent on screening, treating and trying to cure breast cancer, still relatively little is known about its causes. One in every eight women today will contract the disease during her lifetime. Genes account for only a small number of cases, 5 to 10 percent. Known risk factors include age, obesity and low physical activity.
Washington, her mother, and other members of the Bay Area study are uniquely poised to help researchers answer the why’s of breast cancer and other diseases afflicting women.
Over the years, this group of women and their children – known in scientific jargon as a cohort – has helped scientists understand how diseases can start even before birth and may pass from one generation to the next – not just through genes, but also by things in their environment.
Funded largely by the National Institutes of Health, hundreds of scientific studies have been published about these women since the 1960s.
One of the more groundbreaking findings provided a clue that smoking during pregnancy could harm the fetus. Also, based on these women, scientists discovered that exposure to the now-banned pesticide DDT during a mother’s pregnancy could decrease a daughter’s ability to become pregnant and increase a son’s risk of testicular cancer. New findings are expected to be published soon.
There are no research cohorts like it in the country. In fact, it may be the only one of its kind in the entire world.
The study group is “extremely valuable, almost unique,” said Shanna Swan, an environmental health scientist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York who is not involved with the California research. |
Gradual Instability Caused by Gene Silencing
In addition to the acute instability caused by DNA rearrangements, we also observe gradual instability which we believe results
from epigenetic changes resulting in gene silencing. The scientific literature contains | Gradual Instability Caused by Gene Silencing
In addition to the acute instability caused by DNA rearrangements, we also observe gradual instability which we believe results
from epigenetic changes resulting in gene silencing. The scientific literature contains a great deal of information on gene
silencing, which is marked by changes in chromatin structure, including the methylation of cytosine residues at specific CpG
dinucleotides in DNA and changes in histone protein modifications.1–3 These events inhibit the binding of transcription factors, consequently shutting down transcription. Hence, we wished to
ascertain whether DNA methylation might play a role in the gradual instability in our cell lines. A conventional method for
determining whether DNA is methylated is to perform a restriction digest with an enzyme whose activity is inhibited by the
presence of a methyl group in its CpG-containing recognition sequence, and then to analyze the digest by Southern blot.
The phenotypic stability profile for cell line 16-6F, which was continuously cultured for more than 200 days, showed gradual
declines in both titer and Qp. northern blots showed that HC and light chain (LC) transcript levels were decreased, and Southern
blots of the coding region demonstrated that HC and LC gene copy number were unchanged (data not shown). Genomic DNA samples,
prepared at various time points during the time the cells were cultured, were digested with AatII, which cuts the specific
sequence 5'-GACGTC-3' only when the CpG dinucleotide in the sequence is unmethylated. If the sequence is methylated, AatII
will not cut. The AatII digested DNA was run on a gel, transferred to nitrocellulose membranes, and hybridized with specific
HC and LC probes. As shown in Figure 7, with increasing generations there was progressively less AatII digestion of the DNA,
resulting in undigested DNA migrating high up in the lane. A conclusion from these results was that the decline in titer and
Qp in the 16-6F cell line correlated with, and may have in part been caused by, DNA methylation.
Figure 7. Evidence for DNA methylation in an unstable cell line from a Phase 1 antibody project. Cell line 16-6F was continuously
cultured for more than 211 days, and genomic DNA was prepared at various time points (45, 82, 117, 134, and 211 generations).
The DNA was digested with AatII, 2 μg were run on an agarose gel, and the gel was transferred to nitrocellulose, which was
hybridized with probes encoding specific HC and LC genes. The lane labeled "CHO K1 + vector" contains 50 pg AatII digested
specific plasmid DNA spiked into CHO K1 genomic DNA. The migration of both nonmethylated and methylated DNA is indicated.
The drawbacks to performing this type of analysis are that it is dependent on the presence of specific enzyme restriction
sites in the plasmid region of interest, it is fairly low throughput, it is labor intensive, and it requires the use of radioactivity
to generate results of consistently high sensitivity and high quality. |
While fatalities in people are rare, they have occurred in adults who ingested as little as 250 to 500 ml of bleach at higher
concentrations (e.g. 12.5% sodium hypochlorite).3 | While fatalities in people are rare, they have occurred in adults who ingested as little as 250 to 500 ml of bleach at higher
concentrations (e.g. 12.5% sodium hypochlorite).3 It should be noted that bleach ingestion in adults is often associated with intentional poisoning (suicide), and death may
be hastened by the consumption of other toxins, chemicals, or pharmacologic agents.1,3 In children, death may occur with smaller doses, but the exact amount ingested is often unknown. Defining a lethal dose
in people is difficult since there are few cases in the literature, sodium hypochlorite concentrations in bleach vary, and
cases of intentional poisonings may involve multiple toxins.
In this case, the exact volume of bleach ingested by each animal was unknown since copious amounts of clear fluid were noted
in multiple areas near the dogs on initial discovery. This fluid may have been bleach, urine, or a mixture of both. Also,
the fluid on the skin and coat of both dogs smelled like urine and bleach. It was speculated that each dog ingested at least
several hundred milliliters of the estimated 2.12 L in the bottle.
While a lethal dose of sodium hypochlorite in dogs is not established in the veterinary literature, extrapolation from a reported
lethal dose of sodium chloride of 3.7 g/kg in dogs may be considered.5 For example, a 40-lb (18-kg) dog would have to ingest about 67 g of sodium chloride to attain this lethal dose. The consumption
of 1 L of 6.15% sodium hypochlorite bleach containing 19.1 mg/ml of sodium and 30 mg/ml of chloride would equal the ingestion
of 49.1 g of sodium chloride. Assuming the animals only ingested several hundred milliliters of bleach, this amount would
not have been sufficient to attain the lethal dose of sodium chloride. However, corrosive injury to the gastrointestinal tract
and the development of other metabolic derangements and secondary complications, such as aspiration pneumonia, likely contributed
to the severity of the toxicosis. Therefore, it is reasonable to suspect that ingestion of at least several hundred milliliters
of bleach resulted in the severe morbidity of these dogs, which led to their euthanasia.
The severe metabolic derangements and complications noted in these two dogs are comparable to those that occur in fatal cases
Increased serum osmolality. A common finding in fatal cases of sodium hypochlorite bleach ingestion in people is altered consciousness resulting from
acute elevations of serum sodium concentrations and osmolality.1 These elevations may cause central nervous system lesions such as intracranial hemorrhage, cerebral edema, and cerebral
or cerebellar herniation.1
The calculated serum osmolality for these dogs was approximately 391 mOsm/L in the female and 340 mOsm/L in the male (reference
interval = 290 to 310 mOsm/L). Both animals were poorly responsive, which was attributed to the acute hypernatremia and elevated
osmolality. In addition, the hypernatremia likely initiated the shifting of solutes within the erythrocytes in an attempt
to equilibrate with the hypertonic plasma. When the erythrocytes were exposed to the isotonic diluent used by the hematology
analyzer, cell swelling resulted in the detection of an increased MCV (macrocytosis), a decreased MCHC (hypochromasia), and
a higher calculated hematocrit.
In dogs, macrocytosis and hypochromasia are most commonly associated with a regenerative anemia, which would be unexpected
in this case since both dogs had either a high normal or an elevated hematocrit. Cell swelling may also explain the discrepancies
noted between the calculated and spun hematocrit in our patients since the hematology analyzer calculates the hematocrit based
on the measured MCV value and the red blood cell count. In this case, an artifactual elevation of the MCV due to in vitro
red blood cell swelling would have led to an increase in the calculated hematocrit. The spun hematocrit for both animals was
in the high normal range, which was attributed to dehydration.
Hemostatic abnormalities. The slight elevation of the prothrombin time and markedly elevated D-dimer concentration in the female may have indicated
developing hemostatic abnormalities and fibrinolysis associated with disseminated intravascular coagulation, given the severity
of the dog's clinical condition. |
Definitions of cutter
n. - One who cuts; as, a stone cutter; a die cutter; esp., one who cuts out garments. 2
n. - That which cuts; a machine or part of a machine, or a | Definitions of cutter
n. - One who cuts; as, a stone cutter; a die cutter; esp., one who cuts out garments. 2
n. - That which cuts; a machine or part of a machine, or a tool or instrument used for cutting, as that part of a mower which severs the stalk, or as a paper cutter. 2
n. - A fore tooth; an incisor. 2
n. - A boat used by ships of war. 2
n. - A fast sailing vessel with one mast, rigged in most essentials like a sloop. A cutter is narrower end deeper than a sloop of the same length, and depends for stability on a deep keel, often heavily weighted with lead. 2
n. - A small armed vessel, usually a steamer, in the revenue marine service; -- also called revenue cutter. 2
n. - A small, light one-horse sleigh. 2
n. - An officer in the exchequer who notes by cutting on the tallies the sums paid. 2
n. - A ruffian; a bravo; a destroyer. 2
n. - A kind of soft yellow brick, used for facework; -- so called from the facility with which it can be cut. 2
The word "cutter" uses 6 letters: C E R T T U.
No direct anagrams for cutter found in this word list.
List shorter words within cutter, sorted by length
All words formed from cutter by changing one letter
Browse words starting with cutter by next letter |
Kids and Cash
adapted from the Spring issue of Thrivent Magazine by Karen Worner
Make sure your sons and daughters know how to manage money BEFORE they head out into the world. “If you send your kids to college and expect they | Kids and Cash
adapted from the Spring issue of Thrivent Magazine by Karen Worner
Make sure your sons and daughters know how to manage money BEFORE they head out into the world. “If you send your kids to college and expect they’re going to learn personal finance, you’re sadly mistaken,” says Dan Voss, a Thrivent Financial representative in Appleton, Wisconsin, who has taught Finance Majors at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and found them short on personal finance knowledge. “Most have had very little exposure to reality….how much you have to pay in taxes from your checkbook, the cost of owning and maintaining a vehicle, paying for insurance on that vehicle, how to live within a budget, what health care costs and the like.”
That lack of knowledge is hurting your kids. “We owe it to them to explain the reality of personal finance through early training and advice,” Voss says. The high school years are a good time to begin, so they’re ready to handle money more independently once they go to college or move out on their own.
Here are a few ways to get started!
1. Help them realize the value of money.
Kids of all ages sometimes think Mom and Dad have unlimited funds, but you can teach them that isn’t the case. Talk about how much money you have to spend at the store or try bringing cash and show them that when the money in your wallet is gone, its gone.
2. Caution them about “minimum payments.”
To show the impact of only making the minimum payment on a credit card debt, show them your bill. Thanks to new regulations, credit card companies must now tell you just how much it will cost you in interest and how long it will take you to pay a debt using only the minimum payment.
3. Stress the importance of paying bills on time.
Chances are they won’t have any bills to pay before college, so have them help you pay bills once a month to see all the things that have to be paid for. Explain how late or missed payments can seriously hurt a person’s credit rating. The last thing a young person needs starting out in life is a bad credit rating. It could affect his or her ability to rent an apartment, but a car or even get a job.
If you would like more information on this topic find the full article at thrivent.com or call Mark Worner at Thrivent Financial for Lutherans at 763-682-6011. |
Don’t Handle With Care
In a world where some items—SUVs, houses, the size of the national debt—seem to be growing at an alarming pace, Arts and Science physicists have their eyes trained on particles so tiny they | Don’t Handle With Care
In a world where some items—SUVs, houses, the size of the national debt—seem to be growing at an alarming pace, Arts and Science physicists have their eyes trained on particles so tiny they make atoms look elephantine.
Nanotechnology is the study of these tiny particles—specifically those that meas-ure 100 nanometers. (Before you ask, a nanometer is one billionth of a meter.) Uses for nanotechnology range from innovations in medicine to energy production and electronics.
Assistant Professor of Physics James “Jay” Dickerson heads a team of researchers developing a durable nanoparticle film. Nanoparticle films could be used in semiconductor fabrication, drug delivery systems, and even flexible television and computer displays. The problem is that the film is quite delicate and has been known to disintegrate at the slightest touch.
To combat the delicate nature of the film, scientists use polymers to strengthen them, but this complicates the process and makes the film more expensive.
Now Dickerson and his colleagues have created freestanding nanoparticle film without the additional polymers. The key is the inclusion of a sacrificial layer that is used to initially bind the particles, but is then dissolved. Their findings were published recently in a paper in the journal Chemical Communications.
“Our films are so resilient that we can pick them up with a pair of tweezers and move them around on a surface without tearing,” Dickerson says. “This makes it particularly easy to put them into microelectronic devices, such as computer chips.”
One application for the nanoparticle film might be flexible television screens. These ultrathin, ultraflexible screens could be folded and bent repeatedly without crack-ing or breaking. You could literally carry a television around in your pocket, take it out to watch your favorite show and then fold it up and put it away. Flexible computer screens are in the works as well. Beyond the cool factor is that electronics made with this technology will use less energy.
The paper was coauthored by graduate student Saad A. Hasan and Dustin W. Kavich, PhD’08.
photo credit: Daniel Dubois |
Test Driven Development Using NUnit in C#By Muthukumar. V
Testing during development is one of the basic tenets of eXtreme Programming (XP). Another proposition of eXtreme Programming is automation of every possible | Test Driven Development Using NUnit in C#By Muthukumar. V
Testing during development is one of the basic tenets of eXtreme Programming (XP). Another proposition of eXtreme Programming is automation of every possible, repetitive task. This is because automation improves productivity to a very large extent. Put these two tenants together and you have the bedrock for an increasingly popular design methodology: Test Driven Development (TDD).
The most enjoyed phase of software development will always be Design and Coding, while the most hated parts of software development will always be bug fixing. Just ask yourself - would you rather be designing a system and/or writing the code, or would you rather be picking through an application and running tests, trying to squash a bug? Regardless of how unenjoyable testing and bug hunting are, they are necessary steps in the creation of an application. Despite how good of a programmer you may be, you will still produce bugs somewhere along the line.
A number of different software development methodologies have been proposed to reduce the amount of bugs in code. To understand the effects of bugs that creep up during the design process, realize that:
- One bug in code is equal to only one bug - though fixing it might produce more!
- One bug created in the design phase is equal to more than 10 bugs in the coding phase
- One bug created in requirement phase is equal to more than 100 bugs in the coding phase
Test Driven Development, Unit Tests, and NUnit, Oh My!
When sitting down to create an application, many developers start by writing the code. Test Driven Development emphasizes the opposite, stressing the need to prepare test scenarios or test cases before writing the code itself. This seemingly backwards approach has some benefits. First of all, it requires that the programmer be very clear about what tests the program should pass and what test it should fail, bringing such concerns to the forefront of the software design process. Furthermore, by meticulously detailing what tests a system should pass and fail we can use tools to automate most of our tests. An automated job is one that's always very, very easy to do. These automated tests are meant to be run every time there's a code change and are referred to as unit tests.
NUnit is a free, open-source tool for.NET that is developed as a framework which can help automate unit testing. (The same unit test framework was already available for Java and was named jUnit.) NUnit can be downloaded from NUnit site or the SourceForge NUnit page.
Installation and Setup of NUnit
After downloading the NUnit from either of the above download pages, run the installation program,
NUnit-XXX.msi. At the time of this writing, the current version of NUnit is 2.2.0 and the setup file name is
NUnit-2.2.0.msi. This setup will install the required libraries.
NUnit provides two utilities which can be used for running automated tests:
nunit-gui.exe, a GUI tool which I most commonly use, and
nunit-console.exe, which is a console program
nunit-gui.exetool. This can be run from Start Menu --> Programs --> Nunit --> NUnit GUI. After opening the tool, click on the File --> Open and open the
C:\Program Files\NUnit 2.2\binfolder. (The folder could be different if the installation has happened by choosing a different folder.) When the DLL is chosen, NUnit-GUI shows all the unit test code written for the particular DLL using the NUnit framework. If the button Run is clicked, it will show the results as follows.
- Passed Test - Green color
- Failed Test - Red color
- Ignored Test - Yellow color
nunit.tests.dllDLL contains over 600 tests and when run all of them should pass and turn the color to Green, as shown in the screenshot below. This means our installation is properly complete.
Using NUnit to Apply Unit Tests in a Visual Studio.NET Project
In order to run test cases we'll need to things:
- The test cases themselves, and
- The program that is having test cases run against it
The sample application is a command-line application with a single class,
has three properties:
CashBalance, along with a method,
which debits amount from the person's
CashBalance. The germane code is shown below:
Ideally we wouldn't yet have written the code for the
Person class. Instead, we'd just have documentation
that described the behavior of the
Person class. This behavior might be spelled out as follows:
- A person has properties to access their age, full name, and cash balance.
- When instantiating a person, we should be able to provide the first and last name, along with the age.
- The person's full name property should return the specified first and last names with a space in-between.
- When instantiating a person the cash balance should be 100,000.
- The cash balance should be reduced by the amount spent on car purchase.
- If we create a person with first and last name of "John" and "Abraham," and age 10, the person' |
Lower energy bills? Check. More-efficient homes? Check. Economy boost? Check. Why would the Public Service Commission want to stop these improvements for Louisiana?
In December, our Public Service Commission passed statewide energy efficiency rules that would help families and businesses | Lower energy bills? Check. More-efficient homes? Check. Economy boost? Check. Why would the Public Service Commission want to stop these improvements for Louisiana?
In December, our Public Service Commission passed statewide energy efficiency rules that would help families and businesses save money by reducing wasted energy in homes and buildings. These types of programs have been wildly successful in 46 other states — as well as in our own city of New Orleans — and have brought with them new jobs and lower utility bills.
Confoundingly, newly elected Chairman Eric Skrmetta and the PSC ended this initiative last month in a last-minute repeal.
Energy efficiency is not about making huge sacrifices; it’s about being smarter in the use of energy, such as air conditioning — resulting in a lower cost. By reducing the need to produce more energy, we decrease the likelihood of ratepayers spending billions of dollars for the construction of new power plants. Energy-efficiency programs provide incentives to weatherize homes and |
1 August 2006
Ethernet arose from Aloha Net
By John Rinaldi and Perry Marshall
Ethernet is the worldwide de facto standard for linking computers together.
Ethernet connects hundreds of millions of computers and smart devices across buildings, campuses, | 1 August 2006
Ethernet arose from Aloha Net
By John Rinaldi and Perry Marshall
Ethernet is the worldwide de facto standard for linking computers together.
Ethernet connects hundreds of millions of computers and smart devices across buildings, campuses, cities, and countries. Cables and hardware are widely available and inexpensive (dirt cheap in the case of ordinary office-grade products), and software is written for almost every computing platform.
Ethernet is now a hot topic in automation, where industry-specific networks have dominated: Profibus, DeviceNet, Modbus, Modbus Plus, Remote I/O, Genius I/O, Data Highway Plus, Foundation fieldbus, and numerous serial protocols over the electrical standards of EIA RS-232, RS-422, and RS-485.
In some cases, Ethernet is displacing these networks. In nearly all cases, Ethernet works in demanding installations alongside them.
Ethernet originated at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the mid-1970s. The basic philosophy was any station could send a message at any time, and the recipient had to acknowledge successful receipt of the message.
It was successful, and in 1980, the DIX Consortium (Digital Equipment Corp., Intel, and Xerox) formed and issued a specification. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) took it over and in 1983 issued the Carrier Sense, Multiple Access/Collision Detect (CSMA/CD) specification, their stamp of approval on the technology.
Ethernet has since evolved under IEEE to encompass a variety of standards for copper, fiber, and wireless transmission at multiple data rates.
Ethernet is an excellent transmission medium for data, but by itself falls short of offering a complete solution. A network protocol is also necessary to make it truly useful, and what has evolved alongside of Ethernet is TCP/IP.
From both a historical view as well as in today’s industrial world, the TCP/IP plus Ethernet marriage is a key combination, without which, neither would have survived.
The many formats and nomenclature of Ethernet cabling is a rather unfriendly shorthand terminology. IEEE’s Ethernet naming convention works like this:
The first number (10, 100, 1000) indicates the transmission speed in megabits per second.
The second term indicates transmission type: BASE = baseband, BROAD = broadband.
The last number indicates segment length. A 5 means a 500-meter segment length from original Thicknet.
In the newer standards, IEEE used letters rather than numbers. The T in 10BASE-T means Unshielded Twisted- Pair cables. The T4 in 100BASE-T4 indicates four pairs of Unshielded Twisted-Pair cables.
Packet communications key
During the 1970s, a Harvard graduate student named Robert Metcalfe read a paper about something called Aloha Net. It was a radio system used in the Hawaiian Islands to send small messages, also called data packets, between islands.
A key feature of this network was anyone could send messages at any time. If no acknowledgement as to receipt came, the message would retransmit.
Metcalfe reasoned correctly that with some mathematical enhancements to the system, the efficiency of the Aloha Net could drastically improve.
The packet communications network he designed became the worldwide standard we know today as Ethernet. It is also IEEE Standard 802.3; it retains today the elegance and simplicity of the original Aloha Net.
Above is a simplified diagram of the contents of an Ethernet packet. It contains two address fields, some data, and a field that verifies correct reception of the packet.
The first two fields are unique 48-bit addresses of the sending computer and the destination computer. These addresses are not the familiar 192.168.0.10 type addresses we often see but are addresses assigned by the manufacturers of the physical Ethernet cards.
Every manufacturer producing Ethernet hardware has, by assignment, a series of 48-bit addresses.
Known as the Media Access Control (MAC) address, the manufacturers of Ethernet interface cards must ensure they use only the addresses in their series and use it only once. That way, no two computers in the world can have the same address.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
John Rinaldi (jsr@rtaautomation. com) is the president of Real Time Automation. Perry Marshall (info@ perrymarshall.com) is a networking consultant. They wrote the handbook Industrial Ethernet, ISA Press, 2005.
Baseband is a transmission method in which the entire bandwidth (the rate at which information travels through a network connection) is used to transmit just one signal. Baseband is a cheaper method than broadband and is typically used for shorter distances of transmission.
Broadband refers to data transmission where multiple pieces of data transmit simultaneously to increase the effective rate of transmission. In network engineering, it is where two or more signals share a medium. |
May Is Asian-American Heritage Month
If you feel your family would benefit from cultural diversity and want to expose your children to different languages, traditions, holidays and food, there are many ways to tie different cultures into your daily lives. Here's how | May Is Asian-American Heritage Month
If you feel your family would benefit from cultural diversity and want to expose your children to different languages, traditions, holidays and food, there are many ways to tie different cultures into your daily lives. Here's how!
May is Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, so there is no better time to step outside of your own cultural background and explore the way others live. It can be enlightening, fun — and also quite tasty.
In your community
Take advantage of programs in your community that offer cultural events. If you live in a bigger city, they may be common and quite popular, but even small towns have festivals through libraries or museums. In areas that aren't ethnically diverse, you may want to go on day trips to visit bigger cities to experience more cultural diversity. Rachelle from Ohio loves visiting festivals. "Right now, we just go to ethnic festivals," she explained. "The Asian and Irish festivals here are amazing!"
In your home
Explore other cultures by bringing them to the dinner table. Plan an Ethiopian meal, for instance, or get your kids to love Thai food. Visit an ethnic market to get your ingredients and have your kids help prepare dinner. If you don't have easy access to some of the ingredients, look online for the best deal you can find on the internet.
If you can, immerse your child in another culture with the help of family members who have a different cultural background than you do. "My mom and her husband (Oma and Opa) are from Germany," shared Niki, mom of one. "My mom mostly speaks to Lucas in German. He is picking it up — he replies back to my mom (in English) when she says something to him in German, or will do what she tells in him German."
Many schools offer opportunities for children to learn about and experience different cultures — even within the student body itself. Charlene, mom of two, is opting to put her kids, who are biracial, in a city school — as opposed to one in the suburbs with a 95 percent caucasian student population. "There is much more of a mix of cultures in the city schools," she told us. "I want my kids around different races, and I especially want them around white and black people so they can get to know their own cultures."
Heather from Oregon is taking advantage of her city's unique academic opportunities for her daughter. "My daughter is about to take full Japanese immersion (80 percent of her day not speaking any English at all) in a school that also offers Mandarin and Spanish immersion," she said. "All three cultures are represented in shared performances."
In books and other media
Media, in any form, is an excellent way to introduce your child to new and different cultures. For example, as May is Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, there is a fun and engaging new series of children's books available in both a traditional format as well as for e-readers. The Fujimini Adventure Series from ONCEKids features an early introduction to Asian culture, holidays, food, traditions and has ample vocabulary-building opportunities.
“At ONCEKids we celebrate diversity and encourage families to explore other cultures, especially those with an Asian influence,” says author and founder, Eileen Wacker. “We believe a love of reading starts with fun, so our products are available in a variety of formats to incorporate different learni |
Have you ever heard of Balaam the son of Beor? Have you ever studied his story? Probably not, He is one of those little-known characters tucked away in the Old Testament, and yet he is an extremely interesting one. The | Have you ever heard of Balaam the son of Beor? Have you ever studied his story? Probably not, He is one of those little-known characters tucked away in the Old Testament, and yet he is an extremely interesting one. The story of his life is found in the book of Numbers.
I would like to embark this year on a new selection of studies on Old Testament characters. I do this for a number of reasons. I love the Old Testament, and I love to teach it. But paramountly, I have found that the stories which are told in this older covenant have the power to change lives. In the New Testament, Paul says that these historical accounts in the Old Testament "happened to them" i.e., they are trustworthy history, and yet they were "written for our instruction."
Though the characters of the Old Testament may have experienced these events initially, the ultimate benefit accrues to us. The term which Paul uses there, and which is translated ''instruction,'' is a term which means ''to set in mind," to place in mind in such a way that these truths are unforgettable. And this is the way I feel about the Old Testament. It takes the principles which are found in the New Testament and portrays them in pictorial form in an unforgettable way, in a way which has an impact upon s that the New Testament perhaps may not have at times. So I am convinced that as we look at these Old Testament stories the Lord is going to change our lives. He is going to put these truths in our minds.
Secondly, I would like to stimulate you in your own study of the Old testament. I Find that many Christians simply do not read and study the Old Testament, perhaps because they feel that the Old Covenant is superseded by the New Covenant and therefore is outdated and outmoded, and perhaps is not even intended for Christians to read, much as we might refer only to an up-to-date copy of the Sears catalog to order some merchandise, rather than to the 1936 edition, But that is not true. The Old Testament is not outmoded, not outdated, not irrelevant. It is exceedingly relevant, and it presents to us the truth that we have in The New Testament in a very vivid way. It anticipates almost all the truth revealed in the New Testament.
Before we get into our study of Balaam, I would like to share with you some of the characteristics of biographies as they are found in the Scriptures. I will add to this list as we continue in our studies. The first thing which impresses me about Old Testament character studies is that the Lord is brutally honest about these people. There is no attempt to cover up their misdeeds or to portray them in some artificial way. Their virtues, and their vices as well, are presented honestly. Every thing is "out front". They are pictured as real men and women coming from a common source. The Scriptures tell us that man came from the dust of the earth. We all are made out of the same stuff; we have the same origins. No one, as Jack Crabtree once pointed out, is made out of superdust! We are all the same. We are all limited, all weak. And the colossal failures of these Old Testament men are presented as well as their victories. Therefore we can identify with them, because we are like that. We fail abysmally at times. So when we read these stories our hearts go out to them, because that is where we are.
David was an adulterer, a murderer, and a man filled at times with massive pride for which he was very severely judged. Abraham, despite the fact that he was "exhibit A" of the Man of Faith, as a husband was just a great oaf, jeopardizing the life of Sarah at least twice in order to save his own skin. Jacob, whose name means "Usurper," was the sort of man who is always trying to take somebody else's place, who is always pushing into line - a con artist. These men are portrayed in all of their failures. And we can look at them and say, "These are our kind of people!" Yet God is not ashamed to call them "brethren". He loves them and accepts them the way they are, and he is available to them to change their lives. So when we see men portrayed |
More than thirty-seven million Americans live below the official poverty line, and their plight has only worsened with rising energy, food, and healthcare costs. The inequality gap in our country has reached record highs, and it’s unclear from current economic events | More than thirty-seven million Americans live below the official poverty line, and their plight has only worsened with rising energy, food, and healthcare costs. The inequality gap in our country has reached record highs, and it’s unclear from current economic events if there will be any near-term relief or directional change. For that reason this year’s Blog Action Day is on the issue of poverty, which has undeniable connections and even potential solutions in the energy and environmental sphere.
Within the last year, the Center for American Progress Action Fund and partners have launched a campaign to cut national poverty in half in the next ten years — Half in Ten. The campaign has its roots in the Poverty to Prosperity report, released in 2007, which outlines 12 policies that would reach the campaign’s goal.
The Urban Institute found that just three of these policies — raising and indexing the minimum wage; expanding the Earned-Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit; and providing childcare assistance for working families below a certain income-level — would reduce poverty by more than 26 percent. Child poverty would drop by 41 percent, and over 9 million fewer Americans would be poor.
The Center for American Progress has also proposed a Green Economic Recovery plan that demonstrates how investments into transitioning to a low-carbon economy can also carve pathways out of poverty and create 2 million green-collared jobs across the U.S., primarily in the construction and manufacturing sectors.
Many of the jobs created would be in response to rising demand for energy efficiency retrofits, which in turn can cut a household’s energy expenditures. This is significant in relation to poverty because while the average American household spends about 5 percent of its annual income on energy bills, a low-income household spends closer to 16 percent on energy bills (and some cases and estimates suggest up to 35 percent). At a time when homeownership is in peril, energy costs and utility bills must be factors in our understanding of home affordability.
The green dream and the American dream are not exclusive battlegrounds, and in fact they share a lot |
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